Mr. Speaker, if this bill were ever to pass through this House, it would provide a livelihood for lawyers for decades into the future.
We hear disagreement just in this House among those of us who have actually read the agreement. I wonder if the NDP member who had a rant in here earlier, calling people's names, had actually read the agreement. If so, he would have seen that there are plenty of areas for disagreement. Certainly, among the legal profession there is huge disagreement about how much of the charter applies and how much it does not.
One thing that everybody seems to be agreed upon is that this bill, if it were to pass, would establish a third order of government in Canada, and with that would come tremendous problems. This is a country that argued actively against apartheid in South Africa which had race-based governments. Here we are talking in this House about perpetuating a system of government that does not treat everybody in Canada as equals. It treats people separately based upon their race. That is a fundamental problem that I see with all of the legislation that has been coming through this place to do with aboriginal affairs.
I will not accept it as the right thing to do, to separate people based upon their ethnic background and create governments based upon ethnic backgrounds. I know that many of my constituents feel the same way and I simply cannot vote for things that would do that.
I will stand up for the equality of all Canadians at all times in this place. We should be working together with governments to provide services for everyone in Canada. For example, in the underlying agreement of this bill, there was one thing that jumped right off the front page at me. The regulations that would be created under this legislation by the band are exempt from scrutiny.
If we were to extend this to a number of other bands in B.C.--if they were to adopt the same sort of approach and get it approved in this House--we would end up with dozens of different governments completely isolated from one another, all passing regulations which are not open to scrutiny and cannot be challenged in any way whatsoever. That is a fundamental problem with this agreement as well and I have a major problem with that.
We can talk all day in this place, using legalese which many of our constituents may not understand. I would like to reduce this to a little bit of plain language. Perhaps one of the best ways to do that is to read into the record an article that was written by Gordon Gibson in the Vancouver Sun on March 22, 2004. It gives a very good description from a layperson's perspective of what is wrong with this bill.