Mary Coyle, Nova Scotia, Mi’kma’ki.

Thank you, minister, and to the officials for your testimony and for being with our Senate committee this morning. We welcome this next step on the decolonization journey, as you have identified it, and accelerating the government’s response to that road map toward self-determination that was forged by Indigenous leaders is so important. I really see this First Nations Infrastructure Institute as a welcome milestone, so I will start there.

I’m going to ask you a question in an area that we haven’t delved into too much yet. If passed, Bill C-45, as I understand it, would add new data collection and analysis and publication authorities for the First Nations Tax Commission, the First Nations Financial Management Board and the new First Nations Infrastructure Institute. Could you elaborate on the data collection aspect mentioned in the proposed amendments? What additional data is expected to be collected, and how would you see this data contributing to evidence-based decision making and planning?

I will probably ask the same question to the next panel, but what do you see this as?

Thank you and welcome back to our witnesses here today. You’ve talked about the amendments being years in the making, let alone the whole institutional change and relationship change that you have achieved and are continuing to strive for.

Mr. Calla, you mentioned that we have to change the infrastructure gap, we have to address that significantly and that is one of the key things we are talking about here. I believe you said we can’t do it with the tools we currently have or something to that effect, and therefore we need these amendments and this new institute. Could you speak, Mr. Calla, to the limitations of the current tools, those constraints that are there, and the advantages that these amendments will bring and what you see concretely? Let’s say we’re five years into the future, we passed this and we’re five years out, going from a point of constraint of existing tools to new tools and our tool kit as a result of these amendments. What’s the advantage, and what will we see concretely?