Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise this morning and address the amendments at report stage to Bill C-11, an act to give effect to the Westbank first nation self-government agreement.
I would like to make a couple of statements at the outset of my remarks. To begin with, this bill is only some six pages long. It is quite a concise bill. There is not a lot to it. I think any member of the public could understand what it is that we are talking about today.
Specifically, I would like to address Motion No. 1 in the name of my colleague from Delta, which basically amends Bill C-11 by deleting clause 3 which is the implementation of the bill itself.
In consultation with my colleague from Delta, he was disappointed that his amendment dealing with the charter provisions was not allowed to proceed and instead, this amendment was the only one that he had submitted that was allowed to stand. He would have liked to have debated the issue of how the bill relates to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Indeed, we are not prevented from doing that within the confines of the existing amendments and I will refer to that a bit later.
During some remarks earlier in the debate, the parliamentary secretary for Indian Affairs and Northern Development said that if someone wanted to change this bill, they should lobby to change the entire government policy, not just one clause in this act. While I would agree with him, obviously, that is not the basis of the debate today. Indeed, that debate will be taking place probably fairly quickly. Whenever the Prime Minister calls the election, we can have a debate about replacing this failed government's policy in connection with aboriginal people.
I also want to make some reference at the outset to the NDP member for Regina—Qu'Appelle who used his 10 minutes to launch a vitriolic rant against Conservative members in the House of Commons and really did not address the bill or the amendments before us today whatsoever.
As my colleague from Okanagan—Coquihalla said, I do not think that adds to the debate for someone to stand up and just go on a personal rant against one member or a party, based on misinformation, I might add. I do not think that helps us with this debate.
To say that this issue is controversial would be stating the obvious. Last weekend I was in my riding as were the majority of MPs. I had the opportunity to man a booth at a trade fair in my home town in the City of Fort St. John where usually somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 local citizens attend that fair over the three days of the weekend. A number of them expressed some great reservations about this bill. As their member of Parliament, I would like to raise those concerns in the debate today.
The first thing, as has been said by a number of speakers, are the deep concerns about the whole business of taxation without representation. When we look at the bill, we see that 8,000-odd non-native residents who are currently or will be living on a reserve will not have a say in the governing and in the passing of bylaws by that body that will govern that piece of property.
Something is inherently wrong when an act takes away people's right to vote for their own representation and to have some means to affect those who govern over them.
As has already been noted, there is provision for an advisory council but the key word there is “advisory”. This council would only be providing advice. I would argue that it certainly does not take the place of people having the right to mark a ballot. Just to make that point, I do not think too many Canadians out there would trade their right to mark a ballot in either a municipal, provincial or federal election for the right to appear before and make comments and suggestions to an advisory board. I do not think too many Canadians would willingly give up their right to cast their ballots for that type of process.
The second issue, to which a number of MPs on both sides of the House have spoken, is that the bill would institute an unconstitutional third level of government. I am reminded that I was one of those MPs who was quite active prior to my election to this place in 1993. We had a constitutional amendment called the Charlottetown accord in 1992 that was voted on by the people of Canada and resoundingly defeated.
While we all recognize that there were a number of reasons that people voted either yes or no, those who voted no to the Charlottetown accord might have picked different things that they opposed in the agreement. A lot of people in my particular riding in northeastern British Columbia opposed the Charlottetown accord because of the undefined third order of government that would have been instituted in the Charlottetown accord.
Yet now we have the government moving forward with the act for the Westbank First Nation that would effectively do that. It would enshrine in law another order of government that would have considerably more powers than do municipalities, whether it is power over language and culture, natural resources, agriculture, the use of intoxicants on their property, education, medicine and the list goes on, this governing body would have the power to bring forward law which a municipality does not have.
As I said, I know, in speaking to a lot of my constituents, that they have a problem with the government moving ahead to institute a third level of government without the approval of the people of Canada.
One of the things we hear from both sides of the House is that there is a force in our country today that wants to see fundamental change to the way in which we interact with the aboriginal peoples in Canada. One of the things I have heard, not only from our party but from other parties and, indeed, the governing party, is that we should do away with the Indian Act. We should get away from this archaic system of paternalism and move into a new era of how we deal with our aboriginal peoples. Our party, the Conservative Party of Canada, supports that wholeheartedly.
It seems rather ironic to me that at the very time that we should be questioning the way in which we structure reserves and the way in which we devolve power to reserve governments to hold the property unto themselves in commonality rather than in fee simple, to prevent the average aboriginal person in Canada from enjoying the pride that comes from owning his or her own home and property, that we seem to be moving away from that with this act. We seem to be moving away from what I would consider to be the inherent right to property.
I know we do not have property rights in Canada enshrined in our Constitution. It is one of the problems I have with our Constitution. I think we should have property rights and those property rights should be just as relevant for aboriginal people as they are for non-aboriginal people.
It seems to me that the legislation would move the aboriginal peoples of the Westbank First Nation further away from enjoying the same rights and privileges that other Canadians have.
For those three reasons I am voicing the concerns expressed to me by many of my constituents in Prince George--Peace River who have some very deep reservations about the bill.