Mr. Speaker, in listening to the interventions by members from the Liberal Party the PC Party and the Bloc this morning, they talked about this agreement bringing certainty.
Listening to evidence from a Queen's counsel in Vancouver at one of the meetings on Friday, he said that the only certainty it would bring was certainty for the lawyers because he could make a living for the rest of his days off this treaty either by challenging it because it was wrong or defending it because he thought it was right. He said that either side would produce certainty of income for the lawyers.
Some of the members here, who are not from B.C. and, frankly, do not have the faintest idea of what they are talking about, said that it has been in negotiations for 25 years, as if that justifies signing it. Sure, it has been 25 years in negotiations but that does not automatically make it right.
The fact that it was supported by the politically correct Liberals and the politically correct provincial NDP in B.C., neither having more than 39% of the popular vote, is enough to show that it was negotiated by the elite not by the grassroots, neither by the grassroots non-natives or the grassroots natives themselves. It was negotiated by elites using formulas that have never worked and have no hope of working in the future either.
When I stood in the House on November 1 to speak on this bill, I specifically asked the minister to name a single Indian reserve anywhere in the country governed by a treaty where the standard of living is equal to or higher than off reserve. That minister stood and completely avoided the question. The reason is that he cannot answer it because there is not a single Indian reserve that has a higher standard of living.
I can use the example of the Samson Cree reserve, probably the wealthiest reserve in the entire country in terms of income: $100 million a year. Yet 85% of the members live in poverty and I believe 85% of them are on welfare.
Only time will tell who is correct about the Nisga'a treaty, but I do not see any way that the Nisga'a Tribal Council can pull off something that no other tribal council has been able to pull off, and that is a success in a treaty. All of the evidence is stacked solidly against it, and that 10 years from now we will have the same levels of poverty and the same repression of the women on reserve. These were exactly the same problems before the treaty existed. There is absolutely no justification to have it passed.
Not a single Liberal member from British Columbia has had the the gumption to stand in the House and say what needs to be said. They know what needs to be said. Every one of them has heard the message from British Columbians that this is such an important deal for British Columbia that it should be subjected to a referendum of the people, not just the Nisga'a but the non-natives as well.
As Noel Wright, a columnist in the Vancouver area said last weekend in his column:
As the model for all future treaties with B.C. natives, it stands to result eventually in a province pockmarked with 50 or more tiny, apartheid-type independent “nations” wielding powers in some 14 areas that would supersede those of the provincial and federal governments.
That is the theme of many of the letters that I get from my constituents. They do not see the treaty as bringing Canadians together. It is separating Canadians based on race. It is creating these apartheid-type or segregated-type communities that we will pay a heavy price for promoting in the future.
I have also heard some of the members over there criticizing Reformers. They make implications about our motives. I will put a few things on the record here that may not be known by the people opposite, and I will give them the benefit of the doubt.
For example, the leader of the party worked for many years as a consultant for native bands helping them to set up native businesses and deal with the government. The member for Nanaimo—Cowichan has adopted native children into his family. The member for Vancouver Island North is married to a Métis. The member for Edmonton North lived and worked on a reserve for many years teaching native children. The member for Yorkton—Melville also worked and lived on a native reserve. The member for Wild Rose introduced a private member's bill in the House to cause an ombudsman to be established to help native Indians with the problems they have with getting help from Indian affairs to investigate corruption in the bands.
While I do not have any direct connection with native bands, in my riding more than 200 members of the Squamish band have approached me by writing, coming directly to my office, via petition and via telephone with their concerns about Bill C-49.
For anybody on the other side to say that we do not understand the issue, that we do not have connections with natives and do not understand where the problems lie in things like the treaty or Bill C-9, is poppycock. We probably understand it a lot better than the politically correct who sit on the other side of the House and refuse to see that for every treaty that has ever been passed in the country evidence shows that they do not work. They create poverty. They continue with the process of repression because they are styled in a socialist manner. They set up a socialist style of community with collective rights that are rife with corruption. It does not work.
I have just been corrected. I apologize to the member for Vancouver Island North. His wife is a status Indian not a Métis.
When the Liberal government introduced enabling legislation for the Nisga'a treaty to parliament on October 21, the minister made it clear that there would be no committee hearings, there would be no travel to the provinces, there would be no amendments to the bill and the time for debate would be severely curtailed. What sort of democracy does that represent?
It does not help us, who are elected to represent the concerns of our constituents, to know that the outcome of every vote is predetermined, that we do not have a hope of making a single amendment no matter how many flaws we point out in the bill. It contains 252 pages. How can there possibly not be one single mistake in the 252 page bill? It is impossible. It is bullet-headed. It is arrogant for the government to assume that it is perfect in every respect. As I mentioned earlier, it is nothing more than certainty of income for the lawyers.
The auditor general himself has said that the longer the treaty, the more likely there will be legal challenges. At the moment we already have more than $9 billion worth of legal challenges under way to existing treaties. The Nisga'a treaty, which is not even law yet, is under challenge from five different groups.
The Liberal Party of British Columbia, the bedfellows of the federal Liberals, is challenging the treaty as unconstitutional. The Gitanyow first nation, as a number of other members on this side have mentioned, consider it an act of aggression. They are challenging it in court. The fisheries survival coalition and a group of Nisga'a people are taking this treaty to court. Where is the certainty? The agreement has not even gone through the House and there are five legal challenges against it.
How can members on the other side of the House have the nerve to stand and tell us that there is certainty? How do they have the nerve to tell us that it is a good agreement because it took 25 years, when every other treaty that has ever been negotiated in the country has been a failure? They have no logic to defend their position.
In my previous speech on November 1, I did bring up the issue of the treaty producing apartheid-like or segregated-type of communities. One of the Liberal members noticed my comment and brought it up in a committee hearing to the chiefs of the Nisga'a band. The answer from the chiefs was that they did not consider the deal to be apartheid-like because those affected freely voted for the system of government themselves.
Is apartheid not apartheid just because people voted for it? It is a totally ludicrous position to take. If we are separating people based on race, that is separation based on race whether we vote for it or not. This is creating segregated communities in British Columbia, not only non-native from native but there will be one native band segregated from another native band segregated from another native band. They will all have their own bylaws and rules.
What is British Columbia going to look like? We have more than 90% of all the Indian bands in the entire country. Nobody outside of British Columbia understands the impact of this treaty on British Columbia. The people of British Columbia should have been involved in the preparation of the treaty. The people of British Columbia should have had the right to vote on the basic components of that treaty making process.
The only way that the treaty would have had the support of the people of British Columbia is if they had genuine input into the basics for that treaty. Then, if necessary, the government could have negotiated a treaty that had public support and, if necessary, use the notwithstanding clause to silence the lawyers because it would have had the support of the people.
As it stands at the moment, we have a lot of big problems on our plate. When this thing gets rammed through the House next week, the law courts will open for business and we will see years and years of expensive legal challenges.