Madam Speaker, I am very proud to rise today to represent the people of Timmins—James Bay. Unfortunately, the wonderful region of James Bay in Ontario is the epicentre of so much of the tragedy that we have been talking about this morning. It is of course all across Canada, but our communities seem to be pointed out.
Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague from Manicouagan.
Right now, as we speak, there is state of emergency in the community of Attawapiskat. It is not the first state of emergency, it is the third state of emergency in the space of three years. I was there last Monday with the Weeneebayko Area Health Authority meeting with families living in tents. In one tent we met a family of six who have lived in a tent with two double beds and a couch for two years. It was pretty cool and the snow had not started. The mother said that when one daughter gets upset, she says she is going to her room. Her room is the couch.
One would have to see this situation to believe it. In another case, we were in an unheated shack that had two grandparents and a little girl sharing a bucket. The bucket was their toilet. They had to dump it in the street in front of their neighbours. On that corner there were 15 people dumping buckets in ditches. This is in Canada in 2011. If we did not see it first-hand, we not believe that this situation exists.
There are 90 people living in a trailer with six washrooms and hardly any fire exits. If a fire were to break out in that trailer over the winter, it would be a catastrophe. There is no sprinkler system. There are no fire alarms. This is the sense of urgency in Attawapiskat right now. These states of emergency do not just happen, crises do not just appear. As we have seen in Kashechewan in 2005, we had three full evacuations of one community in one year, first from E. coli and then because of the flooding. It happens because of a number of factors: chronic underfunding and poor planning.
The Minister of Aboriginal Affairs talked about houses built in 2005. They are uninhabitable. I was in Fort Albany just two years ago, where a brand new subdivision had children sick from the mould covering the walls. The houses were built on the cheap, not for the flood plains of James Bay. How can we put good money after bad? How could we have such poor planning in place that we build stuff on the cheap? The water crisis in Kashechewan was a direct result of the fact that the water plant was not built up to standards.
Beyond the poor planning and the chronic underfunding is the regulatory lapse that allows for two sets of standards, one that protects the rights of citizens across this country and then another standard that almost does not even exist for first nations people.
Let us talk about fire protection. On the James Bay coast in the far north, for police services, they did not bother to put sprinkler systems in the fire units because it costs money. That would be illegal anywhere else in the province of Ontario or Canada.
We were in the Kashechewan jail cell which looked like a makeshift crack house. The provincial minister of security went to see this place with us, but nothing was done. Two men, Jamie Goodwin and Ricardo Wesley, burned to death in that jail cell. They were screaming to get out. The police were burning their hands to get them out. They could not. There were no fire suppressions or sprinkler systems. That would be illegal anywhere else, but in first nations communities that lack of regulatory framework happens all the time.
We need to address the chronic underfunding. I am glad to hear the present Indian affairs minister talk about the need to start investing. Two years ago, in Attawapiskat, we had a sewage backup and 90 people were left homeless. The response at the time from the then Indian affairs minister was, “Tell them to just stay in their houses”. They had dirt and waste coming from their basements, and they were told to sit in their houses and wait. Those houses were not fixed. The damage started the ball rolling for the present crisis in Attawapiskat. Anywhere else in Canada there would be a response, but this is not what has been happening.
We see communities like Kashechewan and Attawapiskat reaching the breaking point. In terms of this regulatory double standard, there is a new film out called Canada: Apartheid Nation that is about the situation in Attawapiskat. I do not use that word lightly because the Toronto Star used the word “apartheid” to describe the situation for children in Attawapiskat who had been denied basic education rights that are the right of any other child in this country.
There is discrimination against first nations children in these communities. Children are going to school coming from overcrowded homes. In Attawapiskat there are 25 to 26 people in a two bedroom house. People sleep in shifts. The children go to school on a toxic wasteland in a makeshift portable. No wonder kids start dropping out in grade five.
Shannen Koostachin, who is from our region, talked about children who give up hope and lose hope in themselves in grades 4 and 5, and kill themselves. There is no support for those children when they are in crisis. Just this past month a youngster killed himself in southern Ontario. It was a tragedy. The nation said we have to do something.
In Moose Factory, two winters ago, 13 children killed themselves and 80 other children attempted to kill themselves. It is a town of 2,000 people. Imagine what would happen if 93 children were taken out of any community of 2,000 people to be marked for death. There would be an international outrage. What was the response? While the community was running around trying to save kids from killing themselves, the province cut the Payukotayno child welfare services because it was costing too much money.
This is the double standard that is happening. Therefore, we need to invest. I will support the government with respect to the building of water infrastructure, which has never happened before.
However, we have to address the fact that the basic rights of these community members are being denied. We do not have the proper building standards on the reserves that we have provincially. We do not have the same education standards on reserves that we have provincially. There is a chronic double standard. We do not have the same fire standards on reserves that we have in the communities.
In Kashechewan I went to the funeral of Trianna Martin, the four-year-old girl who died in a house fire. There were 27 people in that house. There was not even a fire truck to get to that little girl. This is the kind of thing that happens.
As a country Canadians have a hard time believing it because we pride ourselves on our willingness to care. However, right now I have a state of emergency. I have people living in tents in one of my communities down the road from the richest diamond mine in North America. They are dumping their waste in buckets saying that they cannot go on like that any more. The doctors are saying that children will die, that something will happen. This is the extent of the crisis.
It is not just in Attawapiskat, Port Alberni, Kashechewan or Moose Factory; it is in community after community across Indian territory. It will only change when we decide to make it a priority. The greatest resource we have in the north is not the oil sands, the diamond mines or the copper mines, it is the children who come from these reserves.
If members met some of the children in communities like Attawapiskat, it would break their hearts because they have given up hope. Some young people have the power to change the world. However, if we do not give them the homes or the education and health supports that they deserve, we are wasting the greatest possible resource this country has. It is a black mark on Canada right now internationally. It has to end. It has to change.
We can talk all we want about investments and regulatory frameworks. This is not a partisan issue. It is part of the broken promise that goes all the way back to the breach with Champlain to be on a path together with our first nations communities. We will continue on that path.
In many ways over the last 10 years I have seen how that path has moved forward, but in 20 years, 30 years or 50 years, we will still be on that path. It is incumbent upon us now to fix what was done. The damage done by the residential schools should not be continuing today with children being denied basic education services. What happened in Kashechewan in 2005 should never happen again in any other community in this country.
We are on a path together. We have to get beyond the partisan fight. We have to make this a priority in this Parliament, at this time, for our children and with respect to our obligations for the future of the country.
