Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks for filling in as chair.
AG Hogan, thanks for this report. I didn't think it could get worse than the Veterans Affairs report, but here you go.
I want to start with the AG's comments, both present and past. In 2011, Sheila Fraser, after 10 years of audits and ignored recommendations, said the results were unacceptable. Mr. Ferguson follows up five years later and says it's “beyond unacceptable”. Then the current AG says, “We are now into decades of audits of programs and government commitments that have repeatedly failed to effectively serve Canada's indigenous peoples.”
I have the 2013 report here. Every single recommendation was agreed upon by Indigenous Affairs—as it was called at the time. We have audit after audit and recommendation after recommendation that are blown off by the department, with decades of failure to serve our indigenous people. Yet the department repeatedly just says, “We agree with the recommendations.”
I have two questions, and I'm going to be very blunt here.
Why should anyone on this committee, the Auditor General, and anyone in Canada believe Indigenous Services when they say they agree and they're going to act on it?
As a follow-up question, why should I or anyone else in this room as an MP not immediately head up to the House, stand in the gallery and demand that every manager involved in this file be immediately terminated for this absolute, abject, seemingly wilful negligence?
This is low-hanging fruit and decades of failure—again, agreed, agreed, agreed. How do we get past this? Why should we not be calling for the dismissal of everyone who has been attached to these horrific results?