Mr. Speaker, Albert Einstein's definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. A person cannot help but wonder what he would say to the minister of Indian affairs as she sets out to create a new reserve for the Caldwell band in southwestern Ontario.
For over 130 years Canadian aboriginals have been segregated physically through the creation of reserves and legally through the Indian Act.
Legislated segregation has been practised in a number of countries around the world, always with disastrous results.
In Canada, the people who pay the biggest price for the folly of segregationist thinking are the 400,000 aboriginal people living on reserve, where residents often live far below the poverty line, in substandard housing; where teen suicide is five times higher than the national average; where infant mortality is twice as high; and where youth are more likely to go to jail than to university.
Two giants of the 20th century, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela, devoted their entire lives to the abolition of segregation in their countries. How long will Canadians have to wait before our federal government will abandon its segregationist policies?