Absolutely. That's what we want. That's what we've been striving for. As one of the three recognized aboriginal groups in the Canadian Constitution, that is our objective: self-government. I'm actually working on our governance model. We've been working on it for a long time. We believe that would give us the answer to a lot of the situations that exist for our people today. We consider them our citizens.
I just want to comment a bit on this. One of the biggest things that has happened in this province is the establishment of food banks. Alberta has been in a tremendous boom. I spoke to the person running for the premiership of Alberta, and I said to him something that I believe he took as quite shocking. I said that if it were up to me, I would close all the food banks tomorrow. I would close them and give the people enough money. He asked why, and I said that it is because of the humiliation. I told him to go to the food bank and beg and put himself in that position and then be turned down.
We're not only talking about the food in their mouths. We're talking about the spirit, the Canadian spirit. For you or you or you to go to a food bank would be very humiliating. I'm talking about the humiliation we have launched on the poor in this country so that they have to beg and go from office to office and have to do this, this, and this. Where are we as a country? Are we really doing this deliberately, or has it evolved over time? With this committee that has travelled together across the country can we not come up with something far better?
When I spoke to this particular cabinet minister, we had billions in excess money--billions, not millions--yet we had food banks in our province. How does that correlate? How does that function within a country that is one of the best in the world. We put our people through this humiliation and expect them to get up off their feet and do things, when they're shoved down at every point.