Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments by the member for Nunavut. I know the comments about the beauty of the riding are very accurate, as I have been there.
The member started off by saying the bill must be passed by April 1, 1999. I can assure the member that we are not going to do much on this side of the House to speed up any dates but the member's government brings in closure so often it will make sure it gets whatever it wants by that date.
This takes me back to when this legislation first came to this House in 1993 at the end of the time of the previous Tory government. The member for Edmonton North will recall it very well because she was in the House at that time, a lone Reformer, and tried to stop the bill at that time because she wanted to have a look at it.
The bill was nearly 300 pages and parliamentarians had one week to look at the bill. The member for Edmonton North who was back in the corner kept yelling no to unanimous consent but was ignored by the Chair and was told later on she was not a party so it did not matter anyway. That bill was railroaded through the House. I think it was a sad day for democracy in the way it was handled by that government in 1993.
I was reminded of this when the member talked about having this bill by April 1 of next year. The member does not have to worry because her government will do what it has to do to get this legislation through.
I congratulate also the local officials in Nunavut. They have done a great job in getting this government to put up a lot of money. I look at this bill and three superior court judges for the Nunavut court of justice. As the member says, it creates a single level trial court system.
Why is this different from the rest of Canada? The rest of Canada has a different system. Why are we giving a part of our country a different system of justice?
People might say it is the Northwest Territories. It is a big area. It is widespread. I remind people that other provinces, Quebec and British Columbia to name just two, have asked for changes to our constitution. These provinces do not get these changes.
What this government is doing with this legislation is creating another province. It is still called a territory but this government has given it all the powers of a province. This government knows it could not have passed it if it tried to get it through as a province because it needs the agreement of seven provinces.
What really disturbs me is when we have special treatment for one area of Canada, an area with 26,000 people, a long way from Ottawa. We have a lot of people in British Columbia a long way from Ottawa and a long way from parts of civilization.
The bill talks about 26,000 people and 350,000 square kilometres. That is a large area. I wonder how many people in the House know that the four northern ridings in British Columbia are double that size, 700,000 square kilometres. The Skeena riding is 244,569 square kilometres itself. It is two-thirds the size. The Prince George—Peace River riding is 217,188 square kilometres. Caribou—Chilcotin is 120,000 square kilometres. Prince George—Bulkley Valley is 100,000 square kilometres. Those people would like the same things that are happening there.
Go to the north of British Columbia. People have to go all the way to Vancouver to go to court. There are the same concerns that member had. “I saw my lawyer only for a few minutes. I need more time”. Why are we allowing this area of the country to get special treatment? We should use the same law system we have for the rest of Canada. There should be not difference just because it is in the far north of Canada.
The federally appointed judges are going to make $180,000 a year. The releases from the government showed a much lower figure but did not include the raises these judges are going to get. It also includes expenses which I will go into in a minute. They are all appointed at the federal level. That is a scary thought in itself. There is no input at the local level.
Do we need this kind of expensive court? There will be three judges at $180,000 a year plus their expenses. They will get up to $300,000 or $400,000 each to operate. It will be well over a $1 million. There will be three expensive supreme court judges who will sit on cases like dog-napping. That is not what we need in this country. It is not good legislation.
There are many questions we want to ask about those areas when we get into committee. I am looking forward to getting this bill into committee so we can some answers as to why the government made some of these decisions.
The legislation calls for one senior judge and two other judges. As I said earlier, the salaries are very misleading. They do not take into case the new salary increases and also further increases. They will also receive an unaccountable yearly allowance of $6,000. They also get their regular expenses. The senior judge from the court of the Yukon territory, the senior judge from the court of the Northwest Territories and the senior judge from the Nunavut court of justice will each receive an additional $5,000 per year. That is $11,000 per year in unaccountable expenses. That brings the cost of the senior judge to close to $200,000. It seems that is an awful lot of money to have a judge for a territory that has 26,000 people and will have a workload that is nowhere near the workload we have in large cities like Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. I know the workload those judges have.
I know in the north they have to travel. But we also have that in the rest of Canada. We cannot get to Atlin, B.C. from British Columbia. We have to fly in from Yukon or Alaska. They are not alone in the Northwest Territories or Nunavut in having these problems. We have them in British Columbia. We have them other parts of Canada like northern Quebec. Yet we have not made special cases and set up a separate law system to satisfy those needs let alone given these provinces what they have asked for in changes to the Constitution. That seems rather strange to me.
Quebec and British Columbia have had a lot of complaints about how the federal government runs things. We represent a major portion of Canada yet we have not been able to convince this government to do any where near what it is doing for a territory with 26,000 people.
I am sure my constituents have some sympathy for the fact that areas in the north have big territories. But they would wonder why we have one member of parliament from Nunavut representing 26,000 people. Four members of parliament from British Columbia represent an area of 700,000 square kilometres. There are four million people in British Columbia. It is not fair. This is not one person equal representation. We have gone out of our way to set things aside.
I understand that some of the things are fair. They need to happen because of where it is.
This is going a little overboard setting up a separate and very expensive justice system and an unneeded justice system. There are probably better ways of doing this. In New Zealand, for instance, appointed people work at the local level with not only the victims but with the criminals for the good of the community concerning small and non-violent crimes.
We certainly do not need three $200,000 a year judges to be looking into this type of thing in Canada.
The budget for this is going to come out of the yearly allocated budget for Nunavut's implementation which is $32 million. This is not a small amount of money. This account is to run until the year 2008, at a total estimated operating cost of $520 million. That is roughly $20,000 for every man, woman and child there.
I wonder who has made those decisions. Were those decisions thought out back in 1993 when this bill was railroaded through this House?
There is another account for advising on the creation of Nunavut to the Nunavut implementation commission. This account is set at $2.3 million for 1997-98 up from $1.9 million last year. I wonder how high that is going to go up every year. When do all these costs stop? When does somebody stand on his or her own two feet and continue operating on without taking from the rest of Canada?
Land claims are one thing but creating a new province or territory is another. When this legislation was presented they should have gone all the way and said that if they were going to do it they should make it a province, as we should make the Northwest Territories and Yukon a province. Let it go before the people of Canada, according to our Constitution, where all the provinces get a vote on it, and let us solve the issue once and for all instead of going through these expensive processes which also create problems in other parts of Canada.
I am sure the member from that area likes what has happened. I am sure I also would if I were their member of parliament also. However, it gets more difficult to explain to other Canadians who are paying the tax bills when they see the cost per person of doing what we are doing and the continuing costs and where they are going to end.
I also suspect, and it is so obvious because we see it happen so often in this House, that when one bill comes in one has to wonder how many bills are down the road because the first bill was not done properly.
If this bill had been thought out properly in 1993 we would not have it now being rushed through the House, being given one week to look at a major change to our country and then to have closure brought in. They now call it time allocation but I was around when they did not use that term. Just the word closure meant something. Only if debates were taking a really long time, maybe a month or two, would the government bring in closure. Today this government brings it in regularly to run the House of Commons.
I can go back and quote many times when the government House leader on the other side yelled and screamed in this House when he was in opposition and the Tory government was bringing in closure. They are the ones who changed this rule. It was a sad day for Canada when they did it. Debates used to take place in the House of Commons, every member had an opportunity to speak on every bill and the speeches were longer. Some people might have thought it was a waste of time but democracy is not a waste of time. It may be inconvenient to the government of the day but it is not a waste of time.
That is why this bill is not one that we can say it is just a very simple thing adding on to a major bill that passed in this House. We accept the fact that it passed. The one member from the Reform Party who was here at that time voted against it. We can tell it was wrong when it was done because now we have this legislation coming along. The government even says there might be even more bills coming out of the enabling variety which will be very expensive to the people of Canada. That is what concerns my party and that is why we cannot support this bill in its present stage.
When this bill gets to committee we will have a lot of questions that we know the people of Canada would like answered. We hope the government will be prepared to answer those questions at committee. We hope government members will be able to tell us why they can do that in this part of Canada when they cannot do things in other parts of Canada. I am sure a lot of my colleagues over the next few days in this debate will be asking those questions.
When we get into the part of the debate where members can ask questions, we will have some questions for the government members. We hope that they will have some good answers to those questions. We will work with them in committee to make the changes that are necessary so the people of Canada can better understand why one part of Canada has an act in the justice system that is not an act in any other part of Canada.