Mr. Speaker, you will agree with me, however, that the procedural question as to whether there is a quorum does not mean that the House is full at that time. It means the opposite rather. I think that is what my hon. colleague meant to say. I agree with the hon. government whip that I may have gone further than I meant to when I said that the Liberal Party was more interested in having lunch than in looking after the aboriginal nations.
As for the position of the Bloc Quebecois, and I will conclude with this since I have not much time left, the Bloc Quebecois will oppose this bill on the following grounds. There are two agreements, one with the Sahtu Dene and the other with the Gwich'in. The government said it would use those agreements as the basis of a bill which would handle the entire question of water and lands in the Mackenzie Valley. By that very fact, all of the other communities have not settled their claims are being included. That strikes us as a major problem.
We have consulted these communities and they have told us that they had pulled out of the negotiations and that now legislation was being applied to them, implementing follow-up or application of an agreement that does not concern them. In other words, no land claim agreements were concluded with them, and here we are imposing one because of agreements that were reached elsewhere.
Specifically, the Deh Cho and the Dogrib withdrew from the agreements and were not consulted on anything further. Today they are faced with a bill that will be including them.
There are implementation problems of such proportion, in my opinion, that the Bloc cannot today support such a bill.
Another point was raised in discussions, particularly with the Deh Cho and the Dogrib. They wanted complete sovereignty over their land. In other words, they no longer wanted to be a part of Canada, and the federal government is totally opposed to that sort of thing. I wanted to raise the point because I did not want this example to be used to tell Quebec that the native peoples in northern Quebec were entitled to separate from northern Quebec.
If it is not permitted in Canada, it should not be permitted in Quebec either, and if this is the case, the sovereignists and the federalists should not be going at each other over the ins and outs of this debate. I felt it important to say that.
Therefore, the Bloc Quebecois opposes Bill C-6, because it wants it to apply only to the native peoples in the Sahtu region and to the Gwich'in, with whom the government has agreements. We oppose having the bill apply to the others as well. Accordingly, the Bloc Quebecois opposes the bill at second reading.