Mr. Speaker, I am very interested in some of the comments and remarks which the hon. member made. Certainly toward the end of his speech he mentioned the inherent right to self-government as being one of the key goals and objectives that we are seeking, to ensure it is recognized.
As we know, some of us think it was a missed opportunity when the Charlottetown deal fell through because that would have promoted or guaranteed that inherent right. I would like the member to comment on that.
There is another issue I would like the hon. member to comment on. In recent months we have been hearing speaker after speaker from the Reform Party challenging, denouncing and condemning native leaders and communities, implying that there is widespread, rampant corruption, almost an irresponsibility in terms of handling financial matters, as if they are not capable or not ready to take control of their own destiny with true self-government.
Upon hearing these things over the last few months, one cannot help but think of similar charges which were made about the leadership of the civil rights movement in the southern United States. As those people started to get very close to the prospect of true social justice, critics in the southern United States, from groups like the Reform Party, felt that the easiest way to challenge this kind of evolution in terms of human rights and civil rights was to denounce the leadership, to take potshots at the leadership, to criticise them and to try to convince people that that group of people was not ready to take their first struggling steps toward true participation.
I would like to hear the member's comments on both of those things: first, the failure of the Charlottetown deal, which might have taken some steps toward self-government for aboriginal people and, second, the obvious connection between other civil rights movements and the extreme right wing in those areas taking shots at the leadership of those movements to try to discredit them.