Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Murphy, I'm very pleased and interested in your statement on the need for the amendment on kinship and customary care. We know that Bill C-92 has devolved the role for establishing child welfare codes to first nations and Inuit communities. It is so important.
In communities I represent, we have the kokums, the grandmothers, who are raising children. We have cousins and neighbours who are raising children. They are raising them with love, but they are often never recognized. We fight like hell to get them the child tax benefit because we have to prove it again and again. These are very natural ways that children are being brought into safe environments when they are in unsafe environments, when they are at risk or when the parents are not in a position to look after the children. In one of the communities I was in, they said, “We aren't going to take the children out of the homes; we're going to take the parents out of the homes. The children should have safe homes. If the parents are the ones causing problems, we'll take them out, and we'll look after the children in their home.”
From your work, what you've seen and your experience with your council, how important is it to frame language around the recognition of those family realities, for protecting and building loving homes for children?