Mr. Speaker, certainly there is a lot of work to be done on both the residential schools file and the Kelowna agreement. The devil is always in the details. That is always what we saw with the Liberals. They would have ad hoc meetings behind closed doors and do a lot of the political spin and so on. They have always had the leadership in their pockets. What I hear ordinary aboriginals say in my riding is, “What does this really come down to? What does this really mean to us?” They do not know and I cannot tell them that yet either because there are still a couple of court order hoops and hurdles to be followed through with on the residential file.
As for the Kelowna agreement, as I said before, the devil is in the details. We really do not know what all that encompasses and how long term that is going to be. I have always had a concern and the concern of most aboriginals in my riding is when is it going to be over and when will we finally see some resolution.
The Liberal government in its political wisdom went ahead with a consultation period on the residential schools. Eighty per cent of the money went to lawyers and consultants and 20% went to the so-called victims of the residential schools fiasco. We do not need to take any lessons from the former Liberal government on what to do about the aboriginal file. We will look at it case by case, detail by detail and move forward, not sit still or move backward like the Liberals did.