Mr. Speaker, three weeks ago the Adams River bridge was torched by an arsonist during the Gustafsen Lake confrontation, also with Shuswap Indians, forcing some 90 residents previously blockaded by the Adams Lake Indian Band to use a temporary ferry as their sole access to every service from medical health to the mail.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has said the salmon resource will prevent bridge demolition and reconstruction until mid-August 1996. Because the court ruled the private road belongs to the Adams Lake Indian Band, nobody knows who owns the bridge and therefore who has the responsibility to rebuild it.
I will present a petition today from Indian Point residents that the government buy out their homes at the assessed value.
On behalf of Adams Lake residents, mostly seniors seeking peaceful retirement, whose lives have been so terribly disrupted by federal and provincial government mismanagement, I urge the minister to buy out their homes now.