Mr. Speaker, the member for Broadview-Greenwood talked about many different issues.
With regard to the surface rights board although it is designed to operate solely within the Yukon with two sets of representatives designated by the Yukon Indians as well as by the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, the whole concept of the board is that it will be paid for from federal funds. This is a particularly obnoxious part of the bill.
If we want to give this board long term stability and something that is locally responsive, then I firmly believe we need to ensure those groups that are benefiting from the existence of the board are the ones who are paying for it. I would not mind having a response to that comment.
Additionally, when we talk about northern communities, it is very important to recognize that Whitehorse is a very modern community. It contains 90 per cent of the population of the Yukon. There are 25,000 people, a modern airport, modern highways, modern housing. It has many more facilities than equivalent or smaller sized communities in my province of British Columbia. When I was in Whitehorse this summer I had a tremendous golf game. We cannot treat these communities and these areas as somehow being subject to a whole different set of rules than communities south of 60, certainly not in the case of the Yukon. That is my belief.
There was also a statement that everybody in the Yukon supports this bill. As we know, this bill flows from Bill C-33 and Bill C-34 that went through the House earlier this year. The member for Broadview-Greenwood knows very well how the Reform caucus felt about those bills. Bill C-55 is required as companion legislation in order to implement Bills C-33 and 34, even though they have already received royal assent.
At the time of considering Bills C-33 and C-34 we were given that very same statement that everybody in the Yukon supported those two bills. As a matter of fact everybody in the Yukon did not support those bills but certainly the filtered message we received in Ottawa was that everybody in the Yukon supported those two bills.
Given that Bills C-33 and C-34 have already received royal assent and we are currently looking only at Bill C-55, the degree of support in the Yukon is to just get on with business. It is a much higher degree of support. I am the first one to admit that is the case, but I did not want to holus-bolus let that remark slip by without making a comment on it.