Certainly, Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to do that. In the interest of keeping an elevated standard of debate in the House, I will take those remarks to hand.
One thing we have noted is that the Canadian Alliance approach to aboriginal issues, in recent months at least, has been to seize on isolated incidents of misuse of funds or mismanagement of funds. The Alliance comments over and over again on isolated incidents across the country and then tries to thread them together into an overall theme that there is gross mismanagement of funds in virtually all aboriginal communities.
That is the message, whether deliberate or not, that is getting out to the public. The Canadian Alliance says that aboriginal communities are corrupt, ergo they do not deserve self-government and we should not proceed any further with land claim settlements. That is the theme that comes across to the Canadian people, whether real or perceived.
I guess the same thing could be said about my comments because I am threading together isolated incidents of Alliance Party members saying horrible, hateful things. I have come to a broad conclusion that it is in fact party policy, not just isolated incidents.
I point out that the member for Athabasca said that of course we defeated them, and that just because we did not kill them in Indian wars does not mean they are not a vanquished people. Otherwise, he asked, why would they accept being driven into those godforsaken little remote reserves? That was the attitude of the member for Athabasca who is still sitting in the House.
I have been here longer than the hon. member for Provencher and I have heard some horrifying attitudes expressed toward aboriginal people.
The Canadian Alliance launched an out and out campaign to aggressively stop what I believe is the most historic treaty of our time, the Nisga'a land claim treaty, which was ratified in the House of Commons. It was a very proud moment for all of us. The Alliance launched an out and out campaign to stop and to block that group of people from taking their first courageous steps toward independence and self-government. It is opposed to aboriginal self-government.
The NDP is in favour of the implementation of the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. The Canadian Alliance Party is not. That is why I think I am justified in questioning the motivation of that group when it raises aboriginal affairs issues in the House.
I am very happy to speak to the motion. It is a lot more difficult to speak to the motion now that it is so watered down and innocuous. If the Canadian Alliance is harbouring some sort of resentment about land claims and self-government, it should at least have the guts to put forward a motion that actually says that so we can have an honest debate in the House.
We now have a watered down motion that calls for the status quo. The reason the Alliance got the Liberal Party to agree to vote in favour of the motion is that it is easy for the Liberals. They are already doing that. The motion put forward originally by the Alliance insinuated that there was no auditing or accountability in aboriginal communities and that therefore we needed to impose a requirement for auditing.
In actual fact, the Indian Act and the Indian Bands Revenue Moneys Regulation already calls for that. Articles 8.(1), 8.(2) and 8.(2)(a) state:
8.(1) Every Band shall engage an auditor to audit its account and to render an annual report in respect thereof.
(2) A copy of the annual auditor's report shall, within 7 days of its completion,
(a) be posted in conspicuous places on the Band Reserve for the examination of all members of the Band;
If that is not a requirement to have an independent audit and to publish the findings of the audit, I do not know what is. Frankly, all the Alliance is calling for is what we already enjoy.
I object to one thing in the remarks of the Canadian Alliance member in introducing the motion. I will need to check the Hansard for the actual words, but he implied that the Alliance has the support of the grand chief of the Assembly of First Nations for the motion. I found that very hard to believe, given the offensive stance toward aboriginal issues that the Canadian Alliance has demonstrated since it has been in parliament. I doubt it very much that the grand chief of the Assembly of First Nations would endorse a motion put forward by that party because, frankly, that individual, more than anyone, would have serious reservations about the motivation of that party.
I called the national grand chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Matthew Coon Come. His executive assistant just got back to me five minutes ago. Not only did the Assembly of First Nations never endorse the motion, it was never contacted about the motion. It was never called.
The Alliance Party has started this whole debate with dishonesty. That also leads me to believe that there is more here than meets the eye. The real motivation of the Alliance Party is to do everything it can to foster animosity toward the self-government process because it personally is opposed.
There is no party in the country that has bastardized the word equal more than the Alliance Party. I am very proud that just last week an aboriginal judge in the province of Manitoba, Murray Sinclair, moved up to the Court of Queen's Bench. Murray Sinclair, in the aboriginal justice inquiry, deals with this very issue. He says:
—the application of uniform standards, common rules and treatment of people who are not the same constitutes a form of discrimination. It means that in treating unlike people alike, adverse consequences, hardships or injustice may result.
In other words, we cannot treat all people equally if in fact they are unequal at the beginning. After we have met the basic needs of people and established a common denominator, then rules can be applied equally.
That is a very wise statement and I am proud to be able to raise it in the House of Commons today. Equal rights for all is in fact unfair when dealing with people who are held back in a systemic way, as is the case with many aboriginal people.
I come from Manitoba, where we have perhaps more firsthand and recent knowledge in trying to renew the relationship with aboriginal people than do many of the members here from other provinces.
I am not proud to say it, but my province was the home of J.J. Harper. If that name has not been raised in the House of Commons before it certainly should have. If it had been me walking home late one night instead of J.J. Harper, I might have been pulled over by the police and asked questions. However I probably would not have died that night. J.J. Harper did. He was killed. That was one of the incidents that spurred the aboriginal justice inquiry, which was probably the most comprehensive review of the hugely disproportionate representation of aboriginal people in Canada's criminal justice system.
My province was also home to Helen Betty Osborne, a 16 year old girl in The Pas, Manitoba who was killed. I can assure hon. members that if it had been my 16 year old daughter walking home that night kid, she probably would not have been seen as a target by four redneck hillbillies who would sexually assault and murder her. After the murder of Helen Betty Osborne, the whole town took part in a 16 year conspiracy of silence to shield the actions of those people. We in Manitoba have firsthand knowledge and very real examples from which to draw.
One of the things that came up during the aboriginal justice inquiry was the hugely disproportionate representation of aboriginal people in our prisons, never mind the ones caught up in the criminal justice system. It came to light that, at periods of time during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s in two women's prisons in Canada, the percentage of the population that was aboriginal was 100%. That was all of them. It was as if we were trying to lock up a generation of young aboriginal people as some supposed fix to the terrible situation they were in.
It is galling for me to watch a group of people who are not as far evolved in their thinking about the new relationship that is necessary with aboriginal people. It is frustrating to see a group of people from provinces not far from mine who are so politically naive when it comes to the new relationship that is necessary with aboriginal people.
There was a poem spray-painted on a wall near my office in downtown Winnipeg for many years. It has now been erased. A street poet wrote it and one of the lines in it said “Racism is ignorance masturbating”. It was the sort of thing that would catch one's attention. However, when we think about it, racism is, by its very nature, born out of ignorance. As soon as people learn more about other cultures they are no longer threatened by them and they are less racist. We see that gradual maturing process happening in every neighbourhood and community across the country. The more we know about other people, the more we realize that they love their children as much as we love ours and that we have more in common than we do that is separate.
Masturbating is, by its very nature, a solitary act. It is not very gratifying and it certainly is not productive in any way, shape or form. Neither is racism. Racism feeds on itself and it does not benefit anyone. That comes from the very solitary nature of it.
Canadian Alliance members do not consult and they do not learn from other people. They do not phone the Assembly of First Nations when they say they do. We know that much as evidenced today. There is a terrible dishonesty in their approach.
I have already pointed out that the motion we are dealing with today is really the status quo, is it not?
I have tried to point out some of my reservations about following the Canadian Alliance's lead on anything to do with any aboriginal issue ever, because I know who its members are. I have been here long enough to hear their spokespeople and to understand what really drives and motivates them. I will say again, I believe the Canadian Alliance is the legislative arm of the anti-Indian movement in Canada. I have never seen anything to dissuade me or move me off that opinion.
Today's motion is so harmless and so innocuous that we do see fit to vote in favour of it. Everyone is for public accountability and public financing.