Debates of Sept. 26th, 2000

Manitoba Claim Settlements Implementation Act

[Angela Vautour, NDP, Beauséjour—Petitcodiac, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to address the amendments to Bill C-14, an act respecting an agreement with the Norway House Cree Nation for the settlement of matters arising from the flooding of land, and respecting the establishment of certain reserves in the province of Manitoba.

This bill includes two parts. The first one deals with the Norway House Cree Nation, while the second one seeks to facilitate the implementation of the land claim agreements in Manitoba, including the ones on future land claims.

Many aboriginals affected by this legislation were concerned about their aboriginal and treaty rights. The Manitoba northern flood agreement was signed in 1977 by Manitoba, Manitoba Hydro and five first nations of the province. That agreement was reached following the flooding of land used by first nations. It listed the conditions for compensating first nations affected by the flooding of their traditional land. It is not for me to say whether this agreement is considered to be a treaty, or if it will be in the future.

The first amendment seeks to protect treaty rights, should the Manitoba northern flood agreement be considered to be a treaty some day. The problem I see in supporting this amendment is that it would protect any right or claim resulting from the agreement. The key word here is the term right.

The word right is not defined in the Manitoba northern flood agreement. In this bill, this is not a problem, because there is a definition of right or claim in the Manitoba northern flood agreement. If we introduce the definition of this term, I believe that would allow some new interpretations and would broaden the scope of the bill.

Another amendment, the second one, also includes the terms right and claim. Primarily, its intent is to ensure that the Manitoba northern flood agreement continues to be the document that takes precedence in compensating the Cree of Norway House.

In this bill, the comprehensive implementation agreement would also take precedence over claims by the Norway House Cree. With the amendment, the Manitoba northern flood agreement would be amended as far as rights and claims are concerned. This therefore reinforces the protection of treaty rights and the original conditions of the Manitoba northern flood agreement.

I can understand the reasons for demanding protection of treaty rights, as in the case of the first amendment, but I do have difficulty with the idea of introducing a term that is not defined. As I have said, the term right is not defined in the Manitoba northern flood agreement.

Furthermore, the people of Norway House Cree Nation voted in a referendum to accept the terms of the master implementation agreement. While we heard from a number of concerned Norway House members about the process used in the referendum and their fears that they will lose rights afforded to them by the northern flood agreement, the fact remains that treaty rights are constitutionally protected. Discussions about the accuracy of the referendum were never completely explained, which means that one has to accept that the people chose to accept a resolution to a claim that is more than 20 years old.

It is the Norway House Cree Nation that should ultimately make decisions regarding compensation for their flooded land. They chose to accept the terms of the master implementation agreement and, with the constitutionally protected treaty rights, they should be in a position to finally realize the compensatory benefits afforded to them by the northern flood agreement.

Amendment No. 3 would add another clause to the legislation dealing with the Norway House Cree Nation and the master implementation agreement they signed in December 1997. This amendment would provide a security feature to the legislation to ensure that nothing in the act or the master implementation agreement is meant to “abrogate or derogate from the existing aboriginal rights or treaty rights of the first nation”. That is a quote from the amendment.

While this amendment has some merit since it is meant to protect aboriginal rights, these rights are already protected in the Canadian constitution. This legislation should be a positive move for the Norway House Cree Nation. Their members voted to accept the terms of the agreement and the chief has recognized the benefits of the agreement for the band members.

The PC Party supports legislation that allows first nations to become more self-reliant and financially independent. This legislation does exactly that. It will provide funds to be managed by a trust fund on behalf of the first nations. We support the legislation because of the positive advantage it provides to first nations in Manitoba but we do have reservations regarding the amendments.

[Derrek Konrad, Reform, Prince Albert, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to speak to Bill C-14, the Manitoba claim settlements implementation act. I was in Manitoba when the dams were being built. I was a surveyor and flew many miles over that country in a helicopter on my way to and from work. It is an interesting country and it was an interesting job.

Many aboriginal people in that area were deprived of some pretty nice land, particularly along the river. It is good land, but farther back it contains a lot of muskeg, so the land they lost was among the best. This bill will bring some finality to the issue and will put some money in their pockets so that they can get on with their lives. It is important. Not only is it some money, it is some land to make up for what they lost. It is land of equal value. I see from the bill that it will take about four times as much land to equal the value of what they did lose.

There were many questions raised by many people about the process used to get approval for the flood agreement. Most of those questions were never adequately answered. They were not answered in the community or in committee. It seemed to me that the Liberals spent a lot of time trying to hush up the issue and hurry this bill through. They spent a lot more time on procedural matters and objections to the list of witnesses that many of us in the official opposition and other opposition parties wanted to hear from.

We had more correspondence on this than anything I have seen since I came to the House. Members of the committee received a binder that is probably four inches thick and is filled with letters, briefs and presentations that have been made on this issue over the years. In the length of time we had to look at this bill, it was impossible to do a proper assessment and analysis of the entire situation. Also, the people most affected by this legislation were never really heard from when it was brought to parliament. That is not right.

The first agreement that was signed was so loose and open-ended that it gave rise to absolutely every kind of interpretation. It was not capable of being implemented due to its open-ended nature. Simply to bring some closure to the matter, the government trampled on the rights of a lot of people and overlooked due process.

People should not be deprived of their land without due process, and once deprived through legislative means they need to be adequately compensated. Those rights are available to all Canadians under expropriation acts, whether provincial or municipal. Certainly that right has to be there as well for Canada's aboriginals. They simply cannot be deprived of land and rights just because it happens to suit the political agenda of the party in power at the time. We are not overly happy about many of these things.

We notice the insertion of the word right. I am not sure, given recent court decisions, that the insertion of this word adds anything or that leaving it out will detract from anything. To that extent I agree with my colleague from Churchill. She had it about right there. The courts seem to be playing more and more of a role. It seems the Canadian public, the Canadian government and the Canadian taxpayer are being governed by our courts, much more than by the people who were elected, not appointed, to make the laws. We need to look after that.

Some of the questions I have about the transfer of land in fee simple to the band concern private ownership. Let us remember the bill has two parts. There is also a treaty land entitlement part to the bill. I and my colleagues doubt that any individuals will be able to exercise private property rights over any of that land. It will have to be always dealt with in common.

People who have appeared before our committee have said the lack of private property rights by natives over aboriginal land is one of the biggest barriers to economic development for those people, not just as a group but as individuals. The head of the First Nations Bank is one of those people. The head of the Business Development Bank of Canada is another individual who believes there need to be private property rights for individuals to make any headway in society, and that the communal style of owning property, which means lending institutions have no way to take collateral, is one of the biggest drawbacks to economic development for aboriginals.

These things were never addressed in the legislation. The government had an opportunity to get to work on these types of things.

The treaty land entitlement process does make up for shortfalls in Indian reserves that were established and surveyed at the times the treaties were signed, and it is a fairly generous settlement at that. Individuals will not benefit from it; simply bands will benefit. Many times that means the leadership gets most of the benefit, not the band members.

I have had aboriginal people come to my office in the riding of Prince Albert, I have had people telephone me at home, and I have had people contacting me by phone, letter, e-mail, fax, or whatever in my office in Ottawa, saying they want to be able to exercise private property rights. They would love to get a square mile of land somewhere, anywhere, maybe with some lumber on it so that they could do some logging, build a home, start to farm, or something like that.

Can they do that under the bill? Nothing doing. They are absolutely kept out of the mainstream of the Canadian economy because of legislation such as this and attitudes such as those on the other side, which deny Indian people the same rights that are available to every person in the House.

There needs to be a process to allow native people to take possession of their hopes. I recently spoke to a man on a reserve who had been given six months to get off the reserve and out of the house he lived in. He had been married to an Indian woman. The band said “We need this house for band members. You are not a band member”. His wife had just died and he got a letter from the band saying “You are out of here”. Is that the way to treat Canadians, aboriginal or otherwise? I do not think so.

The lack of rights available to people living on reserve is a scandal and needs to be addressed. While the bill does some good things locally for the people in making redress for land taken from them, it is a far cry from the kind of legislation we need to introduce to ensure that aboriginal women have the protections they need.

I am sure that woman would not have been happy to know her husband was told “You are out of here”. Fortunately he had daughters who were willing to look after him and took him in, but here was a man who was capable of living independently. He was not that old. He was forced to live with his children or else leave his home and his friends. That just does not work.

Under the legislation the federal government will fund Indian bands to undertake land selection studies. In Saskatchewan, where the treaty land entitlement process has been in business for some time, too many bands have been spending too much money doing studies and not enough buying. If any farmer were to spend that kind of money on studies, he long since would have been into bankruptcy, out of business, and working for a living.

There needs to be some accountability for the money that is transferred and held for these people. Certainly we will be watching that. I am sure we will be taking phone calls on that same issue over the years. We intend to form the government, and we will be making certain that this money is well spent on behalf of Canada's Indian people.

[John Finlay, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened with great interest to my colleagues' comments. Having worked with most of them on the aboriginal committee, I know from whence they come and I know they are genuine in their statements.

However, we are dealing with a separate piece of legislation that has the purpose of making an agreement with the Norway House Cree so that they can get on with the business of running their community, of getting the land they are entitled to and the compensation they have been denied by a long and cumbersome process that started in 1977.

This is, in miniature, what my colleague from Saint-Jean talked about regarding the Nass Valley. I too was there the week before last to honour the opening of the new legislative building of the Nisga'a, who worked for 120 years to get to that point.

The bill deals with an agreement made with the fourth of five first nations affected by the Manitoba northern flood agreement. The reason we have this agreement is that the other one does not work very well, because it allows for the kind of thing my colleagues across the hall have deplored. It allows for confrontations in court. It is costly and inefficient.

In order to get around this stumbling block, the parties, including Manitoba, Manitoba Hydro, Canada and the northern flood committee, have come up with a way of negotiating an implementation agreement with each first nation individually.

The first part of the bill deals with compensation for the Norway House Cree Nation, which it is situated 450 kilometres north of Winnipeg. There are over 5,000 members, and nearly 4,000 of them reside on reserve. As my colleague from Prince Albert has said, and he was involved in the surveying, the best land along the rivers was flooded. These people are in need of land to compensate for that loss at about four to one. As my colleague from Churchill said, the chief and council have agreed with the bill.

One of the reasons rights are not mentioned is to get around the very problem of making this a treaty, which it is not, and maintaining it as an agreement, which it is. This, in line with “Gathering Strength”, our aboriginal action plan, moves the agenda forward.

If we accept this motion to add that word then we are back to square one. We are back to pre-Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples days. We are back to Chief Justice Hamilton's comments about certainty in inalienable rights and aboriginal rights. If they are not clearly defined we get into trouble. We are not trying to define them in the bill. We are saying there is a problem. These people deserve compensation. We will compensate them according to the bill.

The second part of the bill affects more first nations, particularly Manitoba first nations, potentially all Manitoba first nations, in that it aims to facilitate the addition to reserve commitments under a variety of existing and future Manitoba claims settlements. While the most significant of these commitments at present are to the 20 Manitoba first nations covered by the 1997 Manitoba treaty land entitlement framework agreement, other first nations in Manitoba will also derive benefits under part 2, relative to other existing and future settlements.

It is imperative, in order to move the agenda on, in order that the first nations of Manitoba can get the support and the freedom to act they need, that these amendments be defeated. If they are not we will go back into a very murky situation that existed 22 years ago. That is not progress for the native people. It is not progress for the government. It is not progress for the country. It is a lack of progress.

There is no danger in this act to any first nations treaty rights, aboriginal rights, inherent rights or any other rights. The bill rights a wrong, an overdue delay in settlement with the Norway House Cree. It makes further settlements with the other bands in Manitoba much easier to accomplish because people have to sit down and agree on what they need, how much they can have, where the land is, add it to the reserve, et cetera. As Chief Gosnell said in the Nass Valley, confrontation is not the way to go. Consultation, agreements and negotiation are the way to go. That is when everybody gets the most value for their efforts, the government and the first nations. I urge the House to deny these motions.

[John Duncan, Reform, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-14. I was involved earlier in the agreements that derived from the Manitoba flooding of the 1970s. In the last parliament we had Bill C-36 dealing with the Split Lake Band, Bill C-39 dealing with the York Factory Band, and Bill C-40 dealing with the Nelson House Band. This is now the fourth bill dealing with five bands. We only have the Cross Lake Band that is currently not addressed by new legislation and is still subject to the Manitoba northern flood agreement of 1977.

Specifically Bill C-14 deals with Norway House. I had the experience of going to Norway House in the summer of 1995 as part of my party's task force on aboriginal affairs. We were trying to develop policy at that time.

I well remember the charter flight from Winnipeg to the airport at Norway House. We had made arrangements previously with some women from the Norway House community to meet us at the airport. There were several members of parliament from my caucus. The first words that came out of one of their mouths was “Congratulations, you have now been at Norway House one more time than our chief has this year”. That was actually the forerunner and the first clear example in my mind of the way in which aboriginal women were making decisions. When they are dissatisfied with the way their community is being run, they will do something about it. That is one memory that is etched in my mind.

The 1977 Manitoba flood agreement was laced with problems. It did not become a very good document to implement a lot of the necessary things to address the huge displacement of community lands. There were new hazards for residents of the communities because of the change in the waters and water levels. Resources were displaced. A whole new way of life had to be put in place because the flooded lands had changed the way the water oriented communities had operated up until that time. Clearly no one could reasonably argue that compensation is not an important part of this whole agreement.

We have supported all of the compensation agreements. We have been very consistent in doing that in Bill C-36, Bill C-39, Bill C-40 and once again today we are supporting Bill C-14. We have actually debated this since June 1994. That was the first set of debates.

I will just give an idea of what happened when the flooding occurred on the Nelson and Churchill rivers along with the Lake Winnipeg regulations project. Almost 5,000 hectares of reserve land belonging to these five first nations were flooded as well as over 200,000 hectares of non-reserve land that was traditionally used for hunting and trapping.

In the 1970s when the flood agreement was put together, it was very loosely worded. With these agreements now, not only is implementation better served, but we have clearer questions of how liability will be addressed. The project proponent, Manitoba Hydro, now essentially has the ongoing and unanticipated future liability. I think everyone would agree that is just and proper as it is the major proponent for the project.

There are some interesting elements to these agreements. In many ways we should be looking at these as enlightened things that we can build into future agreements.

The fee simple lands that are being transferred are not necessarily being transferred into typical reserve status. This will give the bands a lot more flexibility and opportunity to deal with those lands in a way that will not necessarily involve all the bureaucracy of the department of Indian affairs.

On the transfer of moneys, the compensation package, the moneys are going into a trust arrangement that will necessarily have an accountability function built in which I think is highly appropriate. We know for example that under the Liberal government the accumulated deficit of native bands across Canada has gone from $130 million to over $300 million. That lack of accountability is something to be avoided. This arrangement avoids that lack of accountability.

Those are the main points I wanted to get across. A couple of other things are worth pointing out.

The fee simple lands held by the respective native corporations are held outside the normal encumbrances of the Indian Act. They are also subject to property taxation. Any business originating from these lands is also taxable. In addition, individual band members may appeal under the Manitoba arbitration act if they are unsatisfied with band decisions which affect them personally.

We have some new thinking here that is worth putting under a microscope a few years down the road to see what real changes it has brought about. My suspicion is that this will lead to some good changes in the way governance is applied within these communities.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The question is on Motion No. 1. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Deputy Speaker]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Deputy Speaker]

The recorded division on Motion No. 1 stands deferred. The division on this motion will also apply to Motion No. 2.

The next question is on Motion No. 3. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Deputy Speaker]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Deputy Speaker]

The recorded division on Motion No. 3 stands deferred.

The next question is on Motion No. 4. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Deputy Speaker]

I declare Motion No.4 carried.

(Motion No. 4 agreed to)