Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One thing that bothers me a lot is that you can go through Canadian history, we can see what has happened in Davis Inlet and other places in the country. What happens to the child once they are taken away from their culture communities and taken to a large urban centre, Yellowknife or wherever, that just the environment that they have been taken to, they have become accustomed to. When you take them back to the communities they are from, the children are either bored or they do not fit in because they became adaptable to another culture or another geographical area.

What I see happening, especially in my community, I have had several calls in the last while of children taken out of the communities I represent where the grandparents have called me and asked me to intervene to see if there is anything they could do so they will take care of their grandchildren and what not. Yet they are still being taken out of the communities and sent to Yellowknife.

There are a couple of children here in Yellowknife today. The mother of the children is in Fort McPherson and the father is here in Yellowknife, but he is unemployed and does not have his own place. He is trying to go back to school to try to improve himself. He is trying to look for his own place but he is not able to because he is not employed.

Because of either your cultural background or the social conditions you find yourself under, we are back to the old system where because you are aboriginal, you hunted, you trapped, you lived on the land and spoke a specific aboriginal language, people took your children away and tried to brainwash them, saying that was evil.

I for one feel that we are not doing anything different from what they did back then. We are continuing to take children away out of the communities saying we know what is best. You have a problem because you have FAE/FAS. You are not rich. You are poor. Because of all of these circumstances of who you are, it is held against you because you are saying you cannot provide for your child because you do not have a job. You cannot provide for your child because you have a disability.

These are things that are against a parent or a person. Do we, as a government, have a right to put labels on people, saying that because of your circumstances or social conditions that you live under, you have 85 percent unemployment in your community, you do not have the right to raise your child because of the conditions? Sure you might have drank and what not. So does the whole community. You happen to be within that percentage that is looked at by society as being unproductive.

I for one feel we are going back to the old system of hostels where we are institutionalizing children where they become in the system. You can never get them out of the system once they are in there. They either go in at a young age, then the next thing they go into the juvenile system and then they are in the correctional system. Then you are wondering what is wrong with the system.

Unless you are able to deal with the problem in a community as a family and as a unit in a community...I thought that under this child protection, also in regard to the family law bills that have to be passed, there were going to be some assurances for people in the communities, and aboriginal leaders or aboriginal groups, regardless of whether it was Inuvialuit or Gwich'in, would be notified that this was happening, that you will have input into the process.

We talk about community justice committees we are trying to set up in our communities so that they can have a say in our justice system. I think we need a similar process when it comes to children. We have to have a system in place where the aboriginal cultural communities, regardless of what group it is, has notice that these children are going to be taken out of their communities and away from their parents, that they are able to intervene on behalf of those people that they represent.

I have a real concern when it comes to developing regulations or laws and what not. At the end of it all, all we are doing is giving the government a bigger hammer to hit you over the head with at the end of the day. There are no real reasons, in some cases, for the law to be enacted or changed, except to give someone with responsibility more responsibility so they can overshadow your lives and say exactly how they can impose themselves over you, or how they can basically have control over your lives regardless of whether you like it or not. They can walk through that door, grab your child and walk out the door and there is not a damn thing you can do about it.

Unless there are some laws and regulations in place that protect the parents...I have heard from some parents whose children have been taken away and moved from one day care unit and put into another one without even notifying them. They were put on medication without notifying the parent that they are now on a stronger medication than they were when they left the home. They are doing these things to their children, but they do not have a say in the matter.

I think that because of what we see happening in this country, especially what is happening in a lot of the other aboriginal communities in Canada, we have to find ways to deal with the problem at hand. It is a family as a whole. You cannot just take a child out of the community and not deal with the problem at home. Then you expect the child to go back to that same lifestyle. Unless the lifestyle changes, where they know they have to change certain things and then the child is basically to fit into it.

We cannot continue to take children or people away from a system without trying to fix the system. I think the government has to do more to ensure that there is accountability and also that we do notify First Nation governments. What is this government doing to ensure that aboriginal organizations that represent these children who have been taken away have received full notification and have the right to intervene on their behalf?