Mr. Speaker, no public policy issues facing the government and the people of Canada are more complex than those concerning first nations people.
The Progressive Conservative Party endorsed the inherent right to self-government of Canada's first nations when drafting the 1992 Charlottetown accord. It was a Conservative government that established the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and gave it a broad mandate to study and report on all issues affecting the lives of Canada's aboriginal peoples. Progress on all such issues has been slow. The Nisga'a land settlement was only recently approved after having taken years to negotiate.
There is no one size fits all solution to the problems facing Canada's first nations. Self-government as set out in the Charlottetown accord and implemented by the Nisga'a agreement is only one of many possible forms of self-government.
No matter which structure is desired, however, governments must move in that direction. It is only through self-government that first nations people can begin to recover the dignity and power taken from them since the early settlement of Canada.
Many other issues face aboriginal people as well. These include determining a sound economic basis for first nations to grow, flourish and benefit from being a part of the country. The legal and cultural role of first nations women needs to be addressed especially in the movement to self-government.
Among the most pressing concerns to be addressed are the complex issues facing first nations youth and first nations individuals living in cities without land base. More than half the first nations population of Canada is under the age of 25 and living in cities. Most often they are experiencing poverty and functioning alone, without direction. Without significant steps being taken by governments in partnership with the first nations, these young people will become a generation lost to Canada and their own people.
Our party feels that the minister needs to look no further than at the royal commission created by the former Progressive Conservative government for ideas and changes made to the Indian Act. It has been mentioned on a number of occasions by previous speakers that it took years and millions of dollars to put the royal commission together. I have seen the volumes. There are recommendations in there that could have been implemented yesterday be implemented now or in the very near future without having to go through a make work project that the minister seems to be embracing.
The PC Party believes that the ineffective paternalistic and colonial approaches of the Indian Act must give way to greater self-reliance and self-esteem through effective education, economic development, social justice and local control. It must also lead eventually to the elimination of both the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development as well as the Indian Act, which would lead to self-government.
The PC Party does not support the establishment of a third level of government. Instead self-government is best achieved within the current system of our government. The current government with this minister could make major progress, but it seems to be choosing what on the surface may be a delay tactic. Progress delayed is progress denied.
On the surface this initiative has the appearance of a make work project from a government that seems to be void of ideas. It has the opportunity to look at the royal commission and to implement some of those ideas now. However the process that the minister has chosen looks like another stalling tactic. I hope it is not.
I hope the minister could convince me and the first nations people that he wishes to consult. I hope the process in place now will come to fruition and will not be another report sitting on a shelf gathering dust. The policy issue is far too important, not only to the first nations but to the people of Canada.
I wish the minister good luck and Godspeed. I also wish he will be able to implement some of the things he is putting forward to his government and to the House in the not too distant future.