Mr. Speaker, this is all about talking to the folks back home who are watching. It is all about Bill C-56. It is all about the government making a commitment it could not keep. That is basically what this is all about.
I will quote from an article written by John Gray of the Globe and Mail . It is entitled “Referendum process leaves a House divided”. It is about a government trying to go ahead by buying votes. That is what it is about.
Maggie Balfour is the former chief of the Norway House reserve. She and other people on the reserve wanted to challenge the legality of a referendum with regard to the implementation of this whole agreement. She and other people had problems with the process and the way these things were done. They were going to put forward their challenge to what had happened.
What happened then? Ms. Balfour described it as bribery in the article. She said that basically everybody who had problems with the process was offered $1,000 just in time for Christmas. If they accepted the $1,000 then these dissidents would thereby kind of fall off this challenge. As a result, with $1,000 the government could buy silence from these people on the reserve.
Not only was the government complicit in these things, but the band council got control of the $1,000 payouts and could decide who would get them and who would not. It was even more selective than just whether or not you took your name off the list. There was complicity between the federal government and the band council.
The article touches on some other issues that we are dealing with in the country, particularly a province that I have in mind. They say here that if a referendum loses, then a second one should be called, and that is exactly what this situation had in mind. They were continuing to call referenda until they got the results they needed. This was all something the federal government was up to because it had made commitments that it just could not keep.
As a result, the federal government and the band were complicit in holding referenda again and again on the implementation on this whole agreement until they could go ahead and pass this legislation.
It says here that money and land was exchanged for a formal end to the obligations of the northern flood agreement.
I will quote directly from the article because it is particularly relevant in this case. It states: “When the votes were counted on the night of July 29, the majority in favour of the implementation agreement was almost two to one. But the referendum was defeated because there was not a majority of eligible voters on the reserve in favour”.
What happened then? On August 1, three days after the defeated referendum at Norway House, Ms. Jackson, the federal negotiator, was laying the groundwork for a second referendum.
What happened here is that they could not get what they wanted in the first one, so by offering $1,000 and by plunging ahead into a second referendum the federal government, along with the band, hoped they were going to be able to get the results they wanted, despite the objections of some of the dissidents who had problems with what was being done.
The federal government asked questions about the accuracy of the voters' list at Norway House. By asking questions about the accuracy of the voters' list it was able to go ahead and force a second referendum. It even admitted that the rules could be changed for the second vote. “If you consider it changing the rules, I suppose that is what it is”. That was a quote taken directly from Ms. Jackson, the federal negotiator in this whole deal.
In the days after the first referendum a group of Norway House residents took the band council to court on the grounds that the entire referendum process was improper. Some 186 band members signed the application to the court.
In the ensuing three months, three-quarters of those who had supported the legal challenge signed affidavits saying in effect that they did not sign or did not mean to sign the court application. This is because they were being bought off, bit by bit, with thousand-dollar increments of federal money.
The unemployment rate on this reserve is 80% to 85% and most people in town live on social assistance of only $205 per month. Not surprisingly, the money figures prominently in this glossy guide book to the implementation of the agreement published by the federal government. Most of these people are not very well off and $1,000 of federal government money to buy their votes seems like a pretty lucrative deal for some of them. If they only make $205 a month, $1,000 would be five months' salary.
On page 3 of the government's guidebook describing the implementation agreement is the promise of a $78 million trust fund. Page 13 has the promise that if the agreement is approved there will be three payments totalling $1,000 for all band members. Even more so, those aged 55 and older will get $1,500. This will pay off the band elders with a little more money.
Ms. Omand was one of the 186 who signed the challenge to the legality of the referendum. She acknowledges that later she signed the affidavit because she wanted the money. She speaks, frankly, for many of the people who were bought off with federal government money.
The first challenge to the referendum was rejected by the federal court. The dissidents discovered in the two referenda that it is difficult to be effective in a town where the band council owns and controls the only newspaper, the only radio station and the only television station. There is complicity among the band, the federal government, the money being spent by the federal government, the newspaper, the radio station and the television station. How are these dissidents, these people who have problems with it, supposed to be able to have their voices heard? Ms. Omand wrapped up her article by asking “How can the government put us in such a devastating mess?”
In light of this, what does the Reform Party propose as a solution? My NDP colleagues criticized us earlier today so I am sure they would ask that question. The Reform Party believes that the chief electoral officer of Canada should have authority over Indian government elections to ensure they are fair and lawful. What we had here was a case of the federal government and the band buying votes. It was a thousand dollars a pop to have dissidents drop a legal challenge. It was easier to buy their votes than it was to have a fair election and get the results they wanted.
Some members have said today in the House that the Reform Party is bringing up these unfair elections and these problems in terms of democracy and what happens on the reserves. I think that is only fair. We are doing that in the spirit of people like Ms. Omand and Ms. Balfour, the former chief of the Norway House reserve. It is only fair that their type of consideration be heard in the House. These are not just allegations because they were willing to press ahead with them in court. These types of consideration should be taken into account.
Let us think about how this plays with the Liberal strategy in other areas. Liberals do not just buy votes on reserves and buy the complicity of bands and councils to get their way, they buy votes in provinces too. It is not only a strategy they keep up with aboriginals in this country. They buy votes in this country by giving out flags and through various programs that they adjust and tinker with for special interest groups—