Mr. Speaker, this year the University of Alberta, my alma mater, is awarding its Community Scholar Award to Dr. Cindy Blackstock, in recognition of her long-standing work with communities, organizations, and governments to ensure culturally appropriate and equitable services for first nations children in child welfare, health care, and education.
Is it not time that the government stopped wasting taxpayer dollars opposing efforts to ensure the extension of comparable social and educational services to aboriginal children, as our country has committed to deliver under the Convention on the Rights of the Child? Is it not time to finally recognize the dedicated and constructive efforts by Dr. Blackstock and the First Nations Child & Family Caring Society on behalf of aboriginal children, to respect their experience and advice, and to start implementing the programs all and sundry have endorsed?
