Mr. Speaker, I wish to comment pretty well exclusively on what other people have said about the Nisga'a treaty. Some people have said “The only people who are opposed to this treaty are people in the Reform Party”. I want to make it abundantly clear that that is not so.
I want to refer to two major documents. The first one has to do with the transcript of the record of the presentations that were made to the committee in Vancouver last Friday. I also want to refer to one of the senior columnists with the National Post and then refer further again to one of the transcripts from the committee in Vancouver.
I will begin by referring to the comments that were made by Mr. Plant who accompanied Mr. deJong, the MLA from the British Columbia legislature. He reviewed very briefly the three arguments that were presented in the court case that the opposition in British Columbia has given to the courts. Here are the three arguments to why the Nisga'a final agreement is unconstitutional. First, that it is not open to the federal and provincial governments within the existing constitution of Canada to create a new freestanding third order of government. The question is: Does the government even have the authority to do that?
Second, that it is not open to the federal and provincial governments by negotiation with the Nisga'a or in any other way short of a constitutional amendment to confer upon a new order of government paramount legislative power. This is what the Nisga'a treaty does in at least 14 areas.
Third, that the Nisga'a final agreement violates the charter because it denies non-Nisga'a the right to vote for a government which will have the power to make decisions that affect their lives. As the House knows, the charter guarantees every citizen of Canada the right to vote. That is being denied to the people of Canada.
Those are the three arguments that have been presented to the court that is currently examining this particular treaty.
I will refer to an article in The National Post dated November 20. It was written by Diane Francis. The headline reads “Land claims will be the next big crisis: Political correctness is costing Canadians a bundle.” The article states:
This country's next crisis will be about aboriginal claims.
Already, aboriginals have taken the law into their hands and seized private property belonging to others involved in the fishing and forestry sectors. These actions should be met with the full force of the law, in my opinion, and have nothing to do with promises by the British Crown decades ago that aboriginals could fish the waters and hunt in the forests they traditionally used only for their own consumption. Anything more than subsistence rights may be upheld by some courts but these decisions should be immediately struck down with new legislation limiting aboriginal claims.
But we ain't seen nothin' yet.
A precedent-setting treaty in British Columbia negotiated by the feds and province behind closed doors is about to become law. The NDP in B.C. has approved it already and the Liberals want to ram it through by Christmas. The treaty gives the Nisga'a band some 2,000 square kilometres of land, $253 million in cash and self-government powers.
And that is just the beginning.
That is a handout of $101,200 in tax dollars to every one of the 2,500 members of the band and title to a land mass just slightly smaller than the country of Luxembourg.
Not only does this constitute a hideous giveaway—