As my hon. colleague says, “They had enough of talk”.
It was not until about a month later that in fact the term “accord” was attached to what we all know was not a signed agreement. Thankfully, our government was elected and we have been able to move forward with some real tangible plans, not a dreamy panacea that would cure everything. That is the only approach that the Liberals have. They bring forward very glorious talk, but after 13 years they did nothing for aboriginal people.
If we look at some of the ideas that came out in the previous era, the good ones were set aside. I can comment on former minister Nault. The member of course knows minister Nault quite well. His great ideas were set aside. All the Liberals wanted was talk and that is all they came forward with at the last moment.
The member needs to talk to his caucus. On the subject at hand, Bill C-30, I guess the member has not spoken with his caucus. In fact, the whole caucus voted to completely endorse this bill. In clause by clause, every single element of this bill was endorsed unanimously by his party. Yet, he talks about the bill as if it is something he and his party do not support. That is wrong and I am not sure what cheap political points he is attempting to score here, but his party, like I said, has unanimously endorsed this bill.
On top of the deception related to the Kelowna press release that the member put on the record, I would also like to speak to some of the other misinformation he has put on the record. The $150 million associated with this bill is quite a significant amount. When we look back to Bill C-6, the bill that the former government tried to put before Canadians, it only had about $6 million associated with it for the settlement of claims. This legislation is a considerable improvement on the ability of government to actually settle some of these outstanding claims, in fact, a large number of them.
He thinks that the outstanding backlog will not be addressed. He should know that 50% of the outstanding specific claims are less than $3 million. In fact, the vast majority of them are a great deal below the $150 million mark. The $2.5 billion that we have extended to this important tribunal is going to take care of this massive backlog that is in place.
I want to ask the member a quick question. He was speaking earlier about how the tribunal would not be able to unilaterally remove parcels of land from the provinces and territories, including his own territory. Is he suggesting that this bill should now be modified at third reading so that the tribunal could unilaterally take parcels of land out of Yukon? I am not sure his voters back home would like that.