Mr. Speaker, Bill C-222, the first nations ombudsman bill, was proposed by my seatmate and friend, the hon. member for Wild Rose. I would like to thank and congratulate him for this initiative.
I was listening as the parliamentary secretary passed judgment on the bill and I have a couple of comments to make before I start into the main part of my speech.
He said that the Indian Act is incongruent with this proposal. That may well be, but the minister, I understand, wants the standing committee to look at amendments to the Indian Act and, of course, we can always make amendments to accommodate this proposal.
When I travelled with the Indian affairs committee, I spoke to a chief who told me how their traditional electoral practices worked. I will explain this process so that people can hear about the kinds of things that can happen when we go traditional.
When all the candidates for a particular office, let us say the chief, get into a large room they are all sent into different corners. While they are waiting there, all the voters gather in the middle of the large room and begin moving toward their various candidates. One can well imagine the intimidation one would feel. This is not to say that anyone is being intimidated, but members can just imagine how lonely we would feel all alone in a corner and then finding out that our jobs had been on the line. There is no secrecy in a situation like that. If someone had found that his or her job or some benefits he or she had accrued as a member of the band were lost as a result of this process, he or she may want to bring that to the attention of an ombudsman.
The parliamentary secretary said “stay out of the courts”. In response to that, I must say that his government is so frequently in the courts with different bands and first nations that it is almost impossible to write it all down. We know there are hundreds of millions of dollars worth of claims pending against the government.
If there are flaws, we accept that. There is probably no piece of legislation the Liberals have ever introduced that has been perfect. What do we do when we get a bill? We pass it and send it to a committee for review. We could invite the band leadership to the committee to pass judgment, give their advice on how to improve it or just tell us what they think. Why would we kill it here? The initiative did not come from the House. It came from the grassroots people.
Reports of mismanagement are downplayed but they come from across Canada. I was reading newspaper reports last year about east coast chiefs and councillors holding and doling out high paying jobs. Judge Reilly in Alberta caused an uproar when he slammed the Indian leadership for problems that contributed to a number of suicides on the Samson Cree Nation Reserve at Hobbema. Nothing was happening until he issued his report.
The Squamish band members in B.C. have asked the RCMP to investigate band finances. They have appealed to Indian affairs for help and were told that the department was only a funding agency, that it was not an investigative body, which is true. It is only a funding agency but it is also supposed to be a legislative agency.
Last year the National Post ran an entire series of articles detailing the squalor and corruption on some reserves and the helplessness of band members to effect change. The need for such an officer became apparent to participants at grassroots meetings of aboriginals sponsored by the Reform MPs in the summer of 1998 and 1999. I was there and I would not have believed it if I had not seen it.
These meetings were held across Canada with a significant cross section of people attending. The idea of an aboriginal ombudsman came out of those meetings. One of its strongest supporters was Leona Freed who has emerged as the leader of a new group called First Nations Accountability Coalition. These people are calling for this, not us because we think we have all the solutions. We think that the people who are affected by legislation might also have some solutions.
Participants at these meetings charged band leadership with questionable allocation of band funds: refusals to conduct forensic audits when requested; jobs changing hands after band elections; nepotism, favouritism, cronyism; housing allocations to families and friends of chiefs and councillors; band leaders flying high on expense accounts, going all over the world to meetings and whatever; third world living conditions on wealthy reserves; misuse of dedicated funds meant for training, health, housing and land purchases; and any number of things. The government denies all of this, but from time to time it has to admit the facts in individual cases. However, it refuses to see a cause and effect relationship or to believe that anything can be done to improve the situation.
The Department of Indian and Northern Affairs has been of little or no use. Letters written in confidence to the minister have fallen into the wrong hands. What has been done? Allegation co-ordinators have been established to help with the work of co-ordinating allegations made, but they have no teeth, no authority to act and no investigative powers. What use they are is up in the air.
In 1997 several elders, led by Greg Twoyoungmen from Alberta, came to Ottawa to meet with the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development to talk about the problems on their reserves. What did they get from the minister? They got a closed door. The minister would not meet with them. The only people who would meet with them were the Reform Party critic and deputy critic for Indian affairs. Much of what we hear came from there as well.
Who do these people turn to when all the doors are closed? The department of Indian affairs sends people back to their reserve leaders. The RCMP need significant proof before they can move. They cannot go to the courts for lengthy and expensive court battles on a civil basis because they simply do not have the funds available to them.
It was the grassroots Indians themselves who proposed the office of aboriginal ombudsman as an independent watchdog. They are convinced that an ombudsman will enable band members to exercise oversight into the affairs of bands in a way that is out of their grasp right now.
One of the better parts of this proposal is that the ombudsman would not serve at the pleasure of bands but would serve a fixed term of five years and not more than two terms. The ombudsman's pay cheque would not come from a band so his or her independence would be assured and he or she could not be called into question. The ombudsman would get assistance from the Chief Electoral Officer when needed to help settle disputes and would report to parliament annually.
The need for such legislation is clear. The bill is worthy of support by members of the House. I encourage every member to vote in favour of it, send it to committee and let the first nations leadership meet with the committee and give their views on it.
It would be a mistake to let some of the assertions from the other parties that have opposed this legislation, that what the Reform Party is saying is that all band membership is illegal and that is why this is needed, to go unanswered. That is not so. For the times it does, it hurts individuals. Many bands conduct their affairs in an open and businesslike way. They have nothing to fear from any legislation that is designed to protect individuals. Individuals are often hurt by that type of thing.
The critic for the Bloc characterized Indians as different from other people, that they sit around in circles and talk. When three or four people come to my office, we sit in a circle around my coffee table and we have a ceremonial drink. We call it coffee. We are pretty much alike when it comes to that type of thing. We gather in a circle, face one another and hash out the problems.
That is not the issue at all. The issue is protection of individual people who run afoul of a large bureaucratic organization that has economic, political and judicial power on its side. The people need an aboriginal ombudsman to protect them.