Senator Richards: They should be, senator. I’ll tell you a story about this young Mi’kmaq girl that I helped in the university. The story has never been published. She was a little girl who was asked by her mother not to play in the woods because there had been a murder there. I won’t tell you what reserve it is. She went down to the water and her mother said, “You cannot play in the water because a man drowned a woman there.” She went on the street and her mother said, “You can’t go on the street because there are too many people and too much danger.” She could only find one place to sit. This was a seven-page story, and I had tears in my eyes when I read it because it reminded me of my own granddaughter. The only place she could sit was in the basement of her house in her bedroom, and it was there where her uncle had hung himself.

That story, written by a girl from a reserve near us, was absolutely moving, but it had nothing to do with identity politics. It had to do with identifying one human heart to the other. That is what I’m afraid this CRTC bill loses in the context of the bill. That’s the reason. Thank you.