Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her question.
I will make my position quite clear. Unless we see changes to the bill as it is presently constructed, I will not be supporting it. I will not speak for anybody else at this stage but I know the new critic on the committee has expressed concerns about the games that were played.
What happened here concerns me. A year or so ago I spent some time on the heritage committee. Unfortunately, due to my workload I no longer could be on that committee. However it is a very good and important committee and, I must say, is chaired by one of the most competent and able persons in this establishment, an individual who not only does a very good job but knows what he is doing.
I know a chair has no real control over how people vote and if the troops are sent in to get something rammed through or to make changes we cannot do a thing about it. That is democracy. I suppose we can blame a lot of things on democracy but that is the way it works.
I am not sure what the member's position is on all this. We may be missing something here and we might hear about it before it is all over but I agree with the questioner. Yes, we have concerns about the way this was done.
We also have concerns about the overall recording of Canadian history. As I said before, maybe this will open the door to some real discussion on who we are, where we came from and what we have done, but more specifically, what we can do.
I believe that one of the things happening in the country is a real lack of pride in who we are. During the summer I set up a youth forum to talk about youth concerns. One of the biggest concerns of course was the cost of education and the fact that it was impossible for some people who live in rural areas and whose parents are not well off, et cetera, to be able to pay the horrific cost of getting an education. That is unfortunate because society has to pick up the bill for the rest of their lives instead of them being contributing members.
They listed another major concern facing youth and listed some things they would like to see changed. One of the top five concerns was the lack of history in their schools about their own province and the history of Canada generally.
In our school system, in some cases, for a period of years there was little or no Canadian history or perhaps a smattering of it at a lower grade where they really did not understand the big picture. All these young people said that after spending years in school and learning about the unification of Germany, and other things because they had studied European and Asian history, and about the cradle of civilization, that they knew very little about their own place. They said that they graduate from school trying to be active participants in their province and their country but nobody even told them how a community council works. That is sad.
Perhaps through discussions like this we might start getting back to what really matters in life and instead of just teaching people how to make a living, we will teach them how to live and what it is all about.