Mr. Speaker, I want to say that I have the utmost respect for my colleague and for what I believe she has done in her work on the Hill with aboriginal people. I know that she knows something about my involvement with aboriginal people.
I think the vast majority of us in the House take very seriously the work that lies before us in terms of bringing aboriginal people into some sense of sustainability and economic development, giving them a sense of self-worth and bringing them into the Canadian family in every way possible.
I know she has some concerns about our motion. At the same time, I want to ask her this question. We know the vast amounts of money that are involved. They are billions of dollars. Ostensibly the money is set aside by Canadians, through the government, to help our native people achieve higher levels of success in every way.
Yet while all this money is going to native people, we still have the appalling statistics. We have statistics that tell us that unemployment is very high among native people on reserves. We have off reserve people in cities who are not able to find jobs. We have huge problems on native reserves with HIV, hepatitis C, diabetes and all of those diseases that are also in the non-native population, but are disproportionately high in our native population. We have terribly unacceptable suicide rates among our native young people. I just get sick when I hear about it. I see terrific amounts of substance abuse. What went on with the James Bay Cree young people is probably just a drop in the bucket, and it became a very celebrated case.
All of us have to grapple with this question. We have this money available and we have the resources to put at the disposal of native people. If there is not an accountability problem, what is it that is not working to help our native people to achieve what we want them to achieve? I would certainly appreciate the hon. member's elucidation on that.