Mr. Speaker, I am extremely delighted that the Reform Party has come such a long, long, long way in the last five years and is now coming around to support aboriginal women and native rights in Canada. That is a great thing. I want to commend the hon. member for his good, decent and necessary work in that area.
I want to make a couple of points. I will get to the questions of accountability with respect to the legislation before us and address the hon. member's concerns. He is concerned, and I think rightly so, about the division of matrimonial property on divorce or separation. I believe that he has missed the point entirely in this piece of legislation. Hon. members who read it carefully will find that some of the member's concerns and objections very clearly will be dealt with.
Only two days ago the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development was discussing issues such as poverty on reserves in many first nations communities. In that particular instance it was Inuit communities. Members from the Reform Party requested that the minister come before the committee. We had arrived at this place because the Reform Party members had concluded through their own logic, and I followed it closely, that in this particular instance it was not the problem of the Inuit leadership that had caused these difficulties. We brought in the department officials and they agreed at the end of the debate and two or three or four hours of discussion on it that it was not the department officials, that maybe it was the minister's responsibility.
Perhaps, just perhaps, one of the reasons there are difficulties in these communities that we are all concerned about or we ought to be concerned about is because there is not sufficient funds going to these communities to do the job. The leaders who came before the committee made a compelling argument that they are doing their best with scarce resources.
If the salaries of all the chiefs and councils across the country were cut in half and their flight privileges to go to meetings or whatever were taken away, do we honestly think that would clear up the problem in Canada? Is our analysis so superficial that we would honestly believe and debate this kind of thing in the House and that we would think that would be an answer to these difficult problems? I really do not think so and I do not think that any member can stand and say that with a straight face in the House of Commons.
Talking about representation, one of the signatories to Bill C-49 is a band from the area of the member from Prince George. The chief and council met with the member and said that surely if the Reform Party believes in the grassroots notions that its members always talk about, then a vote in the community involving the women of the community as well would hold some weight. If it were true and if they held true to their own values and principles, then it would hold some weight in terms of swaying that particular member of parliament to support this legislation.
The vote was 381 to 51 for the community in Prince Albert to support Bill C-49. The member from Prince Albert ignored the grassroots and stood in this House to say it was unconstitutional and all sorts of silly things which are not true. Where is the grassroots there?
Another member from the Reform Party only two weeks ago found three aboriginal people. Out of a community of some 30,000 aboriginal people he found three in his entire constituency. He equipped himself with a tape recorder and a camera and went about diligently looking under stones, trees, carpets and beds to find somebody in the community who would criticize the leadership so that he could come back to the House and say that he had discovered a great evil in Canada and he was going to lay it bare in front of the Canadian people.
I ask the hon. member if in fact his colleague from Prince George and that band had voted for this particular bill 380 to 50, is that not grassroots representation?