Mr. Speaker, about a month ago I rose to speak on Bill C-16, the Sahtu land claim.
At that time I told the House we were setting a very dangerous precedent and we are following along the same footsteps today. Bill C-33 gives two square miles of deeded land per person in this land claim. Just to put this into perspective, my family has a farm in northwestern Alberta. We have two square miles of land that we farm and it has supported a family of six people. If we were to work this out, two square miles per person comes to twelve sections of land per person.
Let us put this into perspective for a moment. When my family came to Canada in 1869 from England they got 205 acres. We are talking about 12,000 acres here. This is a lot of land. I think it sets a very dangerous precedent.
In the Peace River riding I have six land claims that have not been settled that we want to move forward. It seems to me that every land claim that is settled we start to build and build on it at a time when Canada has a major debt and deficit.
I wonder if the government has given some thought to the implications of how this is going to play out in all the land claims settlements throughout the country. Thirty-five thousand dollars roughly per person in this particular land claim settlement using the model again of a family of six represents $200,000 plus twelve square miles of land.
I have to ask the question, where do we go from here? We have a lot of land claims in the province of British Columbia that are coming up. Are we going to be borrowing more money from places like Japan and the United States to pay out on land claims? We have to think very carefully of the cost of what we are doing here and the precedent we are setting.