Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

I certainly didn’t ever think I would be presenting to the Senate in all my life, so I’m happy to be here. It’s an honour. My name is Allan Claxton, as you can see, and I was the chief of my First Nation for 20 years, the Tsawout First Nation, which is on Vancouver Island. I’m currently on council. I’ve got two more weeks left on council, and through my years as chief, I could see and understand the infrastructure needs of our First Nation.

Early on in my years as chief I met Manny Jules. My First Nation took over property tax, and then we took over the GST, and just recently we initiated the property transfer tax. As a chief, as a community, we do have these tools at our disposal, but we have to use them. We have to put them into action, and help create revenues for my nation.

We understand that the infrastructure gap is huge. That is a big job and a big challenge in front of us, but by working with other institutions, we feel confident that we can get in and connect with the First Nations. We will work with all First Nations and all First Nations organizations to deal with that infrastructure gap.

The system that’s in place now, the infrastructure is extremely expensive. It takes a very long time to get the infrastructure, and that infrastructure doesn’t last very long.

We’ve been working with Jason Calla for the last five years, and we make a very good team, and we have a lot of respect for each other. It’s exciting times working with other institutions and being the new kid on the block. We are excited, though, at the challenges ahead of us, and we all have to work together to move things forward.

With that said, I’m going to ask Mr. Calla to say a few words.

I believe so. Our initial goal is to go in and — they may have some infrastructure that’s ongoing. We want to get them shovel ready. Our next is to build their capacity, so FNII will be up there, but to build their capacity and then it will go like that. They have to be able to work with them to pick whoever they want to do their infrastructure, and Jason Calla is more involved in that than I am. I used to go in as the chief and connect with the politicians and the leadership and then hand it over to Jason Calla and his team.