Mr. Speaker, as I listened to the member give his speech, I heard echoes of the debates that unfortunately we listened to during the Nisga'a. At that time, I was the chair of the committee. I not only listened to the debate in the House and the testimony, I also sat through the over 400 amendments, all of which were not on the treaty provisions itself, as was claimed a little earlier today, but on the enabling act just as it is here.
Someone questioned that earlier. I thought I would take this opportunity to pull the Hansard of Tuesday, October 19, 1999. The Hon. Robert Nault, who was the minister of Indian affairs and northern development at the time, said:
Mr. Speaker, I take this opportunity to table a notice of a ways and means motion to implement certain provisions of the Nisga'a final agreement and the Nisga'a nation taxation agreement, and I ask that an order of the day be designated for consideration of this motion.
In other words, unlike what was said earlier in this House by the opposition party, Nisga'a was done in exactly the same way. I hope I stop hearing that argument. If they cannot read the Hansard , I have read it to them.
I would like to ask a question of this member. I honestly do not understand how his party can say that we need to speed up the treaty process, that we need to help economic development, that we need to get certainty and that many people live on lands that are on certain boundaries. We have not three months or one term of the lives of members in this Parliament or even two terms. We have over a decade of negotiation made in good faith with negotiators from the federal government and from the territorial government where the land is. They made a unanimous ratification in that parliament.
There are over 3,000 members of the Tlicho, with an 84.6% vote in favour and a 90 some odd per cent turnout at that election. Here our job procedurally is to ratify or not.
I can understand if people stand up and say that they do not want to ratify. However, do not say that these good things should happen, but this is not the time or that there has not been enough time taken or that good faith negotiation has not taken place, because that is not the case.
Let us be honest. Is this moving forward? Do we want to move this bill or will we just talk about it and slowly delay and move it on? Is this member serious about doing land claims in Canada?