Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. A memo from Assistant Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs, Jack Stagg, recommends that Ottawa offer financial compensation to native peoples for supporting the federal system in the referendum and subsidies to try to silence the First Nations' constitutional claims while the so-called Quebec initiatives are announced.
When questioned yesterday, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development avoided the issue by saying that he had not read the memo, although the national media were talking about it.
How does the minister explain that, yesterday, not only did he not know what his own assistant deputy minister was doing, but he was unaware of what everyone else was fully aware of from reading the paper, namely the content of Mr. Stagg's memo.