Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to the bill. I want to bring to the attention of the House a connection to this bill which deals with aboriginal people.
There is an absolute crisis taking place on the Pikangikum reserve north of Kenora, north of the minister's riding. This reserve has the highest suicide rate in the entire world. Alcohol and drug abuse are rampant. Organizations are dysfunctional. Ninety-five per cent of the homes do not have running water. There are no sewers; there are outhouses. The community is bereft of hope. I say that with a single purpose in mind.
To show how acute the crisis is among the Ojibway people, this year alone eight females, five of them just 13 years old, have killed themselves. The Pikangikum reserve, with roughly 2,000 people, has an eight year average of 213 suicides per 100,000 people, which is 36 times our national average. I raise this issue in connection with the bill to plead with the Minister of Indian Affairs to deal with the situation acutely, to implement some suicide prevention programs to help save the children in particular of the Pikangikum reserve north of Kenora.
Turning now to the bill, 32,000 people live in the Yukon, which has 4% of our land mass, of which 77% is wilderness. There are 61 mammal species and 278 bird species. There is an extraordinary array of environmental jewels and cultures that exist in the Yukon. The bill is certainly going in the right direction toward blending sustainable development with preserving that incredible gift we have as a country.
I would suggest to the hon. minister that it is possible to link sustainable development and environmental protection with the enhancement of the lives of the people there. I would suggest a model to the minister. Brazil and certain parts of southern Africa have linked them. They have basically said that wild spaces have to generate funds if they are going to survive. The funds generated are poured back into the wild spaces for their preservation. The opportunities are enormous.
What does the north in general have? There is the Alaska Highway pipeline for one and the Northwest Territories pipeline down to Alberta for gas. The north has diamonds, the new emerald find near the Finlayson Lake district, natural gas, iron ore, lead, zinc and copper. They will provide the basic fuel to generate long term sustainable employment in the Northwest Territories and an enrichment of the people's lives there.
That will only happen if some of those moneys are then poured back into environmental protection and environmental enhancement. If we manage to link up that development and also utilize those moneys not only for the welfare of the people but also pour some of it back into the environment, then the people of the Yukon and the people in the north in general will have sustainable development that is congruent with environmental protection.
Historically, they have done a very good job of preserving their environment by engaging in some innovative cleanups of toxic sites. Indeed, only the wood bison and the peregrine falcon are the two major mammal species that are in danger of extinction. That is not a bad track record. The peregrine falcon has dropped to a threatened species from one on the verge of extinction.
There are some significant challenges in the north. I hope the resources there can be used to drive some environmental protection issues, such as the issue of pollution.
In Siberia the Russians dumped a lot of nuclear materials right on the ground. Those radionuclides, those cancer causing, teratogenic, carcinogenic materials have gone into the food chain. If we look at aboriginal people and some of the large mammal species at the top of the food chain, we see extraordinarily high levels of the cancer causing and teratogenic materials within their body tissue. It is having a devastating effect, particularly on aboriginal communities in the north.
I encourage the government to work with other arctic nations to deal with this acute situation. If we do not deal with it now, those cancer-causing agents, those radioactive materials that are so prevalent in certain parts of the north, will continue to waft into our food chain with devastating effects on the people who live there.
The other issue we are dealing with is climate change. The natural resources of the north can be used to generate the resources needed to combat climate change. Is it Kyoto or bust? No, there is a third way.
Kyoto, as we know, is a shell game, moving emissions trading credits around the world. In fact our country will do absolutely nothing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. That is the big flaw in Kyoto. How can we do that? One of the things people in the north and indeed all of us can do is use energy more responsibly, conserve energy better and use existing technologies to reduce our emissions quite significantly through cars, trucks and in heat loss through homes. The amount we conserve could go well beyond the 6% target we set for ourselves in Kyoto in relation to 1990 levels. Indeed, we could go beyond that, which would be useful for all of us.
This is important for the north because if we look at the last few years, in 1998 and 1999 Yukon had two of the four warmest temperatures ever recorded in history. The Beaufort Sea ice pack was 40% less than what has ever been seen. Is this proof of global warming? No, it is not. Is it an indication that there is a problem? Yes, it is, and if we want to use a precautionary principle, we must do whatever we can to use our energy resources more responsibly. In doing so we could go beyond the commitments we chose to make, without, incidentally, taking on the oil patch, reducing jobs or affecting our economy.
If we were to adopt the approach of using the technologies we have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we could find an actual added benefit to our economy in terms of a net increase to the GDP.
I would ask the minister to please look at the experience in Europe where they are well ahead of the curve on this. If we do not adopt the approach of using existing technologies to reduce pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions, two separate entities but connected by virtue of what produces them, we could be left behind the eight ball in terms of our own economic development. I would encourage the government to look at those issues.
My friend from Yukon brought to our attention a very interesting problem connected to this bill, the issue of medical manpower. Yukon has a problem with medical manpower, particularly the distribution in rural areas. We have had some very good discussions on this and there is a solution. What Yukon can do is connect with existing medical training facilities for doctors, nurses and technicians and have some of that training take place in Yukon. If it does that in conjunction with paying for a certain number of medical school nursing and technical-medical positions in return for an equal number of years of service in rural areas, Yukon will be able to get the medical manpower that it desperately needs. Indeed my friend from Yukon brought to our attention the terrible situation of a lot of people in Yukon being unable to get basic medical care as a result of this acute problem of a lack of manpower.
Bill C-2, through the generation of funds and sustainable development, could generate funds that would enable Yukon to pay for certain spots in medical training facilities and in return the quid pro quo would be that those individuals would have to spend an equal number of years in a rural setting under service settings such as Yukon. It does work. We need to catch people right out of school and get them into those rural centres where they can develop relationships and set down roots. There is a better chance of them staying in those rural areas than if we try to pick people out of urban settings after they have completed their training.
The next issue I would like to address is the issue of aboriginal communities. The question of how to engage aboriginal people in development was asked in Central America and Brazil.
It was found that if the aboriginal people were allowed to use some of the money from the natural resources, be it emeralds, diamonds or natural gas, and were able to pour it into primary health, education and skills training, they would be able to improve their health and welfare. This is very consistent with a document put out by a consortium of aboriginal groups. The document gave some very basic principles of what needed to be engaged in with the Yukon government if sustainable development were to work: the aboriginal peoples would be consulted; they would be participants in development and local governments would have municipal powers, which is what the Canadian Alliance has been fighting for and now the minister of aboriginal affairs has been communicating very well. If aboriginal people could have municipal powers, be engaged in the development process in a constructive way, be participants at the table and share in the resources in a meaningful way, then we would have sustainable development in the Yukon as well as improve the health and welfare of aboriginal communities in Yukon.
I hope the premier of Nunavut and his council will look at this as a model he could adopt for his communities in Nunavut. As members know, the rates of substance abuse, sexual abuse and suicide rates in Nunavut are off the wall. The feds are paying huge amounts of taxpayer money to sustain the situation in Nunavut right now. If Nunavut were to look at some of these models, which I hope will be applied in Yukon, then both Nunavut and Yukon would benefit.
Some people like to look at northern development in isolation but I would encourage them to look at northern development as part of Canadian development. If we were to track where the resources in the north were going, for example the pipelines, we would see that they do flow north to south. It behooves us as a country to have a greater north-south dialogue within our own country. I would suggest that has been lacking for a long time.
The engagement between the populated areas along our borders with the United States and the people in the north would go a long way to removing misconceptions and ensuring greater development and harmonization of economic and social activities between both the north and the south.
I want to emphasize again to the government that within the bill lies a great opportunity to engage in true sustainable economic development. However, in order to do that, the development of natural resources in the north, be it natural gas, diamonds, emeralds, tourism or hydro power, can and must be done in a way that ensures that the people of Yukon benefit economically from the development of those resources and that the development of those resources generates a pool of cash that can be used for environmental protection.
I think the public would be shocked to know about the absolute lack of resources that many of our conservation officers have. They struggle to find $100 to pay for a pair of binoculars when they are doing research in the field. With the lack of resources and the yeoman's job they perform, they deserve a medal. They are unable to do the job they are being asked to do which is to preserve and protect the environment in the north and protect the species that live there.
The bill is an interesting one and we look forward to it coming to committee. My party has put forth some constructive amendments. We certainly hope the government listens to them so that the bill will move forward in a constructive fashion that benefits all the people in Yukon and indeed Canada.
