Madam Speaker, the House of Commons is dealing with two different bills that will help one single first nation. If I could help one first nation, in fact one first nation person, and if it were optional and it did not hurt the others, then I would be happy to do that.
Even though I do it for only one, the member suggested 50 or 60. There were resolutions from the British Columbia summit of 138 first nations, the Union of Ontario Indians of 43, and the Atlantic Policy Congress of 35 to 216.
With respect to her last question, once again showing a total lack of understanding of the bill, she asked where are we going to get the taxes to pay? First of all, this bill is not designed for those people who do not have money to pay taxes. In fact, most of the people paying taxes on first nations taxable authorities right now are non-first nations people living on first nations land.
Members know that we just had the Westbank bill where there are 7,500 people and only 400 or so are from the first nation. This provides authorities with the ability to attract commerce if people want to do taxes, and to tax people that have the ability to pay taxes. I do not know why she would want to hold back successful first nations when it is totally optional.
The first nations that she mentioned, as I said earlier, if they do not want to collect property taxes, if they do not have a rationale that will help their first nation to do that, and if they do not have the capacity to pay, then they do not have to get involved in this bill. The bill is to help those who have asked for it.