Mr. Speaker, I will take this opportunity to say with pride that Mr. Mercredi is originally from my riding. His parents live in my riding. As well, the former grand chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Phil Fontaine, was from my riding. I mention that to give some indication of the type of riding I have the pleasure of representing.
Residents of my riding have the benefit of knowing that two of their members have gone on to represent the first nations people of Canada. As a result, I think the people of the riding have benefited.
With regard to the treatment of first nations people, there is no question that it has been absolutely terrible. I grew up in Lebret, a very tiny community in southern Saskatchewan, which had a residential school. In my years of living there I hardly knew a child who attended that school because it was in a segregated area. A lot of aboriginal people lived in the community where I grew up, so I believe I have an understanding of the situations that first nations people live through.
My father actually managed one of what were called the Indian and Metis farms in Saskatchewan. I had the opportunity to see the differences when first nations people are given the opportunity for employment, the differences that can take place in their lives and their children's lives for years to come.
A number of families that had the opportunity to work on farms or at other jobs and to be paid fairly and to live in adequate housing have gone on to see their children educated. Many of those children have become productive people within our country.
We have failed in a lot of areas. Those farms were not the norm. There was the odd one here and there throughout Canada, though I only know of the ones in Saskatchewan. We have failed to give economic opportunities to first nations people. It is very hard to do that on the type of reserve system we have. It will take a lot of years to change that system but those changes will never happen if we do not put enough dollars into proper housing, into proper sewers and water and into schools that are big enough to hold the number of students in them.
A lot of schools in my riding were built to hold only so many children and they probably need room for another hundred. Those children do not have the opportunity of going five miles down the road to the next farming community to go to another school. Most of the reserves are off somewhere so they try to cram people into the schools in order to give them the educational opportunities.
The government must be seriously committed to following through on the recommendations of the royal commission on aboriginal peoples and to putting enough dollars into housing. Anybody who thinks for one second that first nations people do not look after their housing should know that they get the bare minimum standard of housing. Their houses in no way compare to the houses we have in our communities. Their houses would never have been allowed in our communities.
The communities do not have adequate firefighting services and the firefighting services it does have is paid for through its global budgets. When I hear Alliance members talk about wasted dollars in first nations communities, I would suggest to them that if their municipalities had to do everything aboriginal communities had to do with their dollars they would be here screaming and hollering too.