Mr. Speaker, it saddens me to rise today to talk about Kashechewan again. As members are aware, Kashechewan has been in the news in the past week, with descriptions of the despair many young people are feeling in the community. Their school has been closed for months.
Along with the continuing worry of flood during the season's ice breakup, worry about the new location of their community, and worry over mental health issues, particularly among the young, the lack of a school creates more stress in the community.
Unfortunately, Kashechewan is not alone. In Attawapiskat, the elementary school has been closed for over a year because of a diesel fuel spill. The students are now attending at the remaining school in shifts.
In Manitoba, students from the Mosakahiken Cree Nation are waiting for a new school to be built after the old one burned to the ground in 2005.
In the Opaskwayak Cree Nation, the school is so overcrowded that it has 25% more students than it was built for.
In the Manto Sipi Cree Nation, two students had to go to Winnipeg and Thompson to attend high school. The students, Dwayne Ross and Sunshine Ross, went missing, and are still missing to this day.
If we look at the water situation, we can see that Kashechewan is not alone. We are not just talking about remote communities.
In my own community of Duncan, Cowichan tribes spend part of every year with contaminated water from their seven community wells and 33 individual wells. These residences are mere metres away from the municipal service in Duncan but cannot have reliable access to clean drinking water. It is all about infrastructure.
Those are just a few of the communities around the country that are waiting for help with their infrastructure.
This is the question I really have. Is it true that there is a shortfall in capital infrastructure money to provide basic services to first nations in this year, 2007-08, of $293 million, and that facilities operation and management dollars are underfunded to the tune of $82 million? That is a total of $375 million overall that first nations do not receive to provide basic services like clean drinking water, waste water treatment, and access to schools and community recreation.
Will the Conservative government commit to meeting this funding gap in the upcoming budget?