Madam Speaker, most people in the House are aware that the United Nations has declared Canada as the best country in the world in which to live. If we really are paying attention, it has also factored in the reserves across the country and has said we would be 38th.
I would encourage all members in the House who have reserves in their ridings to make absolutely certain when visiting them to go to the grassroots level and see the conditions that some of these people are living in. I want to make it perfectly clear. Not all reserves are that way. There are some excellent things going on in a few, but far too many are living in absolute poverty with the most disgusting things we could ever imagine.
I saw a sump hole in a basement where they dumped the sewage gathered in buckets because they had no sewage system. Then I learned from one family that they had just buried a two and a half year old child who had fallen into that ugly sump hole. The children were not allowed down there, but as children will do, they found a way to get there. They had been playing when the child fell into the hole and drowned.
There was no running water or electricity. Stumps were used for chairs. They had skimpy amounts of food. Yet they were the most hospitable people I have ever visited. I shared with them what they offered in their most hospitable way.
It is that serious. Should we be spending some time in the House of Commons talking about that and how we could quickly resolve it so we could be number one in the world, including the reserves? We certainly should be. Instead what are we talking about? We are talking about the Judges Act.