Mr. Speaker, I sat here too and listened to the member opposite speak with regard to this bill. Bill C-6 was originally introduced in this House on December 12 as Bill C-80.
I would like to get back to the speech of the member opposite if I may for a moment. She mentioned quite proudly the diamond mines in the north, and justifiably so.
I remember not that long ago standing in this House raising some concerns about the length of time it was taking to come on stream through the red tape and bureaucracy that we tend to create in this country.
It has taken years of frustration for the owners and the participants in the BHP diamond mine to get up and on stream while the competition in other countries went ahead.
I want this House to be well aware of the legislation that we create in this House, how it can hamper the development and the process in these areas.
Make no mistake about it, the legislation that we developed here hampered the diamond fields of the north. It never helped them, not one bit. I want to make sure this House is fully aware of that. I want to make sure the member opposite is also aware of that and takes that into consideration as we debate this bill.
There are many concerns with regard to this bill in the north. Some I have heard from the opposite side, and some from this side too have tried to address this. The main concern here is that when we pass legislation, it is far easier to pass it than to repeal it.
As we go through Bill C-6 and talk to all the players involved, not just one or two, we find there is an abundance of concern with regard to where this bill is going and what we are attempting to create here.
We have no problem with setting up some of these boards to help the people in the different areas but we do have concerns when we hear from people in these outlying areas saying about the lack of consultation with regard to this, the complexity of the laws, the complexity of the language used in order to create these laws not fully understood by the participants involved.
That has to become a concern of every politician in this House when we allow this to take place. We all know legal language is probably the hardest language to understand next to a politician.
We have to be very aware of what we are doing when we create laws formed basically by lawyers here in the House so that when we go out to the people to try to put through legislation they fully understand the legislation being put in place.
From some of the letters we have we know this is not what happened here. We know that the concern is there due to this legal language. We also know there is concern. I heard today that there was concern that this was legislation by exhaustion.
We are talking about over 30 drafts of this legislation going forward to these people and basically being online until this got through some of these areas. I have concern about that.
I also have concern when we talk about areas such as this regarding cost. We know these people cannot afford to come to Ottawa to address these concerns. We also know there are some areas they cannot get to, say Yellowknife.
What is wrong with our sending people out there to talk to them? I have done it. I am sure other members of the House have done it too.
These people deserve to be heard. We are enacting legislation in the House pertaining to the way they live, make their living and in many cases raise their families. We in the House have to be very aware of that. We have to make sure there is absolute clarity when we make such legislation.
The Sahtu and Dene Band information session in September raised many question. Far too many of them were answered with uncertainty. It scares me when I hear that their questions were answered with uncertainty. Why? Often the response to such matters was that it would have to be settled in court.
I am just an ordinary person from a place called Vernon, British Columbia, just outside Armstrong. When I read people are afraid we are creating policy that will wind up in court, I have grave concerns about where we are going.
Are we sitting here as a government, as opposition members and as other members of the House to create legislation to further lawyers? Or, are we supposed to be here to further the benefit of the people so they do not have to worry about legislation that introduces the idea it may have to be settled in court. I question that and I worry about that.
There is also question of the extra time limits that will be imposed and the extra level of bureaucracy and the red tape that will be created, especially in the further exploration and development in mining.
We all know what happens in the mining industry. We all have grave concerns about what will happen if the industry ever decided one day that perhaps Canada was not the place to do business in. We have to address some of these concerns. We hear from exploration companies that unnecessary red tape is already creating this distinct possibility.
I sat and still sit on the natural resources committee. I can remember agreeing with all parties in the House in the last session to preparing a draft policy entitled “Keep Mining off the Rocks in Canada”. We worked very hard on it. Yet not one decision of that committee has come to the floor of the House. It sits on some shelf gathering dust. Maybe that is a make work project for government, keeping people busy dusting off policies that would benefit the Canadian populace as a whole. We supply people to dust them off every now and then so that maybe they can refer to them but never in the House.
It makes me wonder about the legitimacy of much of the committee work, as I am sure many members of the House wonder. We put in many hours trying to clarify legislation, only for it to be taken from our hands and drafted into language that very few of us really understand. The lack of clarity has to be the first concern.
We also have to be concerned about what we are creating in the process with regard to the legality problems that could be created and fostered. We have to consider seriously a system that could be under-resourced. I have not heard much about this concern, but we have to consider it, especially its technical capacity. We have to be aware that it might put us at a disadvantage in dealing with the large workload the bill will create by agreements and changes in leasing permits. We have to be concerned about many of these areas.
When the legislation goes to committee I would like to see the amendments seriously debated and considered instead of just washed over. If we were to address some of the amendments that come forward with regard to the bill it would take away a lot of the worry for the people living up there, both native and non-native. It would definitely take away some of the worry for mining exploration companies, the biggest employer in the area.
This has to happen in legislation if we are to go forward with good pieces of legislation that benefit everybody. These are legitimate concerns. I hope members of the House understand them, look at them and are willing to address them through committee work.