Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to answer the question. As I said, back in the early seventies when Mr. Chrétien was minister for Indian affairs, he wrote a white paper on the need for us to move forward with aboriginal self-government and self-determinations.
These are not just words. Paul Martin wanted to treat aboriginal people at the table as a level of government on their own. This has moved backward and regressed under the government. This idea that we must continue to tell aboriginal people what is best for them, this colonial, as my colleague referred to it, attitude, this patriarchal attitude of saying that we know what is best for aboriginal people is what we did when we first came here. We told aboriginal people that they did not know what was good for them. We continue to do it under the government. We have gone backward in time.
The hon. member talked about pipelines and the duty to consult. The government thinks that the duty to consult is to pat people on the back and say, “You can come in and line up with everybody else and make a statement at a committee”. The Conservatives need to consult and respect on a face to face, government to government basis with first nations. That has not been done. First nations have been treated just like anybody else by the government.