Mr. Speaker, I am very honoured to participate in debate on Bill C-47, which is a proposal to deal with the long outstanding issue around matrimonial property rights on reserves.
All who have participated in the debate have acknowledged that there is a need to finally address a matter that has been left in the lurch since the 1985 Supreme Court decision which ruled that provincial laws regarding division of property after a marriage breakdown did not apply on reserve. That we agree on.
I do not think there is anybody in this chamber who disagrees with the fundamental principle at stake here and the need to advance legislation to fill the vacuum. We all recognize that there must be legislation to ensure proper division of property and assets upon a marriage breakdown, whether the people are living on reserve or off reserve.
That principle we support. The question today is this: does this legislation actually fill the bill? Does it respond adequately to the situation at hand?
I listened very carefully to the member for Charlottetown suggesting that it may not be perfect, but heck, we have to act on something, and it is so long overdue. We have to put in place an interim arrangement and this might be it, he suggests. We will go through committee and we will see, it is suggested, and this is only intended to deal with this one narrow piece so let us get on with it.
However, I cannot separate the whole question of equality of matrimonial property from the issue of equality in general. We cannot simply say that we will deal with one tiny piece and leave everything else in disarray or neglected. We cannot put a little bandage on a situation in the hope that we can stop the hemorrhaging.
I suppose it would not hurt to get the bill to committee so we can hear from the various informed players in our society today just how badly the bill meets the requirements, just how much off the mark it really is, and just how little the consultation that did happen was reflected in the bill itself.
I will read again for members the words of the minister responsible for the legislation, who said, as he did just yesterday, that “laws are much more likely to succeed when drafted with the input of the people who would be affected by them”. I agree. The problem with this bill is that the government chose to ignore the bulk of the evidence that was presented to it, as well as the majority of the suggestions that were made and that should have been included in the legislation.
Therefore, the government is masquerading today. It is pretending that it has consulted, that it has addressed the vast array of interests and concerns in this area, and that here all of it is in the bill.
That is far from the truth. We only have to look at some of the key players. Let us go right to the Assembly of First Nations, a broad governing body of the first nations in this country. Obviously it was consulted. The minister would like to pretend that its input was included in the bill, but that is not what Phil Fontaine says.
Phil Fontaine makes it very clear, in fact, that the consultation took place, but the suggestions that were made are not reflected in the bill. I want to quote from his letter of April 8, in which he says:
--the fact that direction provided through this dialogue does not appear reflected in the tabled Bill, leaves us to conclude that the dialogue was of limited value in promoting and implementing a reconciliation approach regarding First Nations aboriginal and treaty rights and Crown sovereignty.
Where is all this input from the community that the Conservatives are talking about? There is something strangely amiss in this place when the minister stands in the House and says that this bill was based on what the aboriginal people wanted and yet those people who were consulted say it is not there.
The same is reflected in material produced for all members of Parliament from the Native Women's Association of Canada which wrote as recently as yesterday that the association held extensive meetings with aboriginal women across Canada to identify solutions to the complex issues comprising the matrimonial real property problem. NWAC believes that the voices of these aboriginal women and the solutions they develop must be respected and included in the government's approach. This has not happened. I hope members are listening. The Native Women's Association of Canada says that this has not happened. Instead, the government has turned the processes that preceded the introduction of this bill into a farce by failing to include the elements that aboriginal women identified as important to them.
I hope that the members on the government benches are not making disparaging remarks about the Native Women's Association of Canada or the Assembly of First Nations. I hope that they are listening to the fact that these voices, these well-established organizations, these reputable organizations in our country today, feel that their concerns are not reflected, are not included in this bill. That is important. It goes back to what the minister himself said yesterday, that the best legislation around is that which reflects the feelings of the people it affects.
If this bill does not do that, we have to change it. We cannot simply let it go on and say that this is it. We cannot do as the member for Charlottetown said, that this is an interim measure, we will have some consultations and then we will get on with it. No. We have to fix the problem. If we are going to send it to committee, we have to do it on a real basis, on a substantive basis, and the government has to indicate it is prepared to accept the amendments and changes that the groups want.
Clearly, we have touched a sore point. The members on the Conservative benches are starting to heckle. I guess I am getting under their skin. I hope so.
There is no point in trying to deal with an issue that is so important and which has been neglected for so long in a half-hearted way. We have to do it in a comprehensive way, with the voices of those people who are affected, who say that this legislation in fact still allows the minister to strike down first nations laws regarding matrimonial interests. This legislation neglects to consider the welfare of children. This legislation, which has been a priority for first nations women since 1985, however, puts the value or the importance, the priority of individual rights ahead of collective rights, which is so paramount to how we deal with issues pertaining to first nations communities on reserves.
We need to send it back. We need to rewrite the bill. If we do it at committee, great. There is no problem with that. However, we cannot also neglect the social and economic context in which we find ourselves today.
I know that others in this House have said that yes, they know about all those problems with housing, water, health, child welfare, suicide, but they cannot all be dealt with in this piece of legislation. Then I ask, when can we deal with them? When will this government finally deal with the neglect in its own areas of jurisdiction, like child welfare on reserves? Why does it not act when there are independent reports such as Judge Guy's in Manitoba as a result of teenage suicides on reserves? Why does it not act after hearing from the Auditor General repeatedly, as we just heard this past week, about the situation with respect to aboriginal children and teenagers on reserves?
The evidence is in. There is a connection between neglect of people and worth of an individual, an entitlement to property when a family is in trouble or a marriage breaks down. There are connections to be made.
We all know that marriages sometimes break down because of socio-economic issues. Are we in this place not interested in trying to protect and preserve the family and the institution of marriage? Are we not interested in providing for equal access to property upon a dissolution of a marriage, which means looking at the inadequacy of the resources on the reserve in the first place?
What is the point of dividing up property and suggesting that one person in that marriage should leave the matrimonial home and find on the reserve another home that does not exist? What is the point in acting if we cannot find a way to deal with the violence against women which seems to be no longer on the government's agenda? What about the missing women and stolen sisters in this land? Did we not learn anything this past weekend when women marched in the streets of cities right across the country about the absence of programs to help missing women and to respond to situations facing women in domestic disputes?
In Winnipeg alone, women were marching the streets, responding to messages from people like Bev Jacobs of the Native Women's Association of Canada, from Gloria Enns, who is with the Dufferin Avenue women's drop-in, from Kim Pate, the executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, and from Jackie Traverse, who is an artist and part of the whole movement to address the situation of missing women. Where is the government? Where is the response?
Is that not important in terms of matrimonial property and division of assets? Is it not important to look at the situation facing women and children?
As we speak, a campaign is being organized around the whole question of family violence in aboriginal communities. It is called the Awareness Campaign Against Family Violence. It flows from the recent documentation of the Auditor General and other reports showing in fact that the underfunding of services is an important issue when we are dealing with the issues before us today. They talk about the existence of a discriminatory bias that aboriginal families are undergoing whereby an alarming rate of children are apprehended to be placed in non-aboriginal families everywhere in this country. We learn that the quasi total amount allocated by the government in Ottawa for child care and family services is directed to child placements. Crumbs are allocated to prevention.
We cannot simply carve off a piece of the issues at hand and say we are going to fix this without even consulting or including the advice of those affected.
We have two problems with the bill that have to be fixed at committee. One, the bill on its own in terms of the division of matrimonial property on reserves is flawed. Two, the government's approach is flawed when it comes to dealing with the situation facing aboriginal people on reserves.
The government has failed to live up to the responsibilities under the Constitution for which it has responsibility. It is in dereliction of duty when it comes to responding to issues facing children and teenagers on reserves. It is in dereliction of duty when it comes to responding to violence facing women on reserves. The government has shown dereliction of duty in terms of its commitment to ensure proper health and social services for all people within its jurisdiction. There is no shortage of material to make this case.
Mr. Speaker, you will know that I have tried to seek consent from you to have an emergency debate on the question of adequate protection for aboriginal children on reserves. That flowed from the fact that the discrepancy between what the provincial government in Manitoba pays for children in welfare off reserve is so much richer, appropriate and responsible in comparison to the allocation of resources provided by the federal government for children on reserve, children in trouble on reserve, which is under the federal government's jurisdiction.
When will the government actually live up to its responsibilities and take seriously the needs of aboriginal people? That is the real question of the hour, because kids are dying. Suicides are happening every day. We only have to refer to what is happening in Shamattawa, Manitoba, and see the number of suicides that are mounting each and every day.
This is the opportunity when we can address the issues facing women, children and families on reserves, to give them the right to be treated as equal citizens in this country, to be given respect and to be treated with dignity and equality.