Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise again in the House to address this resolution. However, the motion has no thought behind it and therefore gives no idea of its consequences. I do not even know why we are entertaining such a motion. I honestly feel that we are not doing our job here debating it.
This motion, as it is written, goes against the very democratic fabric of Canadian society. Basically it asks the federal government to stop doing business with a duly elected majority provincial government. If we were to stop conducting business with the current government in British Columbia we would be insulting the majority of British Columbians who voted for this government.
Perhaps this is not the intent of the motion. Perhaps the intent of the motion is even more appalling. Perhaps the opposition party does not want the government to continue doing business with the duly elected government in British Columbia and not do business with the aboriginal people in British Columbia.
What is it we are debating here? Are we debating whether the provincial government has a valid mandate or are we debating a motion based on race? If race is the issue, perhaps we can ask the hon. members of the opposition if they have any particular wishes regarding Sikhs in British Columbia, the Chinese people in B.C. or other minority groups, or are they just willing to continue this debate on aboriginal people in B.C.?
I might remind hon. members that the negotiations to create the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan were conducted in 1904, four years into the mandate of the second Laurier government. Would the hon. member have wanted these talks to be put on hold because the federal government was facing an election the next year? The second world war began four years into the mandate of Mackenzie King in 1935. Did Parliament say that it could not get involved because the Prime Minister had to go to the polls? In 1956, the last year of the St. Laurent government, the UN emergency force was created, thanks to the work of Lester Pearson. He won the Nobel prize for his efforts.
If the hon. member for North Island-Powell River had been sitting in the House back then he would have said: "I object. Canada cannot enter into such an important international commitment, not with just one year left in the government's mandate".
Let us look at the history of treaty negotiations with the aboriginal peoples. Treaty 7 was signed in 1877. The Macdonald government had been in office since January 1874. It faced an election. It would come in the fall of 1878. Was there any question then that the government had no mandate to sign? Of course not.
Treaty No. 8 was signed in 1899 when the Laurier government had been in office for three years. It would go to the polls the following year.
In our time, the James Bay agreement was signed a year before the end of the Quebec Liberal government.
Would the hon. member for North Island-Powell River be prepared to defer his authority on votes on issues that come before the House because the other parties in his constituency have not nominated their candidates yet or have nominated them but there has not been an election yet? Of course he would not.
Let us not hear any more self-righteousness from the Reform Party with its claims that it speaks for the people. The people elected the hon. member for North Island-Powell River on October 25, 1993, just as the people of Sault Ste. Marie elected me to come here.
Why have a Parliament at all? Why not just have an office where public pollsters send their findings to the bureaucrats? If that is the argument of the hon. member for North Island-Powell River, I invite him to give up his seat, go back home, take up his old job and do something worth while.
The First Nations in British Columbia have waited 200 years to reach agreements. Most have never had an opportunity to sign an agreement outlining their rights. That is an historic anomaly in Canada which the Liberal government inherited from the leader of the Reform Party of B.C. He was a minister in the Social Credit government that signed an agreement with the Nisga'a. He was on the committee that pushed the B.C. treaty process.
What do Reform members have to say about that? What have they said to the leader of the Reform Party of B.C.? Is he not a little embarrassed by the Reform Party in Ottawa about all his work and efforts of the past? I commend him. He at least had the courage to do something for aboriginal people.
In 1990 Premier Vander Zalm reversed a longstanding position of the province of British Columbia which held that aboriginal rights had been extinguished prior to B.C.'s entry into Confederation, or if the rights did exist they were the exclusive responsibility of the federal government. That has changed the climate out there. Premier Vander Zalm said: "You have been sitting there with the Nisga'a for 15 years by yourself. We will do these things. We will get some certainty for B.C."
The current government came into office in October 1993. We opened the doors in December 1993. Since that time 70 per cent of the just under 200 First Nations in B.C. have been at the table. They are doing it our way. They are saying: "We will trust you white people once more. We will not build roadblocks. We will come to the negotiating table". And this is the way they are treated.
The Reform Party has not voted for one piece of aboriginal legislation in the House in two years, except in the one instance when it benefited an oil company. When an oil company could make a profit vis-à-vis aboriginal people, the Reform Party voted unanimously in favour of it. That party says it will speak for the people, that it will come here with an open mind and not vote like a bunch of sheep.
Last week 42 Reform members showed up in the House to vote against the B.C. treaty process, the enabling legislation which allows us to sit down with the First Nations. Yet Reformer members stand every day to denounce Adams Lake and the Penticton blockade. So do we, but the difference is that we are prepared to sit down with the First Nations people. What I hear today is that the Reform Party will not even sit down with the First Nations people to negotiate.
I once said that the House of Commons in many instances sounds like the ill informed conversing with the ill intentioned on any given day. For the first time today I heard the ill informed conversing with the ill intentioned of the same party when they questioned each other.
I will give the Reform Party some correct information. Reformers said vis-à-vis the Nisga'a that we gave them money for negotiations. That is incorrect. It is based on loans 100 per cent. The people who are supposed to know the issues out there said that in the House.
Let me go back and refer to some of the history. I am in cabinet representing the poorest of the poor people in the country. Most of the time I am on my knees and my colleagues know that.
Just before the election when we were hoping to be elected, we said that the Pearson airport deal was illegal and immoral and that if we were elected we would reverse it. Why? We alleged there were a lot of people making a lot of money. There was a lot of lobbying and a lot of money being made by lobbyists. A few weeks before the election we came into the House and who defended the lobbyists and voted against the legislation? It was the Reform Party.
Reformers should think about what they are doing today vis-à-vis aboriginal people and what the Reform Party did in the protection of lobbyists on the Pearson airport deal. Reformers are saying today that there may be an election a year from now because
the opposition parties are opposed to dealing with the poorest of the poor. However they will stand here righteously two weeks before an election and defend the right of lobbyists to make a bundle of money. It gives Canadians an idea of the priorities of that party.
They say: "Let us have a referendum". This is much the same. It is another way of saying we should have a referendum. I remember last year when this was placed before the Prime Minister as an important issue. They said: "Let us have a referendum". The Prime Minister said: "It is our job to make decisions and if we do them well we will be re-elected; if we do not we will be turfed". When will Reformers learn that, as we did in 1984? Reformers will learn that because the public is coming to understand the Reform Party.
Reformers thought they were the party that would talk about fiscal responsibility and bring a new spirit to the House. Instead they found a party that lusted badly for power. It had such an anti-francophone bias they were willing to destroy the country on a fraudulent question to which the answer was yes by 50 per cent plus one. It shows the public the bias of the Reform Party. It shows the public how badly the Reform Party leader wants to be Prime Minister of Canada, that he would do that, destroy the country on a 50 per cent plus one response to a fraudulent question.
I sat here and I listened. I have waited two years and listened to aboriginal bashing from the Reform Party. Some Reform members actually go out and talk to aboriginal people, an insignificant portion of that group that is deserving of respect. An insignificant number of Reformers know what the Reform Party is doing, and that it is wrong.
After two years the Reform Party has an interim policy on aboriginal issues, but it did not talk to the aboriginal people. The leader of the Reform Party says that they did not. I do not know if they could not find them; there are a million and a half aboriginal people out there. There are 608 reserves. There are 50 tribal councils. Where was the consultation? It did not exist.
A key member of the committee that devised this is the member for Athabasca who said, and it is there in two papers: "What is this treaty? The treaty process is a fraud". We negotiated in good faith and now they are saying it is a fraud. "We defeated these people". I notice an uneasiness on the face of Reformers because those with a conscience know that what that member said was wrong. He was a member of the committee that devised this. He said: "If we did not defeat them, why did they allow themselves to go to small, worthless reserves?"
There are only two ways of looking at it. We said the treaty was honourable. We made these agreements and told them in B.C. that some day we would get to them. We finished the numbered treaties at Edmonton, Alberta. We said we would with the honour of the crown and the honour of Canadians sit down with them. Or, we can take the attitude of the member for Athabasca, a member of the Reform Party. I refuse to use a name in the House again unless I put the party behind it. The member for Athabasca is a member of the Reform Party. He said: "We beat these people. We beat them into the ground. That is why they are on small reserves. This treaty process is a fraud. Rebut that".
Then I heard another member of the Reform Party say that he knows all about reserves, that those people live in a south seas environment-I was in the House that day-and the men go around burning women with cigarettes. That is the most atrocious, ill informed, ignorant comment I have ever heard about aboriginal people. That was from the Reform Party.
Now we have the B.C. treaty process and Reformers do not even want us to go to the table and after 200 years do the honourable thing. What they would rather do is stand here and have us sing O Canada. At the same time they will say: "Side with the separatists". I see no difference. I see different geography but I do not see any difference with the separatists facing me or the separatists from western Canada to my far right.
They would say to the Prime Minister that they we want the country dismantled on a 50 per cent plus one vote in Quebec on a fraudulent question. They say that day after day all week. Yet what did they waste the time of the House on last week? A crest. They would destroy the country but keep the crest. They can have their crest but I want my country. It will never be saved by the Reform Party.
This is the new insight. Let us process the situation. We have the Reformers' position on francophones. We can take them out of the equation of what is the Reform Party. We know their non-position on women. If I were a woman, I would be a little concerned. We know their position on immigration. They are for immigration but not to Canada. If I were an immigrant, I would be concerned. If I were a nationalist and wanted to keep the country together, I would be concerned. If I were a lobbyist, I would like that party. If I had big money invested in the Pearson airport, I would like that party.
What do we have left after we strip the philosophy of that party? Not much. That party stood here and told the Yukon Indians that the negotiations with them would never work. They came here. They stood in the House in their costumes. It was one of the proudest moments of our party. It is working. Yet the Reform Party said the Manitoba dismantling would not work.
I get a rough time in Manitoba from the media, and rightly so. Last week the Manitoba media reported:
In Manitoba, Grand Chief Phil Fontaine and the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs are currently negotiating one of the most progressive, daring and risky self-government initiatives in Canadian history. For the first time since Confederation, the federal government says it's prepared to give back to First Nations what many say was never relinquished in the first place.
Harvard University called the Manitoba dismantling the most progressive move in self-government negotiations in the world. The same party denounced inherent right; the Reform Party denounced inherent right. There were over a hundred editorials in the country by people who are paid to be critical. That is their job in the democratic process. A hundred of them were favourable and one was not favourable. The criticism was that we should have waited until the royal commission report.