Mr. Speaker, I wish to thank the minister for his presentation this morning. I note that it was members of the opposition who gave unanimous consent to accommodate the minister. It is unfortunate that there will not be more time for us to debate this issue more fully today and ask questions of the minister.
I wish to tell the minister that we will support him in his efforts to send the bill to committee. We believe he is sincere in his efforts and is endeavouring to do what is right. As he said the status quo is totally unacceptable. In that respect the Canadian Alliance agrees that tools for better governance are essential to building both better economies and better relationships among Canadians.
The Canadian Alliance has many concerns with this piece of legislation. Those concerns will be raised in a forum that will allow aboriginal and non-aboriginal Canadians alike to participate. We encourage the committee to travel extensively to hear the views of a great many more people across the country than this consultation to date has heard from.
We believe the bill is both good and original. Unfortunately, the good parts are not very original and the original parts are not very good. Canadian Alliance members have advocated for greater accountability mechanisms for a long time without any success in terms of the government's response and in terms of aboriginal and non-aboriginal governance.
It was interesting that last week the government came forward with a proposal to clean up its own ethics and at the same time it came forward with legislation purporting to make aboriginal government more ethically run. This is saying do as I say, not as I do. The reality is that the government has had a lot of difficulty offering effective governance illustrations to the Canadian people over a number of years and is currently caught up in a lot of challenges as far as its own ethical conduct is concerned.
The debate on this issue needs to happen. The debate on aboriginal governance is one that aboriginal leaders themselves have been having and will continue to have. There are tremendous success stories in terms of the pursuit of accountability at the local level among aboriginal leadership across the country. Since being named to this position I have had the chance to meet many aboriginal leaders across Canada and I have not yet met one who does not proclaim to be in pursuit of greater accountability mechanisms, both locally and nationally. That is a goal many aboriginal leaders share because they recognize that accountability is not something to be feared. Accountability is not something to run away from as the government has done on too many occasions, but rather it is something to pursue.
That accountability extends in several ways in this instance. It extends not just from aboriginal leaders to their band members, to their off reserve band members, and to residents on their reserves who are not band members, though that accountability must exist. It also extends in a broader sense to Canadians as a whole through the Government of Canada which provides a large percentage of the funding sometimes used and managed well, and sometimes less so unfortunately, by band leadership themselves. Accountability must go in several directions, up, down and sideways. Accountability is a good thing and something that needs to be pursued.
The minister alluded to consultation and spoke of the validity of his consultation. I do not know how fruitful it is for us to engage in a debate about how good or how bad the consultation was although there were many observers of the consultation process who would argue that it was not that good. Not only aboriginal leaders felt they were circumvented in the process, but aboriginal women as well. From an analysis that I read about the consultations, the number of aboriginal women who participated as a percentage of the total was less than 10%. That does not give a good indication of the degree to which the perspectives of aboriginal females could be heard.
This is something we must rectify in our committee process. Aboriginal people are not separate from Canadians. We have shared citizenship. We have interrelationships which in many respects are growing and are increasingly important. It is very significant to recognize that we belong to one another. We must ensure that legislation which we proceed to develop is legislation that has the benefit of input from people, not just of aboriginal status, off reserve or on reserve aboriginal people, but of all Canadians who have vested interests in these issues and who are concerned about them as well.
The consultation the minister spoke of is done. It was protested by many because they disagreed with its validity. They felt that it had a head of steam before it got under way and they would question his comment that it was of high quality. I agree with the minister when he observed that the larger goal of these proposals is to engage in a debate about what we can possibly do to enhance the level and capability of governance in this sector. Best practices is a good thing to pursue, but best practices and consultation should not be avoided either.
There is a law in physics that says for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The best indication of that in terms of the aboriginal debate in this country was the 1969 white paper which was put forward by the Prime Minister when he was the indian affairs minister. The proposals advanced at that time were largely along the lines of assimilation, but the effect was that they incited and increased the degree of militancy and the degree of self-determination among the aboriginal leaders.
In the last three decades we have seen a growing and elevated concern among aboriginal peoples that they not be subjected to the same kinds of colonial, paternalistic, assimilationist types of policies that they had been unfortunately subjected to in past history.
The danger is that in pushing very hard in certain respects, the minister may be pushing for the same kind of equal and opposite reaction. That is unfortunate because the reality is, and the Canadian Alliance understands this and will support policies that aim us in this direction, that the two row wampum that we are familiar with, that symbol of the aboriginal ship and the European ship moving side by side, is an inaccurate and inadequate representation of the way that we should be go on the sea of life together. It certainly is a way we can go on separately.
The danger in the government's approach is that it may just be the case, that we will continue to be separate and because we are separate we will not recognize mutual benefits that accrue to us when we work together co-operatively.
I had the chance to meet with National Chief Coon Come recently and I asked about the two row wampum. It very much concerns me that we have this separateness which seems to be developing, this sense of segregation as a matter of public policy. It does not enhance our ability to learn, to grow, to work, to develop symbiotic relationships, to work more cost effectively in shared institutional approaches, to develop best practices and to do all the kinds of things that the government's spin-masters and communications people want us to believe are a part of this package. It does not do that.
I asked the national chief about that. He said that actually the two row wampum was not just like railroad tracks. It was not just two separate lines going off into a perpetual state of separation. Rather in the beaded belt, which is symbol of our relationship with one another, was a line that connected the two parallel lines. That line is called the covenant. That covenant is in there to recognize the permanent interrelationship and to recognize what aboriginal people have recognized for a long time and that is that the Europeans are not going away and neither are the aboriginal people.
We need that covenant. I am told it is signified by gold beads. What the symbol means is that there is an obligation on the part of people on both sides to keep that gold polished. The way to keep it polished is by honest and open dialogue back and forth and together. The way to keep it polished is not by imposing one's will on democratically elected leaders on the other side.
It is unfortunate that as much as the words are good in the legislation and as much as we agree with many of the aspects, in principle, of what the government is proposing, it has tarnished that gold covenant in a sense and has jeopardized what needs to be really worked on, which is a fair and open dialogue among people who have more in common than they do differences.
That being said, I want to begin my comments about the meat of the bill by saying that there are definitely things here with which we can agree. I think members will find in these consultations that the vast majority of responsible aboriginal leaders agree with these things too. It is important to recognize that in terms of, for example, the financial management and accountability code, and this is something for which the Canadian Alliance Party and before it the Reform Party have been calling for a long time, financial statements should be audited by an independent financial auditor. They should be made available. Copies should be provided to people requesting them. That is a good idea and a smart idea. That is transparency.
We do not get anywhere with accountability if there is no transparency. We have to have access to financial records, properly kept financial records, records kept by generally agreed upon accounting principles if we will have that kind of an understanding develop. We support that in principle.
The government has not done well in achieving these kinds of things in the past. The previous auditor general, L. Denis Desautels, remarked on his departure that one of his greatest areas of frustration with the government was its failure to deliver on the promises it made in terms of achieving accountability among the aboriginal band management. It was a serious problem and a serious concern, and it remains such.
To have these kinds of requirements imposed is a great idea in theory. The question is if it will be achieved in practice.
Prior to the new auditor general coming in, the auditor general's office did a series of evaluations and reports on compliance. It found that less than one-third of the audited band financial statements were submitted on time. Many of them had inaccuracies. Many of them had oversights or areas of potential revenue that were left out of the report, such as own source revenue.
These are larger issues of concern that we also have to get into. I do not know to what degree this bill will give us the opportunity to address those but we must take the opportunity to address them. As long as the underlying causes of non-compliance are not addressed, then requirements like these just will not be fulfilled. No matter how hard the department commits itself, it will have difficulty. The fact of the matter is that financial management and accountability is central to achieving good governance but the reality is sometimes different from the stated objectives as much as we agree with those.
There are many other issues. I recognize that we will have the opportunity through the committee structure to address a lot of these but I will address some of the concerns that we have just briefly now.
We know that unfortunately many of the aboriginal councils and chiefs who are subjected to charges of malpractice are being treated unfairly. There are patriarchal systems in some of the reserves and certainly the chiefs are open to charges like that, whether they are right or wrong.
I will deal with the stated goal of this legislation on redress. The summary material I have obtained from the department on redress states that the band will be authorized an impartial person or and impartial body to fairly and quickly consider complaints for breach of a code by the council or a band employee, et cetera, for decisions made against residents.
As much as the theory of that sounds good, how would the practice of that actually work? How would chiefs in council go about finding an impartial person to act as their kind of mini ombudsman on reserve? Do we realistically think that can happen? Do we think that is a possibility? Do we think that is even a distant possibility? How much would it cost? Who would pay for it?
If there are 600 bands and they each decide to have an ombudsman, how much would that cost? At a rate of $50,000, for example, for every ombudsman, it would cost $30 million for chiefs in council to have a little ombudsmen's offices on reserve where people could go and express concerns. Is that model really practical? Is it achievable? Is it something that could really happen and could it provide the result we want? We all want the result that people who have a genuine grievance or concern get to be heard and that something can be done about it. Can that actually happen in the context of a band?
I will give an example. The minister knows very well of a tiny reserve with about 100 adults on it in my riding. It is going through a tremendous split right now. The dissident faction is led by the sister of the chief. The chief is defending himself as best he can. The dissident faction is trying to find wrongdoing and perhaps they are finding it.
The problem we have with that is now the minister has had to put the band into third party management. Now there is a third party management situation. Would all of that have been preventable if an ombudsman had been present on the reserve? Do we think that really would have saved the day? Do we think putting one in there now would save the day?
We have some serious concerns about how this would work, especially given the fact that the chiefs in council are the ones responsible for hiring and selection of the person. This puts them in an added position of being accused of wrongdoing. There has to be some fine tuning done here.
The bill talks about laws for band purposes. Bands would be able to adopt laws, laws which would set fines of $10,000 and even up to $300,000 if it had to do with an environmental issue. They would be able to set terms of imprisonment not exceeding three months, at the band level now we are talking, on such issues as trespassing on the band's reserve or frequenting it for prohibitive purposes.
I am not casting aspersions on any chief or council but tie this all in with elections. Just imagine if chiefs in council were fighting real hard to be re-elected. Suppose the bands thought that one of the things that should be prohibited was campaigning against those chiefs. They could set the bylaws and the jail terms. A one day jail term could be the day of the election. Perhaps it will never happen but it sure could.
The reality is these are the kinds of things that I think frighten aboriginal people when I talk to them. The potential for abuse would be heightened and enhanced by some of the provisions in the bill so we have to ensure that these things are addressed quickly.
There is a danger with those penalties. When I talk to a lot of the aboriginal women, they are very concerned that there is the potential for abuse by the people in power because they would be given more power under this legislation to set bylaws, to impose fines and evict people.
One thing they would be empowered to do would be to appoint a person who would work for the chief in council and who could go into a person's house and look for evidence or investigate, because an individual does not own the house. The band owns the house. These people would be able to investigate and report back to the chiefs and council if they wanted. That kind of thing just does not happen off reserve but it would happen on reserve. That is the kind of inequality that I am not sure we would be able to support in the Canadian Alliance. That has to be addressed. The ability to go in and intimidate people is pretty much enhanced the way I would read this, particularly if a person is able to go into a person's house and get evidence.
These are the kinds of things that are fundamental to good governance. Another thing that is fundamental to good governance is participation in elections. Part of this legislation addresses that. It also addresses codes that the bands could set up. However we have a fundamental difficulty with this. An area of potentially great disagreement, which needs to be debated among Canadians, is this issue of hierarchical chiefs or chiefs for life.
The minister and I have had the chance to speak a little about this. I know it is a very difficult issue in many ways. To suggest that democratic elections should be held on all reserves is taken by some as a disrespectful comment. It is taken as disrespectful to say that should happen when bands have customs, and we want to honour those customs. At the same time we have other customs.
We did not use to have elections that were open and fair either. We did not use to allow women to vote. We used to do a lot of things 100 years ago we should not have done. Perhaps we need to have this debate in a broader context because there is great difficulty in saying that we will create effective governance on the one hand and on the other hand do nothing about the fact that a lot of bands do not get the right to vote. How can we do both? There are many more issues.
In closing I want to thank the minister. It is important that we build on a foundation of mutual respect. I am not sure that has been the case thus far but it needs to be.
I and the Canadian Alliance want to ensure that, in devolving responsibility to bands, the minister remains accountable to them and to the Canadian taxpayers. Finally, I and the Canadian Alliance want to ensure that we build not in separate directions but together on the basis of shared citizenship, a stronger future for aboriginal governance, aboriginal people and individuals.