Mr. Speaker, I had the honour to meet the family of Jordan River Anderson when we moved that motion. I guess I was a lot more naive back then. I thought that when Parliament passed a motion to say it was going to protect first nation children that we were all honour bound and we would do the right thing, because it would be shameful to do any less. However, here we are all these years later and we are seeing a new government, a new health minister, and she is fighting indigenous children in court when the denial rates in her department against special orthopaedic surgery is 99% and 100%.
Recently, her officials denied a little boy an audiology test. They said it was not necessary. I was stunned when I saw that because my daughter was born deaf. We were told that for every month we lose there was a chance that our daughter would never get into school. We had to move immediately.
Some bureaucrat, not a medical doctor, a bureaucrat in the health minister's office wrote that it was not necessary. This is the kind of discrimination that indigenous children face. Imagine if a child goes to a doctor and gets a prescription or an order for specialized treatment, but someone who has never seen that child, someone who knows nothing about the case, can overrule it. That is what systemic discrimination is. I thought that when we passed Jordan's principle those days would end, but they are still alive and well with the current government.