On Saturday at the YWCA in Vancouver, Interim Liberal leader Bob Rae told the audience that gaps in education, housing, and health care between Aboriginal communities and the rest of Canada needs to be addressed by the government, CBC News reported.
Within some the largest cities in Canada, are “aboriginal ghettos” where the anger towards this inequality has caused many individuals to commit crimes and many others to commit suicide, Rae said.
“Toronto has been described, quite rightly, as the largest reserve in the country,” he said. “This problem is no longer out there, this problem is right here,”
Rae also added that, “As it gets closer to us it also has to be closer to our hearts and to our understanding, to extent that we have not embraced aboriginal culture, we have not understood First Nations history, we have not appreciated the loss, the indignity and the deep sense of injustice that now has to spur us to action.”
The Interim Liberal leader also touched on the disparity in education. Rae believes that too many Aboriginal youth are not getting enough education to be successful in the future.
In a survey by CBC, it found that less than half of on and off reserve Aboriginal students are going to graduate high school, compared to 80 per cent of non-Aboriginal students who are going to graduate.
Rae also believes that there are too many Aboriginals in this generation who are living in foster homes.
“There are more kids today across the country who are in foster care and being taken away from their homes than during the residential community time,” he said.
Also, there needs to be better social policies to address housing for First Nations communities, something that was abandoned as a priority by Ottawa nearly 25 years ago, Rae told the audience.
Social policies for mental illness were also addressed by Rae, who said that the provinces have shut down its largest mental health institutions and have substituted it for social programs. However, these social programs are not adequate. He also added that even military soldiers who have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder are not receiving the sufficient help that they need.
But this social inequality isn’t only Canada’s problem. The United States, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia are also experiencing the same issues of inequality, the Interim Liberal leader said.
“We, as a party, need to be the ones to say, ‘How are we going to deal with this problem?’”
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