Mr. Speaker, last month I had the opportunity to ask the Prime Minister directly why he is excluding the Native Women's Association of Canada from his government's provincial-territorial meetings, and he said, “That is simply not true.” However, in December 2016, the Native Women's Association of Canada and the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples were left out of a meeting with the Prime Minister advancing reconciliation.
On this conversation about reconciliation, there was not a single indigenous woman at the table. In the press conference after the meeting, the Prime Minister confirmed that their exclusion was deliberate. He said, “My answer is that we always have to make choices about who to include in different venues and at different points.” He later told the National Observer that “in any given meeting we have to make choices and we made those choices.” He has chosen again and again, despite the Prime Minister's commitment to a true nation-to-nation relationship and despite his commitment to feminism, to exclude the Native Women's Association. They were excluded from the first ministers meetings in October 2017, December 2016, March 2016, and again not invited to participate in the reconciliation meeting I just cited, in December 2016.
I would like to know from the representative of the Prime Minister what his evidence is that he has been inviting the Native Women's Association of Canada to these high-level meetings, these reconciliation meetings, these first ministers meetings, because he told me that I am saying something that is not true. “That is simply not true” is what he said to me.
The Prime Minister really is in bad company on this. The mandate letter he gave to the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs indicated the government is committed to continue to develop and lead a whole-of-government strategy to include indigenous representatives in meaningful ways in Canada's federal-provincial-territorial dialogues. I will submit that if the Prime Minister continues to leave out indigenous women from these conversations, he is not fulfilling his commitment.
The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women indicated its concern that indigenous women's organizations are not included in Canada's countrywide nation-to-nation relationship on equal footing with other indigenous people's organizations. That report is more than a year old, and it still is not being honoured. UN CEDAW recommended that Canada ensure indigenous women's organizations are included in the countrywide nation-to-nation relationship in all cases in which issues of relevance to women apply.
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples asks the government to commit to article 18, in which indigenous people “have the right to participate in decision-making in matters which would affect their rights, through representatives chosen by themselves in accordance with their own procedures”. The Liberal government says it is going to agree to my colleague from Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou's bill, but its actions do not line up with its words.
I would like to hear from the government's representative why it is continuing to shut out NWAC.