Madam Speaker, nobody has even asked that the Aboriginal Healing Foundation last forever.
The government can honour its legal obligations and still fund the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. There are other obligations, moral and ethical, to the people who suffered during residential schools.
Let us look at the experience of Health Canada when it just started out. Health Canada now has its regional co-ordination headquarters for the people of Nunavut who might need help in Whitehorse. It is three time zones away.
When Health Canada handed out its first pamphlets about its new program for health support, it was not in Inuktitut, the first language of many of the people in Nunavut or in Nunatsiavut, Labrador, or other places across the Arctic, it was only in English and French. When Health Canada mentioned the programs, it did not even mention Inuit or Métis. They were not even referenced in the pamphlets.
This is not the way to start a new healing program that is supposed to be culturally sensitive and responsive to the needs of people.
I would end with this, and this is very poignant. At committee today an elder said, “We were brave children”. I ask the government to show some bravery, to stand up and to support these people.