Madam Speaker, I want to talk a bit about democracy in the House of Commons and what is going on with the Nisga'a agreement.
I want to make very clear that once this bill went into committee we expected the government to travel to British Columbia at the very least, but more important across the nation, to get input into whether or not people agree with the ramifications of the agreement.
It took my colleagues in this place all day Friday, all day today and basically even prior to that last Thursday to try to convince government members that the proper thing to do was to travel to the areas where the agreement affects people most. They did not want to travel. Basically every committee of the House travels when bills are before them. At times I wonder why they travel on bills that do not have major ramifications. However this bill does.
Originally we asked and expected that the committee would travel to Prince George. We originally said Kamloops. The government said Prince George because there would be less of a hassle there. Then there was Terrace, Vancouver, Victoria and Smithers. The fight was over Smithers.
Government members did not want to go to Smithers to talk about this matter because they felt undue pressure would be put on them by the concerns expressed by the people about the Nisga'a agreement. They did not want it. It happens that the people who have concerns in Smithers, by and large, are the Gitksan, other aboriginals in dispute who say that this is an overlapping agreement. Government members do not want to hear that. They just want the agreement to come to Ottawa and they will sign it, and away we all go. We won a little battle on that one, which should not have taken place in the first place.
We found this morning when we came into the House of Commons that they called time allocation, which limits the amount of time we get to speak. The Reform Party, the only party that is in opposition to this matter, has had only four hours and 12 minutes to speak to a bill which costs Canadian taxpayers approximately $1.3 billion and has flaws in it. They called time allocation so we will actually get a total of six hours to speak to it.
This tells the people of British Columbia to go to hell. That is what government members are saying. They do not care about their views. They do not care about overlapping claims. They do not care about the amount of money being spent. They just want to sign the agreement. The Government of British Columbia, a government with 38% of the popular vote, is the most unpopular government in the history of British Columbia, the most current unpopular government in North America. It is hard to believe the Liberals refuse to look at it.
An NDP member from the socialists over here says that will change but it will not change.
Before I get into the agreement itself I have another point. What is the role of any opposition party? Is is not just the official opposition party, there are other parties, the NDP such as it is, the separatists, and Joe what's his name and the other fellows.
We are supposed to be critiquing bills in the House of Commons. Has anybody read this or even questioned the amount of money, $1.3 billion? We say it is that and others say it is $500 million. Others say it is $1 billion. Even that issue alone is worthy of opposition by all opposition parties. That is what this House is about, yet time and again the other three parties in this place support the government. Why? It is because they are not looking at the content of the agreement. They are basically looking at whether or not they might be able to salvage a few votes out of the people who might agree with the bill. That is what this is all about.