Mr. Speaker, I stand today to oppose Bill C-51 for three reasons. The first is that I support good government, namely, government which provides a necessary service, is cost effective and is accountable to the people who pay for it. The second is that the government's process has been faulty.
The third and most serious reason is that the original legislation creating Nunavut ought to be declared unconstitutional on the grounds that it creates what amounts to another province without meeting the 1982 constitutional requirement that at least seven provincial legislatures representing 50 per cent of Canada's population have to consent to Nunavut's creation. The provinces have never been asked.
With regard to the need for good government, this new illegal province of Nunavut, which of course is not a province officially but will have the administrative and governmental trappings of a province, has a land mass about twice as big as the legal province of Ontario. Its population at 22,000 is less than the area population of Cranbrook, B.C. where I have my constituency office.
Canadians often complain about the fact that the Atlantic provinces are so small, but even the beautiful but tiny province of Prince Edward Island has a population of 130,000, about six times the population of the new illegal province of Nunavut. My hon. colleagues will therefore understand if I state my firm belief that having so much government for Nunavut is over governing at its worst.
Specifically the Nunavut Water Board's eight appointed members plus a chair for a population of 22,000 is part of the excessive bureaucracy of an additional 930 civil service jobs cited by a Coopers & Lybrand report of December 1992 on establishing Nunavut, plus 705 public service jobs to be transferred from Yellowknife. The entire Northwest Territories Water Board currently consists of from four to nine members and Nunavut has half the land and less than half the population. However, the various groups of northern peoples apparently said they wanted additional board members in order to guarantee representation for different population groups, including the Inuit of Nunavut and the Inuit of northern Quebec.
I can understand somebody wanting something. There are things I would like myself, for example, a big ranch on prime land maybe with a herd of fallow deer, or all of the waterfront of a small lake in central British Columbia. There are two things that keep me from having that big ranch or lake. First, nobody is going to give it to me just because I want it. No, if I am going to have the ranch or lake, I am going to have to pay for them. The second thing that stops me is that I would have to look after them because nobody is going to look after them for me just because it is something I would like.
Neither of those conditions applies to the Nunavut Water Board. Somebody else is going to pay for it and somebody else is going to have to look after it. Mr. Speaker, it is no surprise that the somebody is you and me and all the other taxpayers of Canada.
With such a small population and such a huge land mass, it is perhaps not surprising that the Northwest Territories is at the bottom of the heap compared with all other provinces and the Yukon in so far as paying their own way is concerned. I make mention of that not that it is the fault of the people who are in the Northwest Territories, I simply mention it as a fact.
According to research supplied by the Library of Parliament, for the 1995-96 budget year it is estimated that the Northwest Territories received 72.2 per cent of its income from general purpose federal government transfers of funds plus 10.7 per cent from specific purpose federal government transfer of funds for a total of 82.9 per cent of the income of the Government of the Northwest Territories coming from federal transfers. Let me repeat that astounding number: 82.9 per cent of the income of the Government of the Northwest Territories for the fiscal year 1995-96 came from federal government transfers.
If this were to provide the necessities of life, many Canadians would probably go along with such a staggering figure, but when a lot of those funds go to employ bureaucrats who seem to be thicker on the ground than the caribou, Canadian taxpayers lose patience. Maybe the Ottawa mandarins have led such sheltered lives that they do not realize that civil servants are not a necessity of life. Taxpayers want the number of civil servants kept to a minimum, just the minimum required to provide essential services. Instead, all too often taxpayers find themselves funding such ridiculous bureaucracies as the water board consisting of eight members plus a chairperson to serve the 22,000 people of Nunavut.
Good government has to do with having the people elect some leaders who are responsible to ensure that public services are provided at a cost the people can afford, by the level closest to the people and best able to perform the service efficiently. Instead, the Nunavut Water Board is appointed by the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development who in turn was appointed-surprise-by the Prime Minister after being elected by the people of Sault Ste. Marie, which the last time I looked on the map was a long way from Nunavut.