Charlie Angus

[Business of Supply, January 31st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, my poor colleague, I invite her to come up and see some of the communities.

We are talking about children who do not have schools. Does she have any communities where kids are denied the right to schools? Do any of the kids in her communities get educated on grounds full of benzene and toxic contamination? No.

If we are talking about all our children getting a fair chance in life, we have to start putting our money where our mouths are.

[Business of Supply, January 31st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for York South—Weston.

I am very proud to speak to the motion about the need for the House of Commons to finally get serious and understand its obligation to address the longstanding moral, economic, social and historic deficit that has left so much of our country in absolutely abominable condition, which must change.

We have always told ourselves that Canada is the greatest country in the world. The international index of human indicators of health and social well-being always placed Canada right at the very top until it started to factor in the fact there are two worlds in Canada. There is the non-native world and then there is the fourth world that the aboriginal communities are living in. When that was factored in, Canada started to drop year-by-year. We are now down to eighth place, that is, taken as a whole. In terms of first nation communities, we are down in 63rd place among communities in the world.

We are seeing talk from the government. Conservatives have their message box. They have press releases and they expect the young generation marching out there in the streets to be patient. We have seen from the Idle No More campaign an unprecedented response across this country, a virtual uprising of people who have come to feel they are hostages in their own country, that somehow they are a colonized people in their own land. They are saying they are not putting up with it any more.

There is a sense of urgency, an urgency that needs us to move beyond party lines, because this problem did not start with the present Conservative government. This is well over a century in the making. Now is the time to pay up and start fixing some of these fundamental problems. We have 39% of first nation communities at high risk from poor water quality and 34% at medium risk. That amounts to some 83% of first nation communities in this country not having safe drinking water. How can a country this rich say that is okay?

How can we tell young people to be patient when they have substandard systems of education, set up in a manner that is a form of systemic discrimination? Every child in this country walks into a school with an inalienable set of rights unless they live on a first nation, and then they get whatever the government gives them. Those kids are being told to be patient.

They were told to be patient in Attawapiskat when, under the federal government's watch, diesel fumes from a contaminant leak were coming up in classrooms and the kids were passing out in the grade 1 classroom and coming home stinking of diesel fuel from their daily exposure to benzines and xylenes, cancer-causing agents. The families were told to be patient, that it would be fixed. Well it was never fixed. It went on year after year.

That is why people are marching in the streets, because they are not going to be patient any longer. This generation has seen that the time has now come to pay up. It is never convenient to do the right thing. It is never an opportune time to do the right thing. We do the right thing because at a certain point in our juncture or history, it becomes clear that we are not the nation we were meant to be unless we meet that fundamental debt, unless we pay that debt. That is what we are called to do.

We need to deal with the education deficit. I speak about this issue because I saw it through a child's eyes. That is probably the thing I most learned in this job, seeing what it was like through the eyes of a child in Attawapiskat, Shannen Koostachin, who saw her life passing before her because she had gone to school in crappy portables. She knew she had a substandard education. She knew that if she did not get that one chance to get a better education, it would be too late for her and her generation. I saw that look in her eyes. I saw that look in the eyes of those children and I realized that all the talk that goes on in the House is not enough. We need to start seeing action.

There are a number of steps we need to take in terms of economic development and meeting basic treaty commitments. I would like to talk about treaties, because there is an idea out there that we won, they lost, and why do they not just shut up? What is their problem? That is not what the treaties were about.

When Treaty 9 was signed, representing a large region of the Nishnawbe Aski territory I represent, they went from community to community and asked the people to sign an agreement to share the land. Some people may think this happened in ancient times, but it did not. I know people whose families signed the treaty. Grand Chief Stan Louttit's grandfather signed that treaty. Theresa Spence's grandfather signed the treaty. Government representatives came to Fort Hope saying that this would be a great agreement, gave everyone eight bucks, and told the first nation people: “You go off and do your thing and we'll do ours”.

However, Chief Elijah Moonias—and we have another version of Chief Elijah Moonias alive today in Marten Falls dealing with the Ring of Fire—stood up and said to the people: “Wait a minute. What's going on here? The white guys have come up and offered us eight bucks and they're telling us that we don't have to give anything in return”. That is in the records. Chief Elijah Moonias warned the people about signing the treaty because they did not know what they were signing on to.

The records also show when first nations were signing Treaty 9 that one of the reasons they felt they needed to sign was that they were worried about the future. They were willing to share the land, but in exchange they wanted education. It was actually in the Treaty 9 documents that they saw that the future for their kids was an education. So the white commissioners signed that. However, they gave them the residential schools. They took their children away from them and tried to destroy them as a people. That is what they got in return for signing Treaty 9.

If we look at the history of Treaty 9, before the community leaders signed it, they asked two clear questions. These people communicated orally, they did not write it down, but they asked for clarification at the treaty signings. One question was: “What will happen to our hunting and fishing rights and our ability to use our lands?” The government answered: “Those will not be impacted in any way”. Well, they were lied to there.

The second question they asked was: “Will we be forced to live on these reserves that you're setting up?” The government answered: “No, you'll be free to live wherever you want”. This was also a promise that was broken because they are stuck on the reserves. For example, in Attawapiskat, the community cannot even be expanded to put in proper houses. All that land either belongs to the federal government or the province and they are stuck on these postage stamp-size reserves, but right beside them is one of the largest diamond mines in the world, and just down the road there will be gold mines. However, when the treaty was signed, the government said that they would not be impacted in any way in their ability to use the land in traditional ways.

Now the current Conservative government might not recognize those treaties, but they have been recognized by the Constitution of this country under section 35. They have been recognized in court decision after court decision. There is no ambivalence about the need to consult because the first nation people never gave up the right to use the land, which brings us to Bill C-45.

Bill C-45 is the government's omnibus legislation where it decided to strip protection of waters and basic environmental protections from all the northern lakes and rivers, but it did not have the guts to do it publicly. The government was not going to go and tell the first nation communities that it was open season on their waterways, the Albany River, Moose River and Attawapiskat River. No, the Conservatives stuck that into a budget bill and tried to ram it through without people noticing, and they figured they would get away with it.

However, now people are saying: “Wait a minute, you didn't consult. You didn't do your legal duty to consult”. That is what the courts have shown and that is what is in our Constitution.

The time has come to start addressing these issues. We are in this relationship together. Although it has been a very dysfunctional relationship, it is the primary relationship in this country. It is the first relationship. We must recognize that we are all treaty people, that we all share this land, and that we will all make the country what it should be when we make sure that our young first nation children have the same opportunities as everyone else. Until we do that, we will never be the country we are supposed to be. This is the moment for all parliamentarians to start making it happen. Let us tell this generation that they are not going to be betrayed the way the last generation was and the generation before them.

[Business of Supply, January 31st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the member. I happen to have in my riding right now probably some of the richest mineral deposits in the world. Beside many of these rich deposits are some of the most impoverished communities in Canada. We are seeing a disconnect as mineral development comes on stream. Even if someone gets hired at the mine, there is no housing in the community so the individual has to leave and ends up being just another fly-in worker just like non-aboriginals. That happens because of the lack of infrastructure in the communities. Local communities do not have the ability to move forward with partnership agreements because the infrastructure is not on the ground. There has not been any job training and basic schools are missing. We do not have grade schools in some of these communities.

What role does my hon. colleague see the government playing if we are to start closing the gap by simply not saying the private sector can do it? There has to be a role for the federal government in terms of job training and infrastructure. The government needs to have a plan to ensure that the young aboriginals sitting there right now without skills are able to get the skills they need so they are in the driver's seat as we start to develop in to the 21st century.

[Business of Supply, January 31st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his excellent discourse and putting this in the historical context that it needs. I know our government friends are sometimes very defensive of their fairly poor record, but it did not start with them. This is probably the largest, historic, moral, cultural, economic deficit in Canada, and it has to be paid.

What we have seen from Idle No More is that people are frustrated. They are not willing to sit back and hear more talk in the House of Commons. This has been talked about again and again, and the responses have been talking points, press releases but no concrete action. What we are seeing in communities across this country is an uprising of young people who say they are not going to sacrifice this generation, as other generations have been sacrificed.

In terms of the respect for treaty rights and the fact that these are rights defined by the Constitution and defined in court case after court case as rights that are inherent on the land, and in terms of the issue of Bill C-45 and the decision of the government to strip basic environmental protection so that it can push things through for big oil and big mining without any consultation, what does my hon. colleague think of the lack of respect and the lack of trust that is going to be engendered in first nation communities who are seeing that once again the government is more than willing to walk over their rights?

[Ethics, January 30th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, they are going to have all the opportunity they want to be backbenchers in 2015.

However, right now, the hon. member is a minister of the Crown and he broke the law under section 9. That is the difference. Why is the hon. member refusing to stand up, refusing to be accountable? Is he trying to tell the Canadian public that writing on behalf of Conservative Party donors is somehow constituency work? It is not. That is why he broke the law, and he needs to be accountable. Why will he not stand up and explain himself?

[Ethics, January 30th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the conflict of interest law exists for a reason.

For example, it should be fairly obvious why a minister of the Crown cannot intervene with a semi-judicial body on behalf of a financial interest. The finance minister did that, and he broke the law. Instead of coming clean on it, he is hiding behind the most dubious of loopholes.

Will the government explain to the House how a minister's writing on behalf of a Conservative Party donor, who does not live in his riding, somehow gets to be passed off as constituency work? It does not pass the smell test. Where is the ethical accountability?

[Ethics, January 29th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that the Conservatives are dismissing the work of the government of India on safety.

With the government, when Canadians see rules, they see loopholes. Let us look at the Conservative House leader's inability to admit that the Minister of Finance and the parliamentary secretary for health broke the rules when they tried to intervene in a CRTC dispute.

Did he not read the ethics commissioner's ruling that said that he not only broke the rules, but told him not to pull those stunts again? How about a change here? How about “I am sorry?” How about “The government will not break the rules anymore?” How about that?

[Ethics, January 29th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, this is a government that has the nerve to tell senior citizens that the cupboard is bare, but money is no object when it comes to their cabinet perks, like Bev Oda, like the Muskoka member who lived like the limo king over in Davos, like the fact that taxpayers paid over a million dollars to fly the Prime Minister's limo to India and that the Globemaster fleet was used to carry this personal Taj Mahal taxi.

India offered high security armoured vehicles. It was good enough for the prime minister of Australia, but not good enough for our leader. Where is the accountability?

[Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, January 29th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the poor man over there is nearly hysterical. I would ask my hon. colleague to help calm him down so that we can address the fact that we are also talking about the Conservatives getting a big net so they can scoop up a whole manner of people who have done very small things, and then the Conservatives will get to crow to their base.

[Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, January 29th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, after listening to the Conservatives, it would appear to me that they believe that we have no law in this country to stop mafioso or war criminals or international gangbangers coming to Canada, believing that Canada is a place these people have been able to come to. My understanding of our Criminal Code is that we do have laws for that.

Why does my hon. colleague think the Conservatives are hiding behind dictators and war criminals and not addressing the issue--