Thank you, Madam Chair.
I don't know where to begin. I clearly heard what you said, and I believe you're right all down the line. Ultimately, I wonder whether we're not the ones who need cultural education, because I realized that, all too often, the decisions are made for someone's good; they aren't made based on that person's needs. We always believe we know better, can do better, than the people directly involved in the community.
I heard Mr. Desnoyers talking about colonization and I drew the parallel with apartheid in South Africa, a country where there is a lot of violence against women as well, where that has increasingly developed and where women have adjusted to violence. It's true, women adjust to violence, because it's easier to adjust and to continue to suffer it than to do something to counter it.
There's one term that I've always detested, and that's the term “reserve”. I'm tired of hearing that word. Reserves are in Africa for animals, not for human beings. Shouldn't we be teaching young people in our schools, in our entire society so they know about history, so they know with whom they share the land, that that land initially wasn't theirs? Shouldn't we do something to ensure that the real history is known and to re-establish the facts?
For a very long time, I thought we were engaged in charity with aboriginal people, with the First Nations—because that's what we were taught—until I met Ellen Gabriel and she told me the history and I understood that we weren't being charitable with anyone. These are things that we owe them, and we're still not giving them enough again, in return for what we've taken from them.
It very much concerns me to see that there is a very large gap between what we say and what we do. You also mentioned harmony between the various levels of government. Let's simply take the example of the new provincial policy on children. If there are problems, the Youth Court can remove the child from the aboriginal mother, in an aboriginal community and take the child kilometers away from there where she won't have an opportunity to see the child as frequently. These are things that make no sense. We're reproducing the history of the residential schools. I wonder who will establish the link between the various levels of government so this has some kind of consistency.
That may be a complicated thought and question because there are so many ideas in my head.