Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments made by my former colleague on the indigenous affairs committee. We talked about a number of issues, and I know she is quite knowledgeable on the issues that are challenging aboriginal people across the country.
I am one of the few MPs who still lives in an aboriginal community. Of the people in my community, 95% are indigenous, so I see these issues every day. Every month, once a month, we will see the court party come in by plane. It is almost a spectator sport, because the community pretty much has to shut down. I live in a small community of 800 people. If there is a callout for 200 jurors, the store has to shut down because all its staff has to show up. The school has to shut down because the teachers have to go. There is a list of people and the docket is so full that sometimes the court party will have to stay two or three days. Normally, the party will not, and it will have to come back, so the court list grows and grows. It is unfortunate because these are people I know. These are people who are related to me. These are my friends. We know the challenges in our communities. We know about the residential school fallout. We know about the addiction problems. We know about the sexual abuse. We know all these things exist, yet we continue to ignore them, and the system stays the same. A royal commission made recommendations 25 years ago that we have pretty much ignored up to now. We need to do more.
I hear from women in my riding who cannot get child support or deal with divorce issues because they cannot manoeuvre in the system we have. How do people in a small aboriginal community out in the middle of the Northwest Territories in a remote situation get access? Over the years things have deteriorated. Support programs have disappeared. Native court worker programs are gone. How do they manoeuvre? They need someone to help them. Now is a good time to start moving forward.
We need a system that allows our elders, who are much respected in our communities, to be part of the process, part of the solution. We need a support system that will deal with some of the people who end up in the correction facilities, the jails.
I heard my colleague say that it is too slow, that we should have done more. Is now a good time to start the reforms to bring changes across the government, which includes justice?