Madam Chair, the greatest mark of respect we can show towards indigenous communities is to call things by their name and define them well.
I am surprised to see that the Liberals will often express great intentions, but when it comes to making them a reality, taking concrete action, that fades away.
The definition proposed in the bill by Liberal MP Bill Casey is that “Aboriginal cultural property” involves “objects of historical, social, ceremonial or cultural importance to the Aboriginal peoples of Canada.” This seems to me to be a rather broad and inclusive definition.
I come back to what I was saying earlier: there are objects that are outside Canada and others that are here in Canada.
I come again to the proposed definition of an “object of historical, social, ceremonial or cultural importance to the Aboriginal peoples of Canada”. What the Canadian Museum of History is asking us to consider is whether the object is kept in collections outside Canada or in public collections in Canada.
We see that there is a distinction between collections that are held outside Canada and collections that are held in Canada. If the law applies to objects kept in Canada, it is recommended that we write a more complex, dense text than a summary may contain.
The museum told us that consultation with senior officials of the Department of Justice and with Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada is strongly recommended, as the current wording has important implications, particularly with respect to negotiations on comprehensive land claims between Canada and indigenous peoples, self-government negotiations and individual constitutional rights to private property.
We are therefore talking about rights recognized in the Constitution, individual rights to private property.
It is also important to note that, in the definition of “indigenous cultural property”, we have not yet considered what has been raised several times by witnesses, in other words, human remains.
In this regard, the inclusion of ceremonial objects and human remains is consistent with Article 12(2) of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, to which Canada is a signatory.
Madam Chair, one element that seems fundamental to us, and that is raised in the brief presented to us yesterday, is that it is important that the legislation apply only to public collections so that it doesn't infringe the rights of persons who own a private collection. I would remind you that we didn't have time to read the brief or the opportunity to propose amendments related to the recommendations of what I call the “heritage guardians”.
There are important issues at stake, Madam Chair. I remind you that we are open to the spirit of the bill, but we want it to be done well. We don't want to end up with what I would call “a bill that has been emasculated from its very essence”, for example, by removing the fundamental definition of what constitutes indigenous cultural property. Instead, we want to come up with a bill that provides a good framework for what we want to do. We want to give communities the opportunity to repatriate their cultural property, but taking into account the legal context and rights that are enshrined in the Constitution.
In this regard, we cannot support a proposal to remove a definition. On the contrary, this definition must be much more elaborate.
Madam Chair, I hope you will tell me how I should proceed, once we have debated this amendment, to ensure that we can have more time, really, to read the recommendations that have been submitted to us, not only by the Canadian Museum of History, but also by a museum in British Columbia.
There are important elements to consider. We don't want to rush the work, which is why it seems essential to us to have more time.