Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-47, the act respecting family homes situated on first nation reserves and matrimonial interests or rights in or to structures and lands situated on those reserves.
Some people who were speaking to this yesterday brought a lot of dimension to the very difficult situation that exists on first nations reserves. This legislation is necessary because at the moment there is no legislation to which people can turn when there is a need for matrimonial real property laws. This is also an issue of human rights for women and children who live on reserve. Really, it is a human rights issue for the families.
The Liberal Party is certainly a great supporter of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and we do support this measure to extend matrimonial real property rights to first nations. While the Liberal opposition supports the intent of the bill, we do not support the unilateral process taken by the federal government to introduce this piece of legislation.
I am going to speak more on matters of governance and capacity building, also in support of why we would like the federal Conservative government to listen to the people and take the road of real partnership and consultation. What we have been trying to say for the last two years as members of the aboriginal community, members of the aboriginal affairs committee and our party is that if we want to see real solutions in our aboriginal communities, there has to be real partnership and collaboration, and that they not be token gestures.
For me, real partnership is going to be based on respect, collaboration, courtesy and compromise. The negotiations would be on the level of diplomacy that I think most of our communities are very good at. All our aboriginal communities are interested in seeing their communities move forward to being healthier and safer for everyone who lives in those communities, whether they are on reserve or off reserve. These are our homes, our lands and areas of great historical connection. These are communities in which we are going to continue to live.
Of course we want to look for solutions that will see healthier communities able to take care of their own and offer solutions. In order to take steps that will move our communities forward, we need to also look at the governance issues. We need to give people an opportunity to be part of the solution, and to offer solutions to issues that are coming before us, in particular for reserves that have been under the rule of a 130-year-old law, the Indian Act.
We know that none of the solutions is going to be quick. History has a way of coming back and making it very difficult for our people to move forward, especially with people who have lived under the Indian Act.
We were reassured when the government came into power and sought the advice of the aboriginal community, especially by appointing Wendy Grant-John to engage in consultations with the people. NWAC was involved. The aboriginal communities were involved. She came back with a report that many people were comfortable with as the basis from which some legislation would come forth. I am sad to say that none of that seems to have made it into Bill C-47.
NWAC and the AFN have put out press releases giving their opinions on Bill C-47, and they have not been complimentary. They feel that all the work they did in helping with the consultation was not taken into consideration. The communities feel that they have been let down. As with the specific claims process, there was praise given to the government for allowing them to be part of the decision making and working with them to produce the act.
We all know that any legislation that comes to this House will not have the support of each and every person out there. However, as a government and having been in government, we feel that we can move forward with a piece of legislation when many people acknowledge that it is a work of collaboration and good consultation. People feel it is one which they can live with and support, given that they will be given a chance to report on it in three to five years, depending on what is in the legislation and that there will be some opportunity to make some improvements to it. Once there is that kind of feedback from the people who are going to be impacted by the legislation, then we know that there is an opportunity that the legislation will actually be implemented and supported by the communities. However, that is not the case with Bill C-47.
I remember when we worked on the First Nations Land Management Act, some bands were quite skeptical that another piece of legislation was dealing with a tiny piece of the Indian Act instead of an overall deletion of the Indian Act.
I have been a member of Parliament for almost 11 years now, and I am proud to say that I am probably the only member of Parliament who has stayed on one committee for the whole term. I have the good fortune of being able to remember how many pieces of legislation have gone through our committee and the number of witnesses that we have heard from all over on the different pieces of legislation that have come before our committee.
When the First Nations Land Management Act came in, there was some skepticism, but after it was implemented and people started to see the benefits for their own bands, they were very open to trying it out. It was voluntary, but more people were applying to go into that regime than the act was capable of taking on. If we do that type of work with the communities and try to help them in their capacity building and in their own governance, I think we will see more success with legislation being put forth that concerns aboriginal people in this country. Because there was cooperation and less conflict, people were open to suggestions. That is what we want to see with legislation that comes forth. We want people to feel that they can contribute, try something out and see whether it will work for their communities.
We do not want to see intimidation. We do not want to see heavy-handed approaches, which is how a lot of decisions were made in the past, especially in the 1960s and even before that, where someone in Ottawa made decisions and told the community what would have to be done. We had no say in any of that. It does not produce good governance or cooperation from the people. It alienates everyone who might have wanted to cooperate to make his or her community a better place to live.
I am sure most Canadians know now that most of the land in our communities are communally owned. I know we are not bound by the Indian Act in Nunavut, but our land is community owned. We have to always take this into consideration when we make any legislation that deals with how one disposes of property, homes or, in this case, matrimonial real property.
Because of these special situations, we need to have an understanding of what solutions will work. This is why it is so important to have the members of a community behind any legislation that will affect their lives.
We know violence affects many homes, whether they are aboriginal communities or not. Unless we have programs to help people, we will not see a lessening of that. Having strictly legal measures to deal with this issue is not the answer. There has to be non-legislative measures also alongside legal measures. That was a very strong point put forth by NWAC, the National Women's Association of Canada. Not only do we need the legal measures and the law that people can go to for assistance, but we also need the measures in the community that will help women usually and children in these cases.
As I said, when I started this debate, we very much support seeing legislation that will help these communities, but how we go about it is fundamental in whether it will be accepted and implemented to the extent that it could help people more if there were more collaboration with the community.
We live in a day and age now where we want to solve more conflicts in the world peacefully and by involving the very people who are in the conflict. We cannot just go in, take over and decide this is the way things should be done. That certainly does not exclude our aboriginal communities. This is what we want to see. We are not saying that there should not be legislation to help families, especially the women and children, but we want to do it in a way that will work.
We are beyond the days of someone saying that they know best how to deal with our communities. It is very sad that we cannot take an opportunity like this to work with the people and have them help Parliament to address the very issues that sometimes end up putting a lot of children in care and our aboriginal people in jail. I do not think families get a real chance to stay together and work things out.
When these children go into care, or some other facility, or jail, it creates another breakdown where one loses their language or their culture, and it is very difficult to heal from that. We cannot keep inflicting damages on communities when we are still trying to recover from mistakes made in the past, such as residential schools, community relocations, people who lost their status and were reinstated, but with no resources for a smooth implementation. We cannot expect communities to move forward in a healthy and safe way when they do not have the capacity to deal with other social situations.
If we do not take into consideration the fact that we have to give the bands the ability to work together with different levels of government, then surely the legislation will fail in the key point, and that is to help women and children live safer and healthier lives.
We all want that. I do not think anyone here will argue that we all have the same goal, but it is how we do it. I cannot emphasize enough that we have to do things the right way with collaboration from the people, with solutions from grassroots. Surely we should know by now that the way we have done things in the past does not work.
I want to see the legislation in committee so we can hear from different witnesses, good experts in this matter, and hopefully see amendments that will improve it.
Committee work is all about that. It is about trying to improve the legislation that comes before us. In the past at committee our experience has shown that the government takes these as attacks, not opportunities to improve legislation. As parliamentarians, our job, as we sit in these chairs inside this chamber, is to provide the best laws and policies we can for our country, to improve it and make it a better country.
Canada is the best country in the world to live. I have seen that as I have travelled a few times internationally. We have a lot to offer, but we also have a lot to learn. The fact that we are open to different ideas and ways of doing things gives a lot of hope to Canadians. They have seen actual changes happen in committee as a result of our listening to witnesses.
We cannot please everyone and come up with the perfect piece of legislation, but at the end of the day, if we all work together, we can come up with legislation with which everyone can live. In a country as diverse as we are, to produce legislation that a lot of people can actually support is a great accomplishment.
I look forward to seeing the legislation in committee. I look forward to hearing from different witnesses. Hopefully we can improve it and make it legislation that communities will be proud to implement.
All those bands will welcome the opportunity to have this type of legislation to work with on their reserves. I do not think we will hear people say that they do not support some kind of legislation, or some kind of rule, or tools or capacity building that will make their reserves healthier and safer communities for their women and children.
When the legislation goes to committee, I strongly urge the government to be open to witnesses and to amendments. No one is arguing that this is not the time for the legislation. It is how we do it, how we implement it and whether we put the resources with it to ensure the communities can work with it in a positive way.