You know, I would be remiss to not say that we have a very bad history as Canadians in dealing with some of these issues with aboriginal people, most notably taking kids away from their families and putting them in residential schools. That's created a huge fracture that's multi-generational, and it's going to take time to heal.
I believe first nations in this country need to be engaged on the issues to speak to what kinds of resources they need and how to use funding. Clearly, we need to make sure that aboriginal children are connecting to education, that we are really supporting aboriginal children in our public education system and giving them opportunities to access post-secondary education.
We have reserves in this country that don't have proper housing or safe water. We're dealing with, on some of our reserves, third-world living conditions. We can't do that anymore. We have to be able to engage first nations leadership across the country and look at ways to fund, with a large significant package, ways to get the reserves up to the standard the rest of our country enjoys. I think that's very important.
Also on the issue of health care, I watched on the news—and I'm sorry I can't recall the actual aboriginal community that had a suicide pact most recently—and saw that a private donor came forward and donated over $300,000. Why is a private donor having to donate $300,000 when aboriginal children on reserve have a suicide pact and parents are losing their children? That's not acceptable. We need to support these communities.
We have gone through litigation for years to reach a settlement agreement and to get an apology on residential schools. But the whole taking away of children from a family.... The children didn't get parented in residential schools. They didn't learn how to be parents. Then they came out of the schools and they had their own children. There's so much residual pain that's connected to the history of that system that it is going to take many generations to heal. In that healing journey, we need to make sure that we're supporting people emotionally with mental health resources and parenting resources. I think that's really important.
Many good recommendations came out of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission around these issues, and we have very good leadership in Canada from aboriginal people who have some really good ideas about the things that we can do to reduce poverty and to give our aboriginal children of the future the best chance they can get.