Mr. Speaker, the hon. member raises a complicated issue. The first part of the issue concerns the governance of the country. He is saying that his sense of the political process in British Columbia or that of observers is that the present government lacks credibility.
I do not disagree the present government in British Columbia is in political difficulty. We live in a process whereby that government was elected for a certain term and has certain obligations to serve the people of British Columbia. This is not a new policy that has been brought forward. The argument would stand better both with the public and with the political process if this were some radical departure the present government was proposing, if it were something in the extreme. That is not what is happening.
The commission has been put in place to take the venom out of the process and to get the negotiations moving along. There is no guarantee they will be completed before the government changes, but the process must be allowed to continue.
To use the present government's unpopularity as a pretext to end what has been a long, extended historical process, which for some people has been going on for 40 years, would be unfair to the aboriginal peoples. It would be disrespectful to the political process of the country.
Sometimes in parliamentary debate we exchange views about one another, but I am sure the hon. member would be very unhappy if I were to stand and say that the polls indicated that the Reform Party has x per cent and therefore nothing he says in the House is to have any credibility. The member was elected. He has a right to speak.
That government was elected to do a job. It is doing its job. There is no sense that it will necessarily complete it but we must continue the process. We have a democratically elected process in the country that has established a mechanism by which we are finally seeing some chance for the resolution of these enormously complex, difficult and important social issues.
I for one would like to see the process continue and to see a peaceful resolution achieved. That is why I find it very difficult to accept the basic premise under which the motion has been moved.