Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity even for just a few minutes to add my thoughts to the debate today on the concurrence motion of the report of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development on post-secondary education.
On behalf of the people of the riding that I represent, Winnipeg Centre, and on behalf of first nations across the province of Manitoba, my home province, let me say that I am very pleased that we are seized of this issue today in the House of Commons.
I am very pleased with the tone of at least the last few speakers in this debate, the note of optimism in their message to us today, and the recognition that there probably is no more significant thing we could do to elevate the social condition of first nations and aboriginal people in this country than to focus our energies on education. There seems to be a consensus building as this debate goes forward today.
Coming from the province of Manitoba I am proud that we have recognized this fact through three successive NDP governments in that province. It was the government of Ed Schreyer in 1977 that began the University of Manitoba's access program. One of the first graduates from that program is the current national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Phil Fontaine. Another graduate is a former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Ovide Mercredi.
I think of my good friend and lawyer, Moses Okimaw, a chief of his reserve. About post-secondary education, Moses said to me once, “The biggest mistake they ever made in their lives was letting guys like me get a university education”, because he has become one of the most effective and outspoken advocates for the social injustices that his people have faced in recent history.
While the tone has been positive, I have to focus on one wrong direction that Parliament was exposed to. In the previous government the former minister of Indian affairs, now the member for Fredericton, said time and time again the single most important thing he could do as the minister of Indian affairs was concentrate on post-secondary education.
He used the alarming analogy of pointing to the over-representation of aboriginal people in jail and the under-representation of aboriginal people in university and said his job was to reverse those statistics. That was powerful. He had me excited. I believed him.
However, not six months later his government's response to this crisis of under-representation of aboriginal people in university was to put a tax on the tuitions and living expenses of aboriginal students when they were at university, a shot across the bow to try to introduce income tax, I suppose, to aboriginal people. The Liberals were trying to achieve some secondary objective by this ludicrous, counterproductive approach.
Can there be any doubt that if aboriginal students had to start paying taxes on the meagre living out allowance they get, they would have less money to spend, the reserve would have to give them more money to live on, and fewer students would end up going to university? It was ridiculous. We were shocked and flabbergasted.
I recognize the aboriginal native students associations of Algonquin College, Seneca College, Douglas College, and others across the country that gathered together and signed an 11,000 name petition that I had the honour of presenting in the House of Commons to point out the absurdity, the counterproductivity of taxing living out expenses of aboriginal people if in fact the government's intention was to have more aboriginal people going to university. It was appalling.
If we are to build civil society, and it is the paternalism of the Indian Act that has thwarted and undermined the development of civil society and aboriginal communities, but if we are to develop a middle class among first nations, there is no way to go from poverty to middle class except for education. It is the only vehicle within one generation to move from poverty to middle class.
If we are to build the administrative capacity that will lead to self-determination, and if that is in fact our objective and if we are honest about that, then we have to pay attention to putting more first nations, Métis and Inuit students through university.
An aboriginal leader sent me an email today about this very debate and he quoted another noted champion of social justice who said:
On some positions a coward has asked the question is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question is it right? And there come a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.
That email that was sent to me today quoted Martin Luther King talking about the struggle for social justice of the Black people in the United States and the civil rights movement.
The social conditions of aboriginal people in this country is the civil rights movement of Canada. The time for social justice for aboriginal people has come. In an era of seven, eight and nine surplus budgets in a row, if not now, then when? That is what first nations people are asking themselves. And as we approach the day of action on June 29, we have to ask ourselves, if not now, then when?
If for no other reason than enlightened self-interest, does it make any sense to leave a huge chunk of the population behind? Our party believes that society does not move forward unless we all move forward together.
There are specific things we can do to ensure that we elevate the standards of social conditions of first nations, Métis and Inuit people. The most obvious, the most agreed upon, and the most simple and most directed straightforward thing we can do is to get rid of the 2% cap as per the recommendations of the report of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, so that funding is based on need with a special emphasis on dealing with the backlog of the 13,000 first nations students who qualify for school, but who are waiting because they have no money to go to school.
We have to jump start this campaign. We have to commit ourselves with a new vigour that this will be a challenge that we are ready to face or we face the consequences of a permanent underclass in our society. I put it to you, Mr. Speaker, that it is morally and ethically reprehensible, but it is also counterproductive if we are to move forward as a great nation.