Mr. Speaker, it does give me pleasure to speak to this motion we have before us today and to speak in regard to the situation for aboriginal grassroots people, who I really would like to focus on.
The previous speaker for the Liberals made the point that it is time to accentuate the positive and I certainly agree. I would like to be able to do that more and more, because there are some positives out there. I have seen them. I have seen reserves where there is 100% employment and where there are excellent plans, excellent programs and a real honest, hard effort on the part of a number of chiefs and councils on a various number of reserves, and that is worth noting. There is no doubt about that.
However, when we take on a portfolio that leads us across the country to deal with grassroots natives all across Canada, we cannot help but notice some very serious situations and problems.
I would encourage all members of the House, whether they have native reserves in their ridings or not—they should go outside their ridings if they do not—to make a point of visiting some of these ridings. Stay out of the elegant administration buildings, or go there for a little bit maybe, and maybe visit the chief and councils in some of their fine homes, but get further into the reserve and really talk to the grassroots people, the individuals who are living on each and every one, and pass out the bouquets when they are deserved. When members see good things happening, they should bring it to the attention of the House. Let us know. We should know more about them. I agree with the hon. member that we need to accentuate the positive as much as we can.
However, where I have been and in what I have seen in the over 300 reserves that I have visited, there have been both positives and negatives. Unfortunately there is an awful lot of suffering going on across this land that needs to be dealt with.
I agree that this particular motion is not going to answer all the problems. A lot more has to follow this type of legislation in order to achieve much, but surely everybody can understand—and I appreciate the Liberal government supporting this motion—that in a lot of cases whatever we do will take dollars. In order to provide the dollars that are necessary, we need to have some good accountable people making certain that the dollars are going to and achieving what it is we want to have happen across this land.
I do not have to spend a lot of time talking about the examples I have seen, but I have been in their homes and sat on stumps that were used for chairs. I have been treated to a great deal of hospitality by so many of these people, who have become very good friends. We are in contact quite often, either by mail or phone from time to time.
As for the suffering, I just could not believe that I was in Canada when I went into a home where there were 12 to 14 members of a family living in that home, with the very minimum to eat, nothing to sleep on, no rooms within the shell that they called home, no running water and no electricity. It was not a rare thing that I saw. It was quite common and in some very unexpected territories, areas where one would not think it could happen.
I was looking at a number of the concerns brought forward by aboriginal people. Alberta, one of the most fruitful provinces in the country, had the highest number of people on reserves asking for help. In a three year period, there were 56. Manitoba was second with 17. What they were asking for was some accountability and they did not know for sure what it would take to get that to happen. They would simply contact their member of parliament. The member of parliament would direct them to the department of Indian affairs, which would direct them to the chief and council. That is where they went in the first place, without results.
In many cases threats were received. They were told to stop complaining about the problem or not to bring it to the attention of the administration any more. They were told that if there were any more words from them they would wish they had not asked for help. Those were the kinds of threats that were made. Homes were burned down on some reserves, with people allegedly saying that they were purposely burned out because they had spoken out against the administration of that particular area.
These are serious things. Yet at the same time, a lot of public money was going into a number of reserves to build some real fine schools, although I will not tell members where they are, with as little as 10% of eligible students in attendance. They had the finest equipment, the best that money could buy, provided by public funds, yet 90% were not attending those schools. Where were they?
I investigated further and became more familiar with the situation. I will use a common name like Jones. What was happening was that all of these great ideas and programs were being developed, and the chief would be Jones, and for some strange reason, the director of education would be Carolyn Jones, the director of natural resources would be Robert Jones, the director of public works would be Phil Jones, and the director of welfare would be Cathy Jones. No one was qualified to even know what they were doing in terms of offering education and assistance for various types of programs. The programs were there and the positions were filled, but no one was doing anything. They were not solving any problems. They were not getting young people into the schools. They were not giving young people the assistance they needed for their addictions and their problems.
My colleague from Okanagan—Shuswap and I visited Winnipeg. One cannot help but feel very sorrowful when one goes to a place like that and visits the streets. We were accompanied by a person who lives there. His name is Mike Calder and he really knows the situation and the problem. He is an aboriginal himself. He runs the St. Norbert centre there, trying to help bring in young people from the streets and assist them with their addictions and other problems.
It was sorrowful to see the young people on the streets—and I mean kids—prostituting, delivering drugs, doing anything they could. They get sucked off the reserves because of their situations and the mighty heroes of organized crime bring them in and exploit them all over the place. We could see them. All we had to do was get in the car and drive around late at night. It is not a pleasant sight for Canadians to see, yet it is just one example of the many across the country now happening in our cities. Young people are exploited day in and day out.
When we cry out loud and clear that we must do something serious about these adults who exploit kids, we do not get support. We get bills like those that have been coming up recently, bills that say we will take away their tax status and that will show them. What a very terrible situation.
I believe my hon. colleague from across the way—I am sorry, but I do not remember from what riding—said loud and clear that this motion might be something that needs to happen, but that this has to go a lot longer and a lot further. I consider this motion to be an excellent starting point. If we can all agree that it is a good place to start, then we have to work toward solving the problems that these people are facing, not through their own fault in many cases. It is not because of them that they are in the messes they are in. A lot of times the leadership is not there and the accountability is not there. The requests for leadership and accountability have not been supported by the government.
How Mike Calder would love to have the federal government phone him and say that it is going to support his initiative in Winnipeg. Right now his initiative is supported by the provincial government and the city. There is nothing from the federal government. What a shame that is when he goes around trying to get young people off the streets, trying to help them out of their desperate situations.
We have to change our attitudes and this is a good place to start. I thank the Liberal government for supporting the bill.