Mr. Speaker, what a double standard: 218 aboriginal communities across our country have boil water advisories right now and are in a high risk health situation. Children, the weak and the elderly face serious health consequences if they drink, bathe in or even eat food prepared in the water of their communities. Something so simple as wetting a toothbrush is a danger.
Let us ask ourselves: If these were non-aboriginal communities, would this not be an urgent priority of the federal government? Would this not be a crisis? It is, and this week the government announced a pitiful spending program for aboriginal infrastructure. Over the next half decade it will only try to address one in five of the water systems problems. That is pathetic.
Yet in the coming fiscal year the dozen federal departments that each deal with aboriginal issues will devote 15 times as much money per year to their communications budgets. Sadly, it appears that this government seems to care more about selling Canadians on the job it is doing than actually doing the job itself.