Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all members of the House who have spoken to this motion and who I believe support at its core what the motion stands for.
The heart of this motion is about people. It is about their needs, their wants and their aspirations. It is about bringing northern peoples, whether they be Inuit, Métis or first nations, fully into this Canadian federation.
We have heard comments from some members trying to parse out what the particular motion means or whether it impinges upon particular jurisdictions, but I have to say that this motion is about co-operation. It is about co-operation from all levels of government: aboriginal, municipal or local, provincial, territorial and federal, but it does call on the federal government to raise itself up, to raise its game up and to offer some leadership.
In no way, shape or form is it an imposition on any level of government. It is about inclusion and it is about respect for all levels of government.
There should be no conversation where local governments are left out when we are talking about their infrastructure, where aboriginal governments are left out when we are talking about their communities, or the provinces and territories are left out when we are talking about areas of their jurisdiction.
It is not about imposition or about jurisdiction. It is about co-operation, and at its heart, it is about people. It is about what they need. It is about roads, where communities need to be connected in the 21st century.
I talk about Labrador where we have thousands of kilometres of gravel road, hardly any type of hard surfacing or pavement. It is about connecting those communities that want to be connected in the 21st century. It is about having modern airports and airport infrastructure.
I want to illustrate something very sad this morning about the type of challenges we have in the north. Just yesterday we had a fatal accident in Labrador where a small twin-engine plane went down trying to get into a small community. The pilot was killed. He was on a medevac, trying to land on a 25,000-foot gravel runway to get a sick person out to take to a hospital.
That is the type of challenge we have in the north. That is the type of infrastructure that we have in the north that speaks for something better. It speaks for something greater. My heart and my prayers go out to the Hudson family in Labrador for their loss. It is sad. It is tragic.
It is about having good wharves and good docks. It is about good water systems so that every child, every family and every community has safe drinking water and proper sewage treatment. It is about housing, schools, recreational facilities, search and rescue, Arctic and northern sovereignty and the social infrastructure that is required.
If we do not have these things, we will not fully, in my view, be part of the Canadian federation in the 21st century. We will not have the basics that are required for proper development, proper economic and social improvement. If we do not have these things, how can northerners say with any confidence that we are equal to other Canadians who live further south, who enjoy many of these things?
The north has long been neglected. It only seems to be important when somebody from somewhere else wants the resources of the people in the north. Whether it is diamonds, nickel or gas, only when somebody from somewhere else wants something that the north has do northerners start to feel that somehow now the conversation is about them, that they are somehow going to be included. That is not good enough.
We have to be more proactive. We have to do it with respect for all the people who live in the north. It is about the quality of life enjoyed by all Canadians and it is about rural Canada.
I want to commend the Leader of the Opposition, our Liberal leader, in his speech in Whistler, B.C., for saying that we cannot have a united Canada until we include all of Canada: east and west, north and south, aboriginal and non-aboriginal, rural and urban, rich and poor. We have to look at policies through our rural lens and we have to have policies that unite, not divide, this country.
This is what this motion does. It holds up the north and includes all people in this great federation.