Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Again, I'm glad Kellyann is here, because I can always point to what she said earlier. It's just a matter of giving our people an opportunity to grow in this. We support it. We support the environment. We support what they're doing. We support their education. We support them al

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I've been in native politics now since 1982, and have I ever had a whole list of recommendations in terms of how the federal government could spend more money on first nations issues. As far as government efficiencies, you know yourself, in terms of what's going on in this count

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Oh, I see.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Okay, yes. I was thinking how you guys could save money, so I'll save that. But I think we outlined that earlier in services and staffing.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Reduction of bureaucrats, saving all their extra little bonuses for doing their jobs? You could pop up millions of dollars to any kind of small education program you have here. Of course in the end there's always deficit funding; that's how it'll go. I have already identified wha

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I was thinking of exactly this on the way in. I'll use an example that happened a few years ago, and that was SARS. SARS became an emergency everywhere, and our communities wanted to be involved with that. The region was asked to put together a plan, the province was asked to put

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  In the fires that I mentioned in my opening statement, the houses were never rebuilt.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  In our community, we have definitely noticed the change with regard to the temperature variations, and some of our elders have noticed that as well. The climate has changed with respect to being hotter. Summers are longer and drier, and that creates the conditions for these types

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I don't have that figure with me right now in terms of what we actually get from INAC. For the population that we have, there is just an old formula. There are Oneida, Akwesasne, Six Nations.... There are five communities here. We've been trying to get the federal government to c

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I don't think there has been any specific conscious gap. It has just been the relationship that we've had with communities over the years and years, and it just doesn't exist. Now with this idea of reconciliation, people are finding out more, but more and more what we've had are

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I just want to let you know that it comes back to this idea of providing some educational resources for us; and they exist, if you know what I mean. We can link with the Canadian firefighters association or pretty well anybody in the province, and link with those types of things,

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Welcome, Madam Chair, and welcome, committee members. [Member spoke in Oneida] My name is Randall Phillips, and I am currently the elected chief at the Oneida Nation of the Thames. It is an Oneida community. It is located about 25 kilometres southwest of London, Ontario. It's a

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Quickly, in terms of that response, there seems to be some assumption that the process is worth saving now. What's stopping this backlog of 800 claims? It's certainly not first nations communities; it's the honour of the government. So when it com

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I have a really quick response. I certainly cannot speak for the other communities and say whether or not this is an advantage for them to move forward. I only suspect that if I had the opportunity to explain to them what our concerns are with th

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'd like to give a partial response to some of the earlier questions and then ask Martin to conclude on that. On how this bill was moved forward, I suggest that the crafters of the bill were careful to address those types of things in its design--to put it in a flavour that make