Madam Speaker, judging from his speech, it is plain for everyone here to see that the minister of Indian affairs thinks he knows better than aboriginal chiefs what is good for Canada's 1.4 million native people. It is this kind of paternalism that has doomed past attempts to amend and overhaul the Indian Act. It is these made in Ottawa policies, like the first nations governance act, that have soured relationships between aboriginal people and the Canadian government. In fact I would argue that it has set them back 50 years.
There is no doubt in the mind of the NDP caucus that new legislation is needed. There is no doubt in our minds that the Indian Act is a vestige of a colonial era. I would go further to say that the Indian Act is fundamentally evil. It has been responsible for 130 years of social tragedy in this country. The Indian Act we know has prevented native reserves from becoming self-sustaining communities and has prevented first nations from sharing in the prosperity of this great nation.
Surely the country's largest native organization, the Assembly of First Nations, should have had a leading role in drafting these new rules. Surely the elected chiefs of Canada's 633 bands understand the needs and priorities of their people better than Ottawa bureaucrats and the minister himself. Unfortunately the minister's highhanded approach has engendered such distrust among native leaders that there is little hope for an open-minded debate about the substance of the legislation.
The biggest problem is that it does not have to be this way. This was a conscious choice on the part of the government and on the part of the minister. When the minister announced plans to rewrite the Indian Act in I believe April 2001 he was advised and strongly urged by all of us in the House, when we stood up to speak to the concept, to take his time, to earn the trust of aboriginal people and to do it right the first time. In the 126 year history of the Indian Act it has been a rare occasion that it has been opened up for the purposes of improving, modernizing and hopefully ultimately abolishing it. He was warned over and over again but he chose to stick to his own timetable. He was warned when he failed to show up at two annual meetings in a row of the Assembly of First Nations that he was losing the support of native leaders.
However he chose to press on ahead without them. He consciously chose to circumvent, bypass and pull an end run on them and, as he says, speak to the grassroots people. He said that if the freely elected leadership of the aboriginal communities would not speak to him that he would bypass them and speak to the so-called grassroots people.
Other parties have said this and I will say it as well. We believe that the whole consultation process was a sham. That is where we got off to a bad start. It is implicit in the Indian Act that any time it is to be amended there should be broad consultation first. It begs the question: what is the legal definition of broad consultation? If we post a bulletin on a telephone pole that says “Town hall meeting tonight. Come on down”, and three people show up, does that mean that the community has been broadly consulted with? I have lots of examples of how this consultation fell short of any reasonable person's definition of what broad consultation really means.
It is with regret that we say that the minister of Indian affairs may believe he was doing the right thing for aboriginal people by ploughing ahead with this legislation in spite of the controversy and adversity. However, we would argue that he is doing it the wrong way entirely.
Let me state again that the NDP caucus is in favour of the idea that the Indian Act should be amended with the ultimate goal of it being abolished. It is offensive and paternalistic. We believe it is the instrument by which Canada's treatment of aboriginal people has become its greatest shame.
Let it be known that the NDP caucus supports self-government for first nations and aboriginal people on their terms. We support the emancipation of first nations people and we support measures that would liberate aboriginal people from what we call the shackles of Eurocentric colonialism, and we support building the administrative capacity in first nations to do just that.
These are the terms we need to be using and they are terms that are freely tossed around by the minister, administrative capacity, building capacity, et cetera, but somehow INAC bureaucrats and the minister chose to deal with the three things that the aboriginal community frankly is not interested in discussing in this round of amending the Indian Act. He chose to deal with the legal standing and capacity of first nations communities, the legal definition, et cetera. He chose to deal with leadership selection and voting rights, implying that there is something fundamentally wrong with leadership selection and the democratic process in first nations communities, and he chose to deal with financial accountability.
It is significant that the Canadian Alliance devoted most of its remarks to the issue of financial accountability, because I believe the government responded to an 18 month long campaign by the Canadian Alliance to discredit first nations communities. We believe that it was fear-mongering on behalf of the Canadian Alliance that led the government and motivated it to pay attention to the issue of financial accountability before it decided to pay attention to economic development or housing or fresh water or health or education or all the pressing needs the aboriginal leadership wanted dealt with. It decided to believe the allegations made over an 18 month period that somehow every first nations community is either incompetent or corrupt, because the Canadian Alliance spent almost two years pulling out isolated incidents of financial mismanagement and tried to thread that together into a common motif or theme that all first nations communities are corrupt or suffering from gross mismanagement. Whereas the truth, and the minister knows the truth, is that 96% of all of the 633 first nations communities submit their annual audits on time, their audits are approved, and of the remaining 4% some need some guidance or assistance or they are late in filing. The actual fact is that only 27 out of 633 first nations communities are in what they call third party management, in other words, they need real assistance.
I condemn the government for focusing on, responding to and listening to the groundless allegations of the Alliance about the competency and financial management of first nations communities and for wasting and frankly missing an opportunity where it could be dealing with issues of substance and instead is dealing with the financial accountability aspect.
We know that this has been a long, agonizing process. The relationship between first nations and the Government of Canada has dwindled and deteriorated systematically since April 2001 when the minister first announced his intention to open up the Indian Act. I note that at the Assembly of First Nations meeting in Ottawa in December of that year, the chiefs sent a very clear message even then on how they wanted the consultation to unfold and how they wanted the negotiation to take place. They voted 126 to 49 against a joint government-AFN work plan because they objected even then, six months into the process, to the substance, tone, content and continued paternalism shown by the government, in that it would dictate what things would be amended and the timetable under which they would be amended.
That was the first real message that the minister missed. Because if it was one of his stated goals and objectives to make the Indian Act less paternalistic, he began the process at the height of paternalism by dictating what would be discussed, the timetable under which it would be discussed, and what the end results would be. Then he said they would have two years to comply or it would be imposed on the first nations. That is so far away from the spirit of co-operation that has been lovingly nurtured and cultivated over the last many years so that we can try to remedy some of the historic injustices. It was cast out the window in a period of 18 months.
I lament that on behalf of our caucus. I am very sorry that we are missing the opportunity for constructive consultation on and meaningful amendments to an act that we all detest. We have squandered that opportunity and in fact we have watched the relationship deteriorate again. It has set us back maybe 50 years in terms of actual relationships.
We have been getting all the literature from the department, from INAC, saying that it is really the aboriginal community and first nations people who have been asking for changes to the governance structure and the Indian Act. Of course they have been asking for changes. They have been asking for self-governance. They have been asking for meaningful progress toward the day when they will be out from under the domination of the Indian Act.
These measures introduced today are insulting. They are so irrelevant to that lofty principle and that goal that it is insulting. This is either a wilful blindness to what they have been saying or it is saying to the first nations communities that they are wrong. These measures are saying that the issues the first nations care about are not the issues that need to be dealt with right away. INAC is saying it knows better, that it is the paternalistic agency that will tell them the types of changes that should be and need to be introduced.
The point has been made that this first nations governance initiative is too reminiscent of the white paper of 1969 introduced by the then minister of Indian affairs, who is now the Prime Minister of Canada. That document launched a generation of protest, activism, demonstrations, occupying of provincial parks and blockades of highways. That paper mobilized a generation of aboriginal youth into activism. I fear that this first nations governance initiative will have the same deleterious effect on aboriginal youth and on activists because they will be rising up in the same sense. The white paper of 1969 aimed to take away the special status of first nations people. Now we are jeopardizing the status of communities and municipalities, this idea of a legal person concept, that the legal definition of a first nations community will be that of a legal person. We know that has been challenged in the courts. We also know the down side to assuming more of the responsibility with none of the benefits, which could happen when this new legal status is imposed on them.
We would argue that if there is to be a change to the legal status of communities, it should be optional. It is a measure that some first nations communities have voluntarily entered into so that they can have different types of business relationships in dealing with financial institutions et cetera. It is an optional thing, not an imposed thing, because therein lies the paternalism, that if within two years they do not comply the default position will be imposed on them anyway.
The 1969 white paper said it would remove the role of the federal government. Would it have altered the fiduciary responsibility of the federal government? That was the question. It said it would make first nations people citizens of the provinces, which again challenges the fundamental nation to nation relationship between first nations and the federal government. It said it would turn reserves into rural municipalities. People balked at that because they felt, and rightfully so because history has proved them right, that this was a step toward assimilation, which is a step toward extinction of first nations people as nations, as an entity within Canada. That was rejected soundly, but there are legitimate fears and apprehensions that we are on the road to that again.
One of the most obvious and disturbing things about the first nations governance bill we have had introduced now is that it wilfully ignores the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the most exhaustive, broad, comprehensive and true consultation of aboriginal peoples ever in Canadian history. I believe that over five years $58 million was spent to develop the volumes of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Therein lay the agreed upon recommendations that in fact would move the plight of aboriginal people forward.
There has been wilful blindness and wilful ignorance. Whether it was too expensive, inconvenient or what the reasoning and rationale was, those recommendations were not looked at. We could open any volume of RCAP and at any page find a meaningful, worthwhile recommendation that would have been welcome because it had been pre-approved, but the government chose not to do that. It chose to dive into new and contentious areas, areas of divisiveness and dispute. That to me indicates ill will, not goodwill, at the bargaining table.
The Assembly of First Nations has long argued that any changes to the Indian Act should stem from the inherent rights affirmed in section 35 of the constitution, so maybe the problem is not so much the merits or the details of this bill. Maybe the problem lies in the fundamental premise, even before we start talk specifics. The minister has often stood up and answered our questions in the House of Commons by asking how we can object to something we have not even seen. We can object to the basic premise that we are not starting from respect for the inherent rights of section 35.
Indicative of that, I think, is the fact that we do not even see a non-derogation clause in the bill, unless I missed it. No piece of aboriginal legislation should be put forward without a comprehensive non-derogation clause to assure the partners it is dealing with that nothing in the bill will take away from rights that are already enjoyed, or in other words, that there is no Trojan horse here, that we are not trying to slip in a mickey. This assurance is lacking.
The AFN has always argued that the proposed governance legislation seems to be based on a premise that first nations governance comes from federal legislation. Again we are starting from a flawed premise, or at least a contentious premise. This is a premise that might not survive a court challenge. Unless the minister is wilfully trying to drag us into a long, hot summer of protests and roadblocks, although I cannot speak for how aboriginal people plan to respond to this, unless he is trying to invite social unrest and long agonizing court challenges, why will he not, in the name of reason, step back one step, pick up the telephone, call the Assembly of First Nations and say that they got off to a bad start? Why will he not say to let us use the summer to try to heal some of the damage that has been done, to let us use what months we have, perhaps while the committee has the bill before it, to at least implement some of the changes, some of the very real and tangible things that have been pointed out and could have been done? What I am asking is, could we not use our time better?
Whatever possessed the minister to launch this volley, to risk the fragile relationship we have with first nations in Canada, to jeopardize that working relationship by insulting them, offending them, showing them disrespect? Who was the architect of this disaster? Who compelled the government to behave in this way?
However, I will say that it is not too late. This can be pulled out of the fire, because there is a fair amount of goodwill on this side of the House. We are going to unanimously agree to send the bill to committee. I know that it will be our job as opposition members to be a conduit to allow those good ideas that have been developed by the people out there who are genuine authorities on the subject, to allow them a vehicle to bring those issues forward and to implement them as amendments to the bill. If there was not enough respect on the government side to seek out their opinions, we will show that respect as opposition members and allow them to use us as their conduit.
In the meantime there is damage control that needs to be done. I would ask the minister to do the right thing, extend the olive branch and reject the negotiating stance he has clearly adopted, because that approach is not working. That approach does not work in such a delicate and sensitive relationship as we have with first nations people.
I could deal with more specifics about the bill, but I do not think it is the merits of the bill that we are here to discuss today. The motion is to put the bill before the committee prior to second reading. It is an unusual move. It is a move that I believe has the support of all the parties for the simple reason that a true consultation has to take place because no real consultation has taken place to date.
I reject the minister's figures that 10,000 people were consulted. I reject that it is true consultation if people are in a room and disagree or want to talk about something else, which was the case in many of those meetings. The officials would introduce the topic of the FNGI and people would stand up and want to talk about housing, education, health care, economic development, fresh drinking water and all the urgent, pressing basic needs issues that are top of mind issues in aboriginal communities. They did not go there to talk about the legal standing of their reserve or the financial accountability or the electoral practices.
The last thing I would say is that imposing eurocentric electoral standards of two year terms and elections supervised by Elections Canada perhaps more than anything else shows a disrespect for the customary and hereditary systems and structures that may be in place in various communities. It shows a wilful disregard and a disrespect for the status quo.
I appeal one more time for the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development to pick up the phone and make overtures. I ask him to be the first one to extend a hand in friendship and heal these wounds that have been caused by the first nations governance initiative before it is too late.