Mr. Speaker, I am so pleased to speak to this bill because I believe that the health and well-being of indigenous children is one of the most important issues before us as federally elected representatives. We are responsible for them and, sadly, we have made too many mistakes that affect them. As elected representatives, it is our duty to fix those mistakes. That is why this bill was crafted following court rulings stating that indigenous children were victims of a discriminatory funding system and identifying our obligation to remedy that. It took five court rulings for a bill to be introduced.
It would have been really nice if the committee had agreed to amendments to the bill, regardless of who proposed them. I believe that all the committee members sincerely wanted to improve the lives of indigenous children, but I think many more amendments would have been agreed to if the members truly wanted to set aside partisanship in order to improve the lives of these children, even though this parliamentary session is almost over. I am sad that the vast majority of the amendments put forward in committee were rejected.
I myself wanted the chance to speak to this bill at second reading, but I chose not to do so because I did not want to unduly delay adoption at second reading, so the bill could be sent to committee. Now I am fortunate to be the last member to speak to this bill before it goes to the Senate. I really wanted to emphasize the importance of making quite a few of these amendments because children's well-being is at stake. We do not want to have to start all over again. This I humbly submit to the senators who will study the bill and who may choose to revisit some of the amendments.
When I leave Ottawa to head home, I drive north for at least six hours. Each time, I pass through Kitigan Zibi, a reserve just outside of Maniwaki. As an aside, Parliament is located on their ancestral land. Every time I make this drive, sometimes twice a week, I see the photos of Maisy Odjick and Shannon Alexander, two teen girls who have gone missing since 2008 and have not been heard from since. Community members are still worried about them.
This is why I am particularly pleased to speak today. We must recognize that many indigenous children have had some very difficult experiences. For example, some children were placed with foster families who do not understand their traditions or language. A huge proportion of these children are placed in foster care every day, and, unfortunately, not all of them are lucky enough to live with people who understand their culture and their identity.
Many of these children are placed with foster families who do not understand their realities, while others still are raised by parents who did not have the chance to be raised by their own parents, who were forced to send their children to a residential school. This generation must now raise teenagers without having learned from their own parents.
I believe that members of indigenous communities deserve our admiration, because they are doing the best they can to pass on all aspects of their culture to their children, to show them who they are and where they come from, even though they themselves were unable to learn these things from their own parents.
As an MP, I have had the opportunity to visit a number of schools in indigenous communities and to see young people learning the Algonquin language, using charts with Algonquin words written on them. Young people are starting to learn the basics of Algonquin. When I was a young adult, I shared an apartment with a young Algonquin girl who had never had the opportunity to learn the language. She had a workbook that her mother had found for her. She was 18 or 19 years old and had never had the chance to learn the language.
This generation is trying to catch up. To do so, they need to be involved with child services on a daily basis. Indigenous peoples have a very different way of raising children. Over time, working as a nurse, I realized that everything related to pregnancy is very different for them. Too often, we tend to judge based on our own perspectives.
In indigenous communities, it is not unusual for teenagers or 18-year-old girls to already have two or three children. That often does not make any sense to us, and we think it must be a problem situation. However, when we talk to those girls, we realize that they do not have the same view as we do of getting pregnant at 15 or 16 years old. If we continue to judge these sorts of situations from our own perspective, unfortunately, it could result in child placement services being called in, even though the girls see the situation completely differently.
Children are placed in care when there is a concern for their safety and their development is at risk. However, we are somewhat responsible for some of those risks, because no new housing has been built on reserves in 30 years and we are failing to provide clean drinking water and schools that are not falling apart. All we have to offer these children is mould-infested schools.
When children have absolutely nowhere to play and community infrastructure is in a pitiful state, child development may well be compromised. How much of this is the parents' responsibility? At what point should there be consequences? In fact, most of that responsibility falls to the system the children are forced into. It is up to us as elected officials to change the system and give power back to the communities, so that they can invest, build housing and make sure that pregnant teens can continue their education while also looking after their children. It is up to us to make sure that schools full of mould quickly become a thing of the past.
I was lucky enough to see a beautiful school built in my riding, in Long Point First Nation. It has made such a difference. Kids used to have to go to a mould-infested school that was eventually shut down by the school board. Since the school was located in the next town, the kids had to take a bus. That building was in really bad shape. Teenagers went to school in their own community, but they had to take classes in the gymnasium, where there were no windows, because there was mould everywhere else. The young people were self-harming. It was a disaster. It took years for them to finally get their school.
The design of this school is quite unique. It is well lit, a lot of wood was used, and it is in the shape of a hive. The children are put in a circle so that they can see each other and communicate with one another. We can see on their faces that these children are doing better. The community knew that the children needed a nice school that they could be proud of in order to be happy.
Today I am calling on the House to pass Bill C-92, for it to be referred to the Senate, but also that we not forget that the indigenous communities need to be allocated a significant amount of funding to ensure that the children are happy. It is the responsibility of elected members to ensure that indigenous communities can benefit from funding to fully develop and that children can stop being exposed to discrimination.
