Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my friend and colleague for his work on other files, protecting rights of people. He is always speaks from the heart, which is I really appreciate.
I do, however, want to bring up a couple of things. First, I just want to remind everybody in the House that the use of possessive nouns when referring to indigenous people should be avoided at all costs. Indigenous people do not belong to Canada and they do not belong to us, so we should never say “our indigenous people”.
The assertion that Bill C-15, one of the most important pieces of legislation that I think we as a generation will ever see in the House, would take steps back on reconciliation or people's rights is really troubling to me. I want to refer to the response of Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond to my question two days ago in committee. She said that the most important thing it would do would be to put an obligation on Canada to conduct its policies and conduct its interactions with indigenous peoples on the basis of recognizing indigenous people have rights.
I think we can all agree that more rights is never a bad thing. How in the world would more rights have a negative impact on people who have title to land?