Canadian Heritage committee  From our perspective, the commissioner has to be indigenous, or has to be first nation. I'm speaking from a first nations perspective. It should be our people who appoint the commissioner—not the minister or the government, but our people—and that individual has to meet criteria.

Canadian Heritage committee  May I respond to the question, Madam Chair?

Canadian Heritage committee  Our cultural centres spoke about funding. We said $250 million, as a start, should be put into a language institute, which would then go right into the communities to help them rebuild their languages. We have another recommendation that $1 million, as a start, should go into fi

Canadian Heritage committee  You're right. It's not there, and we keep asking “What do you mean by 'diverse'?” That could be anyone. Anyone off the streets could say, “Now today, our mandate is going to change. We're going to work on indigenous languages.” That is what's happening right now. I'm witnessing i

Canadian Heritage committee  What I'd like to stress is that our national organization is community-driven. Our cultural centres are community-based, and they have been doing this work since 1972. We operate on very limited funding, which comes from Indigenous Services Canada. It's proposal-driven funding,

Canadian Heritage committee  [Witness spoke in Ojibwa] [English] I've been with the confederacy since 2000. Established in 1972, the First Nations Confederacy of Cultural Education Centres is a non-profit, first nations-controlled national organization. We have a membership of 50 cultural centres across Ca