Mr. Speaker, I have just a few words to say on the bill before the House today, Bill C-31. It is an agreement with the Tlicho people of the Northwest Territories, the former Dogrib people, and was signed some time ago. The prime minister of the country at the time, Jean Chrétien, was in the Northwest Territories on August 25, 2003. In his speech, he remarked that this was a very historic agreement of great importance to the aboriginal people of that part of our country.
I just wanted to say in a very few words that we support this bill. It is a recognition of aboriginal rights, of the inherent rights that the aboriginal people have in the Constitution of Canada.
I remember the constitutional process of 1982. I remember the negotiating that we in the New Democratic Party did--I was the constitutional critic at the time--to make sure that treaty rights and the royal proclamation were both included in the patriation package.
In the first package that came from the Trudeau government, there was no reference to the aboriginal people, to treaty rights, or to the royal proclamation. As we tried to develop a national consensus for a constitution with a charter of rights, that was part of what was put into the package. That was a very controversial time.
At that particular time, I had a great many problems with the initial package brought out by the then prime minister. It did not have an amending formula that treated all provinces equally. It had no reference to aboriginal rights and so on. Throughout the process, there were some improvements in the constitutional package, and one that was made was for first nations people, so now there is a constitutional recognition of the reality of first nations people. There is also a reference to Métis people in our Constitution. It does give them some recognition that they are peoples.
I also agreed with former Quebec premier René Lévesque, who signed the agreement with the native groups, 11 nations in the province of Quebec, if I remember correctly. This recognition of them by the province was something very important.
This kind of recognition has been happening over the last number of years, and what we are seeing now are the fruits of some of what was done about 20 years ago. There are many land entitlement agreements that are yet to be fully negotiated. This is also happening. I hope that this is just another example of a positive thing for aboriginal first nations people in our country.
I think that most of us want to see the full negotiation of self-government and a third order of government in our country. We have the federal government, the provinces, and then we have first nations governments. Those negotiations are under way.
I want to conclude by saying that this is a step in the right direction. First nations people in general have a living standard that is a lot lower than that of any other Canadians. Infant mortality rates are very high. Crime rates are high. Alcoholism rates are high.
Few first nations people have access to education and job opportunities, but recently there has been some improvement in terms of the access to education. I remember back about a year and a half ago going to the law school in Saskatoon and being very pleasantly surprised that about 15% of the law students were from aboriginal backgrounds, which is a very positive thing in the province of Saskatchewan.
With that, I want to endorse the bill before the House today and say that we are moving in the right direction with this bill, plus the Westbank bill, which we have dealt with already. I hope we will have more successful negotiations with our first nations people, our Métis people and the Inuit people of this country.