Madam Speaker, I want to reiterate the words of our leader from earlier today. He expressed how inspired we all are by the young people across this country who are rising and the people from all walks of life who are standing in support of human rights and climate justice.
I also want to acknowledge the uncertainty of the times we are facing across the country. People are worried about getting to work. VIA and CN workers are worried about their jobs. People are worried about getting the supplies and products they need to keep themselves safe. Our thoughts are with those workers.
My thoughts are also with those who are standing on the front lines of the blockade, where I, myself, as an indigenous person, have had to go to fight for my own basic human rights in this country. I understand the reasons for this. These people are defending what they know to be right. They are standing up, saying clearly that they support human rights for all people. They are hoping that this time, maybe this time, things might actually change.
It is a terrible crisis we are facing, but it is a repetitive crisis. Even though the Prime Minister callously indicated that it is a crisis of infrastructure disruptions, it is not. It is a human rights crisis that is rooted in the wrongful dispossession of lands from indigenous people. It is a crisis being faced by people right across the country.
Canadians are now looking for leadership from all of us, and they are looking for leadership from the Prime Minister. So far what we have seen from the Prime Minister and the government is a huge gap between what has been promised and what has been delivered.
This crisis did not start overnight. It is rooted in the wrongful dispossession of lands from indigenous peoples and the human rights violations and violent colonialism that have become so normalized that indigenous people are not afforded the minimum human rights standard that any person needs, indigenous or not, to live a life of joy. This minimum human rights standard is contained in the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, international human rights laws and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, declarations and laws Canada has agreed to follow but often fails to do so in practice. It is a continuation.
These human rights violations have impacted my own family and nation. Residential schools, the sixties scoop and the dispossession of our lands have left a lasting impact on our community that continues to impact us even today. Residential schools disrupted our families. They were about the forced incarceration of children for no other reason than their ancestry, an ancestry of great leaders who taught the values of respect, love, courage, humility, truth, wisdom and kindness, the seven sacred laws that guided a beautiful way of life.
The Prime Minister promised to do things differently. He made commitments to working toward a path to support reconciliation. Once again indigenous people throughout this country are left disappointed. Once again they have been afforded nothing but broken promises that have resulted in many indigenous people throughout this country being homeless on their own lands.
There have been generations of promising one thing but doing another. Instead of learning lessons from the past, the Prime Minister has doubled down. He promised to be different. He promised to make change. He promised to take the genuine steps toward reconciliation. He has a list of things he has done, but let us look at what he and his government have done.
He broke those promises. They have ignored the courts, ignored this place and ignored their own promises. They have continued to drag first nations kids to court who are fighting for their right to have equal access to programs and services and to have the same human rights as other children who live on the lands that we now call Canada. They have broken their commitment to close the funding gap for kids living on reserve to go to school, and they have underfunded the programs set up to help women reclaim their status and those seeking compensation for day schools. Despite promise after promise, they have dragged their feet on meeting their obligations to ensure that clean drinking water is available in indigenous people's communities across the country. These are basic human rights.
The Prime Minister has done all of this while undermining and laughing at indigenous people, including Young Water and Land Protector from Grassy Narrows, who attended a fundraising event and raised the issue of clean drinking water. This is not a joke. We are not a joke.
I have fasted on those blockade lines at Grassy Narrows, the beautiful lands that have been impacted by development. Once again Grassy Narrows is being denied the human right to a healthy environment, and the government is taking its sweet time in providing a treatment centre for those suffering from mercury poisoning.
In the House, weeks ago, when the NDP called on the Prime Minister to accept an invitation from the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs, the Prime Minister laughed and said that it was not his problem and that it was “entirely under provincial jurisdiction.” I can say one thing. I am glad that the Prime Minister is not calling on the police to be sent in. We have seen the consequences of that before. However, how, just a couple of weeks ago, could he have been so blind to the reality on the ground, ignoring the voices of indigenous people, of young people across this country? Just a couple of weeks ago, how could have been so blind? It says so much about why and how we got to where we are right now.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding, willful or not, about the facts of the situation we are currently faced with. Most Canadians have learned a history that ignores the real history of the violent colonialism upon which this place was built that continues under our very own watch today. The concept of the rule of law has been used in this country to steal children away from their families. We cannot pick and choose to only use the rule of law when it suits our economic interests. We must enforce the rule of law to ensure that all people in this country can be afforded human rights, including the rights that indigenous people have to their aboriginal rights and title.
We have a path forward that was provided by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. However, it is one thing to enact it; we must also respect it. We must respect minimum human rights standards and use the rule of law not to punish but to ensure a good quality of life for all peoples in this place we now call Canada.