What we're hearing about this morning, in a very compelling and clear way, is the whole question of inequality and the role poverty plays in that. If you don't have the housing, if you don't have the money to get out or look after yourself, you're left in a position where you have no choices. That inequality is not something that just kind of evolves or happens. It happens because of sometimes bad public policy. Mike spoke to that.
This morning I read in the National Post--not a particularly left-wing newspaper--an article by Murray Dobbin, who suggested there has been a battle happening in Canada over the last 20 years over property rights and equality, and the property rights are winning. It seems to me this is also an issue in aboriginal communities.
He goes on to quote Statistics Canada, saying that in terms of that battle for equality, the poverty created has twice the impact cost-wise than all of the cancers that we experience in the country. He also said that the average life expectancy of women is 75, but 51% of the poorest women don't make it to that age. It is the same thing with men. The poorest men, at 25, lose seven and a half years of life versus the wealthiest.
That's what we're hearing. Yesterday in Whitehorse we heard some really compelling testimony about violence against women. It was just unbelievable, and we're hearing again today that women tend to be the most obvious and clear victims of all of this.
How do we get to equality? And how do we erase the poverty that leads to this inequality?
There were a couple of comments made, and suggestions. We focus very clearly...and we heard again here and yesterday about the very desperate circumstances that many aboriginal people are now forced to live in because of the way things have evolved. We come forward with suggestions of ways we might change life to make it better, and then we move aggressively ahead, with our ideology often sticking out, to do things that then become problematic to the environment.
On the whole question of matrimonial rights, yes, perhaps we should, but what we found in dealing with that bill when it came before Parliament was that the consultation that needed to be done with the parties involved wasn't done in a way that led us to believe that at the end of the day, what they were proposing--and it's always limited--would get us to where you would want us to get to, Jean.
We need to remember that in working with and doing things on behalf of aboriginal people, they need to be involved and engaged and consulted in the whole thing, or else it's not going to work. I think that's what Shirley said this morning, that if you don't sit down and talk with, engage, and work with... That's what some of the leadership of the aboriginal communities who spoke to us both in Vancouver and yesterday in Whitehorse said to us as well, that we have to include them. We have to talk to them and we have to engage... And I think it's the same thing with the disabled.