Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in a debate that is historic and I believe precedent setting.
First, it is my belief the Liberals will pass Bill C-16 using their majority regardless of what it might mean to future generations of Canadians.
Second, my colleagues and I want to register our opposition. We believe that Bill C-16 will not create a better Canada for the Sahtu Dene and Metis or for other Canadians. It does not provide for future harmonious relationships among Canadians. My purpose this afternoon is to show why I believe this agreement will not achieve what it was designed to achieve.
The agreement will have difficulty meeting its first objective. The first objective states "to provide for the certainty of rights
to ownership and use of land and resources". It is clear that the intent of this objective is to provide certainty regarding the right of ownership to Sahtu Dene and Metis, called participants in the text of the agreement. Let us examine these rights.
It is for a very small group comprising 153 Metis, 829 Dene and 773 children for a total of 1,755 persons, slightly less than 2,000. More persons can be added to the Sahtu community in the future if the individuals are residents of the settlement area, have aboriginal ancestry and are accepted by a Sahtu community at any time in the future.
Acceptance is not defined in the agreement except that it requires a sponsor who is a participant and following that is approved by a process to be determined by the participants in the Sahtu community concerned.
What are some of the implications here? The agreement, based on the above, relates to a known group of people today. There is no clear definition of who will be affected in the future, except we know it could be any person who is sponsored by a process as yet unknown, determined by the community and solely by the community involved, so that those kinds of people will participate in the future from the benefits of this agreement. Thus it is possible that the beneficiaries of this agreement may be quite different from those with whom the agreement was reached in the first place.
The Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development suggests that new participants will be few and therefore do not be concerned. Perhaps, but consider growing wealth and growing power as a result of the exploration and development of natural resources, gems, the need for water and the access to it. In such a case is it not reasonable to expect that more and more people would want to become participants? The pressure would be on to become participants in a Sahtu community.
Let us examine some of the details of the land ownership that is being talked about. There are three kinds of ownership.
There is the ownership of the settlement area which covers 280,000 square kilometres which is the equivalent of 108,200 square miles or 108,200 sections of land. That is 54 sections per participant if you use 2,000 as the number for easy figuring. That represents slightly less than one-third of the province of B.C. as my hon. colleague has just mentioned. It contains Great Bear Lake, Horton Lake, Colville Lake and a major section of the Mackenzie River valley.
The second kind of land ownership is the outright fee simple title to 41,437 square kilometres which is equivalent to 16,000 square miles or about eight sections of land per participant. To put that into acres, it is 5,120 acres.
Then there is the third kind of land ownership and that is municipal land. There are two kinds of municipal land: land which is within municipal boundaries and that which is outside municipal boundaries.
What is significant about all of this? The land outside municipal boundaries must be held by one or more Sahtu organizations. I really want to underline the phrase "shall not be conveyed to a person", but the other part is that land inside a municipal boundary may be conveyed to a person. What are the implications of this?
Sahtu land may not be mortgaged or given as security. Sahtu lands when conveyed to a person are no longer Sahtu lands. What is the observation then? Since municipal Sahtu lands may be conveyed to individuals and upon so doing cease to be Sahtu lands, they can now be mortgaged and given as security.
It does not require a great leap of logic to recognize that over time what are described as Sahtu lands within municipal boundaries may indeed be owned by persons who are not Sahtu. Preposterous, you say. All we need to do is look at what is happening and what has happened in other parts of Canada.
At this moment certain financial institutions in Canada have agreed with a certain Indian band to issue mortgages on residential development on reservation lands. If it has happened once, chances are it can happen again. Indeed chances are that it will happen again. That is particularly true if huge profits appear likely.
A further example consists of the problems surrounding certificates of ownership. These are certificates of ownership of Indian reservation land by natives on those reserves having such provisions.
In years past it is my understanding that has not been the Indian way. No individual shall own reservation land, yet it happened. They said: "But it is not selfish in the way the land is transferred". It is my observation that it is clearly known these transfers are fraught with delays, inaccuracies and transfers from one person to another. In some cases they have even been proven to be fraudulent. Will it happen here? I do not know and neither does this government. However the provision to allow it to happen is there. Therefore the stated objective to provide certainty and clarity of rights to ownership and use of land resources is anything but providing certainty of ownership by Sahtu Dene and Metis.
Let us look a little closer at the municipal boundaries. Section 23.2.1 delineates the boundaries of municipal lands. The agreement provides that these boundaries may be changed. The provisions are particularly relevant. They state in part:
Where there is any change to the extent or location of Sahtu municipal lands pursuant to this agreement, schedules XV and XVI shall be amended to reflect this change and such changes-
I quote and directly underline:
-shall not be considered to be an amendment to the agreement.
Schedules XV and XVI describe the Sahtu municipal lands, schedule XV the surveyed lands and schedule XVI the unsurveyed municipal lands.
This list of municipal lands includes Déline, Fort Norman, Norman Wells, Colville Lake and Fort Good Hope. These names are significant to anyone associated with oil and gas and natural resources exploration.
It is my contention that not nearly adequate attention has been given to the possible future development in this region of Canada, particularly in reference to the implications of the provisions found in this agreement on such future developments in the region.
I believe that while the agreement clarifies some matters, it confuses others.
This agreement also is entrenched in the Constitution. The agreement states very clearly: "This treaty, which when given effect by Parliament in settlement legislation"-and that would be Bill C-16-"will be recognized as a land claims agreement under the Constitution Act, 1982".
That means once this agreement has been given effect it can only be amended by resorting to the appropriate part of the amending formula set out in the Constitution Act, 1982. There are six different ways of amending the Constitution. It brings into question which amending formula would apply. According to one constitutional expert:
When the amending formula was designed, no thought was given to devising a formula for amending a constitutionalized land claim agreement between an Indian band and the federal Government of Canada. Section 43 of the amending formula comes closest in that it deals with a constitutional change that affects only one province. In those circumstances an amendment is brought about by resolutions of the Parliament of Canada and the legislature of the particular province involved. But this provision does not really fit either because the Sahtu Dene and Metis collectively is simply not a province. Nor do the territories qualify as provinces for the purposes of the amending formula.
The result of all this may well be that resort might have to be made to section 41 which is described as the general amending formula. If a given amendment does not come within the more specific parts of the amending formula-
I suggest that is probably the case here.
-then section 41 is the only amending formula that would be available in this case. The congruity of that would be that section 41 not only requires a resolution of Parliament but also a resolution of at least seven provincial legislatures. This is inappropriate in the circumstances because the provinces are of course not involved or directly affected by this land claim agreement. Nonetheless, proper constitutional amendment permits no shortcuts or extemporaneous solutions.
Some may observe that the agreement is not the Constitution. It only provides for constitutional protection. If constitutional protection is to mean anything at all then it requires that amendments to this agreement be governed by the appropriate provisions of the Constitution.
Even if we could find ways around the kinds of things we have talked about until now, there remains the question of whether there is judicial support for such claims in the first place.
Chief Justice Allan McEachern in the Gitksan case rejected such claims and went on to say that a summary of Canadian case law was conclusively against the plaintiff's claims for sovereignty of ownership. Is it right for the government to proceed, indeed to accelerate land claim settlements of this kind when the latest word from the courts is that there is no legal basis for such claims?
With an area as large as 50 times the size of Prince Edward Island, which is a province, surely it is almost as if a new province was being created. The Constitution provides that the establishment of new provinces requires the approval of all existing provinces as well as Parliament. This requirement is being bypassed by Bill C-16.
To establish a region that is to be governed under a new set of laws and to convey to a defined group of Canadians known as Sahtu Dene and Metis outright fee simple ownership of 41,000 square kilometres of land is to de facto establish a geographic and political region of Canada that in many respects is like establishing a new province. In my opinion any and all provisions of the Constitution Act, 1982, that apply to the creation of new provinces should apply in this case also.
Some may argue that I am opposed to any settlement or agreement with the Sahtu Dene and Metis regarding land. That would be folly in the extreme and a deliberate misinterpretation of my remarks. It is necessary for all Canadians to be fair minded. That includes recognizing grievances put forward by people such as the Sahtu Dene and Metis and to provide for their redress.
I support that. My contention is that Bill C-16 does not meet its own objectives to clarify and provide for the certainty of land ownership, needlessly complicates administration, costs too much and makes any future amendments a matter of constitutional amendment.
There is a final question. Will this agreement provide for greater Canadian unity and help clarify how Canadians want to government themselves? To answer that question requires answers to three prior questions. First, will giving land and money provide for the harmonious relationships between members of the Sahtu Dene and Metis communities? The answer is no.
Second, will the settlement of land claims bring about recognition, understanding and acceptance of the respective values, social morals, religious beliefs and decision making processes
either among participants or between participants and other Canadians? Again the answer is no.
Third, will creating another bureaucracy of boards, either above or below or within the bureaucracy that currently exists for the administration of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development make governing this land more effective? Again the answer is no.
Since in my opinion the answers to these questions are all negative, how can we justify completing the agreement by passing Bill C-16? I submit what this Parliament should be doing is building a stronger, more united and more globally competitive Canada. I submit to the House and to all Canadians that passage of Bill C-16 will drive wedges between Canadians by creating political power fiefdoms that are economically inefficient, perhaps even unsound and administrative nightmares.
Passage of the bill creates an environment of competing powers that will feed selfish interests to the exclusion of the interests of others. It will create competition where co-operation should exist. Just think of our interprovincial trade barriers that exist in Canada today. Finally, it will make Canada increasingly non-competitive in the global marketplace.
In conclusion, we need to settle and redress grievances of native Canadians. We must agree that the agreement that is the subject of Bill C-16 will not do those things.
I ask all members of the House to defeat Bill C-16 and find an agreement that will redress and solve the grievances that exist between us and the Sahtu Dene and Metis people.
