Mr. Speaker, two days ago, April 25, the chief of the Assembly of First Nations corresponded with every member of Parliament addressing this very specific question. I am sure the member opposite did not intend that he would represent first nations communities.
The letter is very clear in terms of the issue at hand. If it is accountability I do not believe that anyone in the Assembly of First Nations has any issue with that whatsoever. However for someone to insinuate that any one group, in terms of self-government or any of these processes, is deliberately doing something incorrect, I think the person probably owes an apology to the Assembly of First Nations.
We can only go by our communications in a nation to nation discussion. I believe that many of the points put forward by Chief Fontaine are reasonable and achievable in terms of a really rational approach to accountability.
Let us try to stop the accusation being made continually by the parliamentary secretary about what Chief Fontaine is hiding. I do not think that is the kind of talk we want to hear in Parliament.
Basically, we want to improve the bill. I have 11 first nation communities in my riding of Thunder Bay--Rainy River. They have lots of issues with different parts of accountability and accounting: duplication of some of the requirements, reporting that they feel is not really necessary, and those types of things. However in general they know that they are audited. That is very clear. Once one has been in the field and met with first nations at the community level, then one understands that they are very sincere about wanting to be accountable and in a democratic way.