Mr. Speaker, this is an area of particular importance to me and I think to all of us, because the budget allocates close to 10% of the discretionary dollars, the non-debt servicing dollars, to aboriginal-specific programs. That is 10% for about 1% of the country's population. However, the government has not demonstrated a willingness to pursue any kinds of initiatives that depart from the failed policies of the past. It continues to throw money in the direction of dealing with the symptoms of problems. It is not addressing the solutions for those problems.
For example, on property rights, a number of bands in this country have instituted systems whereby their members have the right to own their own homes. This has resulted in better neighbourhoods with far less property crime and better maintained properties. Investment in houses in those areas has paid dividends; the houses last much longer. These are changes that bands are making on their own, but the federal government has not shown any initiative in advancing those kinds of ideas.
How about the fake barrier that the Indian Act puts around the ability to repossess chattels off reserve? Let us say that we have a retail business that sells appliances or automobiles and sells them onto reserve. If payment is not made, the property cannot be repossessed. What that does is penalize the honest aboriginal person who wants to get credit.
We have to take down these barriers. They are antiquated barriers that are 130 years old. The government has shown no initiative in these areas.
How about matrimonial property rights for aboriginal people? The only place in Canada where there are no matrimonial property rights is on reserve. Aboriginal women get the raw end of the deal and many of them unfortunately stay in damaging, painful and risky relationships because they fear they will lose everything if they leave. That is not right and it is not fair.
These are the kinds of things that do not cost a ton of money to do, but they certainly can pay major dividends in increasing the freedom and equality of people for aboriginal people.
We can talk about the Canadian Human Rights Act. Unbelievably in 2004, that act does not apply on Indian reserves.
These are the kinds of changes the government should be making. It strikes me that the government is afraid of the status quo Indian industry in this country, which benefits by the preservation of dependent people, when what we need are ideas and enthusiastic projects, which many bands have embraced on their own. We need them adopted nationally. They can bring aboriginal people to a position where they can be not only self-sustaining, as many already are, but in a better position where they can, as equal Canadians, pursue their goals with the rest of us.
These are not expensive proposals but they take courage and they take forward thinking in dealing with them. The government missed the boat on these issues, both in its throne speech and in its budget. It continues to throw good money after bad in the same, old, failed approaches of the past. As for this idea, this Victorian era thinking, that we can somehow help people by bestowing money upon them, by largesse, by failed old welfare systems that basically steal the souls of many aboriginal people, it is one of the government's failed approaches.
These are failed approaches and they continue. The government continues to insist on following them for no good reason. Welfare reform and many other initiatives are being undertaken around the world, yet here in Canada we still follow the same, old, antiquated, backward view that is too often illustrated by the government, not just in its ideas but in its lack of ideas.