Debates of Oct. 13th, 1999

Special Debate

[John Cummins, Reform, Delta—South Richmond, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the priority native commercial fishery mandated by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Marshall decision reflects precisely the separate native commercial fishery imposed on British Columbia fishermen by the previous Conservative government.

The regulations the minister is imposing on the east coast fishermen to manage the fallout from this decision are precisely the regulations that were imposed on the fishery in British Columbia and which have taken that fishery from profitability prior to 1992 to the point this year where there is no fishery on the Fraser.

Why should I believe the crocodile tears that are coming from the member who just spoke when the policy of his party was precisely the same as the policy mandated by the Supreme Court of Canada?

[Gerald Keddy, Progressive Conservative, South Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, is the hon. member suggesting for a moment that we do not listen to the Supreme Court of Canada, that we are somehow above the law?

There was an opportunity all along. We were following this debate and the issue very closely. The government failed to show leadership. For the hon. member to raise questions and innuendo in the House on issues which he is obviously not cognizant of and for which he does not have the facts, including the aboriginal lobster fishery that existed previously, is a serious mistake.

If we have leadership from the government we have an opportunity to bring an end to the problem in this fishery right now. We can put a moratorium in place. However it was the Reform Party that did not want a moratorium. It insisted that we could have a stay of proceedings. Look where the stay of proceedings is right now. We are 72 hours from the end of this. The stay of proceedings will not happen. We went in the wrong direction with it. We should have had a moratorium in the beginning. That is the problem.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the concern of the member from the south shore of my beautiful province of Nova Scotia. Many of the fishermen in these communities we are talking about are in his riding.

I have spent an awful lot of time on the phone in the last few days talking to fishermen and representatives in the hon. member's riding. A lot of them have said that possibly for the short term in terms of a solution to incorporate the aboriginal people into the fishery is a sort of voluntary buy-back program. There are 6,300 licences in the maritime provinces right now that incorporate lobster fishing. Of those, roughly 10% belong to people who would voluntarily exit the industry if they got a decent price for their licences.

Would the hon. member not agree that could be a short term solution as we work toward a long term goal? The government could purchase these licences, transfer them over to the Mi'kmaw nation and everyone could fish under the same conservation guidelines.

[Gerald Keddy, Progressive Conservative, South Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I think the problem here is that the hon. member is mixing up short term and long term solutions.

That could perhaps be part of a long term solution. It is a way to integrate the native fishery into the existing fishery. The bottom line for the fishery has to be very simple: a commercial fishery based on rules and regulations, the same seasons, the same trap limits and the same lobster fishing areas for everyone in the fishery.

We can find ways and we can be innovative and we can bring the Mi'kmaw fishers into the fishery, but we have to do it under one set of rules with one set of regulations for everyone in the fishery.

[Mark Muise, Progressive Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the supreme court rendered its decision on the Donald Marshall Jr. case on September 17. Almost a month has gone by and only now has the government recognized the seriousness of this particular ruling.

Tonight's emergency debate is focused primarily on the fishery and more specifically on the lucrative Atlantic lobster fishery. Yet the supreme court ruling will have far greater implications for all future federal government negotiations with our aboriginal peoples.

As my hon. colleague from south shore has mentioned, this ruling will most definitely be used as a benchmark for future discussions over such things as logging rights, mineral rights and even land claims.

Despite the importance of this decision, the government chose to postpone the opening of parliament by three weeks to introduce a new throne speech rather than reconvene parliament to address this situation. Shame.

What is more disturbing about the government's obvious contempt for the parliamentary process is the fact that Canada's fishery industry was almost totally ignored in the Speech from the Throne. Except for a very brief mention in the speech, it would appear that this Liberal government could not care less about what happens to Atlantic Canada or the fishery.

After watching the aftermath of the supreme court decision, can there be any doubt that the government was totally and utterly ill prepared to respond to the violent reaction among fishers that such a decision was bound to create? It is absolutely unbelievable that the government did not have a strategy prepared for whether or not the supreme court ruled in favour of Mr. Marshall. That was exactly what happened. Instead of being a leader in this dispute, the minister has left it to the affected parties to come up with their own solutions to this impasse.

Native leaders have just come up with their own solution. Following an emergency debate this afternoon, it was reported that native leaders have now decided to withdraw their support for a 30 day moratorium. This means that native fishers will once again take to the waters without any government restrictions. Such action will certainly heighten tensions in an already hostile environment.

Native leaders are charging the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans with negotiating in bad faith by imposing trap limits on two native reserves in Burnt Church and Indian Brook who refused to enter into a moratorium agreement along with the 33 other band members.

Native leaders went to great pains to explain to the media that their original decision to agree to the moratorium was taken of their own accord and was not influenced by the request of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. It would appear as though they do not recognize the authority of the minister to impose a solution to this impending crisis in the fishery. And why should they? The minister and his own senior officials have shown clearly that they have no solution to offer either native or non-native fishers with regard to this dispute.

In light of the decision taken by native leaders today, it is vital that this minister and this government act immediately to establish at least a short term solution until a long term solution can be negotiated.

What was this government thinking? Why was it so cocky that it could not even fathom the possibility of losing this case before the supreme court? On what did it base this arrogance? It could not be based on the Sparrow decision. It could not be based on the recent logging disputes in New Brunswick. The rulings in these cases should have triggered some kind of warning bell within the government. Let me ask the question millions of Canadians have been asking themselves, one that our party repeated in the House today. Why was the government not prepared to respond to this situation? Why?

This case has been ongoing since 1993. It is now 1999 and this government is acting as though the situation suddenly appeared from nowhere. I have been in the House asking questions on the illegal lobster fishery that has been going on for the past two years. The minister and his officials knew that was happening. He cannot say that he did not know. He should have had a plan in place. It is not acceptable.

Our West Nova fishers perhaps are victims of their own success. Not so many years ago a lobster fisher was said to be involved in a poor man's profession. There were virtually no markets for lobster. Lobsters were used as fertilizers on our fields.

The lucrative lobster industry did not just happen overnight. Through conservation, dedication and a lot of hard work, industry leaders slowly began developing markets for this crustacean. We have gone from exporting lobster to the U.S. to opening lucrative markets in Europe. A lobster licence that may have sold for $5 30 years ago is now worth $250,000 in some cases.

Lobster fishers risk huge amounts of money to participate in this lucrative fishery. Besides the expense of a fishing licence, investments include the purchase of a vessel, fishing traps, bait, fuel and wages for their employees. There is a huge overhead involved in this industry. So much money is tied up in their investment that any major decrease in catches or a significant reduction in the price received for lobster would be catastrophic for many fishers, particularly those who have just recently entered into the fishery.

Let us face it. The government was caught with its pants down by not having a strategy in place to address the supreme court ruling. Rather than admit its lack of preparedness and thereby ask the supreme court to grant a temporary stay of its ruling until new regulations could be established, the minister simply allowed a free for all within the Atlantic fishery which led to fear and ultimately violence. This could all have been avoided had the minister of fisheries taken a leadership role in establishing temporary rules and regulations that would have encouraged dialogue leading to long term solutions.

As tensions continued to rise, the minister kept telling Atlantic Canadians that he had the authority to impose restrictions based on conservation. I asked the minister why, if he were legitimately concerned with conservation, he would allow anyone, native or non-native, to fish out of season.

The supreme court has rendered its decision. The native people's right to participate in the fishery has been upheld by Canada's highest court. However, the decision did not clearly define how the fishery was to be conducted. The supreme court decision left many questions unanswered, such as what constitutes a moderate livelihood and how those displaced by this decision will be compensated.

Many non-native fishers are frustrated by the lack of leadership coming from the minister's office. The minister's initial reaction to the supreme court decision was to allow native fishers to participate in an unregulated, unrestricted fishery. Naturally, tensions were bound to escalate as commercial fishers feared the potential loss of their livelihoods.

The Atlantic fishery is worth over $1 billion to our economy. I would consider that quite significant, yet this government has responded with a casual air of indifference toward this crisis.

The fishers of West Nova are some of the finest fishers in the world. Although the minister and his government colleague appear ready to turn their respective backs on the industry, I want them to know that I will not. I will continue to demand from the government that we work with the stakeholders to come to an acceptable solution of this serious issue.

On behalf of our fishers I implore that the minister begins addressing the issue immediately before the lobster industry is damaged beyond repair.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for West Nova for his remarks with regard to his fishermen. As I mentioned to his colleague from the south shore, I have been dealing exclusively with people in fishing and representatives in that area.

The one thing I would like to add is that he is correct that we need immediate action from the minister. Would he not agree that with the recent decision by the aboriginal chiefs in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to lift the moratorium it would be a very wise idea for the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to get on an airplane and head down to that area to deal with the issue immediately?

[Mark Muise, Progressive Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question. I guess the answer is very obvious. I have been saying all along that the minister should have been on the ground in Atlantic Canada three weeks ago, the day after the decision happened, so he could get a sense of what was happening.

I walked those streets for 42 years and I have never, ever sensed the tension that is in my part of the province. The hon. member for South Shore and my colleagues from New Brunswick tell me the same. The ministers should be on the ground. They should be talking to be people who have a chance of resolving the problem. They should show leadership and they should be there immediately to start working on it right away.

[John Cummins, Reform, Delta—South Richmond, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot help but comment on the last remarks of the hon. member. The tensions and whatnot that he is describing, the fears and the hurts that people are relating to him, are the same problems that we have been listening to for the last six or seven years in British Columbia. They are problems that were brought on by the policy of the former Conservative government.

The solution that is proposed is the same solution. The one season, one set of regulations solution is the same one that was proposed by the fishing industry on the west coast and was rejected wholeheartedly by the previous government and by this caucus all the way along. That has been our proposed solution.

I am still curious as to why the suggestion I made that a stay of judgment and a rehearing of the case be sought is rejected by my friend who just spoke. The facts are clear that the moratorium will not work. There is no compulsion on anybody to comply with the terms of the moratorium, but a stay of judgment would have some legal authority. It would give voice to those people who are affected by the decision. I would like to know why they reject that notion.

[Mark Muise, Progressive Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am always impressed or not impressed by my hon. colleague's inflammatory remarks. It is by working together in trying to come to a solution that we can achieve peace and some kind of acceptable solution of the matter. It is not by driving a wedge between both parties or using derogatory or inflammatory comments that we will come to a solution. We have to represent our people. We have to speak out on their behalf. We also have to encourage people to work together because that is the only way.

Once the court has made a decision it cannot be reheard. There is no room for appeal or there is no ability to appeal a supreme court decision. We have to work together instead of trying to drive a wedge, which my hon. colleague seems to be doing so well. I will have no part of that.

[Ethel Blondin-Andrew, Liberal, Secretary of State (Children and Youth)]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to provide a preamble to the comments I want to make with the fact that throughout the great country of Canada for centuries aboriginal people have very generously stood by and watched the development of the country for commercial purposes, whatever the resources are. It could be oil and gas. It could be forestry if we look at B.C. It could be mineral resources. Aboriginals have reaped few of the benefits. They have no resource sharing revenue mechanisms to have returns of revenues to them.

At this point in time in our history aboriginal people are saying that they want equity of access. We want to be self-sustaining communities and we want to participate. Quite clearly, to put this debate in context, we must understand that aboriginal people and non-aboriginal people have to work hard to allow cooler heads to prevail, to be reasoned and logical, and to try to find constructive solutions.

In dealing with the debate and trying to help clarify the government's position on the Marshall decision, I am extremely impressed with my colleague, the minister of fisheries, who very appropriately went to the aboriginal people and the commercial fishery in the Atlantic region to deal with the problem. It was very skilfully done. The level of arbitration and consultation had proven results. We have to work not only at dealing with an interim crisis but at a long term and strategic solution for it.

When the supreme court ruling was handed down on September 17 some people said we should have provided an instant analysis and announced some bold new initiatives. Kind of a knee-jerk reaction was what was wanted. Some critics even suggest we simply put down our fist and simply close the lobster fishery indefinitely. Closing the fishery would have been in some respects an easy way out but would have been unproductive for all parties.

The supreme court decision, my colleagues across the way should know, is the highest legal voice in the land and we must respect its rulings. We cannot cherry pick on a decision that the supreme court makes when we feel that we do not like it or other people do not like it. What kind of a country would we have? What would happen to the charter of rights under those conditions?

In this case the court upheld the 1760 treaty with the Mi'kmaq but with the modern interpretation of what it means in 1999. The judgment spoke of a moderate livelihood for natives and not an open-ended accumulation of wealth in the fishery.

Just as important, the court also said the right could be regulated. I am sure some people who want to inflame and create fear unnecessarily would have us believe that there would be anarchy on the seas, that native people would go out there indiscriminately after decades and years of depending on country foods and on the fishery for sustainability. That they would go out there and pillage is ludicrous.

As we can see, the judgment is complex and there are still a number of issues to be resolved. The minister immediately sought clarification of the ruling to provide the best possible response in the shortest period of time. This analysis took less than two weeks when many other cases have required months.

We have heard in the House of Commons today a reference to what the opposition considers the fact, that this is a race based right. It is very important to understand that the collective rights of aboriginal people are not race based. Those comments are race based. The collective rights of aboriginal peoples are human rights that accrue to them by virtue of their existence as people with their own cultural, legal and political traditions.

Aboriginal peoples have welcomed others to this land and have asked only for a reasonable accommodation of their fundamental human rights as individuals and as people. With our particular brand of Canadian ingenuity we as Canadians have inherited and built upon a constitution that seeks accommodation between those people that were here and experienced colonization and all those that have come afterward.

The Mi'kmaq of the maritimes have waited 240 years to have their fundamental rights respected under a treaty entered with the crown, a treaty that is part of the constitutional fabric of the country. The Mi'kmaq like other aboriginal people have been asked to respect the rule of law and they have done so by taking their claims to the courts.

I cannot express strongly enough my belief that Canadians of all origins are by nature a generous and accommodating people who respect the rule of law. I have no doubt that we will continue to prove ourselves to be so in the future, but the will and the spirit to co-operate has to be there. We cannot achieve that level of accommodation if we create fear in the public. It is our responsibility to instil hope. It is our responsibility to be responsible in what we say to the public. If we inflame with those kinds of comments we are doing nothing to resolve the issue.

It is important for the House to know the roles the minister of fisheries has played. Instead of closing the fishery, as I mentioned earlier, the minister took the harder road of negotiations. The minister and the government wanted to respect the supreme court ruling. There were other suggestions that were not taken up for obvious reasons.

Where others might have given up the minister continues to seek solutions through dialogue and co-operation. The minister continues to be involved on a daily basis. He is in constant touch with the aboriginal leaders, the commercial fishery, government officials and Atlantic premiers.

Early on the Marshall decision was a prominent issue when the Atlantic Council of Fisheries Ministers met in Quebec City last month. There was a clear recognition from all jurisdictions of the need to clarify the implication of the court decision and to put in place a management regime. The council recommended that regime must ensure the conservation objectives are not compromised and be fair to other interests in the fisheries.

Conservation is one issue but there is another issue. We can play on that. We can use that to be partisan. We can use that to be smaller than we should be. We can do that and that is about economic preservation. Major investments have been made by the commercial fishermen out there. They have increased the value of lobster licences. It is a major investment. It is their retirement package. If we have a sudden influx of other people who would take up in that industry it devalues that investment. That is a major concern. That is an economic preservation concern. That is another thing to think about.

However it is quite interesting if put it into the proper context. On district 23 in the Burnt Church area of Miramichi Bay the number of lobster trapped used by aboriginal people adds up to less than 1% of the number of traps used by the non-commercial fishery. Is that a conservation crime? Is that something that at this point we will have to be totally unreasonable about? It is something we should think about. We have to put everything in context.

I agree that we should be looking at finding a solution. We all witnessed the unfortunate incidents in the days following the court. In conclusion, we have to work hard.

As I said in the beginning, closing the fishery would have been the easy solution, the quick fix. But there is no quick fix on an issue that affects people's rights, lives and livelihoods. I am confident that the minister's staff and department will continue working in the right direction to better the lives of everyone involved.

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the hon. member for her remarks. They were very insightful, passionate and sincere. I could not agree more with the need for reasoned and moderate debate.

However, along that line I would ask the hon. member, in all sincerity, that if this was the true intention, why did her government, three days after the Marshall decision was handed down, decide to prorogue parliament, thus hamstringing and in no small way completely doing away with the ability to debate this issue in the House of Commons? It was the Progressive Conservative Party that had to call for this debate. It was not done voluntarily by the government.

If that is the case and if debate is what will lead to a solution—and I agree with the member that it will—why did her government do away with that ability by proroguing this House?

[Ethel Blondin-Andrew, Liberal, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I think the issue on proroguing the House is a red herring. It is irrelevant to the very important issue at hand. We had a lot of things to consider. There were a number of requirements that had to be met. We were preparing for a throne speech and the installation of a new governor general. Those are not excuses; those are reasons. However, that does not take away from the importance of what was occurring, which was demonstrated in the action that the minister took.

[Yvan Bernier, Bloc, Bonaventure—Gaspé—Îles-De-La-Madeleine—Pabok, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like my hon. colleague opposite to repeat part of her speech. I want to be absolutely sure that I understood the interpreter.

When she says that catches by native fishers represent approximately 1% of commercial catches, is she not contradicting the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans who says that we must ensure conservation of our stocks? One percent is nothing.

I would like to know if she is contradicting the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and if the problem is more of a management problem. How will the fishing be done—that is the problem we have with non native fishers—and, particularly, who will be doing it? That is the problem.

[Ethel Blondin-Andrew, Liberal, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I would never consider contradicting the minister. The minister indicated that conservation is important, and it is an important issue, not just for the fisheries but for every resource. That is an important issue and it is a general statement.

What I did say was that the number of lobster traps used in District 23, Burnt Church, on Miramichi Bay by aboriginal lobster fishers adds up to less than 1% of the number used by the commercial fishery.

We can assume whatever we want, but what I went on to say was that there are other considerations besides conservation. Conservation is always important when we are dealing with a resource, but there is also economic preservation. That was the point I was making.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I have great respect for the hon. member and the area from which she comes. If the member believes that this minister is doing such a fine job, then would she not try to convince her minister, because the people's perception of politics is their reality, and the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development to get out of Ottawa, to get down to the maritime region and to deal with this issue firsthand, instead of dealing with it by long distance from Ottawa? Would the member not make that suggestion to her minister and make it an imperative motion for him to get down there immediately to deal with this issue?

[Ethel Blondin-Andrew, Liberal, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague knows that this is important to the minister. I also know that the minister has a great deal of respect for members of the House and would want to be here to respond to their questions as he did today in question period. He would want to be here to respond to those members who represent the people in the area, and he has been dealing with those people continuously. That is not an issue. The minister has demonstrated quite clearly that he is capable, committed and has the confidence to do the job.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Mr. Speaker, Miramichi, as the hon. member opposite noted, is where Burnt Church is, where Red Bank is and where Eel Ground is, three of the reserves that I represent in the House. Listening to some of the debate tonight I wonder how well some of our native people are being represented in the House.

Across this country there are nearly one million status and non-status people who were the original people of this country. I take affront with some of the statements made in the House in terms of the rights those native people have and should have under the agreements our ancestors made with them.

I also have a very valuable industry in my constituency, which is fishing. Tonight we are talking about lobsters, but in terms of the fishery it is a much broader issue than just lobsters. Lobsters over the last 40 to 50 years have become one of our most valuable species, along with our snow crabs. Those two species provide a lot of income to the people along the Baie de Chaleurs and Miramichi Bay areas.

We also have to recognize what happened and be very aware of the situation that developed which pitted one group of people against another group, the commercial fishermen. I would like to point out to the House that some commercial fishermen are natives.

The aboriginal fishery strategy over the past decade has offered fishing licences and in fact the Burnt Church reserve has approximately 10 licences. It is the same with the reserve at Big Cove where they have fishing licences and also with Indian Island.

It was a very unfortunate incident that happened on that Sunday some weeks ago when fishermen decided to take the law into their own hands. There was a certain degree of frustration because they saw, in terms of the supreme court ruling, that their industry and their livelihood was at stake. I met with some of those fishermen. They came to my office in great numbers on the Wednesday prior to the incident that happened on Sunday. It seems that there were other people who came into our area. There were lobster boats and commercial boats that came from outside the Miramichi constituency to fish on the shores of Burnt Church.

We have to recognize the value of conservation. The inner Miramichi Bay in the fall of the year has very warm water. The lobsters come to change their shells, to moult. It is a nursery where the lobsters procreate and develop for the next season ahead. With that, the commercial fishermen saw a danger to their industry.

We also have to recognize that for the native people of Atlantic Canada the treaty rights they obtained as a result of the Marshall decision created a great period of exhilaration, a great victory they had won, a point they had been striving for and reaching for over many years. Many of the native people took to the shores to set their pots and fishing traps to see what lobsters they could obtain.

We talk of this in terms of wisdom. Many of us are pointing at certain people who have made mistakes. I would like to point out, Mr. Speaker, that when I point at you with one finger, I am actually pointing back at myself with my other three. I think a lot of us in the House tonight, as we try to find some villain in this, are actually doing three times as much damage to ourselves as we are to the people we are pointing toward.

Some will criticize the supreme court. They feel that the supreme court did not have enough wisdom in terms of the outcome of the decision it rendered. The court might have stated in its own behalf that it recognized rural Canada and especially the Atlantic provinces if it had foreseen the difficulties, but that wisdom was not seen by the supreme court.

Some will criticize the minister, but the minister has to look at those judgments. He and his staff and the Department of Justice have to decide just what is said in those pages that have been written by the justices. It takes some time for that to be brought to light and for the proper decisions to be made.

Some will criticize the fishermen who were taken back by the decision. They were very much concerned that an immediate process should evolve and that the minister should simply say “no native fishermen”. That would not be a wise decision. The native people have as much right to the resources of the country as anyone else.

In terms of perspective, we must mention that the fishery has grown over the years. In the 1960s a commercial lobster licence could be obtained for about 25 cents. Today licences are worth somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000.

We also have to recognize that over the years the lobster industry has been developed.

I read an article some years ago about teachers being sought in the southern part of New Brunswick. At that time, during the great depression, teachers often boarded with parents in the community. One promise that one school board made in southern New Brunswick was that no one boarding at their house would have to eat lobsters more than twice a week. Lobsters were frowned upon in terms of being a commodity and only poor people ate lobsters. Today, of course, such is not the case.

We have to recognize that in Atlantic Canada the fishery has been developed. The various species all have different values. We talk about smelts, clams, oysters and the list goes on. In fact, the Marshall case dealt with eels. The fact is that all of them will have to eventually be translated into accommodations in terms of how native and non-native fishermen will approach the fishery.

The point is that not only have native people been restricted in terms of the fishery; the people on the west coast talk about the public right to fish. On the Atlantic side we do not have the public right to fish. Fishing has been closely regulated and people have obtained fishing licences as a result of having paid fees over the years which have been applied by certain regulations.

I hope that in some way this matter can be resolved. In the Miramichi constituency we have people with fear. People are afraid that others may infringe on their rights. We have had burnings, we have had trucks destroyed. There was a special healing site that the native people in Burnt Church burned by fire. A house has been destroyed. All of those things have created great problems in our community. With it, people who have lived side by side for some 200 years are suddenly no longer great friends.

I hope that in the debate tonight we can bring some reason to this problem that has been created in the Atlantic fishery, that people can restore some faith in their ability to relate and understand other people and that, above all, in the near future we can develop a fishery which can accommodate people, both native and non-native, and that the fishery can work in the best interests of the economy of Atlantic Canada.

I also wish to point out one final point. Burnt Church is a very isolated reserve. It consists of between 900 and 1,100 people, depending upon the season. The people of Burnt Church have great economic needs. I think that is true of a great number of reserves across the country. There are some 600 of them. Many of them lack the economic resources to develop their own people and to provide a livelihood for their children.

Let us put all of that into perspective and hope that we as Canadians and as parliamentarians can join together to see a resolution to this great problem that will accommodate most of our people.

[John Cummins, Reform, Delta—South Richmond, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it was suggested that returning to court for a stay of judgment and a rehearing was cherry picking. It is not the case. The purpose of returning to court would be to avoid the type of confrontation we have seen and to seek a clarification of the court's intent in this decision.

For example, would they permit an infringement of the treaty right that they recommended? I refer to paragraph 75 of the Gladstone decision where the court itself recognized that others had acquired rights to fish. It said that reconciliation of aboriginal societies with the rest of Canadian society may well depend on achieving that balance.

Does the member opposite not see a value in returning to the court and getting the court's opinion on how these conflicting rights could be adequately addressed?

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I am not a lawyer and I certainly have to take under advisement what the hon. member has asked.

The conclusion I come to is that since the early 1980s we have brought the Constitution home and the supreme court is the supreme court. Certainly the Department of Justice may work out with members of the court an interpretation of some of their statements in terms of that judgment, but we cannot turn our backs on a supreme court decision.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a question of my colleague from the riding of Miramichi, which is adjacent to the riding of Acadie—Bathurst.

I sympathize with the problems in his riding, but they are the same as in my riding.

My colleague told us that fishers went to see him in his office on Wednesday, and all the problems occurred on Sunday. Then we learned that the minister went there two weeks later. I would like my colleague to comment on this situation. Is he disappointed with his minister's attitude or does he approve of the minister's slowness in handling this whole issue? There is a crisis in our region, and we must take action. I think the minister should not even be here tonight. He should be in Atlantic Canada trying to solve the problems of native and non-native fishers.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Mr. Speaker, in New Jersey on Thursday of last week I met with a number of people and I visited the Burnt Church reserve a short time later. I made a statement that generally all people are good people but there are people in every group who want to create major problems.

I know that in terms of what happened there, we were unfortunate to have outsiders come to Burnt Church. It was also unfortunate that some of the fishermen did what they did.

On the afternoon in question, members of the MFU and I spoke with the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. I called him on the phone and he was readily available. We discussed the problem in the presence of the MFU representatives. We said to them that there should be a solution early next week.

That the boats came from outside the constituency on the weekend certainly was a major factor. From that, the Sunday morning episode resulted and then the Sunday night episode shortly after I visited. I was down there that evening from about 6.30 to 7 p.m. and shortly toward dark those vehicles were destroyed. It is a very unfortunate thing, but the point is that it happened and we all have to live with it. Hopefully the minister in the fine efforts he made in the week since has brought some resolution to it. He has met with the 30 chiefs. He certainly had great courage in doing so and I want to commend him for it. He met with the MFU and hopefully we can resolve this.

[Angela Vautour, NDP, Beauséjour—Petitcodiac, NB]

Mr. Speaker, native communities, like many non-native communities, are in some economic difficulties. The hon. member for Miramichi mentioned that. There are a lot of native communities in difficulties. That is why it is so important now that there is an opportunity for them to have some work in the fishing industry we make sure that 10 years from now there are still lobster out there. That is going to benefit both communities.

Would the hon. member agree that we could have seen more leadership on the part of his government, because conservation is the solution to this? We have to get around the table. It is very clear that conservation is what—

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

The hon. member for Miramichi has 30 seconds, please.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the leadership was very evident. I was satisfied with the leadership the minister provided. I am glad to see the hon. member opposite, who has a very large native community of her own, speaking up for them and representing them in the House. I thank her for that.

[Mike Scott, Reform, Skeena, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to engage in the debate this evening.

I would like to start by focusing my remarks on the supreme court. I do not doubt for one moment its sincerity. I do not doubt for one moment its character or the integrity of the nine justices who sit on the supreme court, as I do not doubt the integrity and the character of members opposite and of members in other political parties who hold different views than I do on this issue.

I would hope that members opposite would refrain from attacking the character and motives of people in this party every time the Reform Party disagrees with them on a philosophical basis on issues that are so fundamentally important to the future of Canada.

In saying that, I want to focus on the supreme court. Many people and many members in the House look at the Supreme Court of Canada in awe. They somehow see these nine justices as being virtually infallible and that somehow we have to accept anything handed down from the supreme court as being the final word. It is as if these people were anointed or appointed by some higher being, by some deity that is unknown to us.

The fact is that the nine justices on the supreme court were all appointed by partisan prime ministers, either Conservative or Liberal. Over the past 30 or 40 years all the existing justices on the supreme court have received their elevation to the bench in that manner. While I would never want to accuse any of the justices on the supreme court of being partisan, it is important to note that I recognize that they are appointed within a certain milieu, a certain political prevailing philosophy.

For about three decades or more that certain political prevailing philosophy can be characterized in several different ways. We could call it more and more the posture of the politically correct. We could call it progressive enlightened thinking. Or, let me borrow from Thomas Sowell, the great American writer who said in his excellent book The Vision of the Anointed that these people have become enraptured with a certain vision that is predominantly a Liberal left vision. The philosophy of that is so evident in our political, social and academic institutions. It has become progressively more so over the last three or four decades.

We are not saying that these are bad people. We are not saying that their characters are flawed. We are not saying that they ought to be harshly rebuked and criticized for the views they hold. What we do say is that they are fundamentally wrong in their thinking. That is the problem we have with this issue today.

The people who embrace this vision of the anointed, again to borrow from Thomas Sowell, assume their own moral superiority because they are convinced of the rightness of their cause. Therefore, they believe they are somehow morally on a higher plane than anybody else. They believe that anybody who disagrees is not only morally wrong, but is in sin. We can see the evidence of that in the debate in this chamber from time to time.

Also, these people who are ensconced in this vision of the anointed also tend to insulate themselves from the reality of the impacts of their own decisions. They do not want to see the reality of the decisions they make. When they make a decision and feedback comes back to them that somehow something has really gone wrong, they point their fingers at anyone and everyone and any other thing they can possibly dream up rather than seriously examine from an intellectually honest point of view their own positions and decisions to see how they affected the outcomes that they do not really want to see.

I submit that the Supreme Court of Canada is very much caught up in this vision of the anointed. The political institutions of this country, the Liberal Party in particular, are also very much caught up in this vision of the anointed.

What we have is a people who fervently believe that they can right the wrongs of history by ignoring the lessons of history. They do not want to give any regard to history's lessons. They do not want to give regard to basic democratic principles and values. They think they can ignore basic democratic principles and values and that because they are somehow more clever, gifted or more able, they can concoct some kind of new societal arrangement that will be successful while ignoring those principles.

I submit that 10,000 years of human history has proven that cannot be achieved. Without democracy we return to the barbarism that all our ancestors experienced in the past. Regardless of who we are in this House, that is where we came from. We learned that through 10,000 years of recorded human history. We learned from experience. We learned by trial and error and many different kinds of societal arrangements that the best way to arrange our affairs so that we can have peace, harmony, prosperity and human rights is through basic democratic institutions.

The cornerstone or founding principle of democracy is the equality of all people before the law. We cannot have it any other way. We cannot be so smart, egotistical or arrogant as to believe we can somehow rearrange society and give special status and rights to be assigned on whatever basis, blindly ignoring the lessons of history and basic democratic principles and expect that we will have peace and harmony in society.

I submit that the evidence of that is before us today. We have had three or four decades of successive policies emanating from government that have tried to encourage Canadians, aboriginal Canadians in particular, that this somehow can happen and that it somehow can work. Not just in the case of the east coast lobster fishery but right across the country we are seeing more and more evidence that not only does it not work but it is leading to real conflict and disharmony in our society. It is not healthy.

I do not doubt the sincerity of the justices on the supreme court and that they were trying to do the right thing. I question how they could come up with the decision they did when the treaty of 1760 on which they relied to render this decision does not even mention fish.

Clearly what they were trying to do was right the wrongs of history by reading into this treaty things that were not there and trying to create some kind of different societal structure that would in their view be a benefit to the Mi'kmaq people.

As much as there are people in the east coast lobster fishery right now who are being displaced and are hurting financially and will continue to hurt financially until this issue is resolved, the people who will pay the biggest price for this folly before it is all said and done will be the Mi'kmaq people themselves.

I will say it again for anybody in the House who cares to listen. The people who will pay the biggest price before it is all said and done will be the Mi'kmaq people themselves.

Unless the government can demonstrate leadership on this and can break with its failed vision of the past and embrace the genuine basic principles of democracy and encourage our aboriginal brothers and sisters to do the same, we will be in real trouble. We can see it coming everywhere. I take absolutely no pleasure in saying this but it is coming. It can be seen everywhere: the Musqueam in Vancouver, the east coast lobster fishery, in Manitoba and in Northern B.C.

It is coming because we have had this political rhetoric in Canada that has encouraged aboriginal people to go down this path. Think about that for a minute. Talk about encouraging aboriginal people in the wrong direction. I would wager that the sons and daughters of members in this place are not trying to forge a future for themselves in a fishery somewhere. The resource industries in Canada are mature to say the least and some of them are over mature as my colleague from Delta pointed out. Some of these are declining industries.

The future economy in Canada and in the world is in high technology, in transportation and in the global economy. It is not in fish. The people who are in the fishery right now are there because they have a historical attachment to it. They have a history with it and are earning a living right now. I would wager that if we were to ask virtually any of those individuals, were they 18 or 19 and had to make the decision all over again, they would not be going into a fishery. They would be going into something else where they could see a much more sustainable and prosperous future for themselves and their families.

What we are telling all other Canadians is that they should get into the information age and the technological age and think about the future in terms of global trade and global economies. We then turn to the aboriginal people and tell them to think of the future in terms of the fishery and logging, in terms of resource extraction and those industries that are already mature in Canada.

It is only within democratic institutions that the value and worth of the ordinary individual is found. When we get into assigning rights and status on the basis of anything other than individual equality, we end up going backward in time. We end up building walls rather than bridges and we end up creating real conflict in society over time.

The supreme court and the democratic institutions of the country genuinely believe they can achieve what human beings have never been able to achieve in the past 10,000 years. The evidence that they cannot is before us today.

The Marshall decision from the supreme court should be a real wake-up call for everyone who is considering what the Nisga'a agreement means. The treaty I am talking about in this instance is a very thin document. The Nisga'a treaty is 200 pages long with 400 pages of appendices and 50 or so agreements that have yet to be negotiated and do not even fall within the agreement as it exists today. Each one of those conditions is subject to a supreme court decision at some point in the future. Consider what that might mean for our country.

The people who have negotiated these treaties have no idea. When we suggested in the spring that they submit that treaty to the supreme court for a reference so we could find out what the supreme court's view would be on the application of the charter of rights and freedoms and what the supreme court's view would be with respect to the constitutionality of that agreement, those people were so arrogant and so sure of themselves, again assuming their own moral superiority, that they looked at us, tried to mischaracterize what we were saying and ignored the warnings we were trying to give them.

We have been trying to give these warnings for six years in this place. We have been trying for six years to say, “hold on, we think you'd better think this through again. You'd better take another look at it”. It is not because we question their character, not because we question their motives, not because we think they are bad people, because we do not, but because we know they are fundamentally wrong.

I would argue that the empirical evidence supports us. The empirical evidence supports exactly what the Reform Party of Canada has been saying since its inception. When we break away from the equality of all Canadians, when we start assigning special status or special rights or special access to resources, when we start assigning different rights to people on any basis, we have a recipe for disaster. We have a recipe for disaster on the east coast of Canada right now.

I do not know what the answer is but I do know how we got here. I know the government needs to take leadership. It needs to demonstrate that it has the ability to lead and to govern for peace, order and good government which it fails to do. It routinely allows decisions to be made by the supreme court so it can duck the responsibility and the potential follow up for making those decisions itself. That is why we are in the predicament we are in today.

I submit that there are people in the federal government and the justice department who are constitutional and legal experts. There has to be ways of dealing with this issue that will be fair, affordable and lead to a resolve of the issue.

The very first responsibility of this government or any federal government has to be to reach out to those aboriginal people who are caught betwixt and between and tell them that their existence with special status has never been of any benefit to them at all. We need to rethink the relationship between the aboriginal people and the Government of Canada and the rest of Canada. Obviously the existing relationship has not worked to the benefit of aboriginal people and has not worked to the benefit of Canada.

It is time that we broke from the failed thinking and failed policies of the past and came up with some new ideas, some new visions and some new ways to move forward. If we do not do that, I fear that we are in for more conflict, more unrest and more of these kinds of events that have been occurring on the east coast of Canada. I do believe that there is a potential for that if this government does not demonstrate that it has the ability to lead and the ability to change its thinking on these fundamental issues.