Mr. Speaker, our failure on children is probably the greatest single shame that we have right now in terms of our ability as a nation and the complete lack of support that exists.
In my community of Fort Albany, we have a good school. The children go to school because they are proud of it. I talked to a lawyer who flies into the James Bay communities. She said that when she looks at the court dockets in Fort Albany they are less than a page long because the kids are in school.
In Attawapiskat, the dropout rates begin in grade 5. It seems that there is nothing of interest to the government about the fact that children give up hope in grade 5 and stop going to school because they are not worthy of a school in the same way that Kashechewan is not worthy of a school and in the same way that so many of our other communities are not worthy of a school.
One thing I learned from dealing with the children on the James Bay coast is that a water project is an infrastructure project, a road project is an infrastructure project and sewage is an infrastructure project, but a school is a hope project. I learned that from a student in grade 8 who saw what a real school looked like and told me that if she had her whole life to do it, she would dream about being in a community where there was a proper school.
We are talking about hope. When a government has this kind of money and this kind of power and shows such disinterest to children that it actually crushes their hopes, there is not much else we can say. The Auditor General's report is scathing. It should cause us all shame. Any party, any member of Parliament, and I do not care what party they are in, has an obligation to say that we can do better. But at the end of the day it falls to a government's sense of priorities, and those children have to be a priority, because if they are not, then shame on us.