Liberal Leader Familiarized With Northern Issues

Liberal Leader Familiarized With Northern Issues

Friday, May 26, 2006 at 14:45

Federal Liberal Leader Bill Graham says he got a good sense of northern Saskatchewan’s infrastructure needs in a meeting in La Ronge yesterday.

Graham says northern leaders he met with communicated the need for natural gas and better roads quite clearly — a message Graham says he intends to take back with him to Ottawa.

Graham also heard from Metis leaders concerned about the Conservatives’ plan to stop funding METSI, and to hire a private contractor to take over METSI’s role in helping Metis post-secondary students.

Graham says he doesn’t agree with the Conservatives’ approach on that issue. He feels people on the “ground level” familiar with the Metis community should be delivering those types of services.

Graham also says he plans to push Stephen Harper to live up to his promise to compensate Ile-a-la-Crosse boarding school survivors.

He adds there is a chance that the apparent omission of those survivors from the residential schools compensation agreement is a “bureaucratic mistake”.

Either way, he feels the case has been clearly established that those former students should qualify for compensation.