Mr. Speaker, I want to say that this is a very personal issue to me. My wife and I visited the home of an aboriginal family. We were confronted by six women. One of the women there was just completely shaken with the fact that the chief and council had removed her family from her. She had no place to go. The host who convened this meeting had helped her get her family back by going to the provincial authorities. By doing so, this woman now has her family back. She was really shaken with the concept of self-government because with self-government, where would she go?
That is not the end of the story. The end of this particular story is that the host of this meeting and her family were then told that they must leave the reserve because the people on the reserve, the chief and council, said that they had a requirement for housing, notwithstanding the fact that there are 11 vacant houses on that reserve.
She was not only required to leave, but she was literally frozen out of her house last winter when the chief and council saw to it that the power and water were turned off at her home.
The issue of the ombudsman is a real issue. It is a gut level issue that I have seen and I have experienced. This is something that absolutely must happen if the government is set on the idea of going ahead with self-government. Along with self-government there must be the position of ombudsman.