Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Acadie—Bathurst.
I will begin by honouring the member for Sault Ste. Marie for his tireless efforts in bringing this motion before the House and the amount of work he has done from coast to coast to coast in terms of trying to raise the awareness of all around the matter of poverty.
I will speak specifically about poverty for first nations, Métis and Inuit peoples and I will begin with the Assembly of First Nations' “Make Poverty History” campaign. It has a first nations plan for creating opportunity. Its campaign lays out some pretty desperate statistics.
Someone from Save the Children, an international organization, recently came to Canada and visited two communities in northern Ontario. The person looked at the desperate situation around housing, water and access to education for many people on first nations reserves.
The Assembly of First Nations talks about the shocking reality of first nations poverty and provided a couple of statistics. It talked about the fact that one in four first nations children live in poverty in Canada compared to one in six Canadian children and that suicide accounts for 38% of all deaths for first nations youth aged 10 to 19.
With regard to housing, first nations homes are about four times more likely to require major repairs compared to Canadians homes overall. Nearly 1 in 30 people live in homes with no hot or cold running water, no flushing toilets, and 5,486 of the 88,485 houses on reserve have no sewage services. About one in three first nations people consider their main drinking water supply unsafe to drink.
With regard to communities, applying the United Nations human development index would rank first nations communities 68th among 174 nations.
The statistics are grim. What we see is decade after decade of report after report that talk about exactly the same kinds of issues. Surely by now parliamentarians would be weary of hearing about the reports and be moved to action.
The Assembly of First Nations is actually moving itself to action because it is tired of waiting on parliamentarians. On Friday, this document will be made public. National Chief Fontaine and the Assembly of First Nations have put together a campaign entitled, “The $9 billion Myth Exposed: Why First Nations Poverty Endures”. This document, which will be public on Friday, states:
Where is the $9.1 billion being spent? Only $5.4 billion of all federal “Aboriginal” spending actually ever reaches First Nations. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada Department officials have confirmed that only about 82% of policy and program funds actually reach First Nations in the form of grants and contributions. Treasury Board estimates that 11% or $600 million per year is spent on INAC departmental overhead. It is estimated that only about 53% of “aboriginal issues” funding from other federal departments actually reaches First Nations. This issue requires further study.
The document goes on to talk about why first nations are still living in poverty:
The federal system of fiscal transfers to First Nations communities is broken. Quite simply, funding cuts to First Nations programs and services over the last decade have made impoverished conditions much worse. First Nations communities have to provide more programs and services, to more people, with less money every year. The result is that the poverty gap has been widening further every year. Due to the 2% cap on core services that has been in place since 1996, the real purchasing power of FIrst Nations has steadily decreased due to annual increases in population growth and inflation. The total purchasing power lost by First Nations communities since 1996 is now 23 cents for every dollar, and we are losing more every year that the 2% cap remains in place.
Further on in the release, National Chief Fontaine talks about the fact that the first nations population is growing at a much faster rate than Canada as a whole. More than half of first nations people are under 23 years old. Freezing their budget at a 2% to 3% growth rate means that first nations governments cannot keep up with the demand of their growing population.
The Auditor General has recognized the fact that Indian and Northern Affairs Canada funding increased by only 1.6%, excluding inflation in the five years from 1999 to 2004, while Canada's status Indian population, according to the department, increased by 11.2%.
Furthermore, there is a notion that first nations receive a disproportionate share of money, but according to this release, first nations individuals receive less than half the amount allocated to each Canadian. On average, Canadians receive $15,400 in programs and services from their three levels of government, whereas first nations individuals receive $7,200 in comparable programs and services from the federal government. Those are shocking figures. It does not stop with first nations.
I would like to talk about the Inuit. In the report “Housing in Nunavut: The Time for Action is Now” from 2003-04 and 2004-05, again there are more grim statistics. I will not go over the whole report, but it talks about the fact that 38.7% of Nunavut households are in core need, which means the housing is substandard, inadequate or unaffordable. Fifteen per cent of Nunavut's population is on a waiting list for public housing. This percentage does not include the number of people who have given up and removed their names from the list. The approximate length of the waiting list for public housing is three years. Three thousand units are needed immediately to relieve the current overcrowding rate and bring Nunavut on par with the rest of Canada. For the Inuit peoples in this country, there is a litany of problems, housing, education, access to water.
The Métis National Council Canada-Aboriginal Peoples Roundtable sectoral sessions policy papers talk about housing, education and health care. I am going to briefly touch on housing once again because poverty and housing go hand in hand. If one is poor, one cannot afford adequate housing. In the Métis homeland, close to 60% or better of self-identifying Métis adults live on less than $20,000 per annum before tax. We know in many parts of this country that on $20,000 per year one could not possibly afford to rent or own adequate housing accommodation. These low income levels translate into higher incidents of affordability problems. This is compounded in many larger urban centres by the high cost of housing, both rental and home ownership, and by costs for shelter rising faster than income. All this dramatically affects the total wellness of families as there is no money left for other necessities in life once they have paid for their housing.
One of the things often talked about is consultation. First nations, Métis and Inuit peoples would welcome meaningful consultation. They would welcome being at the table as the problems are identified. They would welcome being at the table as the solutions are discussed. They would welcome being at the table in a meaningful way when implementation plans are being drawn up. The reality is that consultation is often superficial, rushed and does not allow communities the broad spectrum.
One only has to look at the matrimonial real property consultation that is currently going on. The Native Women's Association of Canada has talked about how there were serious concerns from participants regarding the short timeframe for consultation and the turnaround time for the consultation process. They go on to talk about how in other consultation processes they were given at least a year. In this case they were given a mere three months.
We know how complex the issues are. When we talk about issues like poverty, housing, matrimonial real property and education, meaningful consultation means that first nations, Métis and Inuit peoples must help develop that consultation process. The courts have talked about that.
In conclusion, the Assembly of First Nations put together a report card on the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. The Assembly of First Nations talked about the lack of progress on key socio-economic indicators. Based on our assessment, Canada has failed in terms of its action to date.
This is an equal opportunity failure. It is a failure on the part of the former Liberal government and it is a failure on the part of the current Conservative government. They have failed to put meaningful action in place in terms of housing, education, access to clean water, sewer infrastructure, et cetera.
International communities are now paying attention to what is going on here in Canada. Canada is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, yet first nations, Métis and Inuit peoples are living in third world conditions.
I would urge all members of the House to support the New Democratic Party motion and make a real difference in the lives of Canadians. Fairness and affordability should be our mantra.