Mr. Speaker, in standing to speak to the throne speech, I must say that there were no big surprises.
Since I hold the critic responsibility for the Reform Party in the area of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, I eagerly scanned the throne speech to see what was in there that related to aboriginal people and the challenges that aboriginal people and government face in Canada today. I was not surprised but I was disappointed to see that there was no change in direction on the part of the government and that it is steady as she goes.
The government feels that it is charting the right course. It obviously continues to use words like partnership, gathering strength and all kinds of nice words and phrases that would leave the average person listening to the throne speech with the impression that progress has been made, is actually being made and that things are continuing to improve.
I can assure the House that nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, for aboriginal people in Canada things continue to go downhill. The social problems on reserves continue to worsen. The economic circumstances for aboriginal people living on reserves continue to worsen. The programs that have been put in place by successive governments over a long period of time in the country have actually, if anything, been counterproductive to the health and welfare of aboriginal people in Canada.
As an example, the Government of Canada decided to invest in aboriginal economic development back in the early 1990s. It spent $1 billion on aboriginal economic development over a period of four years. These facts are all contained in the Auditor General's Report to parliament. Over the same period of time that the $1 billion was expended, the economic conditions on reserves worsened, the unemployment rate continued to increase and the overall picture continue to worsen, to darken, rather than to improve.
The question one naturally asks is why would the government continue to go down the same road when there have been no positive results and there continue to be negative results? Do we not learn as human beings from experience? Do we not look to the past to gather and analyse information to assist us in making decisions about what we are going to do in the future? That is really what learning and human history is all about. The government has refused to do that.
Naturally, one asks why we would go through the trouble of having all of these government departments that can track the impacts and effects of various government programs and expenditures if we are not going to pay attention to the results. I have come to the conclusion that the government by choice automatically insulates itself from the realities of its own policies. It does not want that feedback. It does not want to know that its policies are failures.
The government does not want to know because it does not want to admit that it has failed. The government lacks the vision and the courage to think outside the box, to think in some new way that could perhaps be of great benefit not only to aboriginal people but to the country as a whole. Obviously, the country has a challenge in front of it which badly needs to be addressed.
The Liberals do not have the courage to face that challenge. They do not have the courage to admit that the way things have been done in the past, the policies that have been implemented and the taxpayers' money that has been expended has not been of any benefit to native people in Canada.
Is the government not willing at least to analyse the results of its policies? We would think that at least a majority of native leaders would be interested in going through that analysis and going back to government and saying that what the government has been doing has not been working and they need a change. Why are the chiefs and councils across Canada not engaged in a process of examination and analysis? Why are they not advocating for change?
I think the reason becomes clear when more time is spent looking at what the department of Indian affairs does and how it has a relationship with native leaders across Canada and native leaders at the national level. There is a symbiotic relationship. Both parties are unwilling to admit failure because they fundamentally do not want to change the status quo. The reason most native leaders do not want to change the status quo is that they are caught up in the system. Some direct personal benefit accumulates to them as a result of being part of the system.
One of the things that strikes me as I travel from place to place and talk with grassroots aboriginal people is that they feel as fundamentally disconnected from their leaders in many cases as do ordinary Canadians from their political leaders. There is a sense of frustration that the programs are supposed to be benefiting them as individuals but they are not hitting the mark.
One has to do a critical analysis to determine why that is the case. The greatest mistake the federal government has made and continues to make and shows no sign of changing when it comes to native people is it continues to treat native people as collectivities rather than as individuals. It wants to deal in programs and policies that are related directly to collectivities. That is why we see certain things in modern treaties that are being negotiated.
The Nisga'a treaty is mentioned in the throne speech. We are going to have a lot more to say about it in the coming weeks when the government actually introduces the legislation. Fundamentally it sees the Nisga'a as a collectivity of some 5,000 people. It does not see the individuals. It looks at the Nisga'a people, and aboriginal people in general, as being some kind of homogeneous group that thinks the same way, that wants the same things and that fundamentally has a culture that is different from the rest of Canada and therefore must be treated differently.
Of course, what gets lost in the shuffle when that happens is the individual. Individual rights are put on the back burner in favour of collective rights, and individual aboriginal people are coming to that realization in a major way in the country. Individual native people are coming to understand that their rights as Canadians are fundamentally sidelined in favour of these collective rights that are somehow supposed to benefit them, but they see very clearly that those benefits are not accruing.