Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The member is continuing his tirade after being cautioned by the Chair. This is absolutely indefensible.
House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 1997, with 49% of the vote.
Nisga'A Final Agreement Act November 1st, 1999
Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The member is continuing his tirade after being cautioned by the Chair. This is absolutely indefensible.
Nisga'A Final Agreement Act November 1st, 1999
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I believe I should be allowed to respond to the direct challenge by the member as to the precedence of Nisga'a law over Canadian and provincial laws. If he would refer to page 113 of—
Nisga'A Final Agreement Act November 1st, 1999
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I was so enthralled by that departmental speech that I wonder if I could have unanimous consent to ask the reader a question.
Canada Transportation Act November 1st, 1999
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-284, an act to amend the Canada Transportation Act (discontinued railway lines).
Mr. Speaker, this bill would impose a three year moratorium on the dismantling of railway tracks and any related infrastructure of a railway line that has been discontinued under part III of the Canada Transportation Act.
The object of the bill is to enable potential short line operators to arrange business plans, to do feasibility studies, to negotiate and to be in a position to perhaps operate these abandoned lines. Once the abandoned lines have been dismantled, there is not enough money in the country to put them back together again, so any ongoing operational arrangements must be made before the actual dismantlement is done.
On that basis I propose this bill.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)
Canada Labour Code November 1st, 1999
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-283, an act to amend the Canada Labour Code (severance pay).
Mr. Speaker, the object of this bill is to remove an unfair discrepancy in the Canada Labour Code. As the code stands now, if older people are laid off in a corporate shutdown, they often end up unable to collect any benefits because of the fact that they are deemed eligible for a pension. In many cases if they are not 65 years of age, they are not eligible for a full pension. On the one hand the pension is less than it would normally be and on the other hand, they get absolutely nothing from the severance package. This is an unequal treatment based on age.
About five years ago the then minister informed me that his bureaucrats were working on this problem and that it would be dealt with in the next edition of the law. Unfortunately that never happened. I hope to have the support of the House on this bill.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)
Nisga'A Final Agreement Act November 1st, 1999
Mr. Speaker, I suppose I should open by offering my eternal heartfelt thanks to the governing party for giving me the privilege of speaking in the House because it has the opinion that nobody is allowed to speak unless the Prime Minister and his minions believe it is okay. Here I am, one of the chosen few.
Some people might want to know why I am speaking on behalf of British Columbia because clearly I am not a British Columbian. However, the ramifications of the Nisga'a treaty extend far beyond the boundaries of British Columbia. This is not simply a provincial issue. It is a national issue. It is about the balkanization of Canada. It is about legislated race based government.
It has often been said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, always with the expectation of a different and better result. What we see here is the extension of more than 130 years of policies by successive Canadian governments toward the native people based on racial segregation, paternalism and legislated inequality.
Treaties, the reserve system and the department of Indian affairs have conspired to keep Indians out of the social and economic mainstream, but only for their own good of course. The Nisga'a treaty will not only perpetuate the evils of separate status, it will accentuate them.
One does not have to be terribly observant to see what has happened to Indian people under the system which the government likes so well and now wishes to extend to the Nisga'a, a group of people which up until now has not had a treaty and has been relatively independent. Are they entitled to a land settlement? I would say yes, of course, but not in the shopworn treaty concept of collectivism. Let each adult have a piece of land to manage, dwell upon, sell or whatever as he or she sees fit, just as European settlers could do with their homesteads or land grants.
Why, where, when and how did we introduce this concept of communal land ownership, which is socialism, into the Canadian mainstream? Give the people substantial seed money to establish themselves, but give it to individuals, not to some unaccountable collective, and let that be the end of it. End this cycle of dependency. Throw away the bureaucratic urge to subordinate Indian people to bureaucrats or to an Indian elite. Stop treating them like dependent children and financing the venture by stripping the hides off the backs of other Canadians.
I have a long memory. It is rather instructive that a former Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, the current Prime Minister, had some progressive ideas on the subject. He introduced a white paper that recognized the evils of the old collectivism with these ringing words: “To be an Indian is to lack power, the power to act as owner of your own lands, the power to spend your own money and, too often, the power to change your own condition. To be an Indian must be to be free, free to develop Indian cultures in an environment of legal, social and economic equality with other Canadians”. Note the word equality.
The white paper proposed to repeal the Indian Act and wind down the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development within five years. It went on to state:
The Government believes that its policies must lead to the full free and non-discriminatory participation of Indian people in Canadian society.
The paper recommended that dependency be replaced by equal status, opportunity and responsibility. The paper stated “it is no longer acceptable that Indian people should be outside and apart”. Those are fine words, but we all know what happened.
The current Prime Minister continued for a year or so to speak eloquently in favour of an end to the determination of status by race. Even that great collectivist, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, jumped on to the equality bandwagon with these words:
—the road of different status has led to a blind alley of deprivation and frustration. This road...cannot lead to...equality. The government will offer another road that would gradually lead away from different status to full social, economic and political participation in Canadian life. This is the choice.
What happened? The chiefs and the Indian affairs bureaucrats fought like tigers to retain their powers and privileges. The dilatory Trudeau lost interest and the minister, now the Prime Minister, made a strategic retreat. Had he followed through with his ideas, racial integration would be an established fact and many of the horrors of life on reserves and in urban Indian ghettos would be behind us. It is useless to dwell on what might have been, but surely we can try to move forward instead of reinforcing the same old mistakes.
It is time to put aside historical divisions and bind up the wounds of injustice from another century. The fact that some of our European ancestors felt free to treat Indians as an inconvenient life form to be displaced in the name of progress does not make me guilty of anything. I did not participate. Nor is the fact that some Indians—not the Nisga'a by the way—killed some white people, who pressed them beyond endurance, a matter of consequence for the 21st century. This is the new age. We cannot continue to wear the scars of the past.
My ancestors arrived in North America hundreds of years ago. Does that entitle me to more rights and privileges than first or second generation Canadians? I think not. The ancestors of the Nisga'a reached this continent thousands of years ago. Does that mean they should be treated differently from the rest of us? I submit that it does not. We must remember that the Nisga'a do not have an existing treaty to set them apart from other Canadians, but the government is deliberately proposing to create a different status.
The legislated entrenchment of social and political differences along racial lines in the United States was known as segregation. A handful of determined activists created a few ripples of dissent which ultimately grew to a great wave that washed away an evil system. Even South Africa, which I have been told modelled its racially based homelands on Canada's Indian reserves, now recognizes that all people are equal before the law regardless of skin pigmentation.
Some may say that when our society becomes more mature we will be able to remove inequalities from the proposed arrangements with the Nisga'a. Sadly the more noxious and discriminatory clauses of the treaty will be immune to correction by a future government because they will be constitutionally entrenched. If we proceed with this folly, future generations including the Nisga'a will justly curse us and curse this parliament for the race based balkanization of our country.
Grain Transportation October 19th, 1999
Mr. Speaker, the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool has a near monopoly on grain buying on the Altawan and Notukeu rail subdivisions in my riding.
Because the pool is able through zone allocation and car flexing to use its grain car entitlements elsewhere, the elevators on that line have been plugged for more than two weeks.
The railway company will not deliver cars to the few competing elevators or to producers who wish to load their own grain because the competition alone cannot assemble a 50 car train. Farmers in the area are therefore forced to haul grain as much as 80 kilometres over substandard roads while their local elevators are idle.
I am not suggesting that the pool and the railway company collude, but they do share a common interest in limiting the amount of grain shipped off of that line. As less grain is shipped, the line becomes less viable and line abandonment becomes more easy to justify.
As usual, the interests of farmers are being subordinated to those of the grain companies and the railways.
Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board Act October 18th, 1999
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-228, an act to amend the Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board Act and the Canada Labour Code as a consequence.
Mr. Speaker, with the extreme growth that has taken place in interprovincial and international highway transport in the last few years, there is a serious gap in safety regulations with respect to very large vehicles. Any accident involving heavy interprovincial vehicles is now investigated only by the province in which the accident took place, unless the province makes a special request to the Transportation Safety Board to become involved.
The bill would require the Transportation Safety Board to have authority over any accidents occurring involving large trucks and buses in interprovincial and international service.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)
Speech From The Throne October 18th, 1999
Mr. Speaker, the member's speech was so unmemorable that I cannot recall all of the points which I wished to ask him about. However, I have a couple of things which I would like to raise.
He talked about a balanced approach to financing. We all know that in the last couple of years the federal government increased its tax take in this country by $18 billion. The hon. member makes much of the fact that the government is promising to lower taxes by $16.5 billion over the next three years. Is that what he means by balance, that the government will take $18 billion away from us and it might think about giving $16.5 billion back? Is that Liberal balance?
Prairie Grain Elevators Act October 15th, 1999
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-221, an act respecting the transfer of grain elevators located in a prairie province and the discontinuance of their operation.
Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this bill is to require persons who operate grain elevators located in a prairie province and who plan to discontinue operating any of these elevators to provide potential buyers with an opportunity to purchase them. This would place the grain companies on an equal footing with railway companies and make them jump through the same hoops that railway companies must jump through when they abandon a rail line.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)