Mr. Chair, it's a privilege to have an opportunity to appear before the Standing Committee on Finance. We both have a difficult challenge, you and I. We're both elected to make Canadians' lives better: you for Canada and me for my community back home.
I'm the chief of the Whispering Pines/Clinton Indian Band. It's a small community located just outside of Kamloops. We were moved there in 1972 to make way for a B.C. Hydro transmission lines project.
We currently are a small community of 150 band members. I'm one of the old guys; we have 150 people, and my band number is 38, so there are 112 guys younger than I am on my reserve. We have only one person on SA, social assistance, and that's because we pour a substantial amount of money into education. We take the education funding that we receive from INAC and we use it. We do partnerships with pipeline companies, logging companies, and so forth, so we have a well-educated young population.
My community has the same dreams that other Canadians do: to receive primary and secondary education at the same standard as other Canadians; to have post-secondary education opportunities; to acquire skills, education, and meaningful employment; to live in a healthy community; to raise our families; and to own our homes. That's what I am asking for here: to own our own homes.
Like you, I was elected to realize the dreams and goals of our youth, and I was elected to honour our elders and provide health care for them. That's why I'm here. However, in my community we can't do that. Our elders can't retire with security and our youth can't get ahead.
First nations people do not and cannot own their own land on reserve. My house is owned by the Minister of Indian Affairs. It says that in subsection 2(1) of the Indian Act. I bought it; I paid for it; I paint it; I fix it; I insure it; but he owns it.
Under the Indian Act, we are prohibited by legislation from holding legal title. In Canada, only children, mentally incompetent persons, and first nations people living on a reserve cannot own land.
Why should our young families not be able to own homes on our land? Why should our elders not be able to retire using the equity they've acquired in those homes? On what grounds does Canada continue to justify first nations not having the same human rights as other Canadians?
A recent event has given me a profound appreciation of why property rights are a fundamental human right. Hernando de Soto, the distinguished Peruvian economist, visited us last year at Thompson Rivers University.
In his work throughout the world, Mr. de Soto has found that the distinction between prosperity and poverty is the laws. Quite simply, it's how you hold title to the land and how you hold title to your house. As Mr. de Soto put it when he visited us, to not provide these rights is to condemn a people to poverty. Why should we as first nations be condemned to poverty through the Indian Act?
Mr. de Soto has learned this lesson in his own country. In 1992, Peru was impoverished and beset by the Maoist group, the Shining Path. Peru had informal property rights that were not codified into law so they could not be enforced and traded. Mr. de Soto led Peru through a program to create legal title to the land for Peru's people, with very impressive results. Over the last 20 years, Peru has been the fastest growing economy in South America and North America; the Shining Path has been eliminated; and the violent crime rate is among the lowest in the Americas. This approach has become a model for the rest of the world.
Hernando de Soto visited us a month or so ago because that is precisely what we want to do in Canada with first nations reserves. Our community is one of the proponents of the first nations property ownership act legislation. If passed by Parliament, this legislation would return our home and native land to us. It would be our land, under our jurisdiction. It would allow our members—our youth, our elders—to access mortgages, business loans, lifelong education opportunities, retirement savings, and other things like that, which Canadians take for granted.
All I'm asking the Standing Committee on Finance to do is to urge the government to act on the economic action plan 2012 commitment to introduce and pass the property ownership legislation. It was the Standing Committee on Finance which wisely recommended that the government include the commitment in the 2012 budget.
My community members support property ownership. There is no good reason for Parliament to continue to overlook this human rights violation. Parliament must act now to introduce this optional first nations legislation.
We are not asking for special rights. We are simply asking for the right to own our own house and to own our own land, just like every other Canadian.
We are not asking for sympathy or pity. We are not asking for handouts. We are simply asking for what is right.
Thank you.