Keith Martin

[National Defence Act, June 10th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, there are some constructive solutions we can adopt to make sure our military people have the ability to carry out their jobs.

To revamp their morale, make the accommodation assistance allowance non-taxable. Make it applicable to every person serving in our military. Roll back the rents to what they were in 1994 at the time their salaries were frozen.

Give the base commanders the ability to maximize the efficiencies on their base and get public works out of their hair.

Bring back the traditions within the military. Listen to the grassroots people in the military and allow them to wear their merit badges. Bring back the honourable traditions that have given them pride.

Stop penalizing the petty little infractions that enable them to have esprit de corps necessary for them to form a fused fighting force that will enable them to take care of the difficult activities they must engage in abroad.

Be hard on those who are engaging in criminal activities and be ruthless about eliminating them.

Take a look at the upper echelons of the military and make sure there are people there who are working for their soldiers and the grassroots and who are not people who are politicians in military garb.

Give our soldiers a clear direction as to what their activities are to be. They must not be ambiguous messages from the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Through the minister of defence make sure that the direction of our military people is very clear and precise. Ask them to do a task and they will do it, but make sure the message is not ambiguous.

Make sure we remember we are not training cub scouts, we are training individuals to go abroad and potentially engage in war.

Make sure we do not forget those individuals who are in civilian garb who operate and serve our soldiers and military garb in the department of defence. Many have worked for many years. They have undergone great cuts. They have engaged in efficiencies willingly and they have done a superb job of doing that. They need to be looked at, examine what they have done and do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. In doing that we may be adopting systems that would be less efficient for our military.

Let us remember that our tradition in our military is longstanding. Men and women have fought and died to make sure that we have a country that is strong and free.

Let us enable our military personnel today to engage in the honourable traditions of the past to engage in and fulfill our obligations abroad and at home.

[National Defence Act, June 10th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the House for its generosity. I will be sharing my time with the hon. members for Lakeland, Edmonton East and Compton—Stanstead.

It is a pleasure today to speak to Bill C-25. Men and women in military uniform have been for a long time serving our country with courage, distinction and in silence. They have worked hard. They are busier now than they have ever been and have engaged in some 17 military operations since the Korean war. Yet their morale is the lowest it has been in years.

Why is that so? There are many reasons for it. The government had an opportunity but it is disappointing that Bill C-25 did not get to the heart of that.

My colleague from Calgary East put forth numerous constructive suggestions to the government. It did not adopt any of them. The suggestions would have gone a long way to making Bill C-25 the bill that it should be, one that restores accountability, transparency and honour to the military justice system.

We wanted to make the inspector general independent which would have given the IG more power to represent our people in uniform. On reforming the office of the judge advocate general we asked that the JAG be separated from the chain of command. In other words it would enable the JAG to have more power to investigate problems within the military.

A situation is taking place in our military that is tearing out its guts. Criminal activity including rape is somehow being allowed in the military. It is turning a blind eye. Activities done by a very small number of bad apples are tarnishing the vast majority of people in the military who are doing an outstanding job.

Those things are hardly being touched upon. Yet petty rules and regulations are being enforced which are eliminating the esprit de corps that is necessary to be able to mould a fighting force that can be deployed around the world. The traditions of our military have been torn away. The ability to wear badges of merit are forbidden within our military.

How can we have a situation where promotions are basically flatlined and stalled, where people are in the same positions for 10 or more years? Salaries have been stalled and flattened out for a long time, and we understand that.

The government could have put forth constructive solutions that would not have cost any money. I presented them to then General Dallaire who was responsible for the military in that capacity two years ago when he appeared before the defence committee. We were promised that action would be taken on them and nothing has happened.

One constructive solution was the provision of a tax free accommodation assistance allowance for all military people. Local base commanders should have more power and more ability to manage their services. Public works should be taken out of the hands of base commanders so that they would be able to operate in a more constructive way.

It is important also to look at our equipment. It is true that the government has made some sensible purchases recently, but the military still labours with equipment that is hazardous, rickety and dangerous to the health of our service people. Military personnel move around the country. They move from a small base like the one in Cold Lake, Alberta, to the Esquimalt base in my riding, the Marine Pacific Command. They find their costs increase dramatically but there is no allowance for that.

When people enter the military they are willing to move around to various parts of the country. They know it is part of their job but they do not expect to be kicked in the teeth when they do it. The situation is so bad military service people are going to soup kitchens. They are moonlighting. Men with pregnant wives are forced to work abroad to make a bit of extra money to put food on the table back home. How can they serve our country and our international obligations properly when they are forced to do that?

We all understand the situation of the government with respect to the financial crunch we all labour under. However constructive solutions such as making a tax free accommodation allowance payable to everyone and reducing the rents of members quarters to what they were three years ago would be only fair.

PMQ rents were repeatedly jacked up and the salaries were frozen. That sends a very bad message to our military personnel. They are not looking to get rich. They know the situation they are in. They understand the situation of the government and the restrictions it is under. However they expect to be treated fairly.

That is not too much to ask for people who travel far away under extremely dangerous circumstances to wave the Canadian flag and do the bidding of our country to fulfil its obligations abroad and domestically.

We also have to consider the non-military people who work for the military, the civilian population. At the base depot in Esquimalt the people have done an admirable job of cutting. They have cut remarkably well, so much so that they have been used as a model for other bases around the country.

Many of those people have been working for the military at salaries less than what they would make if they had gone on welfare. Yet they have chosen to stay with the military and work for DND because of the pride they feel in supporting an institution that is an honourable part of the history of the country.

Those individuals have no assurance of what will happen in the future. They are not being communicated with at all on their future. They know the tender process that is taking place is occurring for efficiency reasons. All they ask is to be able to bid on the contracts fairly and on a level playing field. They are not being allowed to bid on jobs in which they have worked honourably for decades in some cases. That is no way to treat the people in our military. It is no way to treat the honourable people who work in the Department of National Defence.

We should listen to the solutions put forth by my colleague from Calgary East which would revamp our—

[National Defence Act, June 10th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I think you would find unanimous consent for me to share my 40 minute time slot with three of my colleagues thus breaking it into four 10 minute slots.

[Aboriginal Affairs, June 10th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the situation on the Pacheedaht Reserve in my riding is desperate. Band members have begged for over a year for the department of Indian affairs to investigate allegations of the gross misappropriations of funds and lack of accountability. For example: $1.8 million from Parks Canada, misappropriated; $1.3 million for treaty negotiations, misappropriated; $47,000 for suicide prevention, misappropriated; septic fields draining into the water table; social assistance and pension fraud.

The minister's response? Go to the RCMP. The RCMP, however, cannot investigate. The result is that the Pacheedaht people are caught in a vicious cycle with deteriorating third world social conditions and nowhere to turn.

The government has tossed money at these aboriginal people without accountability. The result is an abuse of the grassroots people.

I challenge the minister to listen to the aboriginal people, do independent audits and help those grassroots people right now.

[The Senate, June 9th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, let us take a look at the chamber of sober second thought. What is supposed to be an effective check and balance to the House of Commons has decayed into an institution with little credibility left in the eyes of the Canadian public.

Why is this? Could it be because of the embarrassment some senators place on themselves, one living in Mexico, another convicted of influence peddling?

The best solution to restoring the honour of the upper chamber is to have senators elected. This would enable the good hardworking senators to stay and get rid of those who are simply there for the ride. It would invigorate the sleeping hollow Senate and make it an active and vigorous place.

Support for an elected Senate is overwhelming; 84% of British Columbians, 91% of Albertans, all want their senators elected. It is time the Prime Minister stopped using the Senate as a resting place, a landing pad for his friends. He must do the right thing. Canadians want value for their tax dollars. They want a democracy. They want an elected Senate.

[Judges Act, June 3rd, 1998]

Madam Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to speak on Bill C-37. I think the public would find it very interesting to know that this is not the first time, not the second time but the third time that the government has revisited the Judges Act.

When we have issues such as victim rights, health care, aboriginal issues, economic issues to deal with, this government has tied up this House for the third time through committees to deal with the Judges Act. Why?

It is costing the taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars to deal with this act when we have people out there, as my colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan mentioned, who cannot even get health care, when we have a judicial system that is clogged up, that denies justice to people, where justice has been absent for too long. The government has failed to take the bull by the horns and address these issues in a substantive and meaningful way.

Even with the Judges Act it had an opportunity to get it right. Instead of dealing with the substantive issue of putting accountability back in the system, transparency, scrutiny, we have the same old system where the prime minister appoints the people he or she sees fit to the Supreme Court of Canada.

That is not what we want. That is not what the public wants. It can be done. It is possible to enter accountability into the judicial system.

We can look at California. California has introduced elected judges. Judges can be elected. They run every six years. They do not run in the traditional sense as we run but they run on their record. They are forbidden to actually campaign. The purity of the system is that the judges are judged by their peers, by the public, on their record alone.

In this way judicial independence can continue. It is very important in a democracy. I would ask that if the government is going to revisit the Judges Act again, heaven forbid, that it consider this a substantive and positive issue rather than tinkering around with issues that have very little meaning or impact on the Canadian people.

There are other things we could have done. It has been intelligently proposed that lower court judges come under scrutiny in provincial or federal legislatures by the judicial justice committee. This would provide some element of scrutiny as to the qualifications of the individuals concerned. This would be a reasonable and cost effective way of ensuring that judges are the best we can attain and are not merely buddy-buddy with the political elites.

There are other issues that can be dealt with and should be dealt with and the government has failed to do this with our justice system. I will present some of the challenges and some of the solutions the government can tear apart and make better for the benefit of all Canadians.

The first thing is to streamline the judicial system which is getting clogged up. We have a system right now where there are ways in which a person can go through the courts for an extraordinarily long period of time while the victims wait in earnest to try to find some end to the situation they are in, some end to their victimization. This could be done if a committee were formed to find effective ways to expedite the judicial system from arrest to conviction.

A DNA databank should be put forth that is effective, cost effective and based on the good science we have which would enable the police force to have the tools and power to arrest and convict those who are guilty in an expeditious way but also enable them to exonerate those individuals who are innocent. The DNA databank cuts both ways. It will be a good decider in trying to differentiate between those individuals who are guilty and those individuals who are innocent.

We have to put justice back in the justice system. Justice delayed is justice denied. Now we have a system where we have enormous delays and procedural influences that can be put forward by clever lawyers who can clog the system for the benefit of their client. The judicial system today and the wars that take place within our courts have little to do with justice and everything to do with how clever and able lawyers are to manipulate a legal system that has more to do with how you can manipulate the system than whether justice is truly being served.

Sometimes I wish I were a lawyer so I could put forth some suggestions. I would implore those who are in the judicial system today who feel frustrated about the system they labour under and who want the best for their clients and the Canadian people to present those solutions to members from all party lines in this House so they can work to develop better solutions so that those individuals who are working in the courts are able to work more effectively.

Give the tools to the police. They are hamstrung in so many ways and they are getting increasingly frustrated as they put their lives on the line to make our streets safe.

I applaud the minister for putting forth her suggestions on crime prevention. A Reform motion was passed in the House of Commons that called for a national headstart program. That was supported by everybody but the Bloc. The minister could use her resources and power and call together in Ottawa her provincial counterparts in human resources, justice and health. The minister could put on the table all the programs today, take out what is not working and keep what is working.

This could be integrated with the medical community, train mentor volunteers in the middle, as was done effectively in Hawaii. Child abuse was reduced by 99%. We could use schools and the educational system for children between the ages of four and eight, use the parents and integrate them into the system. We would have a headstart crime prevention package that would be the most effective way to decrease crime.

We know criminal behaviour in many cases results from a fractured psyche that is a result of situations of child abuse, violence, sexual abuse, improper parenting, absence of proper parenting, and improper nutrition. A combination of all these during that sensitive first eight years of life fractures the development of the psyche and causes future problems, everything from personality disorders to conduct disorders and sometimes criminal behaviour.

The legal aid situation is getting out of hand. It is far too expensive. The system right now is untenable. A creative solution would be to go to a public defender system.

California developed a public defender system where individual lawyers were on salary. The question one had to ask was did this provide the defendants with an adequate defence as compared to the previous legal aid system. This has been analysed and the answer is very conclusive. It demonstrated that those individuals who were being defended under a public defender system had as good or better defence as they had before.

[Nunavut Act, June 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member from the NDP asks some very good questions. The first thing that has to be done that can be done is to grandfather those members who are senators today and nothing will change for them.

However, establish a plan right now that all new senators will be elected and will come on the basis of regional representation.

Although the member clearly says it will be very difficult for provinces such as Ontario and Quebec that have the lion's share to accept that, or New Brunswick which has a disproportionate number to British Columbia, that is where leadership comes in. That is where doing the right thing will demonstrate to the Canadian public that this House is not a house of elusions but a house of leadership.

Grandfather current senators. New senators would fit into a system of proportional representation where senators would be elected on the basis of an equal number for each province.

[Nunavut Act, June 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Fundy—Royal who has always put forth quite a number of intelligent suggestions in this House in the past.

In the crisis taking place today among aboriginal communities there are three things that can be done, scrap the Indian Act, have a phasing out of the department of Indian affairs, and those moneys can be put into developing programs for the aboriginal people to deal with issues such as counselling, substance abuse, economic development, giving the aboriginal people the tools to become employable and take care of themselves.

As my hon. colleague from Fundy—Royal knows from his experience in the maritimes, the people in New Brunswick are chopping down trees. That is illegal and they should be dealt with accordingly but the lesson behind that is that these people now have the ability, albeit illegally, to take care of themselves. They have the ability to work. They have the ability to earn money. They have the ability to take care of themselves and their families. As a result, we have seen a dramatic decline in some of the social ills that are being predatory on aboriginal communities.

If we can do that it would be the greatest gift we could offer aboriginal people in giving them the powers to work with us to build a stronger country.

On the Senate amendment, the member knows very clearly that we have pursued a course of a triple-E Senate for a long time. I am encouraged that he supports that principle and I hope he will continue to work with us to making that a reality.

[Nunavut Act, June 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question. The question that really has to be asked is whether the carving up of Canada will help aboriginal people. Who will pay for the development of Nunavut? Who will pay for its establishment and bureaucracy? Where is the accountability?

I use Nunavut as an example of what might happen in British Columbia with the Balkanization and the carving up of British Columbia into mini states. That is exactly what will happen. It is what will happen with the division of a province into separate mini states with separate laws, rules and regulations.

Aboriginal people want to be masters of their own destiny. They want the power to do that. But can they not do that within Canada? Can they not be equal partners in a country in which we are moving forward together? This government and previous governments have taken away power from the people and put them out separately in another field to develop by themselves, to go through different rules and regulations for their own development. As a result, many resources have not reached them. As a result, we have created an institutionalized welfare state. That is the biggest crime of all and that is what has to be addressed today.

[Nunavut Act, June 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak to Bill C-39, an act to amend the Nunavut Act. This legislation will transfer powers to the new Nunavut assembly. It will implement measures for territorial elections and the appointment of senators.

I am going to talk to a number of issues today, but I want to address the long history of dealing with the aboriginal people in a way which has created a welfare state. This dependency has compromised the health and welfare of aboriginal people to a great extent. They have some of the worst health care in this country.

This bill will allow the government to appoint senators for the Nunavut region. That concerns democracy. Should the people who represent the people of Nunavut be appointed or elected?

We have always maintained that the election of individuals representing the people should be the way to go. An appointment circumvents the democratic principles of the country and prevents individual members of the community from getting the person they want as opposed to the person a prime minister would like to have.

If the Prime Minister would take a courageous leadership role in ensuring that from now on senators would be elected by the people and for the people, he would be doing an enormous service to institute an element of democracy in the House that it so desperately needs.

For years we in the Reform Party and others in the community have asked for a triple E Senate, an elected, equal and effective Senate, a Senate that would bring power to the people, not power to the leadership of a political party. We have asked for that repeatedly. If the Prime Minister would take that initiative he would be demonstrating enormous courage and leadership. I implore him to do that.

With respect to the powers of the Northwest Territories, those powers will be transferred to Nunavut through the bill. I want to get to the heart of my speech, the real reason I wanted to speak on Bill C-39.

For decades we have created an institutionalized welfare state. The institutionalized welfare state has been put forth through the Indian Act, an act that is discriminatory. It balkanizes, increases prejudice and keeps the boot on the neck of aboriginal people by preventing them from having the ability and the power to develop, to be the best they can be and to be masters of their destiny.

We have circumvented that by creating a separate act for a separate group of people. That attitude has compromised the health and welfare of hundreds of thousands of aboriginal people and will continue to do so as long as we treat aboriginal people as separate and distinct members of the country.

It is possible and advisable to ensure that aboriginal people are integrated into Canadian society and not assimilated. Assimilation would destroy the incredible culture and language they have to teach all of us. Integration will enable them to become integrated, functional members of Canadian society.

Let us look at the situation in New Brunswick today where aboriginal people are flaunting the law and cutting down trees. The response from those aboriginal people is that there is no way they will allow anybody to take away their chain saws. For the first time in their lives they have been able to earn a living, generate funds and provide for themselves and their families.

The result has been a dramatic decrease in substance abuse and violence. The community is stronger. Individuals have a sense of community. They are pursuing that course because they have the ability to generate the revenues, the funds and the wherewithal to be masters of their destiny and to take care of themselves, as opposed to the situation we have today where aboriginal communities are forced to look to the government to be their paternal father, the one who will take care of them.

We in the House are members of different ethnic groups. If any of us were to come under the Indian Act and be forced to ask permission from the Government of Canada to do a number of things, what would happen? If we were forbidden to own land or we had to ask permission to get services, what would happen? If we had a separate group of services and opportunities different from the rest of the country where things were given to us instead of our being forced to earn it, if instead of being given the opportunity to take care of ourselves and the chance to have the tools to take care of ourselves, and if money were given to us, what would happen?

We would suffer from alcohol abuse. We would suffer from other substance abuse. We would suffer from sexual abuse and violence. Our communities would be in tatters. If a system were created where things were given freely to no matter whom, it would erode the very soul of a person. As a result the society the person lives in would be eroded as well.

The situation on some reserves is appalling. In my job as a member of parliament I have investigated allegations by members of reserves who have said that the resources their reserves are earning are disappearing. It is alleged that those moneys are being taken by members of the reserves.

Generally aboriginal and non-aboriginal people in leadership positions are alleged to be taking moneys that should be going directly to the people for education, health care and treatment programs and to enable them to have the tools and the power to stand on their feet.

The minister of aboriginal affairs said there was no problem and that if I had a problem I could go to the RCMP. The result is that the people on the ground, the average aboriginal people in the trenches, are being hammered.

An aboriginal woman on a reserve I visited said that moneys which were supposed to go into schools had been taken by the leadership of her reserve. If she went to the leadership she would be ostracized in her society. If she went to the department of Indian affairs it would tell her to go to the leadership.

What should that woman do? Her children will be educated in a school that does not have the resources because the money has potentially been stolen. Such people are caught between a rock and a hard place.

This is not uncommon. When I investigated allegations of misappropriation of funds on a reserve in my riding the minister said I could go to the RCMP. Before that happened the people who were allegedly doing it, individuals on the reserve in positions of power, threatened to sue me to shut me up.

What happens to aboriginal people in that community who are seeing the money disappear and do not know where it goes? There is no accountability. There is no responsibility. There is fear that if they complain they will be ostracized within their community or worse.

They come to me. I go to the minister. The minister says that it is not a problem and asks me to go to the RCMP. With the resources going into the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development a significant amount of money is potentially in the wrong hands. The Canadian taxpayer would be completely appalled by that.

What are we doing? We are pursuing a course that will balkanize our country. What will the Delgamuukw case that came down in British Columbia do? It will drastically undermine crown ownership of 94% of B.C.'s land mass; put almost insurmountable hurdles in the way of the provincial government over land resource decisions; supplant common law with a new system of law in which equal credence is to be given to aboriginal cases, to the aboriginal perspective; and replace the longstanding rules of evidence in civil cases with two sets of rules, one for aboriginal cases and one for other cases.

The aboriginal title as defined by the court may be supplanted by other forms of land tenure only if there is rigid testament by the government and only if compensation is paid. It failed to confirm in constitutional terms the right to make laws where they are fully vested in either parliament or provincial legislatures. It turned over to the federal government the right to exclusively legislate land management for natives on lands found to be covered by aboriginal title.

The Delgamuukw case also prompted the first nations summit for an immediate freeze on development of land resources anywhere in British Columbia. What did that do for aboriginal people who want to earn a living? It destroyed the ability of that land to be utilized for aboriginal people and for non-aboriginal people.

The attitude in the Delgamuukw case and in the federal government as in previous federal governments has been to divide, which does not bring aboriginal and non-aboriginal people together in an environment of mutual respect and tolerance, with a vision and goal of pursuing a common and united purpose for the betterment of the health and welfare of all people. It pursues a course that will balkanize our country and will tear apart aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities.

What has been the outcome? As I mentioned earlier in my speech the health care parameters are appalling. I have worked in emergency rooms and visited aboriginal reserves. The incidence in some reserves of fetal alcohol syndrome approaches 60 per thousand live births. The unemployment rate can be 50% or higher. The incidence of diabetes is three times higher than that for non-aboriginals. The incidence of infant mortality is much higher than for anyone else. The birth rate is nearly 3% higher than in other communities. The tuberculosis rate approaches third world levels. Why?

Does the federal government not understand that the pursuit of separate developments is apartheid in Canada? Does it not realize that will only fail? If its actions are to work we would have seen that by now. Instead we have seen a decline in the health and welfare of aboriginal people.

Members should walk for a few minutes through the inner city of Vancouver and through some aboriginal communities. They will see a scene that is reminiscent of a third world country. This is not to say that some aboriginal communities do an outstanding job of providing for themselves and their people. They have managed to do it because they have the ability to work with surrounding communities and the power to be the masters of their own destiny as we are in our communities.

What is so wrong with giving aboriginal people the same municipal type powers as those of other communities? What is so wrong with ensuring that the traditional rights, responsibilities, goals, objectives and cultural needs of aboriginal people are to be preserved in perpetuity?

It would ensure that aboriginal people could engage in the cultural activities they have always engaged in for the betterment of their society. What is so wrong with that? Instead we have a situation of separate development, balkanization of my province of British Columbia and balkanization of our country.

Nunavut may proceed in that direction. Furthermore who will pay for it? Will the moneys be generated there? The federal government and the Canadian taxpayer will foot the bill for separate development that has been demonstrated so clearly to fail.

I cannot emphasize enough that the apartheid, the attitude of balkanization of the country, the Indian Act and the department of Indian affairs and its goal of creating separate development for separate peoples will compromise everyone but particularly aboriginal people.

My colleague from Skeena has spoken eloquently many times and produced many different constructive solutions to the government along the lines of aboriginal affairs under the umbrella of mutual respect, understanding and tolerance, with an objective to move forward to develop as individual societies linked together with the common purpose of a united, positive and healthier future.

The government is doing a separate development which, without accountability, will only increase the problems of aboriginal communities today. If for once I could get the minister of Indian affairs to sit in the House or to come with us to see what is happening in the reserves, in the trenches, she might change her tune. It does not serve her to meet the aboriginal leadership alone, because the aboriginal leadership has a certain goal. It is forced perhaps by circumstance to pursue an objective that is politically correct, given the current politically correct attitude we see today. It is this politically correct attitude that we have toward aboriginal people, this attitude toward separate development, that is causing enormous problems for aboriginal people.

Aboriginal people want their culture and language to be preserved. They want to be able to work. They want to be able to take care of their own. They want to be able to stand on their own two feet. They want to be masters of their own destiny and they want to interact peacefully with non-aboriginal people. That is the objective we should have. Those are the people we should be meeting with, because if we do not the problems we see today will only get worse.

It breaks my heart to see the situation on some aboriginal reserves with the situation I mentioned before of the incidence of diabetes, tuberculosis, premature death of children, the squalor, the destitution and the hopelessness these people have. Furthermore, it is simply not necessary that this occurs.

We have to change our attitude. If there is to be a creation of separate mini states within a province, say in British Columbia through what the Delgamuukw case would provide, what is going to happen when 110% of the land mass of British Columbia is called for and staked out by aboriginal people?

We cannot go back in history 110 or 120 years and try to use that to justify what is happening today. We have to move forward and look forward. We have to repair the damage of the past, but we can do that only by moving and looking forward.

It is imperative that we are able to use our resources to help the aboriginal people to help themselves and move forward in a constructive united front for all Canadians. If we do not, the blood will be on all our hands.