Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House today for my first intervention in this Parliament addressing the House on this very important bill.
I would like to sincerely thank my constituents for once again sending me back to this House to represent them. I pledge to do my very best for them, to do the job that they expect of me.
I begin by reiterating what my colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca so eloquently said a few minutes ago about the need for aboriginal and non-aboriginal people to work together in this country. Clearly that should be a very important motivation for all of us for the future.
On the surface this bill seems to work in that direction. It appears that it is going to get aboriginal and non-aboriginal people working together. The reality is that it will not really achieve that because participation on the environmental and resource management boards is specifically tied and allotted to individuals based on membership in either the Gwich'in or Sahtu Dene bands. It is not because they are local to the area. It is not because they have a vested interest in the future of that area. It is because they are members of the Sahtu or the Gwich'in bands that they will receive membership on these boards.
I submit that when we single out groups in our society and assign them special rights based on distinguishing characteristics, we do them a disservice and we denigrate the fundamental principles of democracy. I will argue that undermining democratic principles is always harmful to society and in the instant issue will prove most harmful to those whom we most wish to help, aboriginal people.
Let us examine for a minute a world without democracy to better understand how human circumstances fare in such a world. Let us look at the history of this world going back several hundred years, going back actually more than a millennium where kings and feudal systems and fiefdoms were the order of the day, where there was no democracy.
Under those systems, who had rights? We all know how those rights were determined. Kings had all the power. Kings were not elected. When they came down the birth canal they were already elected to be king. They did not have to run for office. They did not need anybody's consent. They were going to be king or queen, whatever the case might be, because it was their birthright.
Under the kings there were others such as barons, earls and so on who had progressively less power but who were still above the lowly serfs. The serfs comprised the great majority of the population. They were people with absolutely no power, with absolutely no say. They were people who were virtually owned by the king. They were the property of the king. The king could do whatever he wanted with them. He did not need to ask permission. He was an absolute ruler and they were absolute servants to the king.
History evolved, thankfully for us who live in this day and age, with great thinkers like Plato and Aristotle and later Thomas Paine and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and others. They envisioned and refined a new social order, a new social contract which had at its foundation and core the rejection of elite special status in favour of equality of all people under the law.
The emergence of democracy was a very slow and painful process, first experienced in rudimentary forums in ancient Greece. Later the evolution of our modern democracy had its beginning in 1066 with the signing of the Magna Carta, a very important document. This document was hard won and began the slow process of stripping the kings of their immense power and devolving that power to the people.
Through the following nine centuries after the signing of the Magna Carta democracy became much more entrenched in Europe and North America. In fact I would argue that North America and later Canada and the United States became the apogee of democracy owing largely to the fact that the ties to the monarchy were less strong in North America than they were in Great Britain. As a matter of fact, the ties to the monarchy were severed completely by the United States in their War of Independence. Consequently it was very easy for the United States to adopt a truly modern democratic system without any ties to the monarchy whatsoever. North America, Canada and the United States have since become synonymous with democracy.
I would argue that the fundamental reason we as Canadians enjoy one of the highest living standards in the world is not an accident. It is not as a result of the fact that we live in a resource rich country, although it certainly helps. Look at the Soviet Union, a resource rich country. For the most part the people there live in dire circumstances. It is not an accident. Now we see some hopeful signs with the emergence of democracy.