Mr. Speaker, it seems like the Liberals do not want to hear it out in the field and they do not want to hear it in the House so we have closure everywhere on Bill C-49.
The member for Saint-Jean, our colleague, has shown more concern and more initiative in looking after the needs and concerns of native women than all members opposite. It puts the government to shame.
Members opposite have said that the current climate easily divides the assets of a family breaking up on a reserve. That is just great, except that the assets do not include the family home. I ask which is more important: a car, a few pieces of furniture, or a home where people can live and where children can be raised. That is entirely important.
We took a long second look at the legislation and saw that we would have a patchwork of rights. There will be no legal standard applied from reserve to reserve. That might be okay if there were no movement from reserve to reserve. I have talked to native women who have grown up on one reserve, married someone from another reserve and found out that they did not have the rights they thought they would have as married women. We do not think that is right.
We see the results of family breakdown in cities across the country. My own offices are in the downtown cores of two of the major towns in my constituency, right across from a bar in one case, and I see what homelessness does to people. The need is really extreme. People need to have a home. This legislation could be improved. Nobody would lose by adopting an amendment like this one. The Reform Party will be supporting the amendments. They will do the work for the bands that needs to be done.
The parliamentary secretary has indicated that the minister is willing to work on this problem. That is good, but for a year or two or three nothing will be done. If the legislation was 10 years in the works, how long will it be before we get legislation from the minister? In the meantime we have this patchwork legislation. Provincial laws cannot be adopted by the bands, but if they were made into federal laws that could be done.
They talk about the values of a community as if the values of a community were paramount, over and above the need of children to have hope. What are the values of a community that does not involve children? We cannot talk about one without the other.
They talk about discrimination on the basis of sex, that it does not happen. They should not talk to me about that. How many native women have I had in my office who have talked about losing their rights because they married outside the band? That has been partially given back, not fully. Land is given to the bands in their name and they are not even living on the reserve. Or, if they want the benefits, they have to move to some remote reserve. Is that equality? Give us all a break.
I want to raise another issue. We can talk about giving them freedom, which is good, but let me point out that government members interfere all the time in the affairs of the provinces as has been recently brought out. They defer to individual bands of 200 or 300 people or 1,000 people because they cannot be a threat to the authority of the Liberal government, but when it comes to the provinces there can be interference with all kinds of different rulings. They have to make sure the authority of the Liberal government is paramount when it comes to the provinces.
I would like to read something said by the Prime Minister when he was minister of aboriginal affairs in 1969. He indicated that Indian relations with other Canadian peoples began as special treatment by government and society and special treatment had been the rule since Europeans first settled in Canada. He said that special treatment had made of the Indians a community disadvantaged and apart and that obviously the course of history must be changed.
Further he stated that the Government of Canada believed its policies must lead to full, free and non-discriminatory participation of Indian people in Canadian society. Such a goal, he indicated, required a break with the past and that the Indian people's role as dependants be replaced by a role of equal status, opportunity and responsibility, a role they could share with all other Canadians.
With these few amendments we are looking for some equality and responsibility, the responsibility to consult and equality in the breakup of a marriage. These are good things. These are not bad or difficult things. They should be accepted by people of good will.
I would also quote an elder from the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College talking about the problem of entrusting band councils to develop divorce laws. He said that the problem with entrusting band councils to develop divorce laws was that traditional customs were vague.
If the customs are vague and it is acknowledged by one of their leaders in the federated college, why in the world is it not seen as problematic by the federal Liberal Party? It should allow the new amendments to go through which will protect and enhance not only the bill but people which the bill purports to benefit.