Mr. Speaker, barely 60% of the Nisga'a themselves voted in favour of the Nisga'a treaty. The fisheries minister should abandon his name calling for a while and ask the Nisga'a why they voted against it.
The fact is that the absence of land ownership rights is a major flaw in the Indian Act and the Nisga'a deal. Hundreds of band members from the Squamish reserve in my riding have come to tell me that the lack of land ownership is the single biggest impediment to self-sufficiency for aboriginal people in Canada.
How can the government support a treaty that works against individual property rights and that has been completely rejected for that reason by some of the Nisga'a and the Liberal Party of B.C.?