Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his great speech, but I have another issue.
The federal government passes regulations and laws that affect municipalities without any regard for what they do to their bottom line. It has recently come up with an idea for regulation to reduce the response time at airports. In particular, in the city of Prince Albert it is going to make a couple of minutes difference in the time the fire department can get to the airport. No one in Prince Albert, the council, the mayor, the people who run the airport and the people who use the airport, are concerned about it but the federal government makes this law.
Does the government have any plan in place to ensure that the city can afford the extra cost? No. It is to be passed on to consumers, the users, the airport shuts down, has limited use or something like that. Does the federal government give a hoot? It does not seem to as yet, despite the fact that we have made some interventions.
I would like to point out something else. When there is a disagreement in the private sector about property values, how is it handled? It is handled through a formal process with appeals. Once the appeals have been heard they are binding.
Is it that way with the federal government? Not at all. The federal government operates strictly on its own. It sets the rules. It sets the rules for appeals and all the rest of it. Even when it finally decides on something through the municipal grants review committee the minister is not obliged to accept the recommendations given, so the municipalities feel that the process does not work in their favour.
I would like to turn to the so-called Nisga'a final agreement and read from paragraph 7 on taxation and fiscal relations:
The Parties will negotiate and attempt to reach agreements in respect of grants, between them, in lieu of property taxes.
When we read all the way through the agreement we do not find that the federal government will simply enforce something on the Nisga'a people. However, we do not see an appeal process. We do not see anything. We see that it will sit down and attempt to reach an agreement. Who will determine when an agreement has been reached? It says in here that we will go through this every five years. Paragraph 3 reads:
Every five years, or at other intervals if the Parties agree, the Parties will negotiate and attempt to reach agreement on a fiscal financing agreement by which funding will be provided—
We presume that will also include transfers and payments in lieu of taxes. This agreement is very open ended. In the case of the bill before us it is not even open ended. It is closed. The federal governments sets the limits, and that is as far as it goes.