On Tuesday March 8, I spoke on Bill 4: The Path to Reconciliation Act. I spoke of the importance of including the calls to action from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls into those to be reviewed under the Path to Reconciliation Act. I emphasized the importance of reconciliation and in particular the importance of addressing the high rate of violent crime in Manitoba and the low rate of grad 12 graduation for Indigenous students in Manitoba. The statistics in these areas have not changed in many years of NDP and PC government in Manitoba.
Bill 4–The Path to Reconciliation Amendment Act
Hon. Jon Gerrard (River Heights): The
importance of reconciliation cannot be overemphasized. The need and the
approach that this bill takes, which is including calls to action from the
National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, is
reasonable. But we are still left with many unanswered questions.
One of the major focuses of the national inquiry into missing and murdered
women–Indigenous women and girls was looking at violence against women and
girls. And, clearly, we have a problem in Manitoba because we have some of the
highest rates of violent crime in all of Canada. In fact, we would be, last
time I looked, about twice as high in terms of violent crime rates as the
average of the rest of Canada.
It is not a good record, and the government has not yet brought forward its
approach to reducing violent crime. And successive NDP and Conservative governments
have failed to move us in a better direction when it comes to violent crime.
So there is a disconnect between the approach being suggested here and what is
actually happening in Manitoba, and it is time that we had a government which
had a better perspective on how to go from talking about reconciliation and
talking about doing something to address the calls for action in the national
inquiry on missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and actually
achieving results.
* (16:30)
This is true, not just when it comes to violent crime, but it's also true when
it comes to education. While over the last 20 years, there have been improvements
in the graduation rates for non-Indigenous students in Manitoba, there has been
very little change when it comes to the graduation rates for Indigenous
students.
And
the–sadly, the graduation rates, grade 12, for Indigenous students are about
50 per cent, which is far too low, and the ineffectiveness of the government
of Manitoba which was in place from 1999 to 2015 in moving this at all, has
become adequately apparent to observers who've been watching the scene and
taking note of what the assessments have shown. And, sadly, there has been
little movement under the current government, from 2016 to the present, in
terms of graduation rates for Indigenous students.
And it's not clear why both NDP and Conservative governments have been such
failures in this respect, but it's readily apparent to anybody who looks at
this carefully, that there has been a complete failure of education policy in
this respect, and that is one of the major reasons–perhaps the major reason–for
the poor overall results for Manitoba.
So, while we support this legislation and the added attention to the calls for
action from the inquiry, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered
Indigenous Women and Girls, we call for much better approaches which actually
get results in terms of violence, reducing violence against women and in terms
of results which get results in terms of improving graduation rates for
Indigenous students.
So I conclude with those few comments and thank members for the opportunity
to say a few words.
Merci. Miigwech. Dyakuyu.
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