The member says we cannot instruct the Senate. He knows full well that the Prime Minister is the one who appoints the senators and the senators are beholden to the him. He knows full well that the Senate will do the Prime Minister's bidding virtually every time. That is one of the problems my colleague from Cypress Hills was alluding to a few minutes ago.
The government sent the bill to the senate. A backroom deal was made and the government got the Liberal senators to agree to propose amendments to it.
The Senate decided to hold committee hearings on the bill. We found out about this and made sure that the people who had approached us, the Aboriginal Women's Society of Canada, the Aboriginal Women's Society of British Columbia, Mazie Baker and Wendy Lundberg from Vancouver had the knowledge that this would be in front of the Senate. They came to Ottawa and testified in front of the Senate. I could not sit in on all the Senate committee meetings unfortunately because my parliamentary duties would not allow it, but I sat in on as many as I could. It was an eye opener to hear what those ladies had to say.
Judging by the looks on some of the faces of the senators, they were absolutely astounded and had no idea how to deal with this. It was almost as if everybody was afraid to say that the emperor has no clothes. I can assure everyone that the emperor has no clothes. We cannot pass this kind of legislation on the one hand and on the other hand say that we are concerned about the rights of aboriginal women. The two are incompatible.
These women came from British Columbia and other parts of Canada and made presentations to the committee. They were very compelling in the arguments they advanced and in the stories they told in their own languages and in their own words. They were plain spoken, direct and no nonsense. They did not use six and seven syllable legalese terms. They talked about how it affected them, their families and their children. The senators sat and listened.
I talked to some of the senators. I did have personal contact with some of the senators on this. Many of them felt at a loss as to what they could do. I think the Liberal senators, who are a majority in the other place right now, were instructed by the minister and her department as to what they could or could not do in terms of amendments. Judging by the amendments we see today, I think the minister gave them a very short leash.
There are some changes with respect to expropriation but they are not sufficient by half. There is nothing with respect to marriage breakdown and marital property. There is nothing with respect to inheritance and nothing with respect to any kind of requirement for adjacent municipalities and aboriginal communities to have some kind of consultation when it comes to property development.
I want to talk for a minute about what happens when government passes this kind of legislation without wanting to think about what the ramifications are. Some of its members are very intelligent people. They do not act like it a lot of the time but I know them and they are very capable people. I submit that at times they do not want to look into the future, they do not want to admit what the net effect of these policies are going to be.
Let us look at what happens when government deals in this kind of legislation without that kind of consideration.
Back in 1965 the Government of Canada, the department of Indian affairs, encouraged the Musqueam band to get into the land development business. The Musqueam band owned a piece of property located in Vancouver. There was nothing on it. I am sure this is how it happened. The Department of Indian Affairs told the band that since it did not need this property it should subdivide it and lease it out.
The band, the department and a private enterprise developer in Vancouver entered into a deal. The Department of Indian Affairs signed on behalf of the band. It signed on behalf of the Government of Canada actually because the property is still in the name of the crown. The Musqueam leaseholders came into being. That was in 1965.
When the master lease was signed in 1965, 74 leasehold properties were created. The department of Indian affairs signed the master lease and all of the subleases. The master lease governs the entire 74 properties but each individual property is considered a sublease.
Once the department of Indian affairs had signed the master lease people living in Vancouver started to buy the leases. At the time it cost $18,000 to buy a lease and people had an obligation to pay so many dollars a year. The lease price for this land was negotiated in 1965 at about $350 a year but on top of that property taxes had to be paid. It was a 99 year lease with the initial term being 30 years. It was up for renegotiation in 1995.
The people living in these houses believed they had a 99 year lease with a 30 year term which would be renegotiated in 1995. They believed they were dealing with the department of Indian affairs, the Government of Canada. They thought they could not go wrong. Surely the Government of Canada would never do anything to compromise good taxpaying Canadians, some of whom were veterans of World War II. The Government of Canada would never do anything to compromise their interests.
In 1980 the federal government, the minister of Indian affairs signed a deal without giving any notice, without any consultation or discussion with the leaseholders and transferred the federal government's authority for the leases over to the band. Nobody was aware of this except the band. No disclosure was made at all.
Through the 1980s and into the early 1990s people continued to buy and sell houses which everyone understood were on leased land. Nobody ever bothered to tell the leaseholders that this huge change in administrative authority had taken place. It was done under section 53 of the Indian Act which the minister of Indian affairs at the time was empowered to do, but there was no disclosure.
In 1991 the federal government signed a further deal with the Musqueam band allowing it to enter into direct taxation for property taxes on these leases. Until that time there was a deal between the federal government, the band and the municipality of Vancouver wherein the municipality of Vancouver would provide the services and collect the taxes.
In 1991 the band became the property tax collector. It passed on some of the money to the city of Vancouver because the city of Vancouver had to be paid for the services it was delivering. The residents had no knowledge that this was going to happen. There was no consultation. It was just done. It was done without their knowledge as a fait accompli.
After it was a fait accompli residents became aware of it very quickly. Their property taxes skyrocketed. The band since that time has been collecting property taxes. It will argue that it is not collecting school taxes, but I would argue it is collecting much higher levels of taxes now than what was collected when the city of Vancouver was the property tax assessor and collector.
The band is not providing school services to those residents. It is not turning over any of the tax revenues it is collecting to the Government of British Columbia in aid of providing school services for the children of the leaseholders who live on that reserve. In some cases it has almost as much as tripled the property taxes these people pay.
In the municipality in which I live, and all municipalities are the same, property taxes are not there as some kind of cash cow for the municipality to do whatever it wants. Taxes are tied to the services the municipality delivers. Municipalities by law are not allowed to run either a deficit or a surplus. They collect only as much taxes as are required for them to operate the municipality on an annualized basis. I would submit that because the people who pay the property taxes in municipalities get to elect their municipal councillors, these people are also very accountable for how those tax dollars are spent.
We have a completely different situation in Musqueam. There are 74 people who are paying property taxes to the Musqueam band council but they are not allowed to vote for any of the band councillors. They are not allowed to run for office. In fact, they are not legally entitled to even show up at the council meetings. Now I ask, is that a very wise decision on the part of government?
This is why I am very concerned about this bill. The government makes decisions and it does not consider the long term impact of those decisions. On the Musqueam reserve, because of this taxation policy, there is the absolutely unbearable prospect of taxation without representation. The American break from Great Britain happened over taxation without representation. That is how important it is to people.
Do we in Canada think we are so clever and so intelligent that we can reinvent these failed policies and somehow make them work? I do not understand the thinking behind this. There are far too many people involved in the policy making decisions in this country, particularly in the bureaucracy around here, who are clever, well educated and totally impractical and who totally blind themselves to history.
I would submit that the Musqueam leaseholders story in the chronicles of modern Canadian history is an absolute nightmare. It is absolutely beyond my ability to comprehend. I have gone there and met with the leaseholders. I know what kind of pain and suffering these people have been through and are still going through.
A fellow the other day sent me the lease bill he had just received from the Musqueam band. His lease bill was $74,000 for the property that his house is on. There was a tiny little polite note at the bottom to please pay it within 30 days. Is that not interesting? I wonder how the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development would like it if we sent her a bill like that. I wonder how anybody else in the House would feel if they received a bill like that.
We have to be so politically correct we are not even supposed to discuss these issues in the House of Commons. We are not even supposed to raise these issues.