Mr. Speaker, every agreement that the government enters into with anyone in this country, any first nation band or any province, must have terms within the agreement that certain things are going to be carried out.
There are jurisdictions that are delegated to provinces and there are jurisdictions that are delegated to first nations. In those delegations it is assumed that the terms of the agreement would be fulfilled.
I have been here since 1993 and this is one of several first nations self-government bills that have come before the House. Every time the question of accountability came up, there was the issue of accountability from the federal government as well as accountability from the first nation in order to stay within the terms of the agreement. There is a glaring lack of accountability.
In terms of self-government, we in the Conservative Party want the self-government goals to be completed with first nations across the country in respect of the Constitution of Canada.
Back in 1992, in the Charlottetown accord proposal, there was section after section that proposed to give first nations in this country powers of self-government that would supersede federal, provincial and regional authorities.
The people of Canada looked at that Charlottetown accord and they looked at that part of it. Debate after debate went all across the country. The Canadian people said no to that accord, as the House knows. They did not like the terms of it. They did not like the broad language. They did not like the further questions that it could raise in the future.
It was a good day for Canada when the Charlottetown accord was defeated. Since that day, since the Liberals were elected in 1993, slowly but surely, but invariably in every single first nations piece of legislation that has come to the House we have seen the Charlottetown accord provisions being inserted into those pieces of legislation.
The same Charlottetown accord provisions that were defeated by Canadians have been present in every single first nations legislation put before the House. The same provisions that were defeated by Canadians in a nationwide vote have surreptitiously been brought back in every piece of legislation by the Liberals.