Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley.
I too was at Kelowna for the whole event, as was the leader of our party, the member for Toronto—Danforth, as was my colleague from Skeena and my colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan as well. Our party was well represented there out of the sense of hope and optimism that dominated that proceeding. The NDP caucus was caught up with a wave of optimism that finally the country was seized with the issue of the social condition of aboriginal people. There was excitement in the air.
Frankly the dollar figures were not the most important factor. I could argue with my colleague from Fredericton that the dollars were not enough, that they were not all new dollars. I could go through all that, but I am not going to because in the spirit of this debate, what is more important is that we managed to pull the nation together for this common purpose. That far and away overshadowed the dollar figures.
We were seized of the issue for the time being. We were running the risk of and may have reached the point where we had allowed a permanent underclass in society to be created over the last 100 years. No one federal government is to blame. It is a product of a mindset not of the last century, but of the one before that and the century before that, a Eurocentric colonial mindset that aboriginal people were to be either defeated in a war or in our case to be assimilated or phased out as we occupied this territory.
It is a testimony to the enduring spirit of aboriginal people that we are still dealing with identifiable cultures today. In the face of overwhelming adversity and in the face of colonial design that would have seen them stamped out, whether by war, by small pox, or by economic starvation, the fact that we are still seized with this issue and with a burgeoning healthy aboriginal population with cultures and language in place is a modern day marvel. It is something we should dwell on and be inspired by as we mature in our approach to our first peoples in this country.
The sad truth is that I represent an inner city riding, a core area riding of one of Canada's major cities. No matter what economic, social or medical indicator is used, our aboriginal people rank dead last. That is certainly true with respect to the health determinants, whether it is virtual epidemics or diabetes and other conditions that are often associated with poor diet, poverty, et cetera.
If we do not address this permanent underclass for all the moral and ethical reasons, then we should address it for enlightened self-interest. It does no one any good to leave 20% of the population back, or whatever percentage of the population it is that we are leaving back. This is something Canadians should be concerned about if for no reason than our own enlightened self-interest.
With respect to NDP policy, there is a saying that society does not move forward until we all move forward together, that we leave no one back. In this case, by design or perhaps the lack of a design, by the lack of a concerted effort, we have abandoned a significant number of people. Even in the time it took in the last decade to arrive at Kelowna, another generation of youth will certainly not realize its full potential. Some will be left behind altogether.
We would be remiss in this debate not to address the dollars though, because we are not doing it justice if we all do not start from the same informed level of information. The figure of $5.1 billion that is bandied around and which the Liberals like to use is a myth. It is a cruel myth in a way because it is being featured to the general public as a huge amount of money, “Look at the commitment, look at how massive our commitment is”.
Of that amount, $700 million was health care money that was announced and announced over and over again until finally it was re-announced in Kelowna. Let us deduct that right off the top. That leaves $4.4 billion. Of that $4.4 billion, $600 million was the NDP's housing money from Bill C-48. The NDP put $1.8 billion toward housing and we said one-third of that should be dedicated to aboriginal housing. That is $600 million of money that the NDP negotiated. If that is deducted off the top, we are down to $3.8 billion of new money. That is over five years. That is about $600 million a year.
That is not an enormous commitment to meet the greatest social tragedy of our time. In fact, that is one month's worth of EI surplus. The EI fund was showing a surplus of $750 million a month. Less than one month's surplus of EI per year is dedicated to this social tragedy that is the social condition of aboriginal people.
Let us at least keep it in perspective. Maybe this is an unfair comparison but INAC has 6,000 employees. There are 6,000 employees at Indian and Northern Affairs Canada to manage the poverty of about 600,000 people. That is $500 million a year in salaries alone, never mind the workstations, computers, benefits, pension plans and the buildings they occupy. A huge amount of this money is not going to the communities that are in such desperate need.
It galls me that it is like pulling teeth to get a bit of money to try to lessen the misery of a lot of people, whereas when the military wanted to go from $12 billion to $14 billion to service 50,000 troops, it was there. In fact, people are saying it should be more, more, more.
We are talking about $7 billion to meet all of the needs of 600,000 to 800,000 people. That is roughly $8,000 per head. We spend more than that on high school students alone in Manitoba. We spend about $8,500 per student per year in high school while this $8,000 per person is to meet their health, education, housing, infrastructure, sewage and water treatment plants, the whole kit and caboodle.
I say with all due respect that Canadians should never be sucked into this myth and illusion that there is a gazillion dollars being poured into aboriginal communities. There is not nearly enough to meet the basic social needs of those families to survive.
One time I heard a very gifted speaker say that if there are five children and only three pork chops, the solution is not to kill two of the children. The social democratic point of view is to challenge the lie that there are only three pork chops. Do not try to tell me that in the richest and most powerful civilization in the history of the world we cannot provide for the basic needs of a family to survive, whether the family lives in Pukatawagan, Shamattawa, or the inner city area of Winnipeg. I am not buying that any more. It is a myth and it is a cruel myth because it is costing people their futures.
To come back to Kelowna, the money is not the important issue. The current federal government could easily match the dollar commitments of Kelowna. What was important was bringing the nation together for the common purpose of acknowledging the fact that there are these appalling social conditions. The Indian Act can best be described as 135 years of social tragedy. It was a terrible, evil document, unfit for a western democracy. It is Eurocentric colonialism personified and institutionalized into one evil document. It must be eradicated before these oppressed people can move forward.
In closing, I will remind people that we should be aware of a famous Harvard study that looked at the most economically progressive reserves in all of North America, the United States and Canada. It found that the degree of economic development success was directly proportional to the degree of self-governance and independence. In other words, solutions do not come from above and are not imposed on people. Solutions will come commensurate with the degree of self-governance and independence and out from under the Indian Act.