Bill C-27 (Historical)

First Nations Financial Transparency Act

An Act to enhance the financial accountability and transparency of First Nations

This enactment enhances the financial accountability and transparency of First Nations.

First Nations Financial Transparency Act

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the first nations live in Canada as if they were in a third world country, when it comes to access to drinking water, decent housing and something as simple as an elementary school.

In our wealthy and prosperous country, according to Conservative criteria, we accept that a community lives in third world conditions.

I would like the member for Laval to explain how the management rules to be imposed on first nations will change their economic and social status.

Will they at last have the schools they are entitled to or will they have to fill out administrative forms?

[José Nunez-Melo, NDP, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin for his question.

I am not in a position at all to say how this bill could be beneficial to first nations. As he just explained very clearly, they already live in conditions worthy of third world countries, which today are called developing countries.

They have very limited resources and, in addition, they are expected to behave like a nation with its own efficient public service. In fact, they have such limited resources that management is not very complex. And they are generally very well managed.

Imposing a burden of useless and arbitrary red tape just makes management more difficult. They will have to spend their resources on that instead of addressing the crying need of their people for schools and infrastructure.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this House is discussing a bill of surprising relevance. In theory, a government should work in collaboration with the first nations in order to improve governance—not just administration, but the results obtained. It should not use administrative obligations as a weapon to silence anyone. Unions, environmental groups, charitable organizations, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Rights and Democracy, and Development and Peace are all facing administrative roadblocks, some of them so huge that the organizations may disappear.

The Conservatives have eliminated funding for institutions that support governance, for instance the First Nations Statistical Institute and the National Centre for First Nations Governance and, to top it off, they are preventing many young aboriginals from getting a post-secondary education. This is a case of giving someone orders but taking away the resources needed to carry them out. It is Machiavellian. It is demoralizing to give a person an order but make it impossible to carry it out.

The minister’s power to withhold payment of any money due to a first nation or to cancel any agreement concerning grants or contributions to a first nation if all requirements have not been fulfilled is a truly excessive penalty. It turns a person’s ability to fill in an administrative form into a matter of life or death, although the form changes absolutely nothing about the service provided.

There is no mention of social housing. There is nothing about health care. Public education is missing. There is nothing about running water. In short, the means needed to overcome poverty are not there. However, there are administrative rules. This is a huge defect. It will do nothing to relieve the problems of infrastructure, but administrative rules will be imposed—the kind of rules the Conservatives themselves do not obey. They have eliminated the obligation on polluters to respond to environmental assessments. In terms of navigable waters, they have slashed so much that 95% of our bodies of water are no longer protected by the law.

On one hand, some people who no longer have to fill out forms in order to carry out a project get preferential treatment, while people the government does not like get no such favours. More red tape is added, lots more. For a government that claims it wants to eliminate red tape, it is creating a lot. It is generous with red tape for its adversaries, but not for its friends. It is a double standard.

If we apply administrative rules rigorously, then we set up a rule and apply it to everyone. That is what is called GRAP--generally recognized accounting practices. First nations, unions and businesses are applying them already, but the Conservatives have decided to use their imagination when dealing with their ideological adversaries.

We in the NDP believe that the changes in first nations financial statements do not require a law. It could be covered in the requirements under the financing agreements the minister signs with each first nation.

In short, the solution to the problem they claim to see is already there. If they have some problems now and then, the solution already exists.

They show up with their horror stories and generalize from a few back-page news items, when this government already has the solution but is not applying it. Why is it not applying it? That is an interesting question.

In one of her last reports, the Auditor General said the government was inundating the first nations with administrative problems and forms to fill out and it did not even have the staff to check them. That is the height of futility. People are being asked to fill out administrative forms and threatened with financial cuts if they do not fill them out, when there is no administrative infrastructure in place to check the reports. And the government claims to be a good manager. It is actually amazing that the country has not gone bankrupt yet.

It is quite something. The Auditor General and her senior officials gave the government instructions, but it is not listening and it is looking around for something else. It hears some back-page story, it generalizes from it, and it comes in with a club, a coercive law, and a means of eliminating a problem that does not exist. The law already gives the department the means to remedy any impropriety in first nations funding. The means exist. Why is the government not using it?

If a member of the first nations embezzles funds, the Criminal Code is available. All it takes is a phone call to the RCMP to report a theft, a fraud, or problems with management or administration. The department already has flying squads to help people deal with these administrative difficulties.

The department is getting craftier; it does not have flying squads of public servants anymore: it has consultants. It has big accounting firms that come in and tell it they are going to teach it, for a fee, how it should manage itself and deal with the administrative forms it demands. I presume that some day it is maybe going to think of hiring these accounting firms to audit the administrative reports it has demanded. That will be interesting to see.

Obviously, the problems it is facing have nothing to do with the sponsorship scandal. Let us talk about that scandal. The government has been very quick to bring in a bill to deal with these back-page cases. But the Gomery report, which called for a solution in relation to the sponsorship scandal, has still not been implemented to prevent a repeat of the sponsorship scandal.

What it comes down to is that we are faced with threats for which the government does not want to apply solutions. And for problems that do not exist, it invents solutions that are worse than the problem itself. The little bit of money that it might save has nothing to do with the orgy of spending on accountants and consultants that it is going to take to administer this legislation.

Instead of dealing with the real problems facing first nations communities, this bill contributes nothing. And that is disgraceful.

For all these reasons, the NDP will be opposing a bill that produces nothing, a bill that is typical of the government and serves only one purpose: to impose constraints on an adversary.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development]

Mr. Speaker, I will say at the outset that I reject the member's remarks with respect to Conservatives favouring or disfavouring any particular group. I have spent a lifetime working with these communities, and I think he should do the right thing and take those words back.

Whether we are talking about the Parliament of Canada Act, the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act or Manitoba's Public Sector Compensation Disclosure Act, these are examples of the kinds of legislation that make it necessary for government to declare its salaries and expenses to the people to whom it answers. That is what this bill is about. It is about re-establishing the relationship, based on complaints from grassroots first nations community members to their government, and posting what the governments already produce.

That might be too complicated for the member to understand, but I want him to go on record and say if he is telling this place that he does not stand for the countless first nations community members who came forward and had been under duress at certain points in their community forums to simply ask for the disclosure of their audited consolidated financial statements and notes, which reflect the salaries and expenses. Is he saying he does not stand for any level of government? As he said, there should be one rule for everyone. That sounds as if this rule levels the playing field. What is he talking about?

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, for someone who has worked with first nations for a long time, I find the member especially insensitive to their present material welfare.

With this bill, I would have expected that someone who says he wants to work with first nations had actually worked with them. As for good governance, first nations have solutions and they have submitted them to the government. So has the auditor general.

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh!

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I can hear my colleague, but I have the floor. He can ask me a supplementary question later if he wants.

The leaders essentially agree to be accountable for their financial obligations to their constituents. They even proposed that a special auditor general be assigned to first nations, and also the establishment of an ombudsman. There are solutions.

As for the abuses you are talking about, I would suggest you call the RCMP. These days, the Conservatives are afraid they will be arrested if they call the RCMP. That is your problem, not ours. Solutions do exist, such as generally accepted accounting principles. You guys across the aisle do not understand that.

[The Deputy Speaker]

I would remind members to direct their comments through the Chair rather than directly to other members.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, who is one of the hardest working members of Parliament. His speech was so good, witty and full of facts that it went over the member for Kenora's head. It was too intelligent for him.

Could my colleague please comment on the fact that the current Conservative government is possibly the least accountable and transparent in Canadian history? I would like my colleague to comment on the government's irresponsibility.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the government is refusing to give the Parliamentary Budget Officer the information he is entitled to. By denying an officer of Parliament that right, the government is denying all Canadians the right to receive information about government spending.

We do not know how much some people working in the Prime Minister's Office actually earn. We do not know what cuts will be made and what services will be eliminated as a result. The Conservatives do not want more clarity: they only want to silence their opponents.

Bill C-27—Notice of time allocation motion

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, first nations of course have asked for greater accountability and transparency from their governments, and we believe that first nations, like all Canadians, deserve transparency and accountability from their elected officials.

Thus I must advise that an agreement has not been reached under the provisions of Standing Order 78(1) or 78(2) concerning the proceedings at report stage and third reading of Bill C-27, An Act to enhance the financial accountability and transparency of First Nations.

Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the Crown will propose, at the next sitting, a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings at those stages.

Report Stage

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I thank everyone here who is supporting my speech. I speak to a very difficult bill that the government has brought forward, Bill C-27, ostensibly called a “transparency act”, but really it is another colonial act. That is what the bill is about. We have a bill that speaks to a very small segment of society that considers first nations to have extreme problems with accountability. It demands a system of accountability that is really unacceptable, that would not meet the needs of first nations and that would impose a burden that would, in some cases, put first nations at a disadvantage with other Canadians.

The bill would force first nations who are still under the Indian Act to publicly post their financial statements of any moneys provided to chiefs and band councillors regardless of where it is earned, including reimbursements for out-of-pocket expenses, its auditors' reports on financial statements and its auditors' reports on moneys paid to chiefs and council, and to make these available on a website for a period of 10 years. All this information is already accessible to band members through the Department of Aboriginal Affairs by request. This information is available to those who want it and they make use of that service, from what we were told, upwards of 150 to 200 times a year. I do not know if that is every year or in particular years, but out of the 600 or so bands, that is the volume of requests put forward.

Once we took the bill to committee, even those who supported it said that there needed to be amendments. There were a few major supporters within the first nations who took the position of the government and said they wanted it. They made that choice. However, by and large, the majority of first nations people understood and recognized that this was not the way to do business and that this was not government to government. When the minister was in front of us I asked him whether he considers the relationship between the federal government and the band councils in Canada to be government to government. He agreed with me. He said that it is. Hence, the hypocrisy of the bill, which would treat first nations people as wards of the state.

In the Northwest Territories, another government that is set up by a bill of this Parliament, the NWT Act, the NWT government gets to choose how it discloses information. That applies to Nunavut as well as to the Yukon. We have a situation here where the government agrees it is a government to government relationship, yet it will not treat the first nations in the same fashion that it treats others. We have equality in this country. We have equality as a guiding principle of this country and the Conservatives seem to take that and ignore it.

There is a hypocrisy issue here as well because quite clearly the current government has been one of the most secretive governments in the history of Canada. International agencies that monitor access to information have taken us from fourth place in the world to 52nd place in our ability to access information from the government. In terms of the information that is given, when the Conservative government came to power, the average redaction of information was 15%. Fifteen per cent of the items that the government released to the public was redacted. It is now 47%. Why? Has the nature of government changed so much? Has secrecy become so important?

If it is so important for the Conservatives, why would they insist that first nation governments would have to show everything to everyone in this country on a website for every nitpicker in the country to look at. Everyone with a grudge against first nations could go there and go through their dirty laundry to look for something. That is what the government wants to do to first nations. That is what it is doing with the bill. What a shame.

The government could have, through incentives to first nations, enabled them to develop their own information systems. Many have. Many of the first nations that came in front of us said, “Look, here is the work that we have done. Here is how we disclose our information. We are proud of it. We did this ourselves”.

What does the government do? It slaps it on everyone. How is that government to government? Shame on the government. Shame on it for not treating first nations in a respectful fashion. That is the problem we had in Canada for 100 years. I thought we were trying to get over this problem of treating first nations with little respect. After signing treaties with them, after taking over their land, when are we going to treat them with respect?

Let us talk about the Conservative government for a while, because the bill is going to pass and we are going to end up in a situation where the first nations are going to have wait three years to get this fixed. Right now, the government has done very bad things with respect to accountability and transparency.

One of the first acts by the government was to create the office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, saying this would make the government more accountable. Since that day, the government has denied information, delayed the release of information and demeaned the PBO. Most recently, the PBO has had to threaten court action to get the information he needs to provide parliamentarians with the facts we need to properly review Conservative budgets and other financial statements. This is a public government, open to every citizen of the country, unlike first nations, which are governments for specific groups of people in this country. We have a responsibility as a public government to release information to all and sundry.

When it comes to the environment, the Conservative government has shut down investigation into climate change, taken out the Experimental Lakes Area, closed Arctic research centres and has muzzled scientists from speaking in public. What is going on? What is it about science that Conservatives feel the rest of the Canadians should not know? What is it about science that the government wants to hide from us?

That is a question that perhaps we will get in the next election. That is when the Canadian public will actually decide what information they want. There is the F-35 auditor's report and the handling of the Auditor General's report. In his first report as Auditor General, Michael Ferguson said the Department of National Defence gambled on the F-35 fighter jet without running a fair competition, while lacking cost certainty or any guarantee the plane could replace the current fleet of CF-18s by the end of the decade. He went on to talk about business conducted in an uncoordinated fashion by federal departments.

What did the government do? First it said his information was all wrong, after refusing to release the information he requested. Then it tried to shut committee meetings in this boondoggle. The final attempt by the Conservative government to hide the truth has been to delay the release of the public accounts committee report looking into the debacle. These are hardly the actions of a government that supports accountability and transparency.

I could go on for quite a long time about the inadequacy of the government when it comes to accountability and transparency. The Canadian public would probably enjoy hearing about all the issues we have with that. I could talk about robocalls, the impact of the health care transfer cuts to the provinces, the cost of the ideological prison agenda or election financing schemes, but I would be here all day and I only have 30 seconds.

For the Conservatives to say that the single biggest issue for first nations people, many of whom live in third world poverty, is the need for accountability beyond what they do already is real hypocrisy.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Western Arctic knows this topic very well. He has always been a good advocate for first nations. I am really proud of him.

I have seen the numbers. The different aboriginal administrations right now table more than 60,000 reports with the ministry of aboriginal affairs. That is 165 reports every day that these administrations have to give to the minister. Right now the government has no shame. It has the nerve to tell us that there is no accountability and there is not enough transparency when it is already drowning in bureaucracy and paperwork.

I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on that subject.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, the issue surrounding the paperwork that first nations are required to produce is really extraordinary. These governments are being hobbled in their work by the federal government and by the aboriginal affairs bureaucracy. There is no doubt about that. That goes on with respect to every single issue that these people work on. It requires massive change. It is not a question of stupidly increasing the accountability provisions as is happening with this legislation. It is about coming to an understanding of how governments can be accountable in good fashion.

There is so much to do for first nations. They have so much promise and potential and they are being held back tremendously by the rules that run their lives.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is important for us to emphasize the fact that many first nation leaders are advocating for more financial accountability and transparency. That is nothing new. It is not as if the Government of Canada is saying that there has to be transparency and first nation leadership is saying no to transparency. That is not happening. It was recognized in small part in the Kelowna accord where first nations led the arguments as to whether there should be a first nations auditor general who would provide accountability and so forth. I would not want people to get the impression that first nation leadership is outright rejecting the whole issue of financial accountability and transparency because that is not the case.

The case today is why the government failed to consult and work with first nation leadership to come up with how best to deal with the issue of accountability and transparency. Would the member not agree?