Mr. Speaker, I love your haircut.
This is my first opportunity to deliver a speech in the 41st Parliament, and I would like to begin by thanking the voters of Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing for the vote of confidence I received in my re-election. No one can say we did not notice.
I remain humbled by their decision and hope to meet and exceed the expectations placed on me by the good people I am fortunate to represent. I also want to thank all those who staffed and volunteered in my campaign. I am extremely grateful to all of them, and of course, my ability to stand in this House would not be possible without the wholehearted support of my family and my friends, and especially the support of my husband Keith, my children Mindy and Shawn and their partners and of course my mother Simone.
As many of you may know, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing is one of the largest ridings in Canada at 103,264 square kilometres to be exact. Culturally we are very representative of Canada. There is a significant Franco-Ontarian population and, yes, in my constituency, many communities celebrate St-Jean-Baptiste Day. As a matter of fact, Kapuskasing hosts the biggest St-Jean-Baptiste festival in Ontario. Hence, we are disappointed with the Conservatives for not allowing the House to rise in respect of Quebec's national holiday.
Should we be surprised? I think not, given recent elections called by the Prime Minister for which we saw Elections Canada offices open on Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Easter Monday. It is obvious that the Prime Minister is not respectful of holidays that allow for quality family time together. While workers have fought to achieve days off, this government has continuously blatantly refused to respect even religious holidays.
We also have a strong first nations presence in my constituency and both Ojibway and Cree are spoken. There are 17 reserves in the constituency populated by hard-working people.
While I am talking about the first nations, I want to inform the House of something that came to my attention this week with respect to the arbitrary decisions that this government actually makes, the reason we are here today.
Chief Shining Turtle from Whitefish River First Nation wrote to me and indicated that INAC has given notice to one of the bands in my riding that they now have roughly three months to wrap up a major land claim. Their work plan, which was approved by INAC, calls for wrap-up by next year but not in the next three months. However, that is what INAC wants. The band needs 12 months to properly negotiate the details of this 1850 claim. This is a complicated history to evaluate, and they are concerned and want to ensure that they get it right in order--