Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague's remarks this morning, as I did with preceding speakers.
For the record I will read the subject of the motion the Reform Party put forward today and then talk about the hon. minister's objection to it and why that is. In part it states:
That the House urge the government to not enter into any binding trilateral aboriginal treaty or land claim agreements in B.C. in the last year of the current provincial government mandate.
The hon. minister said that for the federal government to do that would be insulting. I find that strange and more than a little contradictory because it is the same government that had no problem in arguing quite successfully that the EH-101 helicopter purchase which the Tory government had entered into was not right and we should not be doing that as a nation, that we should not be spending the money on that.
It argued the Pearson airport deal was not right because it was entered into in the dying days of the Mulroney administration and should be cancelled.
It does not find that insulting, to back out of commitments made by previous governments. Yet for some reason the hon. minister seemed to think today it would be insulting the government of British Columbia to insist that we do not enter into any trilateral agreements with B.C. and the natives of British Columbia in the
dying days of that administration. I find it more than a bit puzzling and I wonder if my hon. colleague would care to remark on that.
I note with interest that the hon. minister spent almost his entire 20 minutes bashing Reformers for being aboriginal bashers. I find that puzzling. That type of name calling and labelling is nothing new for Reformers. We have been labelled that and subject to those types of attacks right from the very beginning when we started our party. We are going to insist on carrying forward sensible arguments on this and other issues, even if they are non-politically correct arguments, regardless of how we are attacked or how often ministers openly attack us in the House.
Would the hon. member care to remark on what he has done. One of the things we have heard this morning is that the public is not well enough informed and the expectations of the native people have been raised. What about the awareness? What has this member actually done in British Columbia to bring to the attention of all British Columbians what is happening?