Mr. Speaker, we are talking about decades of neglect here.
The Assembly of First Nations said yesterday that poverty breeds hopelessness and despair and without comprehensive programs for education and language and a re-energized focus on aboriginal people, the incarceration statistics will only get worse.
Forty one per cent of people under the age of 25 are part of that prison population, a lost generation.
The government has been long on promises and short on delivery. When and how will it develop a real plan to tackle the poverty gap in aboriginal communities?