Mr. Speaker, I have respect for the hon. member who just rose. However, I would like to point out that the member from Kamloops, who is not here right now, not a week ago in public, in a widely circulated media interview, said exactly that. I would ask the hon. member in all fairness to look up what the hon. member from Kamloops said. I am not making it up.
And it was not just once. It has been over and over again. Members on this side of the House have said this about Reformers in the House. That is a matter of public record. I am sorry if it offends people, but it is the truth. That is what happened and it happened with the member from Kamloops not 10 days ago in an interview. They should be ashamed of themselves. We should be able to engage in honest, intellectual debate without getting into that kind of mudslinging and name calling.
I will conclude my remarks by saying that at the end of the day in discussing this treaty the people we ought to be considering the very most is the Nisga'a people themselves. They are going to have to live with this for all time because it will be set in constitutional concrete.
I say that individual Nisga'a people, and I think there are more of them who are coming to understand it, are going to recognize that this is not a good deal for them. It is not a good deal for their families.
It is going to be a good deal for people who are involved in Nisga'a central government for sure. It is going to be a good deal for lawyers as my colleague points out. It is going to be a good deal for all those hangers on in the Indian industry in this country who have been sucking millions upon millions of dollars out of the taxpayers' wallets and out of the aboriginal communities for decades now. It will be a good deal for them.
It will be a good deal for the courts. The Marshall decision was based on a treaty that was half a dozen pages in length. Imagine the amount of litigation that will come out of this kind of an agreement.
The minister even said in his remarks a few minutes ago in the House that people have access to the courts. What kind of answer is that for a minister of the crown to be giving? It is almost as if the Liberals are inviting and expecting legal challenges. They want to see it happen. Maybe all their friends in the legal profession are rubbing their hands together waiting for this to get passed so they can all make a buck on it.
This will not be a good deal for Nisga'a people. That will become evident very quickly. It will not be a good deal for other aboriginal people in Canada because the precedent has been set in terms of the government's provisions in this treaty, in terms of collective ownership of land and collective control over finances. At the end of the day it is supposed to be the Nisga'a people who benefit from this.
Let the record show that the Reform Party was the only party that stood in the House and said that not only is this deal unprincipled, not only is it unconstitutional, but it is wrong for the country and for all Canadians. Let it be said and never forgotten that the Reform Party was the only party that stood in this parliament and said that this agreement is bad for Nisga'a people. History will prove us right.
We know the Liberals have the majority. We know that they can ram this through. That is the way our dysfunctional parliamentary system is operating in Canada these days. We know that the Liberals can get away with it. We have mounted the best opposition that we could. We have done everything within the powers that are granted the official opposition to highlight the defects in this deal and to bring it to the attention of Canadians.
Let the history books show that we did our jobs while other members of this place sat in their seats. They would not hold the government accountable. They were in collusion. They were intellectually dishonest. At the end of the day they failed not only to serve Canadians, but they failed to serve the best interests of the Nisga'a people.