I know that I spoke about this: When we talk about prosperity, I know that there can be no prosperity if we’re still in a place where we’re searching for our children. We cannot have prosperity if we have young girls, young boys—as young as 11 or 12 years old—dying by suicide. There is so much work to be done.

I think electricity is just one piece. I remember for a long time, in my home First Nation, we could not build, we could not expand, because we had our diesel generator over capacity for close to a decade.

I guess my answer is that we could do much better. If you could give us clean drinking water on Neskantaga, I think that would be part of the road to reconciliation.

One of the things that I think is important to talk about is those big issues, as well. I can point back to call to action number 45. It identifies the need to renew and establish treaty relationships based on principles of mutual recognition, mutual respect and shared responsibilities for maintaining those relationships into the future. I think if Ontario started to acknowledge that they are treaty partners—for the First Nations in Ontario, that would be very monumental.

Reconciliation should not have any strings attached to it. Reconciliation requires no-strings-attached support. It requires more of respecting treaties. It requires speaking with nations prior to doing things, because that’s called “free, prior and informed consent” with First Nations. No matter what legislation we talk about, we are the first people who are impacted when legislation happens without talking to First Nations.

I’d like to thank my colleague from Kiiwetinoong for his powerful presentation. His words, “reconciliation requires more than words,” is something that is always resonating with me, and I’ve always tried to think about how I can use my place in this House to further action on reconciliation. As the critic for child care for the official opposition, I’ve tabled a motion for the provincial government to develop culturally appropriate early childhood education programs for Indigenous families, which is the Truth and Reconciliation Call to Action number 12.

But going back to this legislation, I’d like to ask the member—I mean, what is in this legislation is a start, but there is so much more that we can do. There are specific steps that can go into this legislation to make it stronger, specifically for Indigenous and First Nations communities. So I’d like to ask his thoughts on what can be strengthened in this legislation.

I want to thank my seatmate, my colleague from Kiiwetinoong, for his beautiful speech. I know that talking about it is also very personal for him, because talking about the Seven Fallen Feathers, speaking about children, kids who went to school and had to go far way from their communities because they don’t have schools in their communities, and then losing their lives—it’s difficult.

I know that there are things over the past years that have been worked on, and I think the member did a great job of pointing out how these small steps—he called it low-hanging fruit; it’s something that he mentions to me all the time as well, the low-hanging fruit—don’t really do justice to it.

My question to my colleague is, what would it be—and I think this goes beyond that, because when you’re talking about the need for clean drinking water, the fact that you need schools and all of those things, there’s so much more to be done. Would you be able to just tell us, in terms of some of the concrete steps—you mentioned a few of the reconciliation calls to action.