Mr. Speaker, the debate on this bill is not about the degree of respect for aboriginal people held on one side of the House or the other. I know the Liberals would like to make it a debate on that and go into their usual rants about how they see themselves as being the purest of the pure as far as having the best of motives and everyone else's motives are rotten and suspect. That is nonsense.
Members need to examine some of these measures on their merits. They need to get away from some of the rhetoric and some of the emotionally buzzwords that are used, unfortunately, by government, I hope not to obscure clear headed debate on the merits of these proposals. Certainly it should not deter people who are examining these bills in the public domain.
Bill C-6 is called the Mackenzie Valley land and water management act. I assume this is what this bill is about. It is about good management of the resources on the land and the water resources of a huge, beautiful valuable area of our country. It is rightly said that the people who live in that area should have the biggest say in the way the area is managed. That is the principle that we have tried to use right across Canada. Unfortunately we get made in Ottawa solutions that do not benefit the people in a particular area or region of Canada. We have been pretty blunt about pointing that out when it happens. We have just seen in B.C. how the mismanagement by Ottawa of our salmon stocks has erupted into a huge concern and fight with real economic consequences. It is not just people in one or another area of the country who suffer under bad management from this government and I think we need to point that out.
Let us examine the kind of management structure that is being put into place by this bill. First, the bill creates four new boards. It creates a land use planning board in the Gwich'in settlement area. It also creates a land use planning board in the Sahtu settlement area. Then it sets up a Mackenzie Valley land and water board with a regional panel in each of those two settlement areas and it sets up an environmental impact review board for the entire Mackenzie Valley.
The Mackenzie Valley land and water board can create panels besides the two that are set up in the Gwich'in settlement area and the Sahtu settlement area, and of course as other land claims are settled there are other settlement areas and presumably other land use planning boards and land and water boards.
And so we have a proliferation of boards. This is nice. It gives a lot of people involvement and a say in what happens but the simple question is does this lead to power or to gridlock. We can say this scheme is wonderful, we are going to include everybody, we are going to give everybody we can a say and they can sit around the table and give their opinion and make a decision about how this happens. Then a little ways away another group will do the same thing.
Is not the whole purpose of this to properly manage the land and water resources of a very valuable region, to manage them for the benefit of the people there? Just to say that everyone gets a shot at this and is this not wonderful is simply nonsense.
The stated purpose of the bill is to provide an integrated system of land and water management in the Mackenzie Valley. That is a nice purpose. Integrated sounds very nice. That means coming together, meshing, working harmoniously and smoothly together for the protection of the environment and resources that are so important to people of any region, whether it be fish in British Columbia, whether it be hydroelectric power in Newfoundland and Labrador or whatever it is that people are very concerned about the management of land and water resources.
Is this system integrated? By any normal, rational, intelligent definition I cannot see any reason to suppose that this is going to be integrated. There are separate boards and panels being set up in each of the settlement areas and there is a total absence of any logical, coherent framework for doing this. It does not say how the members of these boards are to be selected. It does not give any criteria for eligibility. It has no process for the appointment. It does not lay out who is responsible for what.
There are no guidelines as to how a board decides what is allowable and what is not. It does not say that if a development affects both regions or in future maybe multi-settlement regions if one board decides one thing and then another board has a different viewpoint who sorts all this out.
Are these projects supposed to be sorted out by the courts at enormous expense, enormous delays, enormous frustration where with the resources everyone throws up their hands, as they are starting to do in Voisey's Bay in Labrador, and wishes they had never started the whole thing? Then the potential benefits for the people in the region are completely lost.
I heard the rant by the previous questioner of the last speaker about this wonderful heritage of aboriginal people. The Liberals are not the only ones who know and love, have worked with or have family members who are aboriginal people. They want the same advantages, the same educational opportunities, the same goods and services, the same security and employment opportunities as any other Canadian.
The resources of a particular region are there to be developed to give that quality of life to the people who live there. We must have a way to make sure that there is a logical, well thought out and workable solution so that the people of a region can decide how to protect, enhance and properly develop the resources, but not in such a hodge-podge, mish-mash way that no coherent decision is ever possible.
This decision making process is under resource. It takes a great deal of technical expertise to do environmental impact assessments and all other assessments that have to be made. The development companies will say if they bring in this development or do this or that, it will be great. However, when those kinds of proposals are being evaluated there must be the same kind of technical expertise.
However, there is no indication in this bill that the technical resources will be available to the decision makers who are being put in place. To just put people in place and tell them to go for it and decide without giving them the resources to make well informed decisions is nonsense. Again, the bill does not allow that.
I was in the last Parliament when Reform opposed some of the measures that were brought forward on these settlements. It was on the basis that if we are to set up power, authority, responsible decision making structures, it must be done in a way which will benefit the people involved. We cannot have chaos and expect anyone to benefit.
I challenge the government to clarify the structure of these multi-boards it is putting place. By the way, this is not the only decision making structure in that area. There is the territorial government and the councils of the people. There will be these levels of decision makers, government and authorities. Human nature being what it is, there will also be competing interests and viewpoints.
I have not seen anything in the bill that would reassure me as a legislator, as someone who has the responsibility to examine the structure to see whether it does serve the interests of the people who will be affected. I am not at all convinced that this structure is workable.
To say that it includes aboriginal people in the decision making and therefore it must be wonderful and good and anyone who says it is not must have some sinister motive is complete nonsense. It would be absolutely irresponsible to accept the bill and its structure simply on that soft, fuzzy, mushy basis.
The people who will be affected are looking to us to put in place a workable structure, one they can operate under. In the House we have standing orders, procedure in committees, rules of procedure and Beauchesne. Even then to your sorrow, Mr. Speaker, sometimes order and coherence do not always carry the day. That is the way institutions and organizations and decision making bodies operate. They have to be structured and under some kind of regulatory process which is clearly laid out so that people know what their responsibilities and jurisdictions are and what is allowable and what is not.
Just to say that this is going to happen by magic is like blowing up a print shop and saying you are going to get a complete novel from the debris.
We in the House and this government have a responsibility when we put in structures and make regulatory changes. The goal is laudable. I do not think anybody in this House would say that we should not have environmental protection for the northern regions or good management of land and water resources. Nobody here is saying that.
What we and the opposition are saying to the government is that instead of putting our hands over our hearts and saying we are being inclusive and allowing people to have a say, let us put a structure in place where we have a say in a way that is going to get some results.
If we in this House could just get up and shout at each other and say whatever we wanted whenever we wanted with no structure, no regulations and no standing orders, we would not be able to carry on the business of this country. It is the same with any organization or decision making body that is put into place. There must be some clearly developed lines of how this is going to work. This is entirely missing in this bill. Maybe the parliamentary secretary can reassure us that there are some regulations that are going to be put into place that will remedy this defect. I have not seen them but if they are not there they sure should be.
At this point I think it would be completely irresponsible to foist on the people of a huge, important and valuable region of this country this kind of a hodge-podge management system. I urge members of this House to either see the government rectify these defects or to vote down this bill until these defects are rectified.