Niki Ashton

[Aboriginal Healing Foundation, March 30th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the discussions we have had in the past and certainly the responses the minister has given me as we seek support for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.

However, I have to share the message that not only I believe but that thousands of Canadians have shared with me. With the loss of the AHF is the loss of the aboriginal peoples' control over their healing processes. That is what is so fundamental about the AHF.

Yes, there are programs that deal with suicide prevention, that deal with promoting healthy initiatives in communities. However, the AHF is the only program targeted to communities and has that model of self-government where communities themselves, not bureaucrats in Ottawa or in our capital cities, describe how they can heal. That will be the crying shame if the AHF is lost.

[Aboriginal Healing Foundation, March 30th, 2010]

moved:

That this House do now adjourn.

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I would like to note that I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing.

I am honoured to stand here in this Parliament on behalf of the people of Northern Manitoba and across Canada. I am honoured to carry our message, their message, a plea to the Prime Minister and the government to save the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.

The Aboriginal Healing Foundation is not just an organization. It is not just 134 community projects. It is not just 1,000 community workers. It is not just thousands of survivors, their families and their communities. It is a symbol, a symbol of Canada's commitment to residential school survivors, their families and their communities. It is a symbol of the commitment of first nations, Métis and Inuit toward healing. It is a symbol of the hope that day by day and year by year, the peoples and communities that were subjected to despicable abuse and hardship can move ahead and piece together identities, lives, families and communities.

That is why this debate is about a test. It is a test of Canada's true commitment to first nations, Métis and Inuit peoples. It is a test of Canada's historic national apology made in 2008 in this very chamber. It is a test of Canada's commitment to the journey toward truth and reconciliation.

There are many stories of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. There is the report released by the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada that indicates the success of the program and the identified need for it to keep going. There are the countless positive evaluations received over the years since its inception 10 years ago.

However, there are also the stories of South Indian Lake, St. Theresa Point, Prince Albert, Edmonton, Clyde River, Charlottetown, Yellowknife, Halifax, Pikogan, Saskatoon, Pangnirtung, Vancouver, Watson Lake and Winnipeg. There is the story of Denise Packo, who spoke of the key language programming offered by the AHF that was crucial for a young person who said that she did not feel Indian because she did not know the language that was stamped out generations ago because of residential schools.

There is the story of Louis Knott and Louisa Monias who told of the value of the camps organized by the Aboriginal Healing Foundation in reconnecting with the land and becoming healthy. There is the story of Mrs. Moose who shared the need for survivors to come together in sharing circles.

There are the communities where the AHF program is the only program that gives young people somewhere to go and provides reconciliation and rehabilitation when they leave the criminal justice system. There are the AHF programs that are in women's shelters, where women can seek shelter from violence and domestic abuse often related to the pain and legacy of abuse from the residential schools.

There is the work of Amanda Lathlin, Jennifer Wood, Brian Cook, Qajaq Robinson, Okalik Ejesiak and Alvin Dixon. Their work has broken the silence of residential school experiences across the country and their impact on future generations.

That is what the Aboriginal Healing Foundation is about: first nations, Métis and Inuit peoples guiding their healing processes in their own communities. To lose that ability to make these decisions is a step back, way back.

As we sit in this chamber, we call on the Prime Minister and the government to think back to the apology of 2008, an apology that took place only less than two years ago. It was an apology that started our country on a journey. It started a new chapter for first nations, Métis and Inuit peoples who suffered through the residential schools. It began a journey of hope that Canada would change its step and work with aboriginal peoples toward healing and reconciliation.

We then saw the commitment to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a historic initiative, bringing aboriginal and non-aboriginal people together. However, the reality is that without the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, that apology and the commitment to reconciliation lose their foundation.

As Ed Azure Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation said, “By cutting off the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, you are cutting off the arms and legs of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission”.

As Jimmy D. Spence, a respected elder, said, “The cut of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation for me makes the National Apology empty”.

Let there be no doubt that the need for healing is not restricted to a focused experience at residential schools. Residential schools caused an impact that we cannot even imagine: the loss of a sense of family; the loss of skills that are related to parenting, raising children; the loss of skills that children who were ripped away from their families into schools where their language, their culture, their identity was beaten out of them; the stamping out of language, something that is so central to the identity of anyone and central for the identity of first nations, Inuit and Métis people; the emergence of violence, violence that has taken over families and communities, violence that in many cases hides the pain, a pain felt by survivors, by their children, by generations that have come after, violence that comes out in the gangs and the criminal activities in communities across the country, violence that comes out in violence toward oneself and the high rate of suicide in first nations, Inuit and Métis communities across the country.

The Aboriginal Healing Foundation seeks to heal from that violence, seeks to engage first nations, Inuit and Métis peoples who face that pain, that violence, that history.

Let us fast-forward to today's generation. I come from a generation that came after residential schools, a generation that has seen the evolution of aboriginal rights, that has seen the results of the fights and the battles fought by aboriginal leaders who are here today, aboriginal peoples who have fought for control over their schools boards, for control over their education, for the creation of their own schools. There are challenges, immense challenges facing the generations that have followed, the underfunding, the inadequate infrastructure, the overcrowding of first nations, Métis and Inuit schools, like we do not see in other places in Canada.

Yet working to overcome these challenges, survivors and the next generation say that they want to move forward. That is why it is not too late for the Prime Minister and his government to stand up for their commitment of the past year and save the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.

This is a debate about the future, a generation of people looking toward us and how we will move forward, how first nations, Inuit and Métis people will move forward.

I have appealed directly to the Prime Minister because I watched that apology. I believed him. Many believed him. That apology crossed partisan lines and brought Canadians together. Were those words about the past or were they about the future?

I now want to make it clear that if the Aboriginal Healing Foundation were to be cancelled, if the government does not listen, we will ensure that the message is clear. We will ensure that it is wrong that the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was cut.

Given that commitment, that the initiative by the government, can we not recreate that spirit of the apology? Can we not recreate that spirit that drove the Truth and Reconciliation Commission? Can we not do it by committing to save the Aboriginal Healing Foundation?

The Aboriginal Healing Foundation, after all, is more than 134 projects. It is more than hundreds of communities, thousands of community workers, thousands of elders, survivors and young people. It is a symbol of hope, the hope that the Prime Minister and the government will save the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.

[Request for Emergency Debate, March 29th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising today to request an emergency debate on the imminent cut of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. This debate is urgent given that the Aboriginal Healing Foundation is scheduled to lose all of its funding in two days, on March 31. This means the closure of 134 programs in every province and territory across Canada. It means the loss of vital programing for residential school survivors, their families and their communities.

The Aboriginal Healing Foundation has given healing and hope to survivors, their families and their communities for 10 years, but the need for healing is not over. The Aboriginal Healing Foundation is a central part of the legacy of the national apology that was given by the government and by Canada to residential school survivors. It is a key part of Canada's commitment to reconciliation. The loss of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation is a crisis and must be debated in the House.

I would like to ask you, Mr. Speaker, to grant this debate today or tomorrow, whatever is at your discretion.

[Income Tax Act, March 25th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin my deliberation on Bill C-288 by setting the stage. I was born in a town called Thompson, Manitoba, a town of 15,000 people. Like most of the people I went to school with who chose to pursue post-secondary education, I had to leave my home community. The closest place I could achieve a post-secondary education and follow my educational path was 800 kilometres away in Winnipeg.

Hundreds of young people leave my community and communities like mine every year. Most of them do not come back. They do not come back because they go to a place to get an education and they put down roots there, whether by meeting other people, establishing a family, finding a job or liking where they are. I was one of the few who decided to come back because it was important to me to come back to give voice to the exact issues we in northern and rural Canada face: The bleeding of our population and of young people leaving to pursue opportunities that might not be supported in our region; and the challenges that we face in accessing services that Canadians in urban centres take for granted, whether health care, child care, infrastructure, recreation or basic services that so many Canadians have in abundance in urban centres.

For me and my party this bill is about responding to one of the biggest challenges that rural Canada faces, which is about losing that capital, losing that most valuable resource, our young people, that human resource which allows our communities to continue to exist, to build and prosper into the future.

The bill is fundamentally about investing in rural Canada, and as the rural and community development critic for the NDP, I am proud to stand here to say that we are supporting our colleagues in the Bloc Québécois and are certainly glad to see the cooperation of the Liberal Party. I am very dismayed to see the position of the Conservative Party, a party that claims to represent rural Canada and that in fact has members of Parliament that span, certainly, the prairie region. When it comes to a bill that looks to respond fundamentally to one of the biggest challenges we face, not only are the Conservatives not supporting the bill but they are also criticizing it, this innovative step that goes to the core of encouraging the retention of young people in our rural communities. Many of their constituents would be dismayed to hear that as well.

This investment in rural Canada is a beginning and ought to be one step in a broader strategy on how we continue to build our country. Many people talk about how urbanization is the new wave and that we have so many people not simply coming from rural Canada, but also others moving from other urban centres and people immigrating to Canada, all of whom are increasingly going to urban centres.

While that may be true, rural communities still exist. Rural communities exist because people have laid roots there and because some of the most fundamental economic drivers in Canada are based there. Resource extraction, whether mining, oil and gas, or the minerals found in soil, and forestry are based in rural Canada. So much of what our economy depends on comes from rural Canada, and without people living in these communities, that extraction, that economic driver, would not exist.

What we need to be looking at are steps to invest in our rural communities. Looking at encouraging young people to come back is a key step. This needs to be followed by other steps that we in the NDP have been fighting for for quite some time, and that certainly are based on the fundamental values that our party was built on, in terms of investment in health care, for example.

The disparities between health care services in rural Canada and urban Canada are shocking. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities published a report in 2009 that discussed how quality of life in rural Canada was less than in urban Canada, which is unacceptable. One of the main ways in which it is worse is health care.

I am saddened to stand here and say that I do not have a family doctor, like so many people in my community and my region. We have fewer doctors compared with our population needs. We have less ability to access services, and certainly when it comes to acute care and specialized services.

We also do not have child care. We have fewer child care spaces than many urban centres have per population. Many young people want to make a go and stay in their communities and work in the industries that exist around them, but without those child care spaces many of them, particularly women, cannot pursue their chosen paths.

We also have substandard transportation infrastructure in my region. I rose in this House last week to talk about how I represent communities that do not have all-weather roads. In the year 2010, I represent 22 communities that do not have an all-weather road, not because they cannot have one, but because the federal government has not partnered and not been part of an innovative strategy to look at that. I am pleased to hear it has heeded the calls from the province and, certainly, at the federal level, from advocates, to look at solution around all-weather roads. I hope we will be looking at this in the very near future.

Moreover, there is the issue of recreational infrastructure, looking again at the fundamental question of the quality of life and at the need for basic services that keep people in their communities and keep them healthy and, in general, allow these communities to grow in a much better way.

Bill C-288 is part of that step and the reinvestments that we need to be seeing in rural Canada.

I would like to respond to some of the claims that I heard from the governing side today and on other occasions.

Someone commented that this undertaking would be too expensive. Speaking of offensive, I think that statement is offensive, to use that same language. It seems to me that many investments in rural Canada would be seen as being too expensive. It is too far away and there are not enough people, et cetera.

A couple of weeks ago, we saw quite a substantial flip-flop by the Minister of Industry. Organizations in my riding and across Canada were told that the community access program, which allows them to access the Internet, which many Canadians take for granted, was going to be cut. A senior's organization, The Pas Golden Age Group in Manitoba, was told that it would no longer receive money to invest in accessing the Internet. Yet after substantial pressure, and I am sure significant pressure from its own constituents, the government turned around.

Was the initial claim correct that it was too expensive to invest in something as fundamental as Internet service in rural Canada? Once the Conservatives heard the voice of reason and how fundamental this was, it seems the government realized quite abruptly that a change of course was needed.

We certainly hope that similar sentiments will be applied to this bill, in recognition that this is key to way we look at building our rural communities and the future of our country.

The other statement that really struck me was the reference to certain regions being economically depressed. What is offensive about being called economically depressed?

I come from a mining community, and I know communities where generation after generation people have given everything for the benefit of not just their community and the company there, but also for their country. We need to turn around the language where people say that Fort McMurray or some other region in Saskatchewan might be seen as economically depressed. We need to change that language because in these communities we need to be looking at alternatives. We need to look at ways of supporting the diversification of those economies and at other opportunities, rather than letting people who have given everything to our country suffer.

One step in that support for rural Canada as it builds to the future, despite the economic situation, would be to support this bill. It is a bill that gives back and gives to the future of Canada's rural and northern young people.

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, March 25th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, we have heard a lot from the Bloc Québécois and the NDP about Colombians’ human rights and how this agreement would enable the paramilitaries and some Colombians who support their government to maintain the attitude they have adopted.

One of the attacks on human rights we do not hear a lot about is the attack on women. The government says it is important to end trafficking in women. In reality, Colombia is one of the worst countries when it comes to trafficking in women, because women, particularly indigenous or Afro-Colombian women, are vulnerable and come from communities that have been displaced because of development by mining companies or agricultural multinationals. Those women are therefore in a position of heightened vulnerability.

Once again, we see the hypocrisy of this government, which wants to support an economic system that will continue this kind of exploitation, this trafficking. The Bloc has often been taken to task for some of its philosophies in this regard. I would like to know the member’s opinion on this subject.

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, March 25th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Welland has done a lot of fine work in terms of the importance of the agricultural industry to Canada. Given that a lot of his work has been focused on the way in which the Conservative government has not stood up for the agricultural industry in Canada, I would like him to comment on some of the hypocrisy that we have been hearing.

The government is asking us to support this agreement because it is good for Canada's agricultural industry and livestock industry, but it ignores the call for support from that industry on the ground. It attacks the Canadian Wheat Board. It attacks the Canadian Grain Commission. I would like to hear his thoughts in that area.

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, March 25th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has expressed very well why his party and mine believe that this is a bad deal for Canada as well as Colombia.

The NDP does not believe that the free trade agreement between Canada and Colombia will promote human rights and improve conditions in Colombia. In fact, we believe the opposite to be true. The Conservative government, with the help of the Liberals, is feeding us explanations. I would like to hear my colleague on that.

[Infrastructure, March 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, people of northern Manitoba rely on winter roads to get what they need. Usually the roads are open for over eight weeks. This year, due to a mild winter, they have been open for much less. Despite the Conservatives' denials, climate change is real, and the consequences, especially in Canada's north, are serious.

Will the government provide assistance to communities and first nations in my region to get the essential goods and services that they need? Will it also commit to investing in a long-term strategy, along with the province of Manitoba, to build a sustainable, long-term, all-weather road network?

[Telecommunications, March 16th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, first, the government sends letters to groups in rural communities telling them they are no longer getting funding for Internet access. Now we see the government flip-flopping. What is going on?

For many in rural and remote communities, the community access program is key for Canadians to access online resources for services, training and jobs.

Could the minister confirm that the full funding to the community access program will be maintained? Is the flip-flop due to the outrage of rural Canadians? If it is not a flip-flop, why did they get the letters in the first place?

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, March 11th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I would like to make a direct appeal to the Prime Minister.

Residential school survivors and their families have looked to the Prime Minister and Canada's national apology as a sign of hope. That hope now hangs in the balance. For 10 years, survivors and their families have looked to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation for support as they try to move forward. The foundation has been key in working with young people and future generations. Despite the historic apology, the budget is silent on its support for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.

Will the Prime Minister follow through on the sentiment of that historic national apology and provide support and save the Aboriginal Healing Foundation?