Mr. Speaker, in speaking to the estimates this evening I use the example of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development in my remarks.
As I said in my earlier intervention, federal spending in this department has increased 750 per cent over the last 20 years. In the past year alone, spending in this department has increased 8.5 per cent, which is faster than the rate of increase in population and the rate of inflation combined.
What are we getting for all this spending? What are the results? The auditor general expressed serious concerns about spending in this area. He pointed out that the results are not there. He pointed out that when $1 billion was appropriated and earmarked for CAEDS, which is a native economic development program, over the period of time that money was expended the demand for social services and the rate of unemployment on native reserves continued to rise at a steady rate. This massive spending on economic development had absolutely no impact on the problems that existed on the reserves.
What does the government do? It pays absolutely no attention to what the auditor general says. It pays absolutely no attention to the hard and tough questions we ask of why we are spending this money, what are the results this expenditure is supposed to achieve, and what it is achieving. The government continues blissfully on expending the money because it feels it has to. It is motherhood to them. Them cannot possibly see any other way than to continue, because this is the way things have been done in the past.
The other major problem the auditor general pointed out was accountability. I have had occasion over the last 18 months to travel to a number of native Indian reserves in Canada. I have had occasion to hear from a large number of ordinary grassroots
Indian people who are very concerned about the accountability on their reserves, who are very concerned about the fact there is a small elite group of people in their communities who are receiving a tremendous amount of largesse from the federal government and most of the people are ignored. Most of the people are not receiving any benefits to speak of. Most of the people are living in destitute conditions.
Obviously there is a very serious problem with accountability. I personally as a member of Parliament keep bringing this up and asking the minister to investigate claims, to go to these communities and find out what is actually happening. The response I get is this is an internal matter for the band to deal with and we will not get involved.
Massive amounts of Canadian taxpayers' money are being sent to reserves, to the control of an elite group of Indian leaders with no accountability to their people and no accountability in effect back to the federal government. Is that the way we want to see our tax dollars spent in this country? Is that the way we want to see our society in Canada in 1995? I submit that this constitutes a massive fraud on the Canadian people and a massive fraud particularly on the poor people in these reserve communities, who actually believe that they are supposed to benefit from this expenditure and they actually do not.
We have built a welfare state in this country. I think everyone or most thinking people have come to realize that. Over the last 30 years we have constructed a massive welfare state and we have all the resulting problems that go along with that.
There are the increased crime stats. There is the increase in poverty and the increased lack of individual initiative. The more dependency on government, the more people are willing to look at government instead of looking at themselves as the ones who are responsible for themselves.
Nowhere is this more true than in the native communities in Canada. If we think we have a welfare state in Canada, take a look at Canada's Indian reserves and see the welfare state that has been created there. It is many times worse than what we have in the rest of Canada.
I submit that what the government is doing with these expenditures is perpetrating that. It is perpetrating a fraud on the Canadian taxpayers. It is perpetrating great and serious harm to the people the Canadian taxpayers feel they are actually helping. The net result is that we are going to end up with a greater debt. At some point we are going to become insolvent. At the same time we have created a tremendous amount of harm in these communities.