A final question. As we all know, the residential school phenomena is all over the place now and I think that, personally, someone who has seen the impact of what that has done to our communities, especially our elders and our grandparents. What they did back then is nothing less than what we’re doing today under the family and child services legislation. All we’re doing is legalizing apprehending children from First Nations families. I think that with the predominant number of 600, I believe the majority of those children are aboriginal children. I personally have a real problem when I know of individual families who are trying their hardest to basically take alcohol and drug

treatment programs, going to different courses, doing whatever they can, but they make the rules so rigid that they can’t even do anything without a social worker looking down their throats. For me, I think that this does have to be reviewed.

This legislation is not balanced. It basically favours one side over the other. There is no real legal ability for a family member to get legal counsel in a lot of our communities, to understand what their rights are as parents or to understand on what terms those children were apprehended without having the ability to defend themselves. I find that very disheartening. I would just like to point out to the Minister that this is nothing more than what happened to children in residential schools.