Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in the debate on Bill C-56, the Manitoba claim settlements implementation act.
My comments will be on part 2 of the legislation which establishes a means to facilitate the implementation of land claim settlements in Manitoba through the creation of new reserves or the addition of land to existing reserves.
When government is adding new land to reserves or creating new reserves would be an ideal time to look at the problems in terms of accountability on reserves now and to deal with some of the problems. It is unfortunate that did not take place in conjunction with this legislation. There was very little change that will lead to any improvement in accountability.
During my presentation I am going to refer to a task force I put in place. It is a process that three aboriginal people from my constituency of Lakeland and I went through. We wanted to find out how aboriginal people felt on these issues. I will go through all the recommendations later and then talk a bit about how the task force was set up. I will start by summarizing the comments on accountability made by some of the aboriginal people who presented their cases before the task force.
They said that more transparent financial reporting by band and settlement administrators is needed. That is no surprise. We have brought example after example before this House of the complete lack of proper fiscal accountability on reserves. They were clear that governments at all levels, including native leaders, need to consult their members far more often to ensure that those consultations are reflected in policy. They even said that they would like an ombudsman set up to act on complaints laid out by aboriginal Canadians. They also said that more scrutiny needs to be applied to bands during elections. These are only some of the recommendations made by task force members.
When I looked at this piece of legislation, I asked how many of those recommendations have been implemented in this legislation. The response from Liberal members across the floor was why should they implement changes that came from a Reform MP. I would like to respond by saying that these recommendations did not come from a Reform MP. They came from a task force which included three aboriginal people and myself.
We make it very clear that the recommendations do not necessarily reflect Reform policy, which is fine. The fact is that none of the task force members are Reform Party members. I do not even know if any of them are Reform Party supporters yet, although I do believe that because of the work we have done some of them probably are. However, that is not important.
What is important is that the recommendations came from the aboriginal people themselves. And my question is, why are those recommendations not reflected in this piece of legislation? I believe the members across the floor will probably say “Why would we want to act on a document that has been presented by a Reformer”.
I would like to read the response from the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development to the task force report we presented to her. She finally agreed after a little public pressure was applied to meet with the task force members. We met in September during the first week that the House sat in this session. She gave us ample time to present our case and I appreciate that.
I was very disappointed however by some of things she said. I will begin by referring to her letter of response to the task force report. My disappointment will become evident as I read through part of this letter:
There is no question that accountability is an important issue. Accountability is key to governance. We cannot build self-sustaining, self-governing First Nation communities without it. It is an issue for us as Parliamentarians with a responsibility to Canadians, and it is an issue for First Nations who must be accountable both to their communities and to Parliament for the resources appropriated to support service delivery. That is clearly the conclusion of the work of the Lakeland task force, just as it was also identified as important in the work of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and in “Gathering Strength: Canada's Aboriginal Action Plan', our response to the work of the royal commission.
What the minister is saying is the Lakeland aboriginal task force presented really fits in perfectly with what has been presented in the past, including by the most recent royal commission and by her response to that commission. So she is acknowledging that what is in the report is what they heard through their commissions as well.
I guess my question is why has the minister not acted on it. Why has she not at least made some movement toward acting on some of these recommendations in this piece of legislation?
I will read more of the minister's response:
Within “Gathering Strength”, we set out four themes to be the foundation of a changed and better relationship with aboriginal people in Canada: renewing the partnership; strengthening aboriginal governance; developing a new fiscal relationship; and investing in communities, people and economies. In each of these themes, there is an opportunity and a commitment to focus on accountability.
She goes on to reinforce that accountability is important and there is a lot of work to be done:
When we look at the tremendous challenge of building sustainable governments, and what a complex and difficult process that is, we need to recognize that there are reasons for this. For decades, we have tried to control virtually every aspect of the lives of the aboriginal people. First nations are making their own decisions—defining how they want to be governed; setting their own priorities; and speaking up to hold their leaders accountable.
I agree with part of that statement. Aboriginal people are speaking up to hold their leaders accountable. But what I do not agree with is the minister's statement that first nations are making their own decisions and defining how they want to be governed. What really is happening is that the leadership of first nations and the national leadership such as Phil Fontaine are saying what they want to see in terms of accountability. They are saying how they want leadership to look. But the aboriginal people have not been listened to at all. The grassroots aboriginal people have not been listened to and that is reflected in this legislation and what is missing from this legislation. I think I will leave my reading of the minister's response at that.
I would like to explain a bit about the Lakeland aboriginal task force and why we started it, how it was set up and then refer to some of the recommendations. I know I am not going to get through the recommendations but I am going to really try this time to get through the first five, because it is the first five that deal with accountability, both fiscal and electoral.
I think those examining this legislation and my colleague and others who have spoken on this legislation already have pointed out some of the things missing in terms of accountability. I am sure as this debate goes on others will point out how the minister has really missed the target in terms of taking the opportunity when she is expanding reserves and establishing new reserves of making sure accountability will be there. She has really missed the boat.
The reason I established the aboriginal task force in the Lakeland constituency was that shortly after the last election my constituency boundaries were changed substantially. Beaver River and Vegreville were put together, two-thirds of each, into a new Lakeland constituency. In Vegreville the constituency which I represented before the election, there were no reserves or Métis settlements. In the Lakeland constituency there are eight reserves and four Métis settlements, an aboriginal population of probably around 30,000 people which is quite substantial out of a total population of about 110,000.
Shortly after the election I started getting phone calls from aboriginal people, some on reserves, some in Métis settlements and some living in communities near reserves. Over the first couple of dozen calls I started to see common themes developing.
These themes were that there is virtually no accountability on reserves. What we have are chiefs and councils taking in the money, not accounting for it and spending the money the way they see fit. They do not necessarily follow the guidelines that are laid out by Indian affairs. What became very clear is that many people living on reserves, the people the money was supposed to find its way to, were being completely missed.
I heard one story after another of extremely crowed living conditions. People had nowhere to stay and did not know where they were going to spend this winter. People were not covered by health care for special expensive medication. They were being completely missed. I heard from a lot of people who are covered under Bill C-31 and who were supposed to have some of the benefits of reserves. They were being pushed aside and felt they belonged nowhere. Chiefs and councils decided they were not going to accept those people, so they did not. I heard from dozens and dozens of people throughout the task force process, some by telephone calls before we set the task force up.
I also got calls from people who pointed out specific examples of how money was being completely misspent. In some cases they pointed to cases of fraud which were borne out later by investigations and audits. Many of these people called for a forensic audit. They wanted audits that determined where the money was coming from, how much was coming in and how it was being spent. They felt that the current audits being done on the reserves were virtually useless. It was chiefs and councils that ordered the audits and determined what kind of audit they wanted. Furthermore, they would only make available a summary and in some cases nothing at all. The accountability was not there.
After I received enough of these calls I decided that I had to do something about it. As a member of parliament it is my job to represent my constituents. I went to some friendship centres in towns near reserves. I got together with a few people and asked them what could be done. They said they had different ideas but said we should get a group of aboriginal people together in one place and decide what could be done. We did that.
A group of about 20 aboriginal people met in Bonnyville and we set up the aboriginal task force of originally four aboriginal members and me. Then we laid out guidelines that would guide us in our process. We first determined that the purpose of the aboriginal task force would be to hear grassroots aboriginal people in the constituency. That was the purpose, to hear them, not to tell them what we thought on issues. That is what we did.
Throughout the process we heard from about 300 aboriginal members. That may not sound like a lot, but several of these people, recorded on tape and TV cameras, said they had never before in their lives had anyone in any position in government really listen to them. I thought that was a pretty sad statement. It did not come from just one. It came from several people.
They did say that from time to time they had a minister of Indian affairs listen to certain chiefs and council members. But it was rare. They said that people listened to Phil Fontaine all the time. The minister listens to Phil Fontaine but nobody has ever listened to them before. It was time and the task force was put together to do that.
We did listen and we did it in three stages. We started in the first stage with private, confidential consultations. We held these consultations at various native friendship centres around the constituency. The reason we did this was that more aboriginal people, particularly from reserves, felt comfortable coming in to native friendship centres. They did not feel that they would be detected easily. Think about that.
They felt more comfortable coming to native friendship centres but they certainly would not go to a hall in a community near a reserve because they were afraid they would be detected and that there would be a price to pay from chief and council. This was very common. Some people who went said they knew they would pay for going but they decided it was time to go anyway. And so they did. We heard from them. Some of them did pay a price.
Mr. Charles Favel was there more than once throughout the process. I heard from him before we started. I have a letter from his chief and council that says Mr. Favel will be banished from the reserve because he went to the media in Edmonton and because he was involved with this member of parliament. He was banished from the reserve. The letter is quite unbelievable. I have copies of it for anyone who would like to see it. It was a bit of a baptism for me as to what can happen and just how serious it can be for aboriginal people from reserves to dare to say things are not as they should be on reserve.
We also put the invitation to chiefs and councils by letter to all chiefs and Métis settlement councils in my constituency. The letter we got back said that I basically had no right to do this. I could not quite understand that so I sent a letter back saying I thought I did. They invited me to a tribal chiefs council meeting. I went to that meeting where some of the chiefs said that I had no right to do what I was doing. I thought that as a member of parliament I had not only a right but a responsibility to represent all constituents. I had not heard that Indian people living on reserves or Métis people living in Métis settlements or aboriginal people living in communities near reserves were not my constituents. Of course they are. I am going to represent them.
I will talk more about this aboriginal report during debate on this bill and on Bill C-49. Then I may get through all the recommendations. I am extremely disappointed that this legislation does not show the Indian affairs minister really means what she said in her letter of response to the task force when she acknowledged there are serious problems of lack of accountability, fiscal, electoral and democratic. She acknowledged that is the case but I would like someone to show me where that is reflected in this legislation, ensuring that as these reserves are expanded and as new reserves are established a proper level of accountability will be put in place so we will know the money that is going to the reserves is getting to the people it is intended to go to. It is not happening now.