Mr. Speaker, I find the member's statement somewhat interesting about aboriginal affairs and self-government. I wanted to ask him if he could clarify two details for me.
The first issue is the one in our red book that deals with the inherent right to self-government, which means we recognize as non-natives that there were treaties signed and those treaties suggested that these were self-governing people before Europeans came. I would like to know whether the Reform Party agreed with that.
My second point is if it agrees or disagrees, that not really being the issue, would he also be prepared to tell me, given a system that at present does not work for aboriginal people and for non-natives, and it has been agreed by both sides that that is the case, why he would not want to see a concept of self-government put in place? This is not easily defined because in each community and each region it represents different things to different people.
Would he also not agree that aboriginal people are not homogeneous people, that they are of different cultures and they have different traditions and because of that self-government cannot be that little catch phrase that he seems to be looking for?
I would be interested if he could give me his opinion on those particular issues because my sense of it is he is suggesting that because he does not have a definition of self-government across Canada, we should do nothing.