Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Again, thanks for the question. We're trying to look at kits again for the youth. The education system only restarted physical fitness again just this week. That was a concern being raised by the communities in regard to the lack of opportunity for children to be active and exer

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. We're our own indigenous government, so we do provide these types of additional services to try to alleviate the demand on the health system within the region and the territory. A lot of the medical staff here are transient. They will come up from on

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  When people return from outside of the territory, they are expected to isolate for 14 days in a major centre such as this community. They are allowed to go home after that. Hopefully, they don't contract COVID and then bring it back into the household. That's why there's such a l

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We received approximately $5.8 million to deliver all of those different services, programs, kits and so on.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thanks for the opportunity. I think I would agree with Mr. Vodden's view. We have a lot of remote communities in our area, and they're only accessible by one ship a year to get their annual supply, and/or by aircraft. We have been able to get the airlines in the region subsidiz

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I would say that would be extremely helpful. Where I reside it still takes around 10 days for the government to get the results back, just because of the remoteness. They have not, in any real sense, expanded their rapid testing outside of the capital of Yellowknife, where we se

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I would most definitely be recommending that, because, like I said, it's pretty well non-existent. People have very high stress and anxiety. I did not point out that one of the services that we've been able to provide is professional psychological counselling made available at

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. I want to point out that, as you said, my name is Duane Smith. That's my English name, anyway. I'm located just near the northeast tip of Alaska, to give you some perspective. It's roughly nine hours by jet to get here from Ottawa, but

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It finally recognizes, Canada recognizes, its obligations as well to be more adequately engaged in the proper development of this, and I do recognize this as a framework as well. I view this as something that, like any other piece of legislation, is not going to be perfect, but l

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's part of what I just responded to as well. I think the legislation is clear and as vague as it could be to allow us to deal with those matters on a region-by-region basis. In terms of capacity, yes, there's going to be a need for investment with regard to infrastructure, be

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's an excellent question. We have begun. We do work with our regional education system to gather different data in relation to the students and how well they may or may not be doing so that we can try to focus the limited resources we have to help them improve where they need

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The answer is yes. A secondary response is that you can't have a blanket process for it, I would think, because every individual's case is going to be different. You have to recognize that there needs to be a potential process to assist those going into that transition period, be

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  In reality we still practise custom law. If your grandparent wants one of your children's children, then they take them. It's agreed upon, because they feel they have the better skill in life at that time to give them an adequate upbringing. I'm one of those children, just to let

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We force it on the government. We hope we never have to go to the courts, but when we have to stress that a certain family wants to practise custom law, that's where we have to have a discussion rather than the GNWT, the government of my area, just exercising that process with th

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I am not the government of my area. I can't answer that, but the observations and the recommendations are in the Auditor General's reports. The reason we're supportive of this legislation right now is that we want to finally have our rights recognized to look after our own child