Mr. Speaker, a number of first nations political leaders have denounced the recent budget, the first under the current Prime Minister. He has been promising the sun and moon ever since he became Prime Minister, promising to eliminate what he called the shameful conditions they face.
Unanimously, loud and clear, the political leaders of first nations and Inuit groups have said that the budget, even after all those round table meetings, amounts to very little.
In the budget speech, the finance minister went so far as to say that for too long and in too many ways, Canada’s aboriginal people have been last in terms of opportunity in this country.
Phil Fontaine, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, has pointed out that the Prime Minister's commitment to transformative change must be backed up by real investments by the government.
I will add that the first nations will never experience transformative change if they continue to manage their poverty and social stigma, and the government continues to impose its disrespect.
The royal commission on aboriginal peoples in Canada documented this state of affairs in its report, which was released in 1996. Jean Chrétien shot down the work of that commission. He sabotaged it on the cynical pretext that there was no money available, whereas, as we were to learn later, his Liberal cronies were engaged in the dishonourable act of pocketing public sponsorship funds. We will be finding out how this government was accumulating indecent surpluses, which were camouflaged in foundations well sheltered from Auditor General Sheila Fraser.
Where were the aboriginal Liberal MPs and senators? Were they also more interested in greasing the palms of certain members of the Liberal family than in supporting the royal commission in its recommendations for remedying the historical wrongs against the first peoples. Could it be that the party line imposed by Jean Chrétien was more seductive than their patriotic attachment to their aboriginal roots?
A year later, Jane Stewart, the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs of the day, in an unexpected gesture of reconciliation, spoke out against a large part of what had been done to the Indians. She made it clear that Canada was anything but proud of this and regretted its past behaviour. Jean Chrétien again attacked this statement by demoting the minister to another portfolio.
After that, the commitments made in “Gathering Strength”, which was meant as a response to the recommendations of the royal commission, ended up in the wastebasket.
The budget has proven that there are resources that could be allocated to measures to remedy what the Prime Minister has described as the shameful conditions our aboriginal people have to deal with.
The Minister of Finance is boasting of a situation that is the envy of all the other members of the G-7. He ought not to be so boastful, because he is concealing from them the fact that Canada has not lived up to the commitments it inherited from the historical treaties of colonial times. What is more, the Dominion has not kept its own promises in its various numbered treaties. Canada has deceived the first nations by helping itself to their ancestral lands and resources without properly compensating them. Then it put them in minuscule reserves. The minister has also not told the G-7 about Canada's refusal to fulfill its fiduciary role, by depriving these people of the funding they require to develop properly.
The national chief of the AFN has postponed any concrete measures to improve the deplorable conditions of the first nations. According to Phil Fontaine, they had “brought our best ideas and our best experts to these roundtable sessions and participated in good faith with the goal of making progress.” That progress was not forthcoming.
I must point out that I had a whole lot more to say. We will get back to this later on, since some people are having fun dragging out the debate by asking questions that are not always pertinent.