Mr. Speaker, the gentleman across the hall asks me to quote what the Nisga'a people say about the treaty. I will tell him something. I heard in the House today from the minister of Indian affairs that our member for Skeena had never talked to Nisga'a. That is absolutely untrue. He has met with them many times. He has asked to meet with them over the last while and they do not show up for the meetings.
Those are the facts and the member does not want to know them. He knows that area better than anybody sitting on that side of the House. He gets elected by a very big majority of people who live in that constituency. The people in his constituency do not want this treaty and that is why he is here debating it.
Let us look at what the Prime Minister said. He said:
—what we want, and the Indians are in agreement, is that they should become equal citizens of Canada.
The Prime Minister of Canada said that they wanted to become equal citizens of Canada. That is not in the bill. It creates a fishery that is racist. That has been quoted not only by the Reform Party but many other prominent people in western Canada. It is a racist treaty. It does not make everybody equal in Canada. Yet the Prime Minister said that we all should be equal in the country, and I believe that too. I have another quote from a well-known Liberal:
There is a long term intention on the part of the government, and this to be debated, I suppose, as part of our Indian policy, to arrive eventually at a situation where Indians will be treated like other Canadian citizens of the particular province in which they happen to be.
This was said by Pierre Trudeau in the House of Commons on November 5, 1968. If members read the legislation it does not match that paragraph. Yet this man was a great Canadian, well respected by his party and won a number of elections. The legislation does not allow that to happen. I have another quote from a well-known person across the hall:
For many Indian people, the road does exist, the only road that has existed since Confederation and before. The road of different status, a road which has led to a blind alley of deprivation and frustration. This road...cannot lead to full participation, to equality in practice as well as in theory...the government will offer another road that would gradually lead away from different status to full social, economic and political participation in Canadian life. This is the choice.
This was said by the present Prime Minister in June 1969. That was their position then. They have a different one now. They say we should vote for the bill, let it happen and we will all do fine. As I said earlier, this is the government that said it would ban the GST when it defeated the Tories who had really messed up the country, got elected and became the Government of Canada.
This is the same government that said it would get rid of free trade. It did nothing about that. This is a government which does not know how to keep a major promise. How could anybody in British Columbia believe the government when it says that we should trust it?
As I said, I would trust the Reform dinosaurs before the Liberal sharks on the other side. They act like sharks when it comes to legislation. They have acted like sharks when running the country. They are not doing what is good for Canada. They are trying to make the issue look like it is good for the native people. It is not good for native people. It is not good for Canadians. It certainly is not good for British Columbians.