Madam Speaker, it has been an honour to serve the residents of Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge and now Mission for going on seven years. I appreciate this role and take my responsibilities seriously.
Today is the first day of a fall session. I was a teacher for many years prior to being elected, and September is the start of a new school year, not only in elementary and high schools but also on campuses, with new sports programs, dance classes and many other activities. There is a sense of excitement among many students at the beginning of something new and getting involved. I want to wish students and teachers a successful and fulfilling year.
I have a confession to make. As we enter this fall session, I do not have the same excitement. As a matter of fact, I have a bit of a heavy heart over what has been happening in our beautiful country of Canada for the past years under the Liberal government and, I would also add, in my province of British Columbia under the NDP government. Millions of Canadians are struggling to make ends meet. They are feeling the cost of living squeeze at the grocery stores and gas pumps. Small business owners tell me they feel that the government is, in many respects, warring against them to make them unprofitable and increase regulatory and tax burdens. Canada has dropped like a rock in our ranking in per capita income compared to the rest of the world. I will not talk about crime in our communities or drugs on the streets.
However, I must give credit to the Liberals where credit is due. They are master illusionists. Has anyone ever seen a magician saw an attractive assistant in two, only for the assistant to appear whole, with the wave of a wand and the swoosh of a cape? How do magicians do it? It is a little easier now with AI to find out their secrets. The Liberals are masters of illusion. They give the appearance of doing things, tricking our eyes and minds, but it is an illusion. One and a half years ago, the Prime Minister talked about moving Canada forward at unimaginable speed on major infrastructure and economic projects and about the need to rapidly diversify. Things have been pretty stagnant on that front. They may be able to point to one or two different projects, but it has been very sluggish. They said lots of good-sounding words and talked about doubling housing that is going the wrong direction.
I asked my parliamentary assistant how many new bureaucracies and offices the Liberals have they formed since they have been in government, and he sent me a list. It came to almost 50. There are 48 announced to be funded and formed, layers and layers of bureaucracies weighing down taxpayers with more debt, more regulations, more paper shuffling and more delays. Therefore, when the Liberal government tells me that Bill C-10 will fix its relationship with indigenous peoples by adding a new bureaucracy, I have to ask a simple question: With what? When we open the box, there is nothing inside. We have tried this before.
As I asked in my question to the parliamentary secretary moments ago, between 2015 and 2017, the government created the modern treaty implementation office, the assessment of modern treaty implementation office, the performance management framework, the modern treaty management environment, the deputy minister's oversight committee and the reconciliation secretariat, six separate entities specifically designed to monitor, support and ensure treaty implementation. At this rate, I have to ask: How many government offices does it take to change a light bulb? Apparently, it is six, or I guess seven now. After six offices and committees and layers of bureaucracy, the light bulb is still out.
It is a bureaucracy and a government that have run amok. In 2024, the Auditor General again reported that the federal system remains fragmented, bureaucratic and unaccountable. Responsibility is scattered across Indigenous Services Canada, Crown-Indigenous Relations, Justice Canada and the Treasury Board.
When commitments go unfulfilled, no one is accountable, not politically, not financially, not morally. It is like it is their fault. Adding a commissioner does not change culture or performance. Only enforcement, accountability and clear expectations can. The government's response is what we have in the bill, to create yet another agency to monitor implementation.
Success should not be measured in bureaucratic reports. It should be measured in results on the ground, homes, water, policing, infrastructure, governance and economic opportunities. A commissioner will not build a house. A commissioner will not hire a police officer. A commissioner will not deliver clean water.
The Liberal philosophy is that Ottawa always knows best, that Ottawa must monitor, that Ottawa must supervise. The Liberals want to teach from above instead of supporting from beside. Bill C-10 is the purest expression of that instinct. Indigenous communities do not need a commissioner. The government needs a mirror. Its record is damning. The government has had 11 years to act. In that time, how many new modern treaties has it delivered? The answer is zero. That is a fact.
In contrast, the Conservative government, under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, without all these extra bureaucracies, produced five modern treaties in six years. This is not a question of capacity or goodwill. It can be done and it has to be done. The government knows it has failed indigenous people, and it knows that the Auditor General has told it so, not once, not twice, but repeatedly. There is the 2005 report on treaty land entitlements, the 2006 report on the B.C. treaty process, the 2013 audit of modern treaty implementation, the 2016 report on the Labrador and Inuit Land Claims Agreement. There have been more than 14 reports since 2015, covering housing, clean water and treaty implementation, more than two decades of road maps.
Instead of following the map, the government got lost in its own maze of offices, titles and press conferences. While it wandered in the wilderness, communities have suffered. Treaty rights have not been honoured. Fiscal transfers have been delayed. Infrastructure has crumbled. Policing was underfunded and housing has been inadequate.
In 2023, the government even proposed a collaborative modern treaty implementation policy. That sounded like progress, especially with 70 treaty negotiations bogged down. Two years later, nothing has been implemented. We do not need another report telling us that the government has failed. We already know that.
I ask the House how a future commissioner of modern treaty implementation would magically motivate the government to finish the work. It would not. The problem has never been a lack of oversight. The problem is a lack of execution, a lack of political will and a lack of ministerial accountability. There are some alternatives. I will maybe get to that in my responses to some questions. I will say that we already have the courts. We have the Auditor General. We already have parliamentary committees, deputy ministers, performance frameworks and internal audits. The government does not need another reminder that it is failing to do its job.
Over 100,000 public servants have been added since 2015, with $20 billion a year spent on external consultants. We have a public service that is larger than ever, a public service more ineffective in every respect. Faced with that failure, the Liberal answer is always the same, one more office, just one more commissioner and just one more structure. Actually, it is not just one more. The Liberals are going a dime a dozen. It is the illusion of action.
