Once again, Mr. Speaker, it is a very strange reality when one considers that Canada was one of the countries driving this agenda, that we have not lived up to our obligations to the first peoples of this country, the people who are so important to our sense of nationhood.
I find it quite interesting that the current government would say that Canada cannot be party to the declaration. We certainly were a party to the many treaties that we made with first nations. We were certainly there when we traded for all of the territories and pushed first nations onto reserves. We were certainly there when the residential schools were created, which were intended to assimilate and ultimately destroy first nations communities. We were party to all of that and it would seem to me that it is time to be party to something positive. The UN declaration would most certainly be that.