I am not concerned about my flight at the present time.
The senator goes on to ask:
Are you comfortable enough with those amendments that we as a committee can proceed to final ratification on them?
The minister states:
As I said in my opening comments, I fundamentally believe this is a very good bill on all counts. In receiving testimony from the 14 First Nations, I know you feel that way as well.
She completely ignored the testimony of the Aboriginal Women's Association of British Columbia, Maizy Baker, Wendy Lockhart Lundberg and others. She just wanted to focus on the testimony of chiefs and councils that appeared before the Senate committee.
The minister continues:
Having said that, there may be opportunities for us to clarify the particular language used on expropriation.
The minister was telling the senators that the only area where she was prepared to entertain any amendments was expropriation. There is nothing on the issue of aboriginal women's rights. There is nothing on the issue of property rights. There is nothing on the issue of consultation with neighbouring municipalities. The only area where the minister was prepared to entertain any amendments at all was on the expropriation powers.
The Senate dominated by Liberal senators is nothing but a puppet for the government. Lo and behold we get amendments back from the Senate. Do we have anything on aboriginal women's rights? No. Do we have anything on consultation? No. We have a couple of small baby steps on expropriation.
As a parliamentarian I am so frustrated with this process and the fact that the Senate, which had an opportunity to address these issues, would not do it. It is is essentially controlled by the Prime Minister's Office as is everything else around here.
In reality, the Prime Minister's Office and cabinet members make all decisions. The House of Commons is a necessary inconvenience for them and they treat it with contempt. They know they have to come in here. They come in here as a matter of ceremony more than anything else. The way the Senate treated the bill is a very clear indication of that.
If it were truly an effective elected Senate, a Senate that had credibility and that was not a puppet of the PMO, I believe there would have been amendments this party would have supported. The bill would have been amended properly. It would have passed through the House with all party consent and everybody would have been happy.
We did not get that because the other place has no credibility. It is only doing the handiwork of the PMO. It only dances to its tune. The Senate committee continued:
Senator Chalifoux: Thank you, Minister...for appearing before us. It is important to have many things clarified.
You state you are willing to develop a process to address the issues of women, especially women living on reserve, and including the consideration of the matrimonial property laws, et cetera.
You have spoken to representatives of the NWAC and I understand that you want them to participate. Do you have any funding to assist that organization to participate? That is a big issue. That organization does not have that kind of money. They really need funds to participate properly. Have you addressed that issue?
The minister said:
Senator, I thank you for your work in this particular regard. I recognize that you have taken a keen interest and a keen responsibility.
Matrimonial property is a huge issue for us.
Those were warm words. Is it a huge issue? There are no changes to the bill. She continued:
I was approached first and foremost by the native women's association in B.C. This involves not only the national association; the British Columbia native women's association really addressed this in the first instance. Clearly something has to be done in the context of Bill C-49 to begin to deal with this problem. The resolution in Bill C-49 is appropriate in my opinion. It means that, community by community, women will be participating in the creation of codes—
We see the minister is ducking the issue. She does not want changes to the bill but she says that she will rely on the codes. No one has written a code as yet. She will rely on the codes, which no one can read, to deliver on these issues.
The people we are hearing from, Wendy Lockhart Lundberg, Maizy Baker, the Aboriginal Women's Association of Canada and the Aboriginal Women's Association of British Columbia are saying there is no way they want that in the legislation. They want a guarantee. They are asking us why they cannot have the same rights as all other Canadian women. Why do they have to be dependent on the good graces of a band council to come up with a land code? Especially after I described the ratification process on the Nisga' treaty, we can see how the results of referendums and ratifications can be skewed.
Why do they have to rely on that process? Why could the minister and the government not put that protection in the legislation for them and make sure it was there now? It is a flawed process. I suggest the reason it is not there is that the minister and her government care more about the collectivities than they do about individuals. They put collective rights ahead of individual rights when it comes to aboriginal people.
I submit that has been the bane of aboriginal people from the beginning of the country. It is time we ended that. It is time we recognized that these are real people. They are individuals and they deserve the same individual rights as all the rest of us.
She went on to say:
NWAC can play a broad role. I would note that their funding comes primarily not from my department but from Canadian Heritage.
Imagine that. Its funding comes from Heritage Canada. Referring to the Minister of Canadian Heritage she said:
I will take the representations and relay them to my colleague...Having said that, we do provide money to NWAC for particular project work, not the least of which was included last year and again this week—the symposia on the important issue of Bill C-31. We have provided funds to NWAC so that they can begin to have broad discussions. They have invited many chiefs and individual members and other experts on this issue. We are supporting them.
We can see what she was saying there. The senator asked if she would provide funding for these women so that they could put together a reasonable package or proposal that would address important issues such as the issue of the matrimonial home in the event of a marriage breakdown. The minister in effect said that it was not her responsibility but the responsibility of the Minister of Canadian Heritage and that she would have a word with her some time. That is exactly what the minister was saying. Where is the concern on the part of the minister when that is how she treats this very important question?
Then Senator Austin intervened:
Minister, you, of course, are welcomed by all members of this committee and we thank you for your work in this important area.
He must be a Liberal senator. He continued:
I wish to begin by echoing comments of Senator St. Germain with respect to the high level of interest that this legislation has provoked in British Columbia.
We can see from the discussions that took place the high level of concern expressed about British Columbia. It is not as if this is a meaningless bill. It has been well covered in the press in British Columbia and it has been such a subject of debate because people are very concerned about it.
The senator went on to say:
I know you are quite familiar with what is happening in British Columbia. The reason for the high level of interest is the perceived link between the issue of the Musqueam leaseholders under this bill and the Nisga'a treaty, and the link is not always rational. People tend to link things because they appear in a certain order, whether that is realistic or not.
This committee, in hearing its evidence, has heard a great deal of concern with respect to two nuances of clause 28 of the bill, relating to expropriation. As there is a good deal of concern and because I think—and believe my colleagues agree—that it would lessen the tensions that exist in the political system of at least my province, I have developed, with the stakeholders, some language that I am just having put before the members of the committee here. The language has now been seen by both sides and, I believe, by your officials. I should just like you to consider that language, be aware of it, and be aware that I will be proposing this amendment when they come to the clause-by-clause consideration.
We can see that obviously the senator is a Liberal senator. He quite rightly identified that the concern with Bill C-49 had been linked to the Musqueam situation and the Nisga'a treaty. He then pooh-poohed this by saying that people should not be concerned because they are completely unrelated.
I suggest they are related in some fundamental ways. As I have already identified, there was absolutely no consultation on the part of the minister. They negotiate agreements in back rooms that affect large numbers of people without even giving people notice that they are doing it. That is exactly what happened with the Nisga'a treaty. That is exactly what happened with Bill C-49. That is exactly what happened with the Musqueam leaseholders.
In 1965 the Musqueam leaseholders signed a lease with the federal Government of Canada. In 1980 the minister of the day, John Munro, assigned the government's authority in that lease over to the band without notification, without consultation and without an as you may please to the leaseholders who lived on that land. Until 1993 they went under the assumption they had a lease with the federal Government of Canada. They found out 13 years after the fact that was not the case, that the lease interest had been assigned over to the band.
This is not to take anything away from the Musqueam Band, but when a Canadian citizen or taxpayer signs a lease with the Government of Canada, it is expected that the federal government will honour the lease and treat the leaseholder fairly. Is it treating someone fairly when a deal is made and the leaseholder is not notified that the interest in the lease has been assigned to somebody else? That is the common link between government aboriginal policies in a whole range of areas.
The member from Essex Kent has it right. The minister and her department's policy is to keep the dummies in the dark, in their view we being the dummies. Anybody who is not in the PMO or in the cabinet room, as far as they are concerned, do not need to know. When legislation such as this comes into the House, we are just a thorn in their side, somebody that they have to deal with.
As far as they are concerned, they think the Parliament of Canada is irrelevant. They think that all government operations should be run out of the PMO and the cabinet room. At some point I think they would like to see the House of Commons completely eliminated as a relevant institution altogether.
The senator went on to say:
The amendment essentially deals with subclause 28(1)...There was a good deal of concern that the disjunctive “or” with “other first nation purposes” was a broader power than that which was reserved by the federal government for itself, in terms of the items which could be made subject to expropriation. The amendment would add the word “community”.
Is that not something? Now we have a real safeguard in the legislation. The Liberals are patting themselves on the back and saying “weren't we great?” They amended the expropriation powers to recognize or reflect the concerns that were expressed. How did they do it? They included community purposes. Other than first nation purposes, they included first nation community purposes.