Mr. Speaker, my deepest appreciation to my colleagues from the Bloc. I really appreciate that.
We are debating Bill C-33 today. It is probably appropriate, and it would be the best possible direction to take on the bill, to draw some comparisons between Bill C-33 and Bill C-16.
I know the Yukon natives involved in the negotiation of Bill C-33 overwhelmingly support the bill. There is no doubt about that. It appears that they would be more than satisfied with this settlement. However I believe that we as parliamentarians, as duty bound by the people of the country, would be more than negligent, as have past parties in the House, if we did not address some of the problems contained within Bill C-33.
Certainly my colleagues and I in the Reform Party are most willing to entertain the concepts of aboriginal self-sufficiency and aboriginal self-determination, but only in situations and only under the clear focus that aboriginal people or the Yukon natives will come to a position of self-sufficiency within Canadian society.
Most unfortunately Bill C-33 does not address that focus. Bill C-33 like Bill C-16 calls for more bureaucracy, large settlement moneys, continued DIAND participation in programs, financial assistance and future negotiation for self-government. The bureaucracy possible within the agreement is very extensive.
We in the Reform Party greatly fear that as we proceed along the path to establishing land claims and aboriginal self-government the bureaucracy will create such an expensive and complex deterrent to the goal of self-sufficiency. It is necessary to address that.
I want to look at Bill C-33 for a moment and talk about the package itself. There are some 8,000 Yukon Indians in Yukon out of a total population of 32,000 people. They will be conveyed collectively ownership of some 16,000 square miles or 41,400 square kilometres of land, 10,000 square miles of which include all subsurface rights and the remaining 6,000 square miles of which include some subsurface rights.
In addition, the federal government will pay some $242.6 million in cash and the Yukon First Nations will receive rental revenues from surface leases, royalties and development of non-renewable resources. Yukon First Nations will also receive a preferential share in wildlife harvesting, exclusive harvesting over most of their settlement lands, and 70 per cent of their trap lines will be located in the larger traditional territories.
On top of all this, under the bill all existing government programs for natives and non-natives will continue to apply. How could we have a focus on arriving at a settlement for land
claims if coupled with that settlement are promises for continued future federal funding?
The object of settling land claims is to break the dependency of the native people upon the federal government. We want to give them the opportunity to become self-sufficient. As my hon. colleague talked about this morning, we cannot break that dependency cycle if we continue to give money and funding to a person or a group such as the Yukon natives. That dependency cycle has to be broken. The goal has to be self-sufficiency. To include in the agreement the same federal funding that exists now is no incentive to create self-sufficiency.
Another area of concern is that although Bill C-33 has come to the House for debate, and certainly we in the Reform Party welcome the debate, the other 10 land claim agreements spoken about in the bill and yet to be negotiated need only be approved by order in council. In other words, we will not be given the opportunity in the House to debate those land claim settlements. We are talking about thousands of square miles of land and hundreds of millions of dollars in funding. Surely the people paying the bill, the taxpayers of the country, have a right to be represented in the House by members who debate the good points and the bad points of the bill.
The bill guarantees that future land claims under Bill C-33 would be negotiated in the offices that we cannot get to. I believe Canadian taxpayers deserve more than that. We are trusted by them. We were elected and sent here by them to look after their affairs. This is certainly something of major concern to Canadians.
I want to talk about the constitutional entrenchment. By virtue of clause 6 of the bill the rights contained in the land claim agreements are recognized and affirmed under section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. We are very uncertain as to what this means and we are relatively certain that the government is uncertain as to what this means. It may mean these rights are not amendable except by constitutional amendment or, at the very least, without the concurrence of the first nation involved.
This would mean that these rights are beyond the reach of ordinary future parliamentary amendment. This adds the element of finality to them that does not sit well for changing future circumstances. The circumstances are changing all the time. In our Constitution we have the mechanism to make amendments, to be able to change our Constitution with the times. Bill C-33 in our opinion does not provide for changes to meet future circumstances which may appear. Quite frankly we think the government displays a tremendous amount of arrogance to lock in forever today's government policy. The constitutional entrenchment causes a lot of concern.
I spoke about the comparison between Bill C-33 and Bill C-16. I talked about the boards, the commissions and the councils. Bill C-33 would formally constitute five more government boards and two government councils referred to in the various land claim agreements. Presumably most, if not all, of the functions of these new bodies are presently performed by the facilities of the Yukon and federal governments. Is there a need for more regulatory bodies, support staff and bureaucracy on top of what is already in place?
Clause 9(4) constitutes still more boards, commissions and councils that may be referred in future land claim agreements. As I stated, the bureaucracy concerned in Bill C-16 is predominantly present in Bill C-33. This is not the way to get best value for our dollars.
The government has talked about downsizing government, downsizing departments and downsizing the way government runs so that it can be more cost effective. The government, the Reform Party and the Official Opposition have been talking about downsizing, becoming more efficient and more cost effective.
Bill C-33 goes exactly in the opposite direction. It calls for a larger bureaucracy, a larger government, more costs and less cost effectiveness. This is an area in which the government has done a flip-flop if it believes in downsizing. It has done a complete about turn.
I want to talk for a moment about the transfer of full ownership. The implementation of full ownership of the property has gone far beyond what any court in Canada has found to constitute aboriginal title. No court in Canada of which I am aware has decided that an aboriginal interest in land goes so far as to entitle aboriginal people to fee simple or full ownership. At best our courts have found the meaning of aboriginal rights and title to include those traditional activities carried on by native communities prior to colonial contact. These include hunting, fishing, et cetera.
These rights have been characterized by the courts as not, strictly speaking, being interest in land but all special rights unique to the native people. This represents a cloud on the crown's title. The courts have gone on to say that the cloud can be removed by the exercise of crown sovereignty through legislation that has a clear intention to remove the aboriginal interest.
There is a challenge to the aboriginal land claims presently in the court of B.C. It is a challenge to a ruling by Chief Justice McEachern in which his decision was that there was no valid legal basis for the land claim in question. The fact the government now proposes to bypass an undecided court ruling by means of Bill C-33, a ruling that is still under appeal, causes a lot of concern for us.
I said that the focus of land claims should be on the eventuality of self-sufficiency for the aboriginal people. No one can deny that every Canadian wants to see that come about. It will
not come about until the aboriginal peoples of the country are given an opportunity and the dependency cycle would be broken.
In other words, we have no problem with settling land claims with aboriginal people whatsoever. We have a problem with the inclusion in land claim settlements that government funding would continue exactly as always. This is an area of concern. I urge the government to do the right thing: to help aboriginal people become self-sufficient.
The government has the power to break the dependency cycle. That is what it should be doing. It is like when I was trying to teach my children the value of becoming independent and responsible for their own lives. What if I had continued giving them everything they wanted without asking them to take responsibility and to begin to understand what it means to strive and to work and the value of education to make themselves more independent? If I had not done that they would be still dependent on me and, quite frankly, at the age my sons are I am looking forward to the time when they will be independent of me. That is what I have been striving for. That is what the government has to do in connection with these land claims. They have to break the dependency cycle.
I strongly want to urge members of the House to focus on that. Let us not be swayed by the emotional part of this whole native issue. Let us focus on what should result out of this process. The aboriginal people should have the opportunity to become self-sufficient. Let us break the dependency cycle. Let us not make agreements or contracts that will drive a wedge further between Canadian society and the aboriginal people. Let us seek to tear down the barriers that exist and that does not mean continuing to fund native programs forever and ever.