Mr. Speaker, today I have listened to comments from everyone. There were very incredible speeches. I know the passion is there to turn the tide for what has been in our past not the best record for dealing with aboriginal issues and the situations in which we have found ourselves.
I have also listened with dismay to many comments by members, especially on the government side, who do not leave me any more assured today than in the past that they understand aboriginal issues. They have further cemented my belief that they do not get it.
I stand here trying to figure out how to speak from the heart.
I will be splitting my time, Mr. Speaker, with the member for Fredericton.
I want to premise my comments in the little time I have to try to bring a better understanding.
I come from a people where things are done in a consensus way. We even run our legislative assembly in Nunavut that way. It is a way of working together. I am trying to figure out a way of trying to bring a better understanding of the issues. There is no winner or loser in this debate. It is a way of working together to better understand how we can move forward as a people with the country and what Kelowna means to me. I want to give a little lesson in what we look at when we look at aboriginal people in Canada.
I hear many comments from people who speak about first nations only. I know they mean the aboriginal people of Canada. Right away I know someone does not understand aboriginal issues in Canada, if they just use first nations. That is no disrespect to my first nations friends in the country.
There are three aboriginal groups recognized in Canada in the Constitution: first nations, Inuit and Métis. We make up the aboriginal peoples of Canada. When people speak of just one group, we know right away that they do not understand the fundamental definition of aboriginal people in Canada.
I come from the Inuit population. I represent the riding of Nunavut, which has an 85% Inuit population. The majority of the people do not understand either French or English. This is like trying to understand a different country within a country.
Sometimes I better understand what people from other countries feel when they immigrate to Canada. We have commonality in the issues that we are trying to work through. It is to create a better understanding that I stand before the House today and to try to figure out how we can move from here.
What does Kelowna mean to me? I speak from the heart. I look at the motion and I know that none of us are going to disagree with the main objective of it. Kelowna means a new understanding of our relationship with the Government of Canada. It is an opportunity to work together.
We saw the aboriginal people, the federal government and the territorial and provincial governments at the table. As an aboriginal group of people, represented by five organizations, we were at the table. We were meeting with the Prime Minister. We were forging new relationships, gaining new respect of where we were coming from and deciding together how to move forward.
I am a strong believer in moving forward. I know there are many things in our past that make it very difficult for our people to move forward. I am not saying that I want to forget the past, but how do we learn from it so we can all better deal with the realities of where we are today?
To me, Kelowna was a realization that there is more than one approach to dealing with all our challenges. Speaking on behalf of Inuit, I will say that we had our own way of governing ourselves before a system was imposed on us. We have to be able to gain that ability again, but in a modern context.
There are many opportunities for aboriginal people today. We have opportunities for education and, in that, gaining positions that perhaps our parents never thought we would participate in. We see RCMP officers, teachers and nurses, and for a lot of people those are the everyday career decisions they can make, but for us, seeing our own people in those positions as managers and supervisors and even in elected positions means a great deal to us.
One example I can use is that as we gain responsibility we have to learn how to use those responsibilities. We went for too long without having a say in how to live our lives. Someone else was making all those decisions. Even though we get those responsibilities today, it does not mean that every one of us will know how to charge forward with our new responsibilities.
An example I can use is getting one's first driver's licence. Colleagues here will remember all the harrowing experiences I had when I got my first driver's licence and was driving in the city. It took a lot of practice and a lot of mistakes. I got to know the city quite well because I always took the wrong turn, but I learned from those mistakes. I just kept trying and trying because I had to get my kids to hockey games.
I am a little more comfortable driving in the city today, six years later, but people had to be patient with me. People had to know that when they were getting in the car with me they were taking some risks. I am more comfortable in taking on that responsibility, but it took a little time. I had to learn to deal with that responsibility given to me. Just because I got my driver's licence did not mean that I suddenly could be a race car driver.
It is the same with us. As we take on responsibilities as aboriginal people, we have to learn to work with those responsibilities.
For me, Kelowna was a step in the right direction. It is not the be-all and end-all. We can talk until we are blue in the face about what was wrong with it, whether it was signed and whether it was budgeted, but I am trying to get everyone back to the basics. My colleagues on the Liberal side know that when I talk about basics I am talking about going back to the fundamentals and not getting caught up in all the party politics.
We just want access to good housing, education, good facilities and infrastructure, good health and access to health. I know what Kelowna meant to me as far as reaching those objectives is concerned. It gave us an opportunity to strive for those objectives and an opportunity to, in five years and ten years, evaluate where we have gone and whether we want to change direction. We have the right to change our minds once in a while too. We all want a good future for our children.
Another example is that we have been lucky to see in our lifetime a communist country like Russia become a free society. Those people did not exercise their rights as free people the next day. We also have to learn to exercise those rights. They had to learn what it means to live in a free society. It takes time.
All of this takes time. It is a learning curve for us. I am not saying there is one solution or one size fits all for all aboriginal people, but it was a chance for us to work together with all the people who have the expertise and the best practices and put those into our own context, to give us an opportunity to take on the different responsibilities depending on what our ability is. We are not all homogeneous either on how to do things and in having that capacity within us to take on new responsibilities.
Yes, we will make mistakes, but they will be our mistakes. We are under a microscope all the time. It seems that people are just waiting for us to make mistakes so they can say they gave us that responsibility, we blew it, and they should take back control. Like everyone, we just need a level playing field. I want a good future for my four sons, my two granddaughters and future grandchildren, and again, an opportunity to work together and pool all of our resources for a good future for our people.
