House of Commons photoLost his last election, in 2015, with 30% of the vote.
Business of Supply January 31st, 2013
Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my friend's comments about education. While it is nice that the Conservatives talk about education, could he tell us whether there will be money in the upcoming budget? There are 427 students who cannot go to post-secondary school because there is no money. Those students are sitting and waiting, and apparently there are close to 10,000 such students across the country. Will there be money in the next budget to correct this wrong?
Business of Supply January 31st, 2013
Mr. Speaker, deathbed conversions are not needed here. The Liberal government had 13 years of majority rule, and only in the last year did it come up with something. Only in the last year did it put its mind to something, and that is the problem. That same Liberal government froze the amount of money that had been flowing to first nations people, and that freezing has continued to this day.
As I said, there are 427 kids on a reserve who cannot get post-secondary education because they have run out of money.
Business of Supply January 31st, 2013
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member opposite has reminded us that there has been some tinkering by the government, yes, but tinkering is not what is necessary.
What is necessary is a 44% increase, like the ministry of defence has received over the term of office of the Conservative government, the ministry he is purportedly representing. That is not what the native affairs department has received. It is not what natives in Canada have received. They have received some tinkering around the edges.
If one builds 10,000 houses, which is part of the regular process, but one needs to build 80,000 houses, there is something wrong with the message. If there are 427 students on a reserve who cannot get a post-secondary education because the money is not there and they are waiting, there is something wrong with that picture.
Business of Supply January 31st, 2013
Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak on what is an excellent motion from the member for Nanaimo—Cowichan.
My riding does not have a reserve in it, but there are first nation people in my riding. I have met with them and talked with them. In fact, a couple of them put on a Remembrance Day sunrise ceremony this past November to honour first nation soldiers who had fought for Canada in wars overseas. It was held at an ordinary school in my riding, Bala Avenue Community School. It was to remind the children in the school that everyone is in this, that we are all together. It was a moving and wonderful ceremony.
Another constituent has asked me on several occasions about whether it would be possible to create a native language immersion school in Toronto, because there are 10,000 native children in Toronto who need an education. We can manage to have immersion schools all over the place for the French language, as one of the nation-to-nation languages in the country, but we cannot seem to put together the wherewithal to build language education for first nation children.
I discovered as a result of my investigation that there are such native language schools at the reserve in Six Nations. They teach their kids Mohawk and Cayuga in an immersion setting from junior kindergarten all the way up to grade 8. It is wonderful. I will talk more about that later.
It is clear now, from this issue coming forward and from the events in Southern Ontario and all over Canada, that the whole issue of the relationship between the government and first nations, mostly about money but also about land claims, has proven to many first nation people across the country that there is a problem. There are people talking about whether or not it is discriminatory on the part of the government to provide less for first nation people than it provides for others and whether it is discriminatory on the part of the government to not fund education the way it should.
The Idle No More protest has created a grassroots manifestation of the frustration that has gone on for many years in first nation communities. I am talking about dozens and dozens of years since the first obligations of the treaties and it started to become clear that the governments were not going to honour some of those treaties. It is not just the treaties but the care and control of the government of the first nation people that has failed. The governments have been paternalistic, punishing and prejudiced in their behaviour toward first nation people. More recently, this government is showing its paternalistic and punishing nature with the bills it brought forward to force first nations to report in a new and different way all the money they take in and earn, because someone somewhere did not like the way it was being done. It is paternalistic and punishing, and that needs to stop.
There are some who would suggest that there is a sense of disdain for native issues among some in the Conservative caucus. The events this week by the member for Ottawa—Orléans and Senator Brazeau, in a fundraiser, showed some of the potential for contempt we are hearing. I hope and pray it is not widespread among the Conservative caucus, but there are those out there who fear that it is.
With that context, I went to visit the Six Nations reserve as a result of my quest to see if we could create a native language school. I discovered when I was there just how hard it is to educate children on this reserve. Whether it is in native languages or not, it is extremely difficult. They told me that they receive about half the money from the federal government that the provincial government provides to teach children off reserve.
It is roughly $10,000 per child that the provincial government gives, and the federal government gives, according to the band council on the reserve, around $5,000 per child. When they question this, the government says “Well, you can pay your teachers less.” Those who are living on reserve do not pay taxes, so that limits the teachers they can get to those on reserve. It is a sense of paternalism. It gets worse, though.
When they created this native language school, they did it not completely independent of the federal government, but as a adjunct to the federal government. They did it with fees from the parents. So it is like a private school in that the parents have to pay to send their children to this school.
However, small business people in the community have decided to contribute, to donate space to that school. So what did the federal government do when it discovered that space had been donated to the school? It deducted the value of the space from the contributions it made on behalf of the children of that school. It clawed back a donation.
Imagine if any school board in this country tried to do the same thing. If the kids were out there selling chocolate-covered almonds to raise money for a trip, and the school board said “If you raise money, if there is a donation to the school, we are going to claw it back”, that would be unheard of. It would not ever happen.
On the Six Nations Reserve, that is exactly what goes on. It is shameful that this kind of attitude takes place. It is shameful that the Six Nations Reserve cannot, with full funding from the federal government, provide whatever kind of education it wants to provide.
The Six Nations Reserve is in southern Ontario. It is in the bread basket of Canada, and yet there are 325 homes without running water. How did that happen? How is it that we have a lack of running water in homes in southern Ontario, only on a reserve?
Fourteen months ago when the member for Kootenay—Columbia was up speaking on first nations issues, I asked him about these 325 homes. He said:
Mr. Speaker, we will ensure and work toward making sure those people at Six Nations get drinking water to those 325 homes.... The infrastructure that is required to be placed into those homes has to be done through whatever means is required: putting pipes in the ground, ensuring they get to the homes, ensuring they are hooked up to the water system, and ensuring they are hooked up to the waste water system.
I am confident that this will occur very quickly. It is unfortunate that it has taken so long, but I can assure the House that our committee and the minister will ensure that it happens sooner than later.
Nothing has happened. That was 14 months ago. That is typical of the government of the day. “It is a priority for us”, I hear them say over and over again in answer to questions, but it does not get done because it is not really a priority. It was not in the budget. It is not in the plans. It is not in the priorities of the government. However, the government members sit there and say it is a priority, but they do not actually do it. It boils down to money.
The other big problem at the Six Nations Reserve is the land claims issue. It has been festering for many years, and in Ontario, in Caledonia, we saw the manifestation of frustration on the land claims issue in 2006 when a group of native protestors took over a housing construction project and occupied it, preventing houses from being built. They claimed that the land was disputed, and that issue is still festering. That was in 2006. That was seven years ago and it is still there.
It is not just seven years. It has been dozens and dozens of years that these native groups and first nations communities have been saying, over and over again, that their land claims have not been respected by governments, not just the Conservative government but also Liberal governments before them.
That needs to be done, on a nation-to-nation basis. What also needs to be done by the government is a real commitment to dollars. The Liberal government froze the funding for first nations activities, like education, at 2%, and the government has not changed it. It found enough money to increase the budget for the ministry of defence by 44%, but it can only find 2% for first nations. There is something wrong with the priorities of the government, and we want to change those priorities.
Persons with Disabilities December 10th, 2012
Mr. Speaker, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted on this day in 1948. It says that everyone has a right to an adequate standard of living, including food, clothing and housing. Canada has far too many people paying more than they can afford in rent.
It is our daughter Hollie's 37th birthday today. She has Crohn's disease and can no longer work. Typical of many Canadians on disability, her benefits are too small to provide an adequate standard of living. She pays too much in rent. She will never own a home or a car. She cannot afford Internet or cable TV. She will never have an RRSP. She could never qualify for non-refundable tax credits. She had to give up trying to provide for her son, who now lives with his father.
We need a national housing strategy like in Bill C-400, so that families can have enough after rent for their children, their health and for their future, and we need to keep our promises to the UN on the rights of the disabled. They deserve, as a human right, adequate incomes to provide shelter, health and food.
Jobs and Growth Act, 2012 December 5th, 2012
Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary has not dealt with some of the things in the budget that do not belong in a budget. I am talking about the Navigable Waters Protection Act, which strips environmental protection from some 30,000 lakes and rivers in the country. This follows hard on the heels of the government's elimination, or almost elimination, of any environmental assessments required by Bill C-38, which was also a budgetary bill.
Could the minister explain how a handful of small lakes in Muskoka, which do not have any navigation on them except for a few pleasure boats that belong to people with large and expensive cottages, are protected under the act, but other similarly large lakes in Quebec and other places in Canada lose their protection.
Persons with Disabilities December 3rd, 2012
Mr. Speaker, let us look at their record instead. Conservatives have refused to adequately fund the public service disability insurance plan and they used the enabling accessibility fund almost exclusively for Conservative ridings, refusing other worthy projects.
On this International Day of Persons with Disabilities, it is clear Conservatives have failed to support Canadians with disabilities. When will the government keep its international promises and get behind fair and balanced programs?
First Nations Financial Transparency Act November 23rd, 2012
Mr. Speaker, Bill C-27 is part of a pattern of paternalistic and prescribed regulations on first nations that may in fact be leading toward assimilation. However, it also highlights for all Canadians the problems in first nation communities, such as the lack of housing and the fact that women whose marriages break up will lose their ability to live in their first nation because there are not enough places for them to live.
The government is doing virtually nothing to correct the 85,000 spaces that are missing in first nation communities.
First Nations Financial Transparency Act November 23rd, 2012
Mr. Speaker, it does not fit in. It is clearly the opposite direction. The bill is not the result of consultation with first nations. It is a knee-jerk reaction to a discovery by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation that some first nation leaders are doing really well. We should be proud of the fact that some first nations are doing well. We should be proud of the fact that some first nations are not in the poverty that the Conservative government would like to keep them in. Therefore, we should be proud of the fact this is happening. We should not be punishing them further.
First Nations Financial Transparency Act November 23rd, 2012
We do get it, Mr. Speaker. We do not align ourselves with organizations such as the government opposite that would hide information from people, such as the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who must go to court to get financial information from the Conservative government. We do not align ourselves with that. The government should be more transparent than it currently is. It should be quicker in responding to freedom of information requests. It should respond. It should give the Parliamentary Budget Officer and Canadians the information we need.