Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in today's debate on the final stages of the Nisga'a treaty through the House of Commons.
I have been listening to the speeches this afternoon by my friends in the Reform Party. I use the term advisedly; they are my friends. I consider many of them my personal friends and I respect their views but they are totally different from mine.
I have had an image come to me. It is an image of Colonel Custer standing on the plains in the west completely surrounded by aboriginal warriors. In his last gasping breath, shooting wildly in all directions, he and his band of soldiers are wiped out. That is what I thought when I listened to my friend make his speech just a few moments ago. He does not have blond curly hair, but if he had, he would be the typical picture of Colonel Custer in his last stand.
Today and tomorrow as we vote, it will once again be a version of the last stand. I say that with all due respect but that is how I feel. The Reform members feel very strongly on certain sides of the issue. I feel equally strong on the other. I had this image of Colonel Custer shooting wildly in all directions, knowing that this was it and finally succumbing to the bands of Indian warriors on that very fateful day which changed history in terms of the plains and aboriginal peoples. Today we are at a similar kind of crossroads. Once again the people of the Nisga'a nation were consulted after their negotiators had gone through a very long and painful process of negotiation. I cannot imagine the tolerance that lasted over 100 years.
Madam Speaker, you know this story and I will not repeat it in detail, but I will give a brief history of the Nisga'a. They paddled their canoes almost from the Alaska boundary to Victoria over a hundred years ago, which is a long canoe paddle for anyone, to bring their grievances to the governing officials of the time. They said that they had never agreed to cede their territory and they wanted to negotiate a deal. We all know the terrible impact of the reaction when they were essentially told to turn around and paddle their canoes back home, which they did, but they never gave up.
Over 100 years later, after the patience of Job was demonstrated for decades and decades, a deal was negotiated. The Nisga'a people were asked what they thought about the deal. They said that they agreed with it, that it was not a perfect document, that they thought they could get a better deal. Some thought there were some problems with it, but overall they said it was the best deal they could negotiate with the provincial and federal authorities and they would accept it.
That is democracy. That is what life is all about. We negotiate a deal and then we ask people if they support it. They say yes and then we move on. British Columbia said yes and now Canada is saying yes, presumably in the closing stages of this debate. Then it will go off to the other place. I suspect that because it has the support of the two parties represented in the other place it will pass rather expeditiously, having gone through a lot of public consultation.
I know my friends in the Reform Party are saying that there has not been enough consultation. Fair enough. That is debatable. What is enough? I have held many meetings in my constituency. They were all public, open meetings which were well advertised and well attended. The discussion was always very thoughtful and very progressive. Yes, people had some concerns about the deal. I have concerns about the deal. We all have concerns about the deal, but that is the way deals are made. They are not perfect. The people who negotiate them are not perfect. We have come up with an agreement negotiated by individuals, all of whom are imperfect by definition, so yes we have differences.
In the House of Commons we witnessed a small political miracle. It is a small political miracle when Liberals are in agreement with Progressive Conservatives, who in turn are in agreement with people from the Bloc Quebecois, who in turn are supported by members of the New Democratic Party. Four of the five political parties in the House of Commons are agreeing on a major issue. Yes, we agree regularly on minor issues, all kinds of trivial issues, all kinds of minor homework issues and technical questions, but this is not a typical little deal. This is a huge initiative taken by this House that is historic in nature on which four out of the five political parties agree.
We could say that they do not know what they are talking about or that they do not know what they are doing, but let us face it, these are honourable men and women who have obviously given this a lot of thought, who have read the agreement, who have studied it, who have heard the reactions, and who have, in their judgment, decided to agree with it.
Do we all feel that this is a perfect document? No. Nobody does. However, we have looked at it, we have read about it, we have heard from our constituents and we have made a judgment, and four out of five political parties support it. The Reform Party opposes it. Fair enough. It is a free country and it has a right to its position. This must tell us something.
I consulted with Indian bands in my constituency of Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys. I asked if they supported the Nisga'a deal and they all said no. The Indian bands do not support it. They would not sign the deal because they think it is not good enough. Fair enough. That is their view. They say that they think they should do better and when they negotiate one day they will do better. That is their stated position. When my friends in the Reform Party say that this is a template for other agreements, I can say that the people of the Shuswap Nation say it is no template, that they will not agree to it because it is not good enough from their perspective. All right, we will set that aside.
I could not disagree more with some of the points made by my hon. friends in the Reform Party.
I want to say two things. First, there will be a massive transfer of dollars from Ottawa to British Columbia for the first time in history. I am talking about hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of dollars, which Ottawa will put into the economy of British Columbia. If $100 million goes to the first nations of British Columbia, they are not going to invest that money in Hawaii or the Cayman Islands.