Thank you, Mr. Chair, and you would be accurate in your assumption that we are all blaming you for the fairness.
I am a member of the finance committee as a whole and I have to tell you that I found it amusing when I first came in here. I wasn't going to say anything when I heard words like “not properly consulted” and “not enough hours spent on this bill”.
To put it bluntly, I've never spent more time on any bill in my eight years here, and I think this is actually the most time that any committee has ever spent on a budget implementation act since I've been here, for certain. So I do want to thank this committee for all the hours they've put in. Today, we didn't have enough witnesses so we had to cancel the meeting. Yesterday we had to do the same thing. So we are hearing from a lot of Canadians, and as you say, it's a very diverse group. I'm glad of that because I think it is an important issue, especially because it is a milestone in relation to some particular pieces of legislation.
I'm also glad to hear the NDP is interested in creating more jobs in Canada. Certainly I think that's important, to have value added that actually pays for itself. Here I just want to let the member know that with the glut of refining capacity in the United States right now, it's not a competitive industry so it would be very difficult indeed for a Canadian to make a profit on refining some of the raw materials we do have, because the refining can be done much more cheaply in the south—without government subsidies, of course, which I'm not into.
I do want to talk about something that was brought up and that has, to my mind, not received enough time, and that is the impact of this particular legislation on aboriginal people.
I come from Fort McMurray. There were 1,500 people when I moved there in 1967. Today there are about 130,000. A large component of my family is aboriginal in background, from three reserves in the area. I have seen tremendous changes in that group of individuals in the last 10 to 15 years since we've had economic development there, and I'd like to tell you a story about my nephew. He served some serious time in jail, lived on the streets for a period of time, and is a full treaty Indian from the Janvier Indian Band. Today, at 33 or 34 years of age, he has a family of five children and over a million and a half dollars in the bank. He has a very successful business, after three years, and that is because in Fort McMurray there is a pro-aboriginal hiring policy. Syncrude, for instance, has a policy that 15% of its workforce be aboriginal, for Suncor it's 8%, and there are another 28 companies up there with similar policies of hiring aboriginals because it's very important to them.
We have seen a tremendous change in the communities around us—not the chronic alcohol and drug problems as there were back in the seventies and eighties. There has been tremendous improvement in people's lives, and in going to some places in Canada, I've not seen that same reflection of success in aboriginal lives. And here I'm not just talking about economic success; I'm talking about success in families, success in their general quality of life.
I wanted to address the Chamber of Commerce especially.
The Northeastern Alberta Aboriginal Business Association, which has over 300 members, has the following mission statement: Aboriginal Business in partnership with Industry; enhancing opportunities by supporting economic development of Aboriginal people in the Wood Buffalo region.
I have to tell you, the relationships between the aboriginal bands and the aboriginals in northeastern Alberta are very good, leading to tremendous success for aboriginals.
Now, is that what you see taking place in the rest of Canada in areas that don't have economic development right now and have high percentages of aboriginals? Do you see their coming into the work force and having economic success and quality of life improvement, which is very important to me?
