Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to add the point of view of the New Democratic Party regarding Bill C-19.
I begin by saying that we really cannot address Bill C-19 in isolation. It forms part of a suite of bills that have been introduced lately to amend the Indian Act and which are now being dealt with by the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs, Northern Development and Natural Resources. They are Bill C-6, Bill C-7 and now Bill C-19, all of which really are interrelated and form a package to address certain problems with the Indian Act which, in the minister's opinion, have priority.
I should point out that this opinion is not shared by the leadership of the aboriginal community, by the Assembly of First Nations and by the legitimately elected leadership of first nations in this country. In fact in garnering support for this package of reforms to the Indian Act, the minister has had to go to extraordinary measures, some would say heavy-handed and even bullying measures, to try to solicit support. This has been done by either punishing those who would not co-operate with the amendments, who felt that they were not the priorities that needed to be dealt with and by rewarding those who were willing to participate in consultations and development of the bills, even though many of them have expressed reservations about the misguided prioritization of the minister. We have really seen financial and political retribution used as an instrument by the government to try to sell this reform package to the Indian Act.
I would also like to preface my remarks by saying it was galling for me to listen to the previous speaker from the Canadian Alliance citing Martin Luther King in a very romantic and grandiose style. In my opinion, the Canadian Alliance and the former Reform Party lost their right to quote Martin Luther King when they hired the Heritage Front to be their security at their conventions, et cetera. They certainly have no moral authority on this subject to quote the Reverend Martin Luther King.
I sat in this House while the Canadian Alliance launched a campaign to stop the Nisga'a people from achieving self-governance. It was a comprehensive and longstanding, vicious, bitter campaign to try to withhold that first nation from achieving independence.
They also lost the moral authority when they sent one of their staffers, Greg Hollingsworth, to British Columbia to establish the organization Foundation for Individual Rights and Equality. It sounds like a reasonable organization except it is the anti-Indian movement of British Columbia. The movement has been pulled together by citizens groups who are vehemently opposed to any form of self-governance for aboriginal people. It is a racist organization. It is an anti-Indian organization. Unfortunately, that poison has spread to Ontario now in an equally vile organization called On FIRE.