Mr. Speaker, all modern day treaties, and I mean by that the Nisga'a treaty, the comprehensive claims regarding the Inuvialuit western Arctic agreement and others like the Cree-Naskapi agreement, were individually custom crafted to meet the individual specific realities of the first nations people and the environment that they were dealing with. There is no one single cookie-cutter approach that would do justice to the many legitimate claims out there.
One of the things we caution about this agreement and any of the modern day treaties is that they should not be viewed as templates. They should not be viewed as some boiler plate that we can put in place and then impose on other first nations.
I sympathize with the member's tone and the content of the member's question that this is a tedious, expensive and sometimes cumbersome process. It could be expedited however were there a willingness on the side of the federal government to actually conclude agreements rather than prolong these lengthy negotiations because the stumbling block has been on the government's side.
We have seen movement and negotiation in good faith on the side of the first nations in virtually every application, but we have not heard the minister say to his bureaucrats, or to his negotiators, to go out and conclude agreements. We have heard him say, figuratively if not literally, to go out there, delay and stall, and do not even recognize Supreme Court rulings in their determinations at the bargaining table.
We have a situation where most negotiating tables are frustrated, prolonged and terribly costly. I can given examples to my colleague from Edmonton of negotiating tables where the first nations, in order to continue negotiating, have to borrow money for all the legal expertise that they need, sometimes tens of millions of dollars, and then in the end, 20, 30 or 50 years down the road, when they finally conclude a settlement, they have to pay back all the money they had to borrow to continue bargaining.
Were the government or, frankly, successive federal governments truly interested in resolving these outstanding claims, they would had gone to the negotiating table with a political will and with a mandate conclude settlements and negotiations. We believe economic development could have prospered and flowed into those areas of Canada much sooner.
I lived in Yukon when the entire territory was all under land claims. I wanted to buy my first home because I was starting a family. I wanted to build my first house as a carpenter. My son was born in Dawson City. We could not get a lot anywhere in the whole territory because the entire territory was frozen because of pending land claims. This was all through the 1970s and the 1980s. I had to stake a mining claim and build a cabin on the mining claim because I could not get a simple titled lot anywhere.
Economic development is being held back throughout Canada because of pending negotiations. It is the stubbornness and the unwillingness on the part of the federal government, not just this federal government but the previous one as well, that is stopping the conclusion of some of these protracted and exhausting negotiations.