Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to participate in this evening's debate. I want to thank my colleague from Vancouver East for raising this issue tonight, the matter of aboriginal people living in the downtown eastside and their battle with HIV-AIDS.
When I speak to the issue in the downtown eastside, and I have been there many times, I guess what I am struck with is the passing reference to aboriginal people or what I hear is dismissive references to aboriginal people coming from colleagues opposite.
I think the emergency goes beyond aboriginal people and HIV-AIDS. I think there is an emergency in this country as it relates to aboriginal people and the lack of support that the government is providing for them.
The downtown eastside in Vancouver has become symbolic for all of the ills of the urban aboriginal. It is notorious. It is known for despair. It is known for the poverty. It is known for substance abuse. It is known for the sexual exploitation in the downtown eastside. All of which could be transferred to many other communities across the country, not necessarily with the same intensity but certainly prevalent and certainly there.
I have had the opportunity to visit the downtown eastside in the last months a number of times. Very recently, I had a tour with the liaison officer from the local police department. I toured the area. I visited the women's centre. I visited the aboriginal mother centre. I met with groups of women. I certainly know their challenges and indeed have seen their despair.
I guess what I am struck with, as I go into the downtown eastside and look at them, is, and we have heard this often, they are someone's mother, they are someone's sister, they are someone's brother and they are no less human than any of us. They deserve the treatment, the care, the courtesy, and the respect that I think is not given to them appropriately.
I am not hear to speak to the health challenges of AIDS. My two colleagues who are physicians can run circles around me on that. I want to speak to some of the issues as they relate to aboriginal people, some of the determinants of why we are here tonight, why we are talking about aboriginal people on the downtown eastside, and why they are experiencing such skyrocketing HIV infection rates.
I am here to speak about the causes and the realities in the lives of aboriginal people and why so many of them are living with AIDS. As we saw in some of the clippings that some of us received, Ms. Barney, a member of the Lillooet Titqet Nation, was recently quoted in the Globe and Mail. She said:
It has its roots in poverty, unemployment, lack of housing and dislocation that plague many aboriginal communities and send young people to the streets of Vancouver seeking solace.
They come from all over the country. I have met, as I know many in the House have met, with families whose sisters, mothers and daughters are missing, who have ended in the downtown eastside of Vancouver and disappeared, nowhere to be seen.
What we have seen from the government, and I do not want to be political, has in fact been a pattern of betrayal and disrespect for aboriginal people. We have seen dramatic cuts made to many of the programs that serve them, whether it is the aboriginal languages program or whether it was the $11 million first nations and Inuit tobacco control strategy program, which was a preventative health initiative. What we also know is that the government has scrapped the Kelowna accord, a trade-off I fear.
We were criticized earlier in the evening for bringing up the Kelowna accord and politicizing the debate. The Kelowna accord provided real solutions for aboriginal people. The Kelowna accord offered hope to aboriginal people.
My colleague from Churchill could tell us stories of going into remote communities in northern Manitoba, speaking to elders with no knowledge of English but who knew Cree, Saulteaux, Dene, and Kelowna. Kelowna for them was a symbol of hope and a symbol of hope for their children that their lives would change.
Kelowna really touched on the issues affecting aboriginal people, such as housing, health care, economic development, education, all of which would close the poverty gap between aboriginals and non-aboriginals in this country.
We have heard much in recent weeks about the great success of the government's water strategy. I will acknowledge that some progress has been made, but it has been made at the cost of other programs. It has been made at the cost of education. I can run off a litany of educational programs in communities from coast to coast to coast that have been cancelled, delayed, or put on ice literally and figuratively for years to come because there is an unwillingness to put new dollars into communities.
Kelowna was quite singular. It was an 18 month process that involved politicians at the federal and provincial level as well as aboriginal leadership from right across the country. It involved bureaucrats from various levels of government and bureaucrats from community organizations.
The strength of Kelowna was the fact that it was a holistic response to communities. It allowed communities to develop their own plans and set their goals and aspirations.
In the Kelowna agreement $95 million was allocated for last year for the education of young people in this country and $264 million for this current year. For housing, both on reserve and off reserve, there was $500 million for last year and $275 million for this year. Economic development opportunities would have equaled over $40 million for this year and last. In terms of stabilizing the first nation and Inuit health system, about $137 million for last year and $218 million for this current year.
We know that the underpinnings of poverty, crowded houses, lack of education, lack of hope, and lack of opportunity, drives young people out of their communities to seek what they think might be a better life in the big city only to fall into the trap of dependency, addiction and frequently sexual exploitation.
We have heard much from members opposite about costs. This afternoon, in another debate, a member implied that Kelowna was really not that front and centre in the minds of Canadians. He said that when the government did its budget consultations nobody spoke to it about Kelowna.
I want to read something into the record that came from the former Liberal Prime Minister, the member for LaSalle—Émard. He said in a very recent newspaper article:
This isn't only a question of money. To those who say we can't afford it, I say yes, we can. After all, why else as a country did we resolve in the 1990s to eliminate the deficit? It was not simply to please foreign bankers or leave room to cut a few pennies of GST off the cost of a new coffee maker. We eliminated the deficit to claim control over our future - to finance the kind of Canada we wanted to leave for our children, to fortify our social foundations and, above all, to help those who need it most.
Kelowna was a first and important step on that road to helping those who need it most. I listened with great interest to the member opposite talk about the needs of Africa. I do not want to minimize them in any way, but I cannot help wondering what an African person coming in and going to northern Manitoba, or going to Vancouver's eastside would say about Canada, and how we live and how we serve our population.
We know that the aboriginal leadership has questioned the government's view and role of aboriginal people. They have frequently commented and I will quote Mr. Fontaine, the National Chief of the AFN, who said, “We see this as discriminatory treatment. We ask ourselves if this government really cares about first nations”.
We know, because it is on the record, that there is not a real care for the plight of aboriginal people by members opposite. We have, as many do, the derogatory comments made by members opposite, some at the highest levels of government and some in this department in the past and in the very recent past. So, it is no wonder that we are not seeing the attention given to the aboriginal file that we should have.
We have heard much about the residential schools concern and the residential schools legacy has caused much harm to aboriginal people. The Indian residential schools settlement was negotiated by the previous government, culminated on the signing of it with the passing of a peace pipe that we saw on the front pages of the Globe and Mail, and it was certainly a step in the right direction.
However, when I hear members opposite talking about the residential schools agreement, I cannot help wondering when is the apology coming? When are the Conservatives going to say, on behalf of the Government of Canada, to aboriginal people across this country “we are sorry”?
We have heard much about the survivors of residential schools and the loss of culture that they faced, the loss of heritage, the loss of language and the sad legacy of emotional, physical and sexual abuse. We have heard of the childhood wounds and the lifelong challenges that they faced to overcome them.
There was a study released today and I want to read from an article in a news release from the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network. It referred to two recent studies by the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network, one addressing homophobia in relation to HIV-AIDS in aboriginal communities and the Canadian aboriginal people living with HIV-AIDS in care, treatment and support issues. It showed, and this is startling, “that 16% of participants in each study had attended a residential school and an overwhelming majority, 90% plus, had a parent or a grandparent who had attended. These deep childhood wounds would not go away in four or five therapy sessions”.
She further indicated that preliminary data for those who participated in it said that addictions are a major factor in living with HIV-AIDS. Intensified use of drugs and alcohol was an initial coping strategy when diagnosed, and addictions were dealt with soon after diagnosis in order to begin antiretroviral treatment, or getting cleaned up, and more important than dealing with HIV-AIDS.
The residential school survivors need this apology. We have seen the pain and suffering on the downtown eastside. It is important that the member for Vancouver East has brought this issue forward to highlight it. What she has also brought forward, and which governments, all parties, in fact all Canadians have to take ownership, particularly in light of the Statistics Canada report that came out not too many days ago, is the growing aboriginal population, the growing poverty and despair in the aboriginal population, the drug addiction that is so prevalent in that population because of the lack of hope and the lack of opportunity. We as legislators and parliamentarians have an obligation to speak out on it, to make sure that Canadians are aware and that Canadians participate in closing the gap for aboriginal people in this country.
I thank the member opposite for bringing this issue forward. She highlighted the issue of HIV-AIDS, but she highlighted the greater issue of aboriginal people and the despair which many of them feel.