Mr. Speaker, by way of starting, I am pleased that this issue is before the House of Commons where I believe it properly belongs. I believe the terrible legacy of Canada's Indian residential schools is our greatest shame as a nation. There has never been an injustice on this scale or of this magnitude in the country.
In spite of a national consensus that there should be compensation and reconciliation, the overwhelming majority of the money set aside to compensate victims so they can get on with their lives is being burned up in legal fees and bureaucracy. There is some confusion over the figures. Some say by a factor of 4:1 that more money is spent on bureaucracy than compensation. Some say that it is 35:1. All we need to know is that the money is not going into the pockets of the victims so they can rebuild their lives.
I wish all members could have heard some of the testimony in our committee.
I intend to share my time, Mr. Speaker, with my colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan.
I cannot get out of my mind one elder who came as a witness to the committee. She was an 88-year-old woman named Flora Merrick. She ran away from her residential school when she was nine years old to attend her mother's funeral. When she was caught, she was beaten black and blue and locked in a room for two weeks.
I will not dwell on how horrific this is and the state of fear in which these children lived, except to point out that when she filed a claim under the ADR process for a $3,500 maximum, the government spent $30,000 to oppose that claim, to call her a liar. Then when she was awarded $1,500 as a settlement, the government appealed it. It is going to spend another $30,000 to appeal this lousy $1,500 settlement for Flora Merrick. This is truly outrageous. If Canadians could hear this, I think they would be standing with us today calling for a just reconciliation and compensation program for the Indian residential school victims.
I cannot support the motion for concurrence put forward by my colleague from the Conservative Party. I believe the report of the committee, which he has moved concurrence in, fails to grasp the necessary elements of reform for this compensation program.
The standing committee had put in front of it a motion by myself, which essentially was that the Assembly of First Nations' recommended action to solve the Indian residential school situation. That motion contains three elements that I believe are necessary for us to begin to move forward.
One is fair and reasonable compensation in an expedited process, which is blanket lump sum compensation. In other words, no more wasting money trying to prove these victims are lying. This money should go into their pockets.
Eligibility for compensation should be based on the fact that someone was there. We accept that being torn from the bosom of one's family for 10 years in a row and denied one's culture and language in itself is abusive. We do not need to know how many times one was sexually abused or what size the stick was with which that a person was beaten. Those details do not matter because being forced to retell those stories re-victimizes the victims. Enough is enough. We should put the money that was set aside for compensation into the hands of the victims. This would be the first element and it is lacking in the motion put forward by my colleague from Calgary today.
The second element is a full public apology by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons. Aboriginal people will settle for nothing else. They want an apology. They remind the House of Commons that the government of the day made a formal apology to Japanese Canadians. It has made formal apologies to other victims for reprehensible things former governments did.
As I started by saying, in this case there is no greater injustice in the history of Canada than the history of the Indian residential schools. We want and they want the Prime Minister of Canada to stand in the House of Commons and admit that what was done was wrong. This is not included in the motion we are debating today, as put forward by my colleague from the Conservative Party.
The third element that must be a part of any package to reform the Indian residential school situation is a truth and reconciliation process so that even though the compensation would be lump sum and universal, there would be an opportunity for people's stories to be told so both sides could begin to heal. I do not mean just the victims telling their stories. The churches want to tell their stories. The government wants to tell its stories. Non-aboriginal people who feel sick to their stomachs about this situation want their feelings to be heard. That is the path toward healing and toward true reconciliation. This element is absent in the motion my colleague from the Conservative Party would ask us to vote in favour of today.
I urge my colleagues in the House of Commons to vote down this motion because those other elements which I have raised are within grasp. The motion that I put forward in the standing committee, I now have information that it has the support of the government, of the ruling party. We can get all those three key elements in a motion adopted by the House of Commons. That is why the Assembly of First Nations, the elected leadership of first nations around the country, is asking us as members of Parliament to vote against the motion put forward by the Conservatives today, to stay strong and to keep fighting for a new resolution with the key elements we have identified here today.
I believe we owe it to this issue to do it right and to do it right the first time. This is simply an interim measure. I compliment my colleague from the Conservative Party for what he did at the committee. When it was clear my motion did not have support, he moved another motion which kept the issue alive and it brought the issue into the House of Commons where it properly belongs. However, let us not settle for half of the loaf when the whole loaf is available to us.
Let us not put in place a problematic resolution and motion when we can put in a motion that leads toward healing. One of the elements of the motion we have before us today is problematic in that it calls for simply abolishing the alternative dispute resolution system. Our point, and the point of the Assembly of First Nations, is we want to correct the alternative dispute resolution system, not abolish it. What about all those people who are halfway through the system now, who are 80 and 90 years old, who have been waiting for years for justice? We cannot just cut that program off willy-nilly with nothing to substitute for it. I urge colleagues to keep that in mind.
The motion put forward by the Conservatives recommends that the process be handed over to the courts to supervise and enforce. There should be some judicial oversight, but we do not want to put it strictly into the hands of the lawyers, some of whom are charging a 30% contingency fee for all settlements. That is a mistake. Oversight, yes, but handing it over strictly to that outside third party is wrong.
I urge colleagues here today that when this comes to a vote, to vote against it and vote in favour of a package that more accurately reflects what the leadership of first nations is asking us to do. That is the way to move forward to heal this historic injustice.