Mr. Speaker, I will ask one straightforward question and then I will follow up with a second question.
I am interested in knowing what language the member started his speech off with because I was fascinated by it.
I commend the member on his speech. It is seldom that we see people get up in the House and speak from their hearts as this man obviously did. When we speak from the heart we put all our political stripes aside. We have to admire a person for being able to do that when we know that he truly means it and that it is not some canned speech that has been written for him by some other group. I appreciate that.
Let us get back to the throne speech and the title, “A Better Quality of Life”. The member may know that I spent some time in the Indian affairs department as one of the critics. My mission was going across the country and visiting as many reserves as I possibly could, which ended up being several hundred, and visiting with grassroots people. I did not visit with the elite. I did not visit with chiefs and council. I talked to people face to face and tried to see the problems from their point of view.
I will give the member one example of the reserve in my riding. It is in the most beautiful spot one could ever ask for in Alberta. It borders the grand Banff National Park. It is a huge reserve with a tremendous amount of agricultural land and many hills and trees. It has a river running through it and a huge lake where a lot of people gather for skiing, boating and things of that nature. Highway 1, a major interprovincial highway, runs through the reserve. Approximately 10 million people drive through this reserve on an annual basis as they head for Banff National Park.
However, on this reserve the unemployment rate is 90%. The debt load is huge. Approximately 16% of children who start their education complete it by grade 12. Most of them are in schools outside of the reserve. Poverty is at its greatest. In the member's view, what kind of quality of life does the throne speech promise for the people who are suffering on many of these reserves?