Mr. Speaker, the NDP caucus, I believe, is very much in favour of renewing the fiscal relationship with aboriginal communities. The hon. member was alluding to legislation we anticipate coming down the pike fairly soon that will revisit the fiscal relationship between the federal government and aboriginal communities.
We believe that what really needs to be done, instead of just lobbing potshots at isolated incidents of mismanagement, is to develop the administrative capacity of first nations communities so that accountability can become as mainstream in their administration of offices as it is elsewhere.
I should point out that 95% of all audits done on aboriginal communities come up squeaky clean. I do not know if the current government can make a claim like that with all its programs. Certainly the business community is not held to that high a standard.
In a sense, we are watching the Canadian Alliance take these isolated incidents and trying to thread them together into an overall case that all aboriginal communities are poorly run or mismanaged in some way.
One thing that is heartening, which I learned about recently, is that the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada and the Assembly of First Nations have started a national round table and a mentoring program to give special national certification to aboriginal auditors so that within the communities there will be well trained aboriginal people to ensure that the books are kept to acceptable best practices of accounting.