Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Recently the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples was released. It took five years to produce. The prime minister Brian Mulroney commissioned a $58 million enquiry after the 1990 Oka crisis in Quebec. The 4000 page document offers a 20 year plan and 440 recommendations to improve aboriginal lives in Canada. Already the federal government gave an appropriate response last Thursday to the report. Officials have given the five volume report and warned -- by native leaders across Canada who feel the report was quickly shelved and seriously doubted that any of the recommendations will ever be implemented.
The report confirms what every native person already knows all too well, that the majority of aboriginal people in Canada are at a clear disadvantage to the average Canadian. Here in the Northwest Territories, correction centres report, in March 1996, a 90 percent native admittance in the rate of sentenced crimes. The cost of taxpayers to keep one inmate locked up is approximately $80,000 a year. Health and social services clearly states that it is looking at developing new approaches to alcohol and drug program and intense community control, independency, and self reliance. The Gwich'in Nation has recently developed a new approach to alcohol and drug programming through the development of the Tl'oondih Healing camp outside Fort McPherson. This is the first healing camp ever designed and delivered especially by native groups in Canada. Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.