Madam Speaker, I would like to split my time with the member for Dewdney—Alouette.
The Liberals have been revising history on the Nisga'a agreement since 1994. Now they are revising history in terms of what is going on with this committee travel business from as recently as yesterday and the day before.
The motion we are debating is on the finance committee travelling across the country. It is an all-party committee. Committee travel is not a one-way street. The government wants everything its own way. The official opposition has some needs and wants as well.
The official opposition obviously would like to travel, in particular to British Columbia. The Nisga'a agreement happens once. The budget happens every year. British Columbians have never had a say on the Nisga'a agreement. They have never had undiluted access to consultation on the Nisga'a agreement. Those are things we are asking for. We think they are pretty important.
There are major financial implications to the Nisga'a agreement. It is just as important in many respects. This week the public accounts revealed that there is a $200 billion liability put forward so far on aboriginal claims. The cost to the province of British Columbia, never mind on the federal side, is in the order of at least $10 billion. There are much higher estimates. If anything this is a conservative estimate. Everyone admits it is only a partial estimate.
When I spoke on the Nisga'a bill on Wednesday, the time had expired which determined whether I had time to speak for 20 minutes or 10 minutes. I asked the indulgence of the House to extend my time from 10 minutes to 20 minutes. The government once again denied me and the official opposition the ability to say the things we needed to say on that agreement.
There is a clause that not many people have recognized in the Nisga'a agreement which binds the parties, British Columbia, Canada and the Nisga'a, to all of the provisions of the agreement and requires consent of all three parties for any change. In other words, none of the parties to the agreement may challenge the agreement, which is a veto.
This hobbles what is currently the official opposition federally, and the official opposition provincially, the Liberals in British Columbia. There has been no opportunity for a referendum in the province on the Nisga'a. The public in British Columbia have basically been told to take a hike by the federal Liberals.
I have been talking about the Nisga'a deal since 1995. I did a complete analysis. The 1998 final agreement is a very comprehensive document as we all know. It is 252 pages long with an appendix of 462 pages. Despite all of that, more than 50 areas have yet to be negotiated.
I am a firm believer that the public has been manipulated. The facts have been manipulated. There has been misrepresentation that is not in the public interest by both senior levels of government.
The federal government is imposing a deal in British Columbia that it would not impose on itself. There is a track record and a history of federal negotiations completed in the Yukon and in the territories. Unlike the Nisga'a deal, self-government is not constitutionally entrenched in the northern agreements. The tax exemption for aboriginals enabled by section 87 of the Indian Act was deleted in the Yukon without new tax exemptions being created.
There is a memorandum of understanding on land claims in British Columbia. The province has been co-opted by the federal government. A federal responsibility is being off-loaded on the province to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. That is something that many people in British Columbia recognize and they want an opportunity to get at the federal government in terms of telling it how that is all happening.
The public was not consulted prior to the signing of the Nisga'a agreement in principle on February 16, 1996 in any meaningful way. After the initialling the forestry representative and member of the treaty negotiation advisory committee said this 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, where was the average British Columbian?
It is not easy to be a critic of the federal native agenda. In 1996 for example I was threatened with court action for saying that it was a conflict of interest for a provincial land claims negotiator to be lobbying the provincial cabinet on behalf of the Squamish band regarding their Lion's Gate Bridge proposal. One can make an excellent living if one is willing to swallow the federal native agenda, and I am talking about lawyers, consultants, negotiators, contract services and the academic community.
Madam Speaker, at this time I move:
That the debate be now adjourned.