Mr. Speaker, the attitude of the Reform Party reminds me of the story of Rip Van Winkle who slept for so many years that when he woke up things had changed drastically. I think Reformers are still sleeping with the attitude they have.
Their attitude is surprising when they say how generous the government is. I think the Sahtu Dene and Metis have been pretty generous by giving up 240,000 square kilometres of land to the Government of Canada and only retaining 41,000 square kilometres and 1,800 of subsurface and surface rights. I think that is pretty generous.
I would like to think that the Reform Party can see reason. However, that might be impossible to ask of such outdated thinking.
To the three speakers from the Reform Party, how would they feel if they woke up one morning and somebody said they can live on their land but laws are going to be proposed which they have to obey on how to live, where to live, outlawing their beliefs, taking away their dignity, taking away their hunting rights, not allowing them to vote, putting in a new justice system
that is totally foreign to them, and in the process infecting them with smallpox, tuberculosis and other communicable diseases?
How can they be so dense that they cannot understand that the Government of Canada and the people of Canada are now trying to correct a situation, an injustice that has been around for a few hundred years?
I will repeat my remarks from earlier. The Reform Party members talk as if the aboriginal people are invading their land. It is as if we are taking land away from them. They can record their history in hundreds of years. We can record ours in thousands and tens of thousands of years. The sheer audacity of this group-I am at a loss for words.
How would they feel if they woke up one morning and suddenly found themselves subject to a totally different kind of life than they had been used to for years and years?
Some of them make statements that they are all for aboriginal self-government, self-determination. Strip away that veneer and I think all we see is paternalistic statements from the Reform Party. It is like saying some of my best friends are Indians. It is good to say it but it does not really mean much, because the respect and the support have to be there from within rather than just saying it on the surface.