Mr. Speaker, would the minister agree that what we are seeing here today is the last death rattle of what boils down to a two year campaign on behalf of the Reform Party to try to discredit aboriginal leadership and on a much broader issue than just the Nisga'a deal to try to speak against the whole idea of self-government?
I have sat here and listened for almost two years to a day where time after time Reform members have tried to thread together isolated incidences of mismanagement on various reserves. They have tried to paint a broader picture that aboriginal people are neither able nor capable or should have any control over self-governance.
Some people think that by broadening rights to a larger group of people somehow diminishes their own rights. They have this concept of human rights as one finite pie and if one group takes too big a slice that somehow there is less of it to go around. This is the message we have been hearing over and over again.
Is the minister aware that the Reform Party has really been the spokesperson for the whole anti-Indian movement in western Canada where I live, the architects of the anti-Indian movement of western Canada, with connections that I would love to point out if I had more time?