Madam Speaker, I am going to go back to my point that the member did not allow me to finish. Then, the member for Winnipeg North, instead of learning from an expert, a descendant of the Red River Métis, heckled him during his response when he could have taken the time of reconciliation and truth to learn; it is shameful. At a time when the Liberal Party members should be standing in solidarity, if they are really serious about reconciliation to protect indigenous people from the stealing of our identities, it is unfortunate that they double down and heckle. They are not going to take away my voice.
What has occurred is disgusting for a number of reasons. This member has used indigenous identity potentially for financial gain. The sad part about people like him, like Buffy Sainte-Marie, like the many academics who have received scholarships, grants and bursaries using our identity to get millions of dollars in research grants, is that they financially benefit, but they do not have to deal with the kinds of things that we do as indigenous people. We have to deal with the intergenerational impacts of residential school. We have an ongoing genocide against indigenous women and girls so severe in the Winnipeg that I fear for the safety of my nieces taking taxi cabs there. In the midst of this debate, when the Liberals have an opportunity to give space to indigenous voices, they disrespect that.
However, it is not not just the Liberals. For weeks and weeks, I have had to listen to the Conservatives also usurp indigenous identities for political gain. It is disgusting, and I will tell members why this is so grotesque.
In a Conservative government, Prime Minister Harper said that murdered and missing indigenous women and girls was not on his “radar”. It was the current member for Carleton who said to residential school survivors when settlement agreements were being reached that they did not need the money, they needed to learn the “values of hard work”, like being a slave in the residential schools doing tasks every day was not hard work and being taken away from their families. However, he then fundraised with residential school denialist think tanks and lifted up his friend, Jordan Peterson, a misogynist, a transphobic and a residential school denialist, as protecting, in public, time and time again, freedom of speech. Well, we have laws in this country; we have the Criminal Code. Inciting hate is inciting hate, which has nothing to do with free speech.
Time and time again, the leader of the Conservative Party has fraternized and even fundraised with folks like Frontier Centre, a residential school denial think tank, for the Conservative Party of Canada. He was fundraising with Frontier Centre when he came to Winnipeg when we had just discovered the tragic news that potentially there were women in the Prairie Green Road landfill; women who we are currently looking for. However, he did not go to see the families. No, he decided instead to fundraise with residential denial think tanks.
The member for Saskatoon West likened indigenous people to criminality, saying that the person in question was more likely to offend because of his racial background, and then doctored Hansard to suit his political benefit. I get kind of sick and tired as a representative from a place that has been likened to ground zero for MMIWG, and when I come from a family that has had to deal with the intergenerational effects of child welfare systems and institutionalization, to hear Conservatives, people who have voted unanimously time and again against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, showing deep concern for the latest identity fraud by the Liberals.
There was a point of order when I had not even started talking. It reeks here of appropriating indigenous identities for personal benefit and gain, whether it is the Liberals and members trying to get loans, or the Conservatives' utilizing our trauma and our historical experiences so they can hold up the House forever on our backs. I wish they had fought so hard for residential school survivors. I wish they had fought so hard to get supports for the families of murdered and missing indigenous women and girls. I wish they had fought so hard for our land, territories and resources, not when it suited their economic and political interests but to uphold our human rights, which they have voted against time and again in the House. They voted against Bill C-15.
If we are going to get to the bottom of the matter, if we are going to reconcile in this country, then people need to do some inner reflection, like the members who felt it necessary to heckle me and like the Conservatives and members of the Liberal Party whom I have had to listen to time and again call us “our indigenous people”, as if somehow we are pets in this place.
Let us do some reconciling here. Let us tell some truth bombs about the level of baloney and racism on the backs of indigenous people that I, my other indigenous colleagues, and our family members and communities have to endure. It is political drivel. If we want to reconcile, we need some answers today and we need the behaviour to stop.