Mr. Speaker, this is very frustrating indeed. For those people who are watching, I am going to give them my website, which is www.duncanmp.com. I do offer proposals as to how to do this differently. I have been doing that since 1996 with regard to the Nisga'a agreement, prior to it becoming an agreement in principle. I also have been making suggestions in aboriginal policy areas since 1994.
I cannot help but respond to the previous speaker. We obviously have a different vision, but we both want to fix what is wrong in the area of aboriginal issues. We both agree that the native population has received shoddy treatment. I would be the last one to say that has not been the case.
Reform believes that equality is created by treating everyone equally, unlike the NDP and the Liberals. They consider it a criticism of us that we want to treat everyone equally. I believe that is a fundamental philosophical difference that will forever separate us and is what separates us on this agreement.
The member from Kamloops talked about residential schools. My wife went to a residential school. I do not need any lessons on that issue from anyone.
A bit of time was spent talking about the taxation issue. I will simply say that, yes, individual taxation exemptions for the Nisga'a under the agreement will be phased out over 12 years, but there was a whole new tax exemption brought into the agreement and that is for the Nisga'a central government.
We did not need a treaty to get out from under the tax exemption differential that exists in this country. We could have done it legislatively. It all flows from section 87 of the Indian Act. It is a very simple thing to fix.
I could talk about the Nisga'a agreement for hours, but I am going to focus on only one aspect because my time is limited. I want to talk about public consultation. If I have time I will offer some proposals.
I was the aboriginal affairs critic in the last parliament. I did the first publicly available comprehensive analysis of the Nisga'a agreement in principle. I did that in early 1996, after the agreement in principle came out.
The Liberals would have the public believe that Reform has not dealt with or had discussions with the public, stakeholders or the Nisga'a. The Liberals are revising history and I can prove it. I have a track record of having dealt with the agreement before it was ever unveiled and of having discussions with the public and stakeholders, including the Nisga'a, which is contrary to the revisionist history and statements being made in the current debate coming from Liberals with their public relations spin.
The Liberals are trying to revise history. I am revisiting history. There is a big difference.
Reform MPs in British Columbia, including our current critic, have been talking about the Nisga'a agreement since 1994. We are on the public record, especially in British Columbia.
The only body given official standing as adviser for the Nisga'a treaty was the provincial treaty negotiation advisory committee. The public was excluded other than through this formal committee. I can demonstrate that that committee was also excluded from the process by both the federal and provincial governments.
We have not erected barriers, but the two senior governments, provincially and federally, certainly have. The manipulation of their so-called public consultation has been ongoing.
When the Nisga'a agreement in principle was unveiled in February 1996, a member of TNAC, the committee I just talked about, said publicly:
I can't say we worked on this document, because we never saw it until February 15, just hours before it was initialled. Not one page, not one paragraph of this 150-page document was shared with TNAC, the government's Treaty Negotiation Advisory Committee, or any of the local advisory committees, or any of the people with legal interests in the Crown Land that this agreement would give to the Nisga'a.
That is what the forestry representative said. If the very people who were paid to know the contents of the negotiations were kept in the dark, we know where the average British Columbian was.
Long before the agreement was initialled we knew it consisted of some leaks and from these leaks we prepared an analysis. We took that analysis and other speculations on the road. We visited 10 towns across British Columbia and conducted townhall meetings. We talked about self-government, tax exemptions and other matters that we thought were the direction of the government. It was sponsored by the current aboriginal affairs critic and me.
Nisga'a and other aboriginal groups attended some of these meetings. Representatives from the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, its bureaucrats, were also in attendance.
Later in the same year, in November 1995, I held another series of townhall meetings to follow up on the earlier meetings. I remember driving through a blizzard 2,000 kilometres in 36 hours to hold two meetings. We met in Nanaimo, Prince George, Terrace, Penticton, South Surrey and Maple Ridge. Once again there were aboriginal representatives and Nisga'a representatives particularly in Terrace, which is in the front yard of the Nisga'a.
My office prepared a 37 page analysis which was published as a tabloid and sent to half a million households in British Columbia in the middle of 1996. After the Nisga'a final agreement came out that analysis was revised. It can be found on my website today.
The province talks about consultation. The province got into the act with the so-called consultation in 1996. Everyone in the public thought that they were going to something which would allow them to say what parts of the Nisga'a agreement were okay in their minds and what parts were not.
What did the government do? It changed the terms of reference. The public was to tell it what parts of the agreement could be negotiated in other treaties and what could not be. This was done by a very biased chair of the committee. I will quote from something he said to give clarity to my charge that it was biased. He said:
I am just in awe, really. I've been around, federally; I've been in constitutional negotiations and so on. I don't know what the...I keep thinking about the Fathers of Confederation as they call them, or whatever the words, putting together the BNA Act and so on. The amount of work you people have done in this is really quite unbelievable.
He was talking to the Nisga'a negotiators. He continued:
You're to be really commended...We are coming at it kind of as amateurs seeing your work. I guess that's a long way of saying I'm very impressed.
Is it any wonder that the B.C. Liberals walked away from the process? Obviously no substantive criticism ever came from that committee.
Essentially the public has been excluded by both senior governments. The rationale behind separating the Nisga'a treaty process from the B.C. treaty process was that the Nisga'a treaty predated the creation of the B.C. Treaty Commission. That is how we ended up with the only sanctioned body being this treaty negotiation advisory committee. I have already mentioned how it was excluded.
It is fair for me to say that our current critic has had ongoing dialogue with the Nisga'a and other interests throughout. We have been participants in public consultation. I know, for example, that he had a televised debate with Chief Gosnell from the Nisga'a nation.
If one is to be critical of an agreement, I agree with the hon. member from Kamloops that there is an obligation to provide constructive criticism. I will not deal with that part of my speech, suffice it to say that members should visit my website.