Madam Speaker, let me tell you right away that the Bloc Quebecois will be supporting this bill. As usual, I will try and explain the Micmac reality. I think it is important to give a little background because the Micmac Nation has always been recognized as a fishing nation living for the most part by rivers, lagoons or the sea.
Many people wonder about the meaning of the word "Micmac". In fact, there are two: "a nation and its language", and "my family and friends". When I travelled just recently to the Restigouche reserve, which by the way is called Listuguj, Whatever meaning you give to the word Micmac, what I saw and experienced on the reserve of which Chief Miller is the worthy representative confirms that both meanings perfectly describe the reality as I experienced it on this reserve.
I saw people bound by very strong ties of friendship. Families form a very tightly knit fabric. Micmacs are also very proud of their language. In fact, they make a point of promoting the Micmac language in schools. Micmacs have traditionally been very close to their roots and accorded great importance to their culture.
Historically, what set Micmac villages apart from others was the fact that lodgings often housed one or more families and were located by the water. The significance of this bill's impact comes from the fact that the Pictou Landing reserve was located by the water, which is essential. Naturally, all that has happened over the course of the last three decades has had a direct impact on Micmacs' lifestyle. I felt that this needed to be pointed out.
The Micmac Nation is a nation who was much affected by the arrival of Europeans. A population decline ensued. In the early days of the colony, there were about 50,000 Micmacs, as compared to a mere 10,000 registered Micmacs today. Some kind of socio-cultural conflict arose also because, for the Micmac Nation as for other aboriginal nations, exposure to the European culture did not always prove beneficial.
Socio-cultural shocks have led this nation, and others, into dire poverty. Even during British rule, efforts were made to turn Micmacs into farmers but, given their traditional way of life, these efforts failed of course. Integration attempts continued, with Micmacs being sent out to work on the railway and in logging. Finally, you realize that these people were really sincere in the importance they accorded to their culture, a culture that has not only lived on to this day but is still highly valued, while all integration attempts have failed.
Therefore, I felt it was important to present this short scenario, because the bill relates to a Micmac nation, the Pictou Landing community, which has always lived close to water. This bill deals with a specific body of water, the Boat Harbour.
The problem started when the Scott Maritimes Limited Pulp and Paper Mills settled at Abercrombie Point. As we know, pulp and paper companies tend to pollute the environment. As well, the protection of the environment was not seen as vital then as it is now. The priority was to create jobs in an area largely covered with forests. In fact, that is where the bulk of wood harvesting took place.
However, in 1965, the provincial government decided to build a waste treatment plant after realizing that the company was polluting the water. It was thought to be a good idea to set up a treatment plant to try to solve the problem. I say "to try to solve" because, as I will show in the next few minutes, that attempt unfortunately failed, with the result that lots of contaminants ended up in the water.
That plant, which was built to treat the water coming from the pulp and paper mill, created a body of water covering several acres, in the vicinity of the reserve, and even on reserve land. From the very beginning, there was a lack of movement on the government's part regarding the cleaning up of this environmental catastrophe. This is deplorable. For two decades, from 1965 to 1985, the Micmac tried to come to an amicable settlement with the federal government, which is responsible for native issues, and also with the Province of Nova Scotia, which has jurisdiction over the environment.
For almost 20 years, the Micmac tried to reach some agreement. Because nothing was being done, they finally decided, in 1986, to sue the government.
In this area, the environment has reached the critical stage in terms of its deterioration. According to some information, the level of pollution is such that it has been blamed for a number of deaths on the reserve.
Through an agreement in principle, the government proposed a financial out-of-court settlement to the Pictou Landing Indian band. That agreement in principle was reached in December 1992 and ratified in July 1993. It is a compensation agreement intended to settle out of court a suit brought by the Micmac in 1986.
The bill may look like a minor piece of legislation. There are only four clauses. Consequently, one might think that it does not deal with a complex issue. However, I know from experience that the number of clauses is no indication of how complex a piece of legislation can be. That bill may have only four clauses, but the last one refers to a specific agreement which, as I will show in a minute, is flawed in many ways. Although the bill does have some merits, as the hon. member pointed out. For instance, the money to be paid will not be money as provided under the Indian Act, which means that the community will be able to spend it as it sees fit.
This is probably one of the few positive factors I found in the bill. If we refer to the agreement as such, and there is a reference to the agreement in clause 4, we realize that it does not really deal with the environmental problem. And I am not so sure that we are doing the Pictou Landing First Nation a big favour.
Clause 4 of the bill, where we find the reference to section 13 of the agreement, mentions a compensation account. In the event of legal proceedings in the days and months to come, claims may only be made against this compensation account.
We in the Bloc Quebecois considered trying to help those who did not waive their rights, because, as I will explain later on, the people who use this compensation fund waive their right to sue the federal government, and in return, the government gives them $35 million, and I will give you a breakdown of this amount later on. In any case, at first we had some questions about section 13, because some people had not waived their rights.
What happens to those people? I will expand on this later on, but before I go any further, I would also like to thank my colleagues on the standing committee who agreed to adjourn so I
could investigate this particular point, since we were not entirely satisfied with the response we got from the bureaucracy.
That day, after meeting with officials from the Department of Indian Affairs, we were supposed to adopt the bill clause by clause, but because of my questions and the response from the officials, we agreed, many thanks to my colleagues, to adjourn for two days and-it never rains but it pours-I was given a draft amendment a few minutes before the committee started a special sitting to hear the Bloc Quebecois amendment, but unfortunately, the amendment suggested by our legal expert was not quite what we had in mind. As a result, I had to go before the committee empty-handed and apologize.
We then considered introducing an amendment at the report stage, and although I did not discuss this with my colleagues on the standing committee, in the end, we decided not to introduce an amendment, after receiving additional information from the officials and getting in touch with the community of Pictou Landing.
Initially, and I will provide some details later on, we were somewhat dubious in the case of individuals who did not waive their right, about their ability to bring legal proceedings against the company or Nova Scotia, and we could perhaps discuss this later on, but meanwhile, I would like to say a word of thanks to my colleagues, because they gave me a chance to get to the bottom of this matter and do a decent job in committee, in other words, to carefully examine each clause and then decide whether or not we wanted an amendment.
I touched on this earlier, and I would just like to say, very briefly, that this is money that will not be subject to the provisions of section 35 of the Indian Act. This means the Pictou Landing community will be able to use this money as it sees fit, without being restricted by the provisions of the Indian Act.
I would now like to comment on the agreement as such, and perhaps I should point out that only $17 million remains to be paid to the community, so the rest of the money has already been paid, and that being said, I may have quite a few things to say later on about the logic of having a bill before the House today when the process has already started and all the money or almost all has been paid, so that the government is saying: I just want you to agree and adopt this bill.
It seems to me that certain elements with respect to the process of negotiation with the band must be taken into account, the government's fiduciary responsibility, the Bloc Quebecois' responsibility as the official opposition and the responsibility of the opposition parties of the time, have been overlooked. The whole thing is now presented to us as a package. Now we are faced with an alternative, that is, do we vote in favour of the bill or not. Since 95 per cent of the people in the community voted in favour, our options are somewhat limited.
So, therefore, naturally, we will support the bill without amendment. We do, however, have a few things to say about the agreement, and I think we will use this debate to express them. I said earlier that the agreement was signed on July 20, 1993 and was ratified following a referendum. At the time, 95 per cent of the people said they were in favour of it. In a minute we will have a look at why they were in favour. I have my own personal idea on the matter. In democratic terms, however, we cannot criticize the agreement as such. Given the very high rate of participation-80 per cent-and the strong vote in favour-95 per cent-, we really cannot criticize the democratic aspect of the question.
Furthermore, according to the officials we asked, the remaining 5 per cent are people registered on the list of band members, but who do not live on the reservation. We were told they could live as far away as California. There were also a number of people with intellectual handicaps, who were unable to vote because they could not understand the scope of the agreement.
I will quickly go through the agreement, section by section, to highlight certain comments that, among other things, raise doubt about the seriousness of the government's intention to really resolve the legal action issue and also the basic environmental issue.
In section 2 of the agreement, Canada agrees to pay a $35 million settlement. This amount is intended to cover compensation and to fulfil the government's fiduciary duty. Three funds have been created: one for band compensation and development, one for community development and one for individual compensation and development. I do not wish to get into the breakdown of the $35 million, so suffice it to say that the three funds exist. I will repeat throughout my speech that, in our opinion, this is not enough to compensate for the current environmental damage and the wrong done to these people.
As I have said, since 1965, it is clear that the environment has been seriously harmed by the construction of the effluent treatment facility. Over the past 30 years, the government has been slow to put facilities in place. It has somewhat neglected its fiduciary duty towards first nations because they continually protested the way they were being treated, and neither the federal nor the Nova Scotia government made many firm commitments or took much real action to correct the situation.
We can also say that the negative effects have taken on catastrophic proportions at present. Earlier, I mentioned 162 hectares. Responsibility for resolving the issue and for taking legal action is now in the government's lap. We think that the government is not only hesitating now and will be hesitant in the future to enter into legal proceedings, but that it will also eventually take legal proceedings in the event that Boat Harbour is further developed. Therefore, we have reason to doubt wheth-
er the government really has the will to really resolve the main issue.
The true problem remains the same, even with this bill, because pollution has not disappeared. All that is proposed is that some aboriginals be relocated. We might also wonder what type of land aboriginal people will be able to afford with that $35 million. And we are told that moneys have already been earmarked for purchasing this land. But will these people be better off? Unfortunately, we do not have the answer. I see this merely as an attempt to relieve the federal government of its fiduciary duty to aboriginals and to get out of a tight spot. So we have to find out whether the move will solve the problem.
I also know that the governments of Canada and Nova Scotia are trying to assess the issue of environment versus employment. One cannot deny that Scott Paper creates a lot of jobs in Nova Scotia. We also know that this community suffers from a high rate of unemployment. So can we afford to say to this company, given the present situation, that standards will be set so high, that we will allow so many suits that, in the end, it will have to close its doors and lay off a lot of employees?
We are caught in this tension between the environment and employment. I understand that employment was easily given higher priority than the environment at the time. But, for several years now, there seems to have been increasing concern over the environment. So the debate or tension between the environment and employment remains unresolved. And for our part, we can see that the government has decided to give priority to employment over the environment.
I would like to move on to section 5 now. In this section, one begins to see the Canadian government's position in the matter. The agreement was reached in December 1992 and ratified in July 1993. Even before the agreement was signed, each band member had received $2,000. This, in itself, is a clear indication of the government's approach to the matter.
Even before an agreement had been reached, even before a bill had been introduced, the government had already started with its hand-outs. We have to realize also that the Micmac Indians on that reserve live in appalling conditions, as practically none of them have jobs. Their environment is heavily polluted and, after 30 years, they are sick and tired of negotiating or trying to negotiate with the government. They have to set money aside to set up a fund to pursue their case against the government. It is in such a context that they are presented with a nice cheque for $2,000 and told: This is a first instalment, you will get more, probably as much, but first of all you must relinquish your right to sue. You sign away that right and the federal government will give you $2,000.
We can see why these people would jump at this offer, it is a ray of hope, a chance to improve their situation. Not only were they given a cheque for $2,000, but individuals were promised an additional amount of $1,500 upon signing the agreement in principle. Except that the parliamentary process was conveniently forgotten. This was done without us, we were informed only when the bill was tabled and, today, we are asked to approve a bill implementing this agreement. I find this approach questionable.
This is an approach that we consider paternalistic. It is like saying: We have been negligent, but we are going to make up for it, we are going to give you some money and you forget about the whole thing. With this money you will be able to move elsewhere. We, as a government, are not going to restore the environment, but neither are we going to launch any lawsuit against you. People who sign and take the money must sign an undertaking not to sue the government of Canada or of Nova Scotia or the company. Everybody involved in that mess is getting off scotfree. They did not act responsibly and now people have to take the money because they are in dire straits.
This is a paternalistic approach. We find this kind of approach questionable, at best. In short, band members had already received money, $2,000 in December 1991, and $1,500 in December 1992, before the agreement was signed, and now the government confronts them with a fait accompli.
Before I became a parliamentarian I was, among others things, a negotiator for twenty years or so. This is a well known fact in negotiating circles: when one of the parties to the negotiations is in a very weakened position-negotiating being basically a power struggle-it is easy to promise things, give them systematically and then say to this party: Now, all you have to do is to sign this form and all your problems will be solved.
Everything was done very quickly, in a paternalistic manner, and the environmental issue has not been settled. The whole process is highly questionable.
The agreement provides for a period of prescription; that is to say that individuals have up to two years after the signing of the agreement to decide whether to give up their rights and be entitled to this famous compensation fund, or not to give them up. According to the interpretation given by officials, these individuals are going to be caught between a rock and a hard place, because it will be extremely difficult to challenge the legislation on account of section 13 which creates a further impediment, with respect to individual rights, for people wanting to appeal to the courts. As I said before, it is this particular point we find extremely questionable.
Thus, this prescription period will come into effect in July of this year. Then, not only will the people have not taken advantage of this find it difficult to start legal proceedings but they
will no longer have access to the compensation fund. They will be left with nothing at all.
Other sections as well are a little disturbing. The federal government is getting out from under any future fiduciary duties or obligations towards the community with regard to the risks associated with the facilities. It not only said that you are released of responsibilities, of prosecutions concerning the environment, but that, in the future, if the company decides to pollute even more, the government will assume these responsibilities and thus release individuals from them.
We see that the environment has been greatly deteriorating for almost 30 years and we recognize that this could continue in the future and that the federal government is released of all future responsibilities. I think that this is prejudicial enough to the environment to be mentioned.
Section 7 stipulates the responsibilities of the chief and his or her council with regard to the management of the money received. I agree that the $35 million received are not native moneys but one has to realize that the band and the chief must meet certain requirements. This money is not given unconditionally, to be spent however they wish.
In section 8, the government recognizes that Canada's current position is that it is not at all sure that Boat Harbour will be brought back to its natural condition, that is, the condition it was in before 1965. The government itself admits that it is not sure this can be done. But the government of Canada is committed to exploring possible ways of dealing with the environmental problem.
We have to take a good look at the words that are used. The government will explore possible ways of dealing with the problem. There are other words to which I would like to draw your attention. The government of Canada may undertake, at its sole discretion, reasonable action that it deems necessary. As a negotiator, I could not accept that such vague words as "at its sole discretion" and "reasonable action" be included in an agreement, especially since it is the government itself which must decide what constitutes reasonable action.
There are some flaws in the agreement and we feel that it is important for us to inform you of these flaws and to tell you that, unfortunately, it is a done deal and that this agreement must now be justified. We will not keep our mouths shut. We will denounce all these flaws. I hope the government will take my comments into account so that things are done differently in the future.
Section 9 deals with the creation of a committee on environmental issues composed of three members from the Micmac community and three members appointed by the government of Canada. It says further on that the number could increase with the agreement of both parties. What does that mean? It means that, eventually, the government of Nova Scotia could be represented on this committee and so could the main pulp and paper company, thereby diluting native participation. It is something to be cautious about. Fortunately, both parties concerned have to agree to this.
I have no advice to give. I think that people are mature enough, but personally, if I were on the aboriginal side, I would maintain my participation on the committee at 50 per cent and would not agree to the addition of other members, who would reduce my impact. Just a warning in passing, but a necessary one.
Section 12 provides that all members that have received moneys must automatically renounce completely any present or future claims. Thus, anyone accepting money, who has recourse to the compensation account, agrees not to take any action regarding past or future events. The danger is that the Scott Paper company will feel it is off the hook, that it will continue to pollute-I know that jobs are involved-but the difficulty, however, is that none of the compensation money has been set aside for the environment.
After all, this is a company that is providing employment, even if it hardly gets full marks for its environmental performance. In my view, this company does not even get a passing mark. So, in exchange for an amount of money, the members of the community must forever agree not to take any action against the federal government, Nova Scotia, or the company.
In fact, all rights to take legal action are transferred to the federal government, in the terms I mentioned earlier, at the discretion of the government, reasonable action, as decided by the federal government. One is left to wonder if the federal government is going to take its environmental responsibilities seriously, and I must admit that I have not yet ruled out the possibility of pointing out to my colleague from Laurentides, the environment critic, that there is a major environmental issue at stake here of which she should be aware. As I was saying, if the company decides to step up production, thereby increasing pollution, it is a great pity, but there is almost no conceivable way of stopping it at the present time.
As for section 13, I probably raised the question with officials and was told that my question was perhaps not clear the first time. After reading the committee blues once again, I realize that the question was clear enough and that the official probably changed his mind in the meantime. But section 13 only refers to the compensation account. Those who relinquished their rights have already dipped into the compensation account. Those who do not give up their rights by the July 1995 deadline I mentioned earlier can access the compensation account but, according to
lawyers, the department and, after checking with the band, the Indians themselves, no one can get around this account.
Therefore, band members who have decided not to give up their rights will be forced eventually to use the compensation account, with little or no recourse against the different levels of government or the company. The purpose of the compensation account is to settle past and future bills, but it will be the only money offered by the government.
The federal government must have thought: "I will pay $35 million to settle past and future debts, and that is how I will discharge my fiduciary responsibility toward the Pictou Landing Indians." In a nutshell, I think that is what the government attempted to do. No one, I think, could circumvent the provisions in this bill and say, "I will go further by launching a personal lawsuit for, say, $10 million". People will always be brought back to the compensation account, which is a major obstacle to taking individual legal action. If I were in the shoes of someone who did not give up his rights, I would see if I could sue under the constitution.
I know that this would be an additional obstacle, but I think that individuals can probably still sue. However, the clause I have just read to you will certainly be used by crown attorneys to bring people back to the compensation fund.
In conclusion, there are positive elements in the agreement. This money will be exempt from the Indian Act. However, this approach is highly questionable from a regulatory and parliamentary standpoint. On one hand, the federal government and the province of Nova Scotia have let the situation deteriorate for 30 years. The federal government has neglected its fiduciary role for 30 years. It takes action only when the damage is done and almost irreversible.
It entices the natives knowing full well that they are living in miserable conditions. It waves this $2,000 cheque at them and promises another $1,500 will be paid if the agreement is signed. It tells the band: "You will have a compensation account. You will have up to $35 million to relocate and start up new projects." Given their living conditions, this offer is so tempting that I can see why they jump at it. The approach is paternalistic. Any right to sue is taken away in a context where the scope is so broad and the words used so vague that nothing stops the government from doing absolutely nothing and letting the situation deteriorate if it so pleases. Finally, the government comes up with this bill when all is settled.
When I say that all is settled, I mean that the agreement was signed and money paid. The band already committed itself. It is all done. The only thing left to do is for us to put our seal of approval on the whole thing.
Regarding the settlement process and the parliamentary process, we express serious concerns. Sadly, we have been put in front of a fait accompli. We will go along with the referendum decision whereby a 95 per cent majority approved the agreement as is, but I would like to make a suggestion to the government. It would be interesting if any new claim settlement-and I am convinced there will be more, given the number of reserves in Canada-be subjected to a regulatory process and a slightly more democratic parliamentary process, so that we are not put in front of a fait accompli again. You just cannot come and tell us: "See, it is all settled; all you have to do is to pass the bill".
As I said, this bill looks quite innocuous with just four clauses, but it has impacts and effects on Pictou Landing. Let me wrap up. Based on the background I gave you earlier, we can assume that people who have probably lived by that this stretch of water now have to relocate on land that-I hope, with $35 million-will allow them to maintain their traditions and culture. These people depend on fishing for their livelihood and survival.
While deploring the regulatory and parliamentary process, the Bloc Quebecois will support the bill in consideration of the decision made by Pictou Landing and the aboriginal people who live there to approve the agreement as it stands.
