Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise on this very important issue for Canadians that is obviously of a great deal of concern and importance to aboriginal people who are trying to wrestle with a way to better their lives.
As has been mentioned earlier today, and on both sides of the House, I think, there is a growing understanding and maybe a consensus building in all communities and in all political parties that the status quo is just simply not good enough. We cannot continue along the path we are on, repeat it endlessly and hope that we will have a different result down the way. It is a definition of insanity to say let us just keep the process going when the process we have now has resulted in 80% unemployment on many reserves, the highest suicide rates, difficulty in infant mortality and on and on the problems continue to go. The bill at least is going to get those issues on the table for debate and, I hope, for resolution.
To begin, let me say that the Stó:lõ Nation is within my area, or I am within theirs, depending on whose perspective we are following. There are many different reserves that make up the Stó:lõ Nation. I would say that some very good leaders have come up through the system in the Stó:lõ Nation in spite of the Indian Act, not because of it. The person who makes it to the top and is able to work hard on behalf of his or her people stands out like a shining light, but unfortunately there are so many others who do not get there because there is no natural path to provide good governance and good leadership.
In fact, if they are good governors or good leaders within the community there is no guarantee they will be re-elected or receive kudos for it. In fact, sometimes, and this is what is happening in the Stó:lõ Nation right now, there are certain bands that are so frustrated with the system, with the unintelligible leadership morass they have, that they have given up and opted out of the Stó:lõ Nation. Now they are taking one another to court. Meanwhile different bands are fighting each other. Nobody is helping the aboriginal people with this, but the war is on between the groups as they try to find out who can lead.
We have to resolve the governance issues. This bill at least is taking a stab at it. In that sense it is good. I remember writing to the ministers in times past and asking them to intervene where I thought there was grievous, undemocratic activity going on in certain reserves. The response I got from the minister was if the people did not like it then they should elect a new council. However, here is what happens in those situations. Sometimes the band bylaws are such that all one has to do to give notification of a new election for the band council is to post on the four corners of the reserve or thereabouts a notice on an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper, typewritten, at times posted 12 or 14 feet high on a telephone pole. The election comes and goes because nobody knows about it. There is no public notification required. There is no voters list. There is no night when all the candidates speak. There are none of the things that we take for granted in a democratic system. Certain bands just run roughshod over the democratic rights of the aboriginal people themselves, or what I would hope are democratic rights.
Therefore, we have to grapple with this. We cannot let this go on. We would not put up with it in our dealings with a third world country and we certainly should not put up with it here in our dealings with aboriginal people. They deserve better and they want better. To the aboriginal leaders who squawk the most and think it is unfair to even re-open or open this can of worms, I say “get into the 21st century”. We need to have accountability because without accountability we cannot have good governance.
I also hope that during this discussion on governance issues we will understand another thing that I think is a truism about human nature, that is, if we get money from the people we purport to represent we will naturally have better accountability and better governance. In other words, right now billions of dollars are transferred from one level of government to another level of government in the aboriginal community, but it does not pass through the hands of the aboriginal people. They do not see it. It is just transferred from federal or provincial governments to a local aboriginal government, but the aboriginal people do not see it.
Because of that, the aboriginal people do not have any sense of where the money is going. It is not taxed out of their back pockets. It is transferred from government to government. The aboriginal people say that they do not know where the money is. All they know is that they do not have running water and they do not have facilities. They have no opportunities, no hope, because they do not see any of the money. The money just goes from government to government and then it is spent by the guys at the top and they do not get any of it. They do not see it.
I hope we discuss ways to make government better on aboriginal reserves the same as we would for any other level of government. Money should be given to the aboriginal people. They should have access to it and have opportunities and then if need be it can be taxed back. Then we will see some accountability. We will see aboriginal people standing up and saying that transfers are coming to them, their families and their community to the tune of thousands of dollars and if people want it back then they will be held accountable for it. They will say that if it is to be spent on health care they want to see where the money is being spent. They will say that they do not want it just wasted.
We see the headlines in the local papers back home and in the Vancouver Sun about the money being spent on trips to Hawaii, trips to exotic locations and boondoggle seminars held by dozens of people in exotic locations, all of it because of transfers of money from one government to another. If that money had to be taxed out of the back pockets of aboriginal people they would be rising up and saying enough of this nonsense. However, they never see the money. It goes directly to the band council, the band council disburses a lot of it to itself and then we have taxation without representation. We have money being spent and people not seeing the benefit from it. It is just not right.
Finally, the NDP has tried to make the case today that we should not be raising these issues, that it is unjust, unfair and so on. It is repugnant and there is revulsion and all that kind of stuff. I would tell them, as the member for Prince George--Peace River has said, to get their heads out of the sand. What on earth is the NDP thinking? If the NDP wants to help the aboriginal people, as we all want to, then let us get into the 21st century and not stick with an 18th century or 19th century model of governance. We have to, because they want something new and different.
As for the fact that some of the leadership says it is going too quickly and there is not enough consultation, we can address that in the committee forum, and of course we should consult broadly, but to say that nothing is going to change is an insult to aboriginal people and in essence is telling them that what they have is good enough. It is not good enough.
There has not been an aboriginal land claim settlement in British Columbia under the government's leadership since it came to power in 1993, not one. Hundreds of millions of dollars have now been spent on consultants' fees, on lawyers' fees and on talking around the bush until another generation of aboriginal people has grown up with even more despair.
They were promised better. They say that the government promised them it would deliver something and they cannot even get land claim settlements done under this government because the system is botched up. There is so much political correctness, so many lawyers and consultants and so much 18th century thinking that it is bogged down. Now it is being said that some of those bands, when they settle their land claims, will spend all of their land claim settlements paying off the consultants who got them to where they are today. It is just a travesty for the aboriginal people, who deserve better.
In conclusion, let me say that I was a logging contractor before I got into this business here. In the logging business in those days, I would say that around 50% of the people who worked in the industry were aboriginal, at least in my area. They were some of the best loggers and the best contractors. Some of them made a lot of money. Some of them did very well. They were hard workers, good people and excellent in the woods. We considered ourselves fortunate to have a high proportion of aboriginal people and contractors working for us. However, that was an exception to the rule. If we take the forestry industry out of it, and it is unfortunately less and less of a factor now in economic activity, aboriginal people are asked to sit on their reserves and just exist instead of having opportunities to advance themselves.
It is time to break out of the mould, give them good governance, allow them to make decisions that affect themselves, and work with them to make a brighter 21st century because the past century and a half has been an abysmal failure.