Madam Speaker, I am honoured to rise in the House today and address Bill C-39, the amendments to the Nunavut Act.
Prior to addressing the proposed legislation, I want to again extend my best wishes to the residents of Nunavut. I just returned from a trip to Iqaluit with other members of the standing committee for the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. I enjoyed the hospitality of the people and listened to their proposals for increasing their economic self-reliance. I saw their pride in their new creation, the territory of Nunavut. There was much talk about improving their government and the delivery of services. We certainly wish them well in their endeavours.
Turning to the legislation, before my speech is over I hope to show why the members opposite should have adopted a reasonable and democratic amendment to this bill which was proposed by the Reform Party, the purpose of which was to improve the Nunavut Act. Certainly the purpose of the act as proposed is to improve the previous legislation. By adopting the Reform Party's amendments that legislation could have been improved.
We feel that sending this legislation now to the non-elected, unaccountable and therefore ineffective Senate will simply add the meaningless seal of approval to a bill that will not aid in the cause of democracy. I will be proposing an amendment at the end of my speech which I do not like putting forward but it is necessary given the government's stand on the whole issue of democracy.
The original legislation creating Nunavut territory was introduced and rushed through parliament by the Progressive Conservative government with little time for comprehensive study by members of parliament at that time. It contained numerous flaws such as this act is proposing to amend.
There were errors in the description even of the boundaries. I was interested as a land surveyor to read the errors that the description of the boundaries contained. There were gores and overlaps all along the boundaries. There are unanswered questions with the James Bay Cree as to the status of the islands off the shore of James Bay.
The deficiencies and errors in the act are meant to be corrected by the legislation before the House. There is one glaring oversight which the Leader of the Official Opposition spoke about. That is the matter of how the senator for the territory is to be selected.
We on this side of the House together with many Canadians realize that when the legislation was drafted for many years there had not been any innovative thinking in this House on how government should be constructed or how it should be delivered. It was only after the Reform Party came to parliament that anyone even spoke about how democracy in this country might be enhanced by having the taxpaying public have a say in the selection of their senators.
The election of Senator Stan Waters, a Reformer, was the people's choice in the only Senate election ever held in the history this nation. Depriving the Liberal Prime Minister of his number one patronage plum signals the end of civilization in the eyes of this government, but the election of Senator Stan Waters by ordinary Canadians did not bring about the apocalypse predicted by the government. Instead, Canadians for once had the person they chose for the Senate. This one senator, and only this one, was accountable only to the people who put him there rather than to the Prime Minister of the day and his political machine. His independence meant that he was free to promote and protect the interests of the people who put him there. Is that not the way it should be?
There are members of the Senate who have been there through seven or eight governments and five prime ministers. We realize we need a sense of history in this House but we do not need to bring the artefacts right into government at the Prime Minister's wish and then leave them there until they have long forgotten the current issues of this country.
The creation of a new territory was a perfect opportunity for this government to give the gift of fuller democracy both to the territory itself and to the rest of this country. An elected senator would have been a generous gesture to the people of Nunavut that would signal the government's commitment to reducing the member's list for club Chrétien. Failure to adopt that measure means a continuation of stale and outdated policies regarding the Senate and appointments to it and its increasingly ineffective role in defending regional interests.
The Senate as currently constituted is anathema to many Canadians, and calls for its democratization or outright abolition will only grow more strident as time goes on. Is it not about time the government listened to the voices of those who are calling for democratic reform? It is not as if there were no interest in the matter, as the Liberals would have us believe. Alberta is planning to push ahead with elections for the people's choice for candidates to be appointed to the Senate. This type of thing will only increase in frequency and will spread to other provinces.
I believe the Prime Minister and the government really have only two options. The first is really twofold. They could have been at the front of the parade and shown some real leadership on this issue by first allowing the people of Nunavut to democratically elect their first senator and they could have made a commitment to the rest of Canada that the Prime Minister is willing to appoint the provincially elected candidates for senators in accordance with voter wishes. By rejecting this reasonable option, the Liberals risk being in the history books as the party that denied Canadians a democratic voice in the selection of those they desire to govern them.
Hope springs eternal in the human heart. It is spring now and as life and colour return to the earth there is the promise of a new crop as seeds are planted. The seeds of some new and democratic ideas have been planted here today, seeds of hope for Canadians weary of paying taxes to support an outmoded and deficient arm of government. It has long fallen behind the needs and expectations of the people of Canada and the purposes for which it was created. In its present form it is an anachronism, a fossil remnant of the important institution it was meant to be.
We had hoped the government of the day would act on the amendment which was previously proposed. However, I now propose on behalf of the Leader of the Opposition and other Reform members the following amendment:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following:
“this House declines to give third reading to Bill C-39, an act to amend the Nunavut Act and the Constitution Act, 1867, since the principle of the bill does not guarantee that the government will select senators who have been lawfully elected in a territorial Senate election”.