Bill C-28 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Cree-Naskapi (of Quebec) Act

This enactment amends the Cree-Naskapi (of Quebec) Act, in respect of Cree bands and Category IA land,
(a) to provide the Cree Regional Authority with additional responsibilities and powers, including by-law making powers; and
(b) to recognize the Crees of Oujé-Bougoumou as a separate band and a local government under that Act.

Cree-Naskapi (of Quebec) Act

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague from the NDP, who is also my neighbour on the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. I want to congratulate her too on her French. I used to be able to say anything at all about her so long as it was in French, but I cannot do that any more. She has learned a lot from the James Bay Cree. If we look at what has been happening in Vancouver since she found out about the Cree, first nations issues have been settled much more easily. She can use Quebec’s experience with the first nations and apply it to British Columbia. The parliamentary secretary realized this and was actually quite happy about it, given the way he reacts when our colleague stands and speaks in the House.

I am very proud of the determination and pride of the Quebec Cree. I cannot speak for the Cree of Ontario or other provinces because, apart from the witnesses who appear before us in committee, I have not had much opportunity to talk to them. Generally speaking, though, the Cree rely a lot on the comprehension and understanding shown by the members of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development when they come to see us and try to make us grasp their problems and view of things, which is not necessarily our own.

For example, in regard to Bill C-28 before us today, we should not forget that the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement has been in negotiation since 1973. Negotiations started as far back as 1973, under René Lévesque, in connection with the James Bay power project. After the project was developed on their lands, the Cree decided to claim some of the benefits. We well remember how hard they had to fight, even going to New York, if I remember correctly, to assert their rights.

Bill C-28 arose pursuant to the promises Canada made in the subsequent agreements. Its purpose is to implement these promises: the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, signed in 1975; the 1992 Oujé-Bougoumou/Canada Agreement, in which Canada promised to remedy the failure to include the Cree of Oujé-Bougoumou in the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement; the Cree and Naskapi legislation; and the 2008 Agreement concerning a New Relationship between the Government of Canada and the Cree of Eeyou Istchee, which reaffirmed the promise to give the Cree Regional Authority greater governance powers over the development of the James Bay Cree. I am very happy for the chief of Oujé-Bougoumou, whom I hold in high esteem. She is a very nice lady who has now become a very great lady.

As I just said, the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement has been in negotiation since 1973. It comes from the Eeyou Istchee Cree, which translates as the land of the Cree of James Bay, Quebec. The association of Inuit of New Quebec entered into negotiations with the Government of Quebec, the federal government, Hydro-Québec and the James Bay energy corporation. At that point, they focused on the regions and the people in them, recognizing and protecting certain rights and benefits. The negotiations concluded with the signing in 1975 of the James Bay agreement, the first comprehensive land claim agreement in Canada, which today is protected under the Constitution as a modern treaty, pursuant to section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. In this agreement, the Cree gave up, transferred and dropped all claims, rights, titles and native interests to and in the lands in the area and in Quebec in exchange for clearly defined rights and benefits.

The James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement recognized eight bands. This land regime defined three categories of land. I will not enumerate them. In the 1975 agreement, with Oujé-Bougoumou not yet a reserve or even a recognized band, it had to fight until 1992 for recognition and to obtain its own village.

The current agreement comes under the heading of local administration. The Cree-Naskapi (of Quebec) Act establishes the eight bands as corporations recognized by the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement and establishes their powers in the following areas—making bylaws with respect to category IA lands under section 45; regulation of buildings for the protection of public safety; health and hygiene; public order and safety; the protection of the environment; the prevention of pollution; the taxation for local purposes of a broad range of local services; roads, traffic and transportation; the operation of businesses and the carrying on of trades; and parks and recreation.

Other sections concern band financial administration, residence, access and other rights on category IA lands, the disposition of interests in these lands, and policing.

Bill C-28 provides amendments for each of these parties, thus giving considerable autonomy. Unfortunately, it is not yet complete, but it is the most progressive in Canada at the moment. I offer the example of an agreement signed not so long ago with a first nations band from my colleague's area, which was also granted autonomy. It was obtained through negotiation, consultation and agreements.

I was listening to the parliamentary secretary reminding us of Bill C-8. The government consulted some people, including women and the Assembly of First Nations. When this bill was introduced, we understood that the Assembly of First Nations acknowledged being consulted. The Native Women's Association of Canada, the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador and Quebec Native Women also acknowledged being consulted. However, that is where the existing agreement between the department and these associations representing first nations stops. Consulting and taking nothing from the consultation contributes nothing.

This is why the first nations of Canada and of Quebec have spoken out against Bill C-8, as they did against C-44 and C-21, and as they will continue to do just as long as we do not recognize the philosophy and way of life, the culture and the needs of all first nations. When they ask for something in consultations, it is not enough just to listen but do nothing. Their needs must be taken into consideration. They are persons just as we are persons. Many more agreements can be reached, and I am proud of this for the James Bay Cree.

In committee, after our discussions, unanimity was reached on this bill with the exception of one minor change proposed by the government, which was to adapt the English version to the French in a certain clause, because the French definition was more accurate than the English.

The bill received unanimous support and I sincerely hope that the House will also support it when it comes time to vote. For its part, the Bloc Québécois supports the first nations, as it always has, for that matter.

The Bloc Québécois has made it our duty to support the first nations across Canada, not just in Quebec. We know that the first nations of Canada in general have experienced more or less the same difficulties, and the Bloc Québécois recognizes the aboriginal peoples as distinct peoples with the right to their culture, their language, their customs and traditions, as well as the right to direct the development of that unique identity themselves.

In so doing, it is respecting the direction taken by René Lévesque, a staunch defender of aboriginal peoples, who made Quebec the first government in America to recognize the aboriginal nations in its midst.

Bill C-28 is in fact the extension of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement and of the Paix des Braves, which was signed under Bernard Landry and the Parti Québécois. Bill C-28 enables the federal government to fulfill its obligations to the Cree-Naskapi.

In 2004, the leader of the Bloc Québécois said the following:

The Paix des Braves ratified by the Government of Quebec and representatives of the Cree Nation has paved the way for these kinds of negotiations and demonstrated that major development projects have to be negotiated with mutual interests in mind. The Bloc Québécois supports the first nations in their fight for emancipation. That is why we are asking Ottawa to follow this example to negotiate a similar agreement with Cree Nation representatives.

In its 2008 report, the Cree-Naskapi Commission identified the negative outcome of the federal government's failure to respect the James Bay and Northern Quebec agreement:

Consequently, the full potential of local self-government, with its dynamic and evolving nature, has not yet been realized nor achieved by the Cree and Naskapi First Nations because, as one principal constraint, the Cree-Naskapi (of Quebec) Act, after twenty-four (24) years, remains an inflexible, rigid instrument which has not yet been reviewed by Canada, the Cree and Naskapi for the purposes of determining appropriate amendments to enhance and improve Cree and Naskapi local government.

The commission issued a series of recommendations that I will not get into now because most of their demands have been acknowledged in this bill. That is the big difference between this bill and Bill C-8, which we will soon be debating.

I was listening to the member for Saint Boniface earlier, and she was saying that the government had held extensive consultations. That is true, but the extent of the negotiations has little to do with whether the government understood the demands put forward during the consultations. I would like the government to understand that. We could avoid all kinds of futile, useless discussions and debates if only we really listened to the people we were talking to.

I will end on that note. I really hope that all parties in the House will support this bill so that it can make its way to the Senate quickly.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to speak today to this bill that recognizes the rights of the James Bay Cree of Quebec and would set in place a framework to move forward. It is one of those few occasions where we see all members of Parliament working together for a result that is needed and that can actually set a standard to move forward.

I would like to begin this afternoon by placing this agreement in terms of the context so we have a real understanding of what it is we are talking about. As much as we support the bill and recognize the importance of the bill, we need to put it in terms of the overall failure of the federal government to put in place similar agreements elsewhere. We go back to the 1970s, the time when the James Bay projects were first being enacted in the province of Quebec. I think my colleagues from Quebec will agree that at that time the understanding of first nation relations was very different.

When I worked in the region of Abitibi, I remember people talking about how the first nations were for many years considered squatters on their land. The idea of developing projects, whether it was hydroelectric projects, forestry projects or mining projects, they were never done in consultation with the first nation communities affected. In fact, this has been a situation that has gone on right across Canada. Even last year we saw the McGuinty government in Ontario jailing leaders of a first nation community who were trying to lay down some basic ground rules about consultations in their community.

The James Bay agreement stemmed out of what started as the James Bay Cree fighting to be recognized on their own territory and to say that if there were to be development, they would be at the table. If there were to be benefits, they wanted their people to see some of those benefits because they would be the ones living with the long term effects of the massive hydro developments being proposed at that time by the Bourassa government.

The James Bay agreement originally came into place because the province of Quebec recognized at a certain point that it would not be able to go ahead with development without a framework agreement in place with the James Bay Cree. There was too much international pressure. The Cree, Billy Diamond, Matthew Coon Comb, the whole leadership of that period, mounted such an amazing international fight that Quebec came to the table and, because Quebec came to the table, they said that the federal government had to come to the table as well.

We do not see the federal government going out and settling land issues. It is not in the business of doing that. Time and time again, it dodges its obligations. It has refused to meet with first nations communities on the most basic issues. In terms of the initial James Bay agreement, it was because Quebec recognized that if it were to get hydroelectric development off the ground it would need to have an agreement and to have an agreement there needed to be a provincial and federal détente.

The original James Bay agreement set the framework for the Cree of James Bay of Quebec to actually begin to participate in the 20th and 21st century economy and to set a standard in place that every first nation across this country has looked to. The idea of revenue sharing agreements used to be seen as revolutionary and now it is what first nations recognize is needed to go forward.

I would like to compare the situation of the original James Bay Cree agreement, the Paix des Braves, with the bill we are looking at today, Bill C-28, in terms of the development of treaties on the ground and the success of the James Bay Cree, but compare it to the difficulties being faced by other first nation communities that are also trying to establish agreements.

I represent the James Bay region of Ontario and we could not see a starker contrast in terms of first nations development between the James Bay communities of Ontario and the James Bay communities of Quebec where both the federal government and provincial government in Ontario consistently walked away from basic obligations for infrastructure, education and health services that have left the communities in levels of poverty that most Canadians would not believe exist, but on the James Bay of Ontario it is all too often the daily occurrence.

I had the distinct pleasure in a past life to travel along the James Bay coast of Quebec where I saw proper roads, proper houses built and the people were part of the economy. This is not to underplay any of the problems that may exist on the James Bay coast of Quebec but to say that we have a very distinct situation in Ontario.

In my role as a member of Parliament, I took part in the Treaty 9 centenary that was happening across the great territory of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, which is part of the region I represent. It has been 100 years since the signing of the treaty.

Being in communities such as Martin River, Fort Albany, Kashechewan and Moose Factory, I got a very different view of what those treaties meant than the politicians who were coming in to so-called celebrate it. In many of the communities I went to, people said there was not really much to celebrate in the fact that they signed off their land in good faith, to work as partners, to develop and to give their people a chance. The white commissioners at that time saw the treaties as a way of taking the land and putting the communities onto these pitiful reservations.

There is a difference in how the people talk about the treaties. It is clear that once the federal government signed the treaty, and in fact the province of Ontario signed Treaty 9 as well, as far as it was concerned it was finished with its obligations. It walked away on these communities. In the first nations communities, they still talk about what the treaties meant.

Let us look at the historical records of Treaty 9 communities, such as the Mushkego Cree of James Bay, Ontario. One of the reasons they signed the treaty was because they recognized that with the pressures on the change of life, with the Hudson's Bay factors who had lorded over the land for many years, there was a change coming. They were worried about the future of their children.

One of the key things they talked about in agreeing to sign that treaty was that they wanted their children educated. They would make the agreement to share their land, but they wanted their children to have proper schools. We know that the federal government never lived up to that obligation. In fact, it brought in a system of residential schools, not just on the James Bay coast but all across the territory, that inflicted massive generational wounds on these communities.

Even to this day, in my region of Timmins--James Bay, we have two communities with no schools. There seems to be no plan for schools from the government. There seems to be no awareness by the government of a need to build schools. We see that the treaties that were signed were broken.

Having worked as a land negotiator with the Algonquin Nation, I learned very quickly that the word of the federal government often meant very little when it signed an agreement. It signed an agreement as long as the media lights were on and the ink was still wet on the page, but then when it left, whatever agreements a community may have had, the federal government said, “Take us to court”. Of course the communities are too poor to take it to court.

I was working in the community of Barriere Lake after it signed an agreement with the federal government in 1998 to rebuild the community. I was there five or six years later and not a single new dwelling had been built, even though we had an agreement on paper, signed by the federal government, to work with the community to bring it out of its horrific levels of poverty in Barriere Lake.

I sat in on a meeting in November 2005 with the minister of Indian affairs and all the top bureaucrats from Indian affairs to sign an agreement to build a new community for the crisis-ridden community of Kashechewan. I remember that when we were signing that agreement, it was vague, that the verbal agreements that we had been given by the minister and by the senior Indian affairs department heads were not on paper. They had made promises to work and rebuild the community, but none of the commitments we had in terms of moving to higher ground, of a timeline, of how many houses would be part of a movement to get that crisis-ridden community off a flood plain, were in the agreement.

We were told by the Indian affairs senior administration that it would be a sign of good faith and trust to just sign the agreement. Here we had a community that had been evacuated three times in one year because of a failure of infrastructure, because of the crisis that the community had been put through by the mismanagement of their land and their infrastructure by the federal government.

The community was in a desperate situation and they signed that agreement, just as so many first nation communities have signed agreements over the years, in the best of faith. They believed that when the people sitting across the table from them, who represented the Crown, who represented the federal Government of Canada, said that they would follow through, they would mean it. The fact that everything was not spelled out in the agreement was not a problem because they told the community to its face that the agreement would be respected.

The results are clear. Less than a year later we had the government standing and saying there never was an agreement and there never was money set aside for the community of Kashechewan, there was no plan and this was all somehow a figment of people's imaginations and we misinterpreted what was said at the meeting even though we were there with the senior representatives, the senior civil servants of this country in terms of Indian affairs, and the minister and the senior political staff.

We can see the frustration that exists in communities that take the federal government at its word when it comes to negotiating agreements. The failure of the government to live up to basic standards is evidenced for example going back to the community of Kashechewan.

Just a year and a half ago we had two young men, Jamie Goodwin and Ricardo Wesley, who burned to death in a shack. That shack just happened to be a police station. It was a police station because there was no adequate police service facilities in the community of Kashechewan and there were no fire services in the community of Kashechewan. The Nishnawbe-Aski Police had been warning for years that unless the agreement that existed to fund first nation police services was addressed that someone would be hurt, someone would die, perhaps a citizen in a community where there was no police service, perhaps a police officer in an isolated community who had no backup.

Unfortunately, in Kashechewan, it was the case of two young men who were not criminals. They were just young and rambunctious and they caught in a jail cell that should not have been used as a jail cell anywhere else in the western world, and they burned to death.

I was in that jail before those men died. I was there with the Ontario minister of public safety and security and we showed him this building that looked like a crackshack in a war zone. We told him that this is what police officers are having to make do with and something should done.

We spoke in the House of Commons about the need to have agreements in place. It comes back to the issue of being at the table and signing agreements. In terms of police services, it is the federal government and the provincial government that sign these agreements with, for example, the Nishnawbe-Aski Police Services or with health services. Then, both the federal government and the provincial government walk away on those commitments, and the communities are left suffering.

The fire inquest has just finished in Ontario. The recommendations are damning. They are recommendations that we would have seen in any non-native community 40 or 50 years ago in terms of basic standards that have to be in place. For example, we need fire suppression, we need water sprinklers in any building, we need proper facilities, and we need proper funding for police services in these communities. The issue then becomes that agreements are signed but they are not signed in good faith, not by the federal government, very rarely.

I would like to say in the case of Bill C-28, we have an agreement that works. I think we have that agreement because it was the Grand Council of the Crees who fought for so long and said, “This is our territory. When development happens on our territory, it will happen with our consent and unless they have our consent there will be no moving forward”. There was a very clear initial hard line. All the communities worked together to maintain that line. It brought the province of Quebec to the table and then brought the federal government to the table.

I would like to think that it does not take a hard line to get other agreements in place. However, I wonder some days. I wonder when we see the recent report by the parliamentary budget officer and the shameful lack of standards for first nations schools. Again, we talk about agreements that are made and agreements that are broken, and they are casually broken.

In the community of Attawapiskat, which was the impetus that drove the study to get Mr. Page to look at the funding, it is a community that has been poisoned for 30 years. It is a community where children have been at risk, children who now are starting to show signs of leukemia, having gone to school on the largest diesel contaminated site in North American history. That is where their school grounds are. They have been exposed on a daily basis to low levels of benzenes and methylethylenes, blowing up from the dust on the school grounds. That is a community that had negotiated.

Again, we are talking about a community that sat at the table and negotiated in good faith, that had done all the studies that were asked of them, that did all the reports that were asked of them, and that had signed commitments from regional Indian affairs bureaucrats in Thunder Bay, in Toronto, and all the way up to the minister's office, Robert Nault. He came to the community in July 2000 and committed that there will be a school there. Minister Andy Scott in November of 2005 sat with the senior bureaucrats and said, “Make this happen”. The former minister of Indian Affairs, who is a Conservative cabinet minister now, wrote a letter to the community and said, “I will support this plan at Treasury Board”.

If we were in business with someone who signed these kinds of agreements and then breached them, we would take them to court. We would have a reason and we would win in court. When someone makes those kinds of verbal and written commitments, works with a partner step by step along the way and then at the eleventh hour pulls out of negotiations, walks away and says there never was a deal, that person would be taken to court. Yet, first nations are left high and dry.

It is a question of the need to make a commitment to communities that is not arbitrary, erratic or based on whether ministers decide they are going to spend the money some place else. Maybe they are going to move it back to Treasury Board, maybe they are going to take money from a specific funding envelope for schools and spend it elsewhere. This is what the Parliamentary Budget Officer has shown us very clearly, that the standards at Indian Affairs are erratic, random and not measurable by any standard.

As a former school board trustee, I was always shocked when I tried to get a straight answer out of Indian Affairs about its planning methodologies. It was making them up as it went along. Instead of having bureaucrats who could answer, I was dealing with spin doctors.

The civil service exists to protect the public interest and make sure that money taken from the taxpayers of Canada by the government is spent wisely. The role of the civil servant is not to cover the rear end of ministers based on whatever arbitrary political decision they make on a given day. Yet, this is what we see with Indian Affairs all the time. It raises the question of the federal government needing to take seriously on an across-Canada basis a willingness to negotiate in good faith and to tell first nations communities that it when it makes a plan, the plan will be transparent.

There is kind of a sick joke for people who work in first nation communities where the federal government always says to any first nation, “You have to be accountable. You have to be transparent. We want to see your books. You can't monkey around with your numbers. You have to be able to show how you are spending that money”. Well, all first nation communities do that. If they do not, someone takes control of their finances immediately.

Yet, Indian Affairs officials do not subject themselves to any of the same kinds of clear criteria, such as ring-fencing on line items so that funding envelopes cannot be pilfered and spent elsewhere. These are clear obligations. First nations cannot move that spending around. A school board cannot move the funding envelopes around. A municipality cannot go to the local school board and say, “We are not building schools for you this year because we are going to build some roads with it and give a tax cut to our constituents because it is an election year”. That cannot happen. That would be illegal under the provincial systems of government and, of course, it should be. Yet, at the federal level, that is the way business is done on first nations territory.

We are looking at an agreement that should be a model, an agreement that was made with a number of communities in the James Bay region of Quebec that drew a line in the sand and said, “There will be a standard of how you work with us, how you consult with us, how you develop our territory, and we will be part of that”.

I am very proud to work with all the parties in the House to make sure this bill gets through and that this agreement comes into force. However, the standard of trust and respect has to become part of the federal government mantra in order to develop all our first nation communities because the greatest resource we have in our lands and the territory north of 50 is not forestry, not hydro, not the gold nor the diamonds. It is the young people and the children living on reserves who are often treated as completely neglected backwater. The failure of the government to plan and work with communities to develop the resource of these children, these young people, and these growing communities is a staggering loss for today, for tomorrow, and for what our country could become.

I would hope that the spirit of Bill C-28 will help move us forward and all our communities.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the member brought up the item about bargaining in good faith. I want to talk more about that as it relates to land claim implementation.

The member has done a lot of really good work on education. I want to ensure he had enough time to bring us up to date on education, especially in the distant rural schools and the amounts of funding. There is a recent report about this.

On the funding, compared to provincial governments, are these children getting an equal chance? If we all co-operated, what could we do to ensure they would get an education on a par with other Canadian children?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, with regard to the report brought out by Kevin Page, he does not address the massive shortfalls in salaries paid to teachers, or the lack of special education dollars, or the lack of adequate resources. He simply talks about managing the assets, the infrastructure of schools.

What is very positive about Mr. Page's report is that he offers us a way of working together. He is saying that we need to move toward a capital planning methodology, which exists everywhere with regard to school boards, whether in a school board of just 13 isolated rural schools or in larger cities. Our capital planning methodology would be the same as it was in the city of Toronto, where there are hundreds of schools. The methodology has to be that we take a long-term view, that we understand the conditions of the buildings, which Indian Affairs does not have, that we have a clear standard in terms of what we expect and that we have clear financing in place to maintain and replace these schools.

From Mr. Page's report we see that every year the government under funds school construction and maintenance by about $170 million. Therefore, these buildings are already substandard. Then there is the lack of support from that. Of the money that is in place, the government moves it to spend on other things. In the last five years, $122 million that should have gone directly to building schools was spent on other projects. We cannot do that if we are to protect the education rights of children.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to thank my colleague for his analysis of the bill and his eloquent, lively and, I would even say, moving speech, which comes from his very lengthy experience with first nations communities on the Ontario side of James Bay.

I have had the opportunity to visit and get to know the same communities on the Quebec side, and I am aware of the differences he referred to, because the James Bay and Northern Quebec agreements came out of the Malouf decision in the early 1970s, which imposed an injunction that interrupted work on one of the largest construction projects in North American history because laws had been broken. Talented people, people with vision, capable people like John Ciaccia took charge of the issue and said they would resolve it.

I believe that models may exist. But I was sad to hear what he said about the schools, and that is what I would like to ask him about.

Could he tell us about some of the problems? We were all disappointed yesterday by the mediocre responses from the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs. We can see that he does not really care about this issue. He would do better to look after the plumbing elsewhere in the government.

Could my colleague from Timmins—James Bay give us some examples of cases where young people are being deprived of the resources they need to grow and develop and communities in turn are being deprived of their right to sustainable development, which means taking care of future generations?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Attawapiskat sits on the largest diesel contamination site in North American history. This is where the children go to school. The building has been abandoned for 30 years. The government's solution in Attawapiskat was to tear the building down. There is no other jurisdiction I know of that would tear down a building as a school solution. When the government tore that building down, it promised the community it would have medical teams on hand because it knew the risks to those children. Therefore, community agreed to having it torn down. We do not make a promise of medical teams for demolition unless we know how serious it is. Guess what? There were no medical teams present. Health Canada told the community to send their kids back to school in the middle of the demolition.

We have documented reports of teachers getting sick, children throwing up. We had a teaching crew from the Toronto school board at the time, and the teachers were horrified. Kids had nosebleeds and some passed out in the classrooms. Anywhere else there would be an outcry that would lead to people being charged, people being fired and heads would roll.

We have heard the minister say that he is not aware of any health and safety problems whatsoever and he has told us to prove it. We are talking about children who have been left at risk. A promise was made to have medical teams available to ensure the children would not get sick. Again, it is the lack of good faith from the government. It makes agreements and it walks away, leaving children at risk. That is simply unacceptable in a country like Canada in the 21st century.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, although the bill is not controversial and should get the support of the House at third reading, the subject matter seems to have drifted to the obligations of the Government of Canada with regard to first nation issues.

I want to ask the member about the minister's opinion on the actions taken by his ministry with regard to Bill C-8 and the representations he made in his speech to this place, that he consulted widely and had taken all the necessary steps to engage first nation communities. In fact, I refer to statements about the fact that the Supreme Court of Canada recognized the federal government was required to consult, accommodate and obtain first nations' consent when it contemplated action that could affect first nation, aboriginal or treaty rights.

Even some of the questions that we have seen at question period, again, seem to deny the fact that there was no consultation in the form that was required, that informed consent was not there, that the accommodation was not there.

What assurances or what comfort level does the member have that the government in fact has appropriately consulted with these communities with regard to the important changes to the act under Bill C-28?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the obligation to consult has been defined in court decision after court decision. It is the obligation of the federal government to work with first nations.

Again, if we are going to move forward, it is the prerequisite for developing legislation, where we start to move away from treating first nations as somehow children or wards of the state who can be treated in an arbitrary fashion.

Bill C-8 looks to address some of the existing issues on how first nation laws are enacted. However, clearly we did not see a pattern of consultation. The government needs to understand that until it does consultations, until it works collaboratively, first, with the first nations and then with its partners in the House of Commons, it will be unable to force legislation through. It will also be unable to attack its opponents and say that we are against human rights and so on. The government can do it all it wants, but it will not get the legislation it needs.

I hope the minister would learn from this and reflect on it. Why waste the time of Parliament and why waste the time of Canadians? If he does not do the groundwork and consult, the bills will eventually fail. It is the obligation of members of the opposition to push back in those cases because without consultation, there is no legitimacy for developing first nation law.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Mr. Speaker, given the member's long track record of working with aboriginal people in northern Ontario and in Quebec before he arrived here in 2004, how could the model that has been used to put this bill together so successfully be used in the very real challenge that he himself faces in his riding in both Attawapiskat and Kashechewan?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when I worked for the Algonquin nation in Quebec, it always called the Cree the “big brothers” because the grand council of the Cree had set the standards. It set the standards by being tough and by laying down some really hard lines in the push back against the original James Bay development. Out of that came a framework for agreements that has established a whole series of agreements, which have helped move these communities forward.

The problem is other communities do not have that strength and they rely on the federal government to represent them and the federal government has failed.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, Arts and Culture; the hon. member for Madawaska—Restigouche, Unemployment; the hon. member for Pickering—Scarborough East, Financial Institutions.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I am not going to use my whole time slot because there is cooperation on the bill. I want to use my time as a springboard to talk about some of the items the previous member talked about and to get points on the record about land claims implementation and improving or amending land claims.

There are two types of land claims. There are comprehensive claims that deal with everything. It is a complete treaty that deals with the entire land, resources, and sometimes self-governance agreements that are attached. That is called a comprehensive claim.

Then there is a specific claim. If there is a treaty in place but the treaty has not been followed specifically, there is a claim that an item in the treaty has not been followed and there is a grievance.

Regarding specific claims, which I will deal with first because they are the easiest, the government brought forward a good initiative, which all parties agreed with, to get specific claims into a tribunal and get them out of the old system. Basically two adversaries made a claim that something was done or not done. The judge, in essence, was one of those parties, and obviously that did not make any sense.

The new system for specific claims is very good. It has an independent arbiter get arguments from the two parties and then make a decision. That is a very good improvement, and it's a big step forward. It deals with thousands of those little specific annoyances. Many of the claims are small, but some of them have been backlogged for years and years. All parties agree that this should speed it up and deal with the problem.

With regard to the comprehensive claims, which are in lineups for years and years, a number of them are under negotiation. Once again, we have to make sure there is a fair system to deal with them that does not have them lost in the other business of the department, that there are enough resources that people are not waiting another generation to have their land claim and self-governance dealt with, that it is done in a fair manner and that there is some type of independent arbiter who actually makes the ultimate decision. Hopefully, we can move forward in that respect.

The last area is when there is a treaty, especially a modern treaty, and how we deal with the provisions to implement that. Having a land claim and a self-government agreement is not really the end of the road, as some people might think. It is actually the beginning of a great journey of governments together: the Canadian government; first nations governments; all aboriginal governments, Inuit and Métis. It is a starting point for a new government-to-government relationship. It is a living type of relationship; it is not set in stone. It has to evolve and unfold in good faith and in the spirit those agreements were signed so they can work and progress.

It does not matter how much legalese there is, nothing will work if the will is not there to make it work. To make it work changes have to be made, with modifications and provision of the resources and the good will to make them work.

In regard to some of the modern treaties that have been signed, there are a number of problems. The Auditor General has pointed them out. It is so significant that the first nations with modern treaties, many of them north of 60, have formed a land claims coalition, because their grievances are falling between the cracks. People think an agreement is signed and that is the end of it. Organizations and governments have other things on their plate and they forget that with these modern treaties the implementation process is not smooth, it is not financed, it is not finished. There is a lot of evolving to do and a lot of work to be done on the implementation.

It is pretty bad when so many hundreds of first nations people have to have an organization and conferences to try to bring their points and grievances to us. They need to be dealt with in good faith.

The funding amounts for these claims are not necessarily known on the first day the claim is signed. As an example, the negotiators in the Yukon claims, very wisely, put in a nine-year review period. They will go back after nine years and see that the money being transferred under the program services transfer agreements to each first nations government to run a program that was formerly run by the federal government is enough.

It was very wise that there would be a nine-year review. Unfortunately, just to use this as an example, we are now in the thirteenth year of the nine-year review. It should not take that long. They have done baseline studies, with both governments having officials involved, to study the gross expenditure base and exactly how much it takes to run those programs. It is time to get to the table to get those amounts resolved. As the member has said, the federal government has to provide a negotiator who will negotiate in good faith.

The point made to us is that over these many years, more years than it took to fight the first world war, the negotiators have constantly changed on the federal side and they came without a mandate from cabinet. These things are not going to make for progress.

Hopefully government officials have received that message over the last few weeks from the coalition and from our committee hearings, where we have dealt with this to some extent. I compliment the committee for bringing that topic up. I forget which member actually brought it up, but I commend that member for bringing it to all the members' attention.

Another example is that these particular modern agreements allow a first nations government to take on certain powers. That makes eminent sense. We have some great success stories of first nations delivering their own programs. Unfortunately, they seem to be endlessly roadblocked in taking on the powers that have been legislatively assigned to them.

We have one first nation that has been working on a particular power, and I do not want to point any fingers, for nine years now. The two world wars basically could have been fought in that time. That is to take on a simple power that is legislatively their right. Nothing should take that long. Maybe people have problems with the agreements, but we should have thought of that when we signed the agreements.

The agreements are laws. In fact they are stronger than the ordinary laws of the land, because they are constitutionally protected. The land claims, and in some cases the self-government agreements, are constitutionally protected, although not the Yukon agreements.

We have signed these agreements in good faith with the honour of the Crown. We should be implementing them in good faith. We should sit down, provide negotiators, hopefully with consistency, and with enough mandate and resources to come to an agreement so that first nations can take on these programs. I think we would all be pleasantly surprised, and we would benefit from the success stories that would evolve.

Some of these things in our history have not gone well. These new models obviously cannot be worse, and they could be great success stories for the country. There could actually be resource savings, for a lot of reasons I will not get into. Obviously it would save of a lot of human failure and lack of success stories. We would have new models that might work in those communities, if we simply put some spirit, some effort and some resources into the implementation of these claims.

I have had one member from my community suggest that we set up an independent commission, like the specific claims commission, to deal with some of these implementation problems, as opposed to having these negotiations go on forever. In fact it is funny that there would be a negotiation over something that is a right by law. Why do we not just have an independent decision and get on with it so these agreements can continue?

The bill we are talking about today is a good example of making a correction, but of course it took far too long. I know there are more grievances. A number of times in committee some administrative corrections were requested. I compliment the federal government. It seems to have committed that within a year the other details will be taken care of. We did not want to move forward until we got the assurance from the department that these other administrative improvements that need to be made in this area are going to be made.

The last point I want to make is that sometimes various departments of the federal government do not seem to be aware that when there is a relationship with another government of equal stature in certain areas, it is not just the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. These agreements are signed by Canada and a first nation. All the departments within the first nation have to abide by these agreements, but so do all the departments in the federal government.

If there is a responsibility to consult, as the last member spoke very eloquently about, it is not just the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development; it is the Government of Canada and all the departments. The Government of Canada has 50 or 60 departments and agencies. It is not only the department that can do things that could affect the rights of first nations, Inuit or Métis.

And just as a sideline, I hope the minister will give attention to the Yukon Métis association that met on the weekend and is looking for funding.

It is not just the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development that has to respect the responsibility to consult, because any other department or agency could do something that would impinge on the rights of aboriginal people. They have to be very aware that these modern treaties, which include a government-to-government relationship and a duty to consult, apply to all federal departments and agencies. I hope the officials who are listening from other departments will remember this and get up to speed.

It is a very complicated task, because there are a variety of agreements across the country that are all different. That is a benefit, because individuals and communities are different, but it also makes it complicated for administrators to know the responsibilities of the federal government and to deal in the honour of the Crown with each individual government and community.

It is a big task, but the progress being made in this bill is an example that the job can be done if everyone works together. For that reason I will be supporting this, and I will be looking for progress. Hopefully we will continue, as we do with specific claims in areas that still need to be dealt with, on comprehensive claims and the implementation of modern treaties.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my hon. colleague, who has done a tremendous amount of work with first nations communities.

The Senate is doing a review of the Indian Act in Manitoba and other parts of Canada right now. It is going to first nations communities and asking the question of whether the Indian Act impedes their ability to build their communities to become economically self-sufficient and viable.

My personal view is that the Indian Act should be scrapped and that consultations should take place with first nations communities to determine how a structure can take place in order to create a relationship that is going to be mutually beneficial and productive. Certainly the status quo actually hamstrings the ability of first nations communities to develop.

I know that with first nations in my riding of Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, chiefs and councils have a terrible time with development. In fact, they have four to five times the amount of red tape as non-aboriginal communities and people who want to develop their land.

I would like to ask my friend whether he thinks a good route forward is to consult with first nations communities and remove the shackles that impede the ability of first nations to develop their lands.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, that is a very interesting question about whether the Indian Act should stay or not. I will give two answers to it.

First, last week we had an interesting speaker in the parliamentary restaurant, a professor from the University of Ottawa, and I asked her specifically about the Indian Act. She said that there were a lot of bad things in it but that there also were a lot of dependencies, that it was a government department that actually came through with certain items for first nations and that it was their contact in government. She had sort of a mixed view. The point is that it would be a very complex task but it should be looked at.

The second answer relates to the land claims that we have had in Yukon. Once one has been through a modern treaty, a land claim and a self-government agreement, the Indian Act no longer applies. My personal opinion is that the evidence of that is like night and day as to the results of the success stories. I used to go around to these first nations bands and find a cabin, may or may not find a shack and may or may not find a band administrator and that was about it.

Now that those bands have self-government agreements and land claims, they have modernized buildings, a modernized bureaucracy and they are delivering their own programs. All governments are receiving less complaints about the programs because they are being delivered right there in their villages. Many of their people are no longer unemployed because they are the bureaucrats delivering the programs to their own people.

It is a long road but it is like night and day and a great success story, which is the reason I say we should get on with comprehensive claims with all the first nations that would like to do it.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to engage the member in a dialogue around this bill in the context of the upcoming anniversary of the annual day of reconciliation on June 11.

In Manitoba, we just held a day of healing and reconciliation this past Saturday where a clear message was sent to me and others that this place needs to offer more than an apology to the aboriginal people of Canada for the trauma of the residential school experience, and that we really need to be acting very specifically and concretely on initiatives that will deal with the hurt and the systemic inequalities that now exist in the first nations, aboriginal and Métis communities.

I would like to know from the member how he sees this bill fulfilling that promise and what else we need to do in this place to actually show we are serious about national healing and reconciliation.