Mr. Speaker, the social condition of Canada's first nations people is this country's greatest failure and this country's greatest shame.
Today the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations served notice that decades of round tables, consultations and royal commissions have gone nowhere and have done nothing to improve the social conditions of the people that he represents. The national chief served notice that his people are losing hope and that when young people lose hope, desperation can lead to social unrest and civil disobedience.
It was in 1990 that social unrest among first nations led to the Oka crisis. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples bought a decade of peace, but in the absence of any meaningful progress, we should recognize that peace is a finite commodity.
We should be grateful and recognize and pay tribute to the leadership of first nations who have kept a lid on the boiling pot of social unrest among their people. We should serve notice to the government of today that it must act meaningfully today.