If you take a look at the breaches of rights, whether it's the underfunding of education or health care, and all these issues which accentuate the poverty of Canada's indigenous people, and the lack of reaction to them - it becomes clear that if Canadians understood what's at stake, they wouldn't stand for it.

We, as Canadians, have no hesitation lecturing the rest of the world on what they should be doing, how they shouldn't discriminate, and how they should treat the poor. That same discrimination - unfairness that exists in so many of these countries - has been practised for years in our own country.

Most Canadians previously had no idea what went on in the residential schools. You tell Canadians the last one closed in 1996, they are appalled. So now that Canadians are aware of residential schools, you'd think there would be a huge impetus for progress. It hasn't, and that's amazing.

Paul Martin Quotes