Mr. Speaker, as I said in my comments, this started at the round table in April 2004. Kelowna took place in November 2005, 18 months later. When I was involved in the round table, I was the minister for infrastructure and housing. I can tell the House that at the time I was excited by the possibilities because housing would be a big part of it and I remember wanting to be part of something that I thought, done right, could make a big difference.
Little did I know at the time that I would become the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development eventually and have the opportunity to facilitate this dialogue between a number of federal government departments. The Department of Justice was involved. I will not even begin to describe the number of departments involved to help facilitate that.
The Prime Minister had struck an aboriginal affairs committee of cabinet to make every policy change that was necessary. Over 20 times I had to go to cabinet to seek a policy change and to get the funding in order to support that policy change. This preoccupied the government for a year and a half, always respectfully, always recognizing that this would not work if it was imposed on the community, regardless of good intention.
This would only work if it was a respectful collaboration between the first nation of our country and the government of the day. That was what it set out to be and that is why so many people were invested in this agreement, because it meant so much to the people who contributed and participated.
At the end of the day one cannot build houses without investment or educate people without investment. There are all kinds of details that would explain how it was that we wished to go forward and the processes that would be involved because process is a big part of collaboration, but it is not all of it.
We would plan education with the provinces and we would structure educational systems because at the end of the day the consensus was that most of the education delivered, particularly in first nation communities, was delivered not by educational systems but simply in schools. My own children going to school in Fredericton would recognize that education is now a system and that is not the case in first nations communities generally.
Therefore, all of that content was a part of this exercise and there was a great deal of content, such as private ownership of homes. There is a long list and I will not get into enumerating it. More important perhaps than all the content, even perhaps more than the revenues or resources that were secured, is the relationship, the idea that finally the government was sitting down with the community and we were going to solve these tragic problems that have haunted our country for hundreds of years. We were going to solve them together, respectfully.
That was the nature of the new relationship and that is probably what is most at risk if the government does not see fit to support my hon. colleague's motion today.