Mr. Speaker, on this issue of competing claims, if the parliamentary secretary looks at chapter 2, clause 49, he will see that there are in fact eight treaty claims to the Tsawwassen territory and two non-treaty claims. If there is any infringement on this Tsawwassen traditional territory, the onus is on the government to compensate Tsawwassen. This could be an expensive process and one that could go on for a long time.
The notion somehow is that this treaty addresses concerns of band members, and most people think of people living on the reserve. The fact of the matter is that in Tsawwassen, over half the band members no longer live on the reserve. In fact, they live in California, Washington state, Oregon, Manitoba, Ontario, and elsewhere in British Columbia. For many of those members, and they are basically new members, their only connection to the Tsawwassen Indian band is that they may have had a grandparent who was a member of the Tsawwassen Indian band. They are in fact one or two generations removed from the reserve.
Does the parliamentary secretary think that it is appropriate, given the nature of this treaty, that Canadians would continue to pay the costs that would be recognized by this treaty to people whose connection to the reserve is tenuous at best? Many of them, as I say, do not even live in this country and, as I am told by many band members, have never set foot on the Tsawwassen reserve.