Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Daniels stated, if I remember well, that all those indigenous people fell under section 91(24), which is a legislative authority that the federal government legislates for the Indian.... It doesn't mean that programs that are specifically for first nations, Inuit, or Métis will s

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The ones who are under grants can do that.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  As far as I remember, the ones who are under grants—and I will check just in case I was wrong—receive core funding that includes social assistance. That means they have the capacity to reallocate or spend in a different way if they want.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  You're right. We're hearing from chiefs and from communities that would like to use social assistance differently. The grants or self-government, of course, would give them that flexibility. We have been engaging with first nations on a review of social assistance and how we can

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, it's probably 26% to 28%.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think it's increasing on the executive side a bit, which is encouraging. It varies from place to place. What we're trying to do now is to have a targeted approach. What I mean is that if I look at my regions in Ontario, it's 50%, so it's significant. Other regions are lower, o

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The majority of my employees are in regions. Given the division of labour, if you want, between both of us, the majority of my employees are in regions. That is probably—I don't have the exact numbers—close to two-thirds, so that's quite significant. My expectation is that it's

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Unfortunately, there are no programs encouraging people to speak indigenous languages at the office per se. We encourage our indigenous employees who work with indigenous communities to speak their own language. We have that, and we see that.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We have programs where we do a recruitment process that is targeted to indigenous people. We don't necessarily link—

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I cannot—

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I cannot have an exemption from the official languages policy. What we have been trying to do and to risk-manage is to hire those people and send them on French training, to make sure that in two years they will meet the requirements. We do our best, but we have legal obligatio

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We met the same chief. It is an issue that has been raised, the fact that the funding for language is related to the first nations education system, not the provincial one. Some people have an agreement with the province—the education system, the schools, are actually provincial

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, it's CMHC dollars. We don't want to comment necessarily on their budget, but I get the same comments on infrastructure and budget. You have to look at it over the years. Sometimes it depends on the building, on the construction, especially on infrastructure. It happened, for

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's why we're trying to move to 10-year agreements. That's why we're trying to move to situations where they have a sense of what the amount of money will be. We can always debate whether it's enough or not, which is a normal discussion to have, but you have to have predictabi

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think it was 84, 85, the last time I looked.