I'd like to thank you very much for the courage that you've shown by coming here to share your stories. I can't even begin to imagine the pain that you and your community have gone through for generations. Your historical and cultural souls have been torn. Your language has been taken away. Your family units are broken down. Where do you begin to pick up the pieces when you don't have anywhere to turn? Then you have the institutional environment of Ottawa coming in and saying, “This is what we think you need to do.” Well, it caused this problem in the first place, so where is the basis of trust moving forward?
All the way through this study, it just keeps coming back to the same thing. The system is broken and the funding model doesn't work. Ottawa keeps trying to bring in something new, a new magic bullet and again a new magic bullet, and we end up right back where we started, with families breaking down, with alcohol and substance abuse and abuse.
On one hand, part of the problem is autonomy. At first it seems you have autonomy, but no, actually, the funding grants and the funding model, the programming model, the way they works is that you are constantly having to battle to get new funds or to get reoccurring funds and they can only be spent in a certain way. Do you agree that the funding model is broken?