Mr. Speaker, I have a brief comment and a question for my colleague from Mississauga South.
I think he would be the first one to agree with me that the social condition of Canada's first nations is Canada's greatest shame and that is why many people view the time we are spending on this fairly narrow issue of matrimonial real property as somewhat of a red herring if the real problem lies with the Indian Act, a document unworthy of any western democracy.
The Indian Act has been responsible for 130 years of social tragedy, which is the only way to phrase it, and yet we are dealing with a fairly narrow Eurocentric, simplistic notion of matrimonial real property. When there are circumstances of abject poverty, it becomes less relevant and less important for Parliament to be seized with this one issue.
Does the member agree with me that something about this bill shows a lack of sensitivity to the traditional culture and heritage of aboriginal people? I will give him one example to illustrate this.
I took part in the constitutional discussions around the Charlottetown accord, the aboriginal round. We met with a group of aboriginal women elders who did not want us to pass the provisions of the Charlottetown accord as it pertained to aboriginal people, partly because of this Eurocentric lack of recognition. They told us that their culture was a lot older than ours and that they had ways of dealing with things.
One aboriginal woman elder told me that in her community, women were not allowed to run for chief. Many of us at the discussions shook our head and said that was terrible. She went on to say that the men were not allowed to vote. It was clear that in their community, they had, over thousands of years, developed a fairly egalitarian way of ensuring that men were not dominating the culture and tradition of that community. Yes, the women could not run for office but the men were not allowed to vote for the chief.
If we were to take that issue before the Human Rights Commission, some tribunal would be wrestling with that and would probably rule that the thousands of years of culture, tradition and heritage in that community would be invalid, not in keeping with Canadian values and would be interfered with. That is the type of nuance that probably would have come out were there genuine consultation taking place in the crafting of this bill.
I would agree with my colleague that consultation has legal meaning and part of true consultation means accommodating the legitimate concerns that are raised by those being consulted. Consultation is not just telling people what is going to be done to them. Would he agree with that?