Madam Speaker, as critic for indian affairs, I will speak mostly about two of the claims that are before us today. I could have chosen to get directly to the point, but I thought it would be useful to look at what Quebecers could do with $300 million, since this is approximately the amount of the claim submitted to the federal government which is now being discussed in the House.
There are quite a number of things Quebecers could do with $300 million. The first one that comes to mind is probably, as Minister Paillé said, an investment fund with a greater accent on venture capital, that would give young entrepreneurs with creative ideas the opportunity to go into business. We could create 50,000 to 100,000 jobs with such a fund of $300 million.
There is chronic unemployment in Quebec. The unemployment rate has always been higher in Quebec than in the rest of Canada, because of decisions made here, in this House, where we often choose to establish heavy industries and other important job creating activities outside Quebec. We are stuck with an unemployment insurance fund and we are being told: "You are lucky because we give you more money than you give us. We return more money to you in unemployment insurance, social assistance, and education transfers". Listen, you do not build a society with unemployed persons and welfare recipients. These people are hard pressed right now, and we have to put them back to work.
I think it is appropriate that we should question the government today, that we should introduce a motion which says: "Listen, ladies and gentlemen, pay your bills. You owe us $300 million".
I will now move on to the Oka question. Originally, the bill was for $84 million, but the Liberal government finally paid $5.3 million in 1992. At that time, the government looked at our claim and said: "We are paying $5.3 million, but the remainder is not eligible". Why is it not eligible? There is practically no reason. I remind you that, at the time, the Quebec government was Liberal and federalist. The man in charge was our former Minister of Social Security, the ineffable Mr. Ryan, that everybody knows and who tangoed with the federal government.
He danced the tango in step. Mr. Ryan kept complaining, and the federal government kept sending him letters saying: "You are exaggerating, we will not pay that much, we will give you $5.3 million, but as for the rest, the $79 million, forget it."
Mr. Ryan kept dancing with the federal government, he kept exchanging letters with the federal government, and he kept wringing his hands in the federal government's headquarters here in Ottawa. He kept writing to ministers tearful speeches, saying you must resolve this for us.
However, we never saw him demanding publicly the federal government to pay the bill now, as the current Quebec government is now doing after so much pussyfooting. We know the federalist mind of Mr. Ryan, as I said, the ineffable Quebec's Minister of Public Security at the time, and we understand that he was content to dance the tango privately with the federal government and never dared to do it publicly. So, we are doing it today.
Why do the expenses not qualify? We do not know, except that, with the Parti Quebecois' arrival in power in 1994, as early as December 1994, the then minister of public security was asking his counterpart for the reimbursement. What happened then is exactly what the minister wants to take us into today. "We will do it with the auditors and the high officials. I suggest that we meet".
For five years, it has been only meetings. For five years, we have been told that officials would get together to try and resolve the issue, that the auditor general would also be asked what would qualify and what could be paid.
It was a disaster that happened in Quebec in 1990, a disaster that had an effect not only in Quebec and in Canada, but also internationally. Several courts, several international fora dealt with the Oka events. I think that Quebec qualified under agreements signed between the federal and provincial governments and providing for such a disaster.
Was it a disaster? I think that I could talk about it for hours, because I certainly experienced the events, I saw them, I saw the federal government's negligence in the Oka crisis. From our point of view there definitely was a major crisis in Oka affecting not only native people but Quebecers also.
It has become obvious that in the beautiful region of Oka located near the Deux-Montagnes lake, where I go on a regular basis, the tourist industry has been completely wiped out. That region has become a desert from a tourism point of view. No one goes to Oka any more. There are still events in Oka which prove the carelessness of this government which sits around idly and waits for things to take a turn for the worse. What is happening during that time? The economy of the area and surrounding areas is in bad shape, as a result.
Some officers of the Sureté du Québec had to spend weeks in Oka at that time, far from their families. Who is paying the bill? The government of Quebec is paying the bill, at present. As I said earlier, there are agreements where in case of a disaster there has to be some sort of sharing. In this case, Quebec is the only one to pay the bill, except a paltry $5.3 million.
This government is still showing carelessness today. Just a week ago a good friend of the Liberals, Michel Robert, was appointed to the Quebec Court of Appeal. This man is a close friend of the Liberals, the red lawyer par excellence, a man who was on all strategic committees of this House, including the Security Intelligence Review Committee.
That man played a key role in the Kanesatake negotiation. I talk about carelessness because I also know the native people's philosophy. According to their philosophy, you cannot suddenly say that you want to negotiate, to set a timeframe and solve everything in three days. This is not the way things work with them. You need time to gain their confidence. I must say however that Mr. Robert is a very good and very competent negotiator.
However, after only seven or eight months, as we were beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, this government appointed Mr. Robert to the Court of Appeal and there we are, back to square one. What I am saying now is that the federal government is controlling the pressure in Oka, as he did in 1990. It raises or lowers the pressure depending on the political context. Today, we are claiming $79 million, knowing that this government has not done anything since 1990 to settle the problem in Oka. In this context, I think the claim is legitimate. As I said, it is another example of the carelessness of this government.
What were we supposed to do in Oka? The major part of this claim relates certainly to the presence of police officers there. What evidence is needed to convince the government? Maybe a videotape would do? They are quite in fashion. As was shown recently, the government opposite only reacted when they saw videotapes.
I recall events in Oka when the Sûreté du Québec was systematically sandwiched between aboriginal people and their opponents. I saw police officers torn to pieces. I saw on video some of them, accompanied by friends, being carried out on stretchers, because they had tried to separate two camps which were trying to cut each other's throat, so to speak.
Now we are told: "You take care of that yourselves. Public security is Quebec's responsibility." We do not worry about the fact that we are the trustees of aboriginal people, that we pay them and that we give a certain amount to the Oka band council every year. We simply continue to pay. You, however, will continue to pay the bills when things go sour, and also when we decide that things are taking a turn for the worse.
I think that Quebec's $79 million claim for these expenses is quite legitimate. And I think that the Quebec government did the right thing during that crisis by putting the Quebec provincial police between the two factions that wanted to have a go at each other.
They always fall back on the argument that things will be monitored by the auditor general, that senior officials will sit down together and keep an eye on things. I think that the problem is on the federal side. We should appoint an auditor
general who is above everyone and can check on the conduct of this department, which not only increases or eases the pressure as needed, but also perpetuates through dilatory tactics the financial confrontation between Quebec and Canada. That is the problem. The federal side does not want to settle the problem.
Whenever we present them with a bill, it is quite normal for them to tell us, "Let us sit down together and look at this with our officials". What Ms. Beaudoin wanted was a political settlement. She wanted to meet with the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and settle this bill once and for all. However, the minister's solution is, as always, to perpetuate the problem. He says that the matter will be considered, that his senior officials, his faithful servants, will meet with us, but he refuses to settle the problem. The federal government will not settle the problem. So we are always caught in an ongoing financial confrontation with the government, and this confrontation may go on if a motion like this one is not adopted. Today's motion has launched a broad debate in which we are trying to convince the people opposite that they must pay their bills and settle their accounts.
I now move on to James Bay. We know about their open mindedness. The minister gave us a very good presentation on what is happening in Quebec in terms of culture. I could give a presentation, but I would rather answer the questions of Quebecers waiting for $300 million from the federal government. I could talk about the Naskapi, the Cree, the Inuit for hours, but that is not the subject of today's debate.
Neither is the fact that we always have to wait for money-taxpayers' money, of course, as my colleague pointed out earlier-from the federal government. We cannot say that the federal government does not give any money. It must give some. Because they are the trustees of Canada's aboriginal people, they must provide these people with a minimum standard of living. I do not deny that the federal government has given money for that purpose. So has the Quebec government.
Let me quote statistics showing that, as far as education is concerned, the Quebec government did not rely on the federal government. Otherwise, I think the James Bay Cree would have been in a really bad position.
How does it work up there? There are three school boards; the Cree, the Inuit and the Naskapi each have their own. Costs sharing was on the basis of a gentleman's agreement.
Here is how costs were shared at the time. I have the table before me. I read that, for the Cree-Naskapi, the Quebec government was to pay 25 per cent of the costs involved, and the federal government, 75 per cent. For the Inuit, the percentages were reversed, with the Quebec government paying 75 per cent, and the federal government, 25 per cent. We, in Quebec, care about native education. I cannot give you the exact figures, only the conclusions drawn from these statistics.
In terms of language retention, the Cree, Inuit and Naskapi do better on average than natives in the rest of Canada. By language, I do not mean French or English, but their native tongue, which is Cree. Their language retention rate is clearly higher than in the rest of Canada and we have Quebec and the James Bay agreement to thank for that, for this agreement is a model in Canada and several aboriginal nations used it as a basis for negotiating with the federal government. I might add that the federal government often refers to this agreement because, as I said, it is a model.
Enrolment rates are also higher than for other native groups in Canada. As for health, because they are more educated-this is an important consideration-aboriginal people have an infant mortality rate lower than the Canadian average. The life expectancy in these three groups is higher than in the rest of the native community in Canada. We can say that as far as the Cree, the Inuit and the Naskapi are concerned, the Government of Quebec has taken its responsibilities.
The government never accepted to sign the agreement-it is a gentleman's agreement-and things went well until 1987. Starting in 1987, the basis of calculation changed drastically. Indexation was introduced, but without taking into account the birth rate, which, incidentally, is twice that found in the rest of Canada. Aboriginal peoples are currently a very strong drain on the budget. The problem is easy to understand. The aboriginal population is growing twice as fast as that of the rest of Canada.
With regard to adult education, it was found that a whole generation-and that is true everywhere in Canada-of aboriginal children were removed from their families and taken far away, in an attempt to make them forget their culture and their language. A whole generation, the one which preceded us, of aboriginals completely missed the boat in terms of their culture, their language, their recognition as a people and, of course, their education.
There is some catching up to do regarding adult education in Quebec's far north, and these people are working on that. There is also an increased demand for services such as daycare, etc. Aboriginal people in the far north have access to the latest technology and knowledge, which allows them to have very adequate education conditions, compared to the rest of Canada.
What is the federal government's reaction? It says that it will pay back, but based on an indexation criteria, instead of complying with the terms of the convention in effect at the time. This government does not intend to pay its share in the current year.
The finance minister's budget does not allocate any money to repay the federal government's share under the James Bay agreements. Earlier, the minister said that the government gave $450 million. I want to correct him. He made a small mistake. The amount is in fact $465 million. The government gave more than the minister said it did. The problem is that if the original
agreements had been respected, the federal government would have had to pay $584 million. This shortfall of $119 million is what we are claiming today.
I would like to quote another minister of the Quebec Liberal government of the time, who is now the Minister of Labour in this government.
With three minutes left, I have just enough time to explain what the education minister of the Quebec Liberal government was doing back then. She too was waltzing with the federal government. She took over from Claude Ryan, her colleague responsible for public security, and sent her deputy ministers to Ottawa with this message: "Listen, this does not make any sense in the education sector. You have to pay us back". A number of meetings were held but, of course, the federal government did nothing.
My conclusion is what could Quebec do? What could the Quebec government do, given the federal government's negligence and inertia? Should we follow the example of the Blood Indians and the Blackfoot nation I visited in Central Canada and tell young aboriginals: "Sorry, we do not have the money this year, so you will not be sent to school". We did not do that. Even if the federal government is not paying its share, Quebecers have decided to support the rights of native peoples in Quebec, and young aboriginals are going to school.
Lack of funds will not prevent a single child in northern Quebec from going to school. The Quebec government has decided to take on this responsibility. What were we supposed to do in Oka? Withdraw all police forces and let people fight? We had a ethical vision of our responsibilities, and the Quebec provincial police assumed a commendable attitude throughout the crisis, trying to prevent such fighting. Having said that, I would ask the federal government to abide by this gentlemen's agreement. Up to now, this side of the House has behaved in a gentlemanly way. I hope members opposite with the same mindset will keep their promise and pay what they owe to Quebecers.