Madam Speaker, the best answer I can give my colleague is to refer him to a book that was written by Thomas Sowell, an American author who wrote a book called The Vision of the Anointed . What we have here is a very similar proposition. We have a vision that is expressed through government policy that is adopted by all the other opposition parties in the House. It is a failed vision. It has been a demonstrated failure for over 130 years. My goodness, look at the results that it has represented for aboriginal people on reserves. Look at the dire circumstances that many of these people live in.
These people are so enraptured with this vision that they insulate themselves from the reality of the policy decisions that they make. They refuse to accept the fact that the failure and the abject poverty that many aboriginal people live in is as a direct result of these policies. They continue down the same path without being able to question or even engage in an honest, intellectual debate about what the government ought to do and ought not to do in terms of rectifying the situation and trying to improve things.
That in my view is the failure of the opposition and the government for that matter in this entire debate.