Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that there is other business that needs to be done.
I want to focus for a minute on Maizy Baker because I think her story is important. It is important in the context of how we see ourselves as Canadians and how we see our fellow Canadians and their rights.
Maizy Baker is a status member of the Squamish nation who is living in the Vancouver area. She is an elder. She has children. She has property that she wants to pass on to her children. She has lived on that reserve all her life. That is what she knows as her home. It is her family home. It is where her children grew up.
Many of us have these same circumstances. We grow up in families and even in our middle years and later life we identify with the family home as the home where we grew up. It is our place. It is no different for Maizy. Maizy has found out that she is living in that house by permission of the band council. She does not own it. There is no heritability. There is no ability for her to pass that property along to her children and their children.
I would argue strongly that is contrary to Canadian values and everything that we believe in and stand for in this country. Where are Maizy Baker's rights? Where are her property rights? Where are the rights of her family? Will they find at some point in time when Maizy has gone, and hopefully it will be a long time before that happens, that the family home in which they grew up is arbitrarily assigned to another band member and no longer has any meaning or value for them as family members?
I would argue not. I would say that the biggest flaw we have in the reserve system is related directly to land and land management. Let us face it, land is a very, very important instrument in delivering individual rights to Canadians and to all people.
Maizy Baker does not have those rights. She does not have that ability. She cannot pass her property along to her children. The biggest flaw in the reserve system, and there are many, is that there are no property rights.
I am not suggesting that Bill C-49 or any other legislation that might be brought down in this House in the near future would provide exactly the same kind of fee simple property rights that all other Canadians enjoy, although that is what I would like to see; I am suggesting that the bill was an opportunity to address that issue. There could have been private property rights of some kind assigned under that legislation. There could have been protection of some kind because without some kind of property right it is impossible for the whole issue of division of the marital home to be addressed in any meaningful way. Without a private property right, we are left with always is an arbitrary decision by somebody else, most often the band chief and council, as to who is going to end up with possession of that home once the marriage dissolves.
These issues were raised by Maizy Baker and Wendy Lockhart Lundberg with the House standing committee on aboriginal affairs. They were also raised in the Senate committee hearings that took place a month to five weeks ago. These ladies, and many others, travelled great distances, all the way from British Columbia in the case of Wendy and Maizy, to tell their story and to put their concerns forward with the senators who were studying this bill and who were supposed to be working behind the scenes with Liberal MPs to make amendments that would provide the kind of protection and address the kinds of concerns that were being raised.
The groups made very forceful presentations. I have copies of the minutes of the Senate committee meetings, I sat in on some of those meetings. After the Senate committee listened to all of those presentations and after hearing the expressions of frustration and deep concern these women were telling, at the end of the day the committee sent the bill back to the House with a couple of amendments.
While the amendments are a small step in improving some of the expropriation concerns expressed by myself and others in the House, they do not go anywhere near the issue of aboriginal women's rights. They do not go anywhere near the issue of the concerns of municipalities over mutual consultation when adjacent lands are to be developed. On the issue of compensation, the only real change is that the bands must adhere to the Expropriation Act, which we do agree is an improvement. However, it does not require the bands to expropriate only for the public works or public services that may be required by the band. It still says that it is anything that the band council may deem to be in the band's interest.
I have the May 14 minutes of the Senate committee on aboriginal people. When the minister appeared before the Senate committee on Bill C-49, she said:
Thank you, honourable senators, for allowing me to be here to speak about an extremely important piece of legislation. I have been following your work and I recognize the attention and diligence that you have brought to Bill C-49.
I would start by positioning the bill and its importance from my point of view. As honourable senators are aware, the bill ratifies and brings into effect a framework agreement that was signed on February 12, 1996, by the 14 First Nations and the former Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Together with the signatory First Nations, Bill C-49 is a product of over 10 years of work that sought to find a meaningful way of restoring land management jurisdiction to the signatory First Nations.
I would suggest that if this is the best they can do after 10 years I am absolutely nonplussed. I cannot understand how anybody can say that this is a good bill. After 10 years, I would have expected something much more refined, something that would have addressed the issues and the concerns that have been expressed.
The minister went on to say:
The framework agreement and this legislation provide the signatory First Nations a legitimate, organized and controlled means of taking back the authority to manage their lands and resources at the community level and pass laws regarding how their land is developed, conserved, protected, used and administered.
We can already see the major difference between the Squamish Reserve, for example, or any reserve that might be covered under this bill, and any non-aboriginal community.
I live in a non-aboriginal community. Some members of the House live in communities, but I think most members probably live in communities, municipalities, cities or whatever. The municipality I live in collects property taxes from me and has some say in what I can and cannot do with my property. I believe that is based on consideration for my neighbours who may not want me to put up a barn in my front yard. However, it certainly cannot tell me where I can live, where I cannot live, who can live in my house and so on, because I own my property not the community. The municipality does not own that property.