Mr. Speaker, I stand with great pleasure to close the debate this evening. There are only a few moments left but I want to make a number of points that I think are particularly important to the debate.
In the intervention made at the outset by the member for Skeena, the critic for the Reform Party, he said he cannot support this bill because he wants to consult.
I want the member sitting next to him from Calgary and the rest of the members of his caucus to know that it was before Christmas that both he and the member from Prince George, the deputy critic having sat at the standing committee, having listened to the witnesses, having gone through that legislation clause by clause in the committee, representing the Reform Party, voted yea to the legislation.
They voted for the legislation with one amendment providing constitutional protections and those were agreed to. I want the Canadian public to know and I want the people of British Columbia who are watching this debate to know that both their members agreed to it. They shook hands with the chiefs and council members who were there that evening.
They had an agreement. We had an agreement of trust and guess what we had here today? We had the member leading off the debate saying that he wants to consult when he was trying to convince the rest of his members to support the legislation.
He has done an absolute turnaround on this legislation to stand in the House now and say he wants to consult. For the comments made by the member from Calgary, there are 9 years of consultation involving 14 bands that have reworked this again and again. They brought the legislation forth in this House once before only to have it defeated and thrown out. They went back to their communities to consult again, to rework it one more time and they come back in the House again. This far from the goal line, after close to 10 years of consultation, and they want to kill it. They want more consultation.