Mr. Speaker, as I previously said, there is no agreement of any kind that will satisfy every member. Whether we are talking about a union agreement or a collective agreement by a group of people or a municipality, we are never going to get 100% agreement. If there is one like that, I would be glad to see it.
That is what this country is built on: democracy. We say that if the majority of the people support it, then that is what goes ahead. If we were not a democratic country, I probably would not be sitting on this side. I would just decide by myself that I wanted to sit on that side even though I was democratically outvoted and it was declared that I could not be in the government. I would take an individual position and just say that I did not like the way that was done, so I would just sit on that side and decide for myself that this was the way I was going to do it. That is not the way we do things in this country.
As for talking about people living outside of the country making decisions, there was a court decision saying that it did not matter if people were not living on the reserve. They could still vote in their band elections and on issues happening on their reserves. That is a court case.
Are we going to respect the judicial system of this country? It was not the people who said they were going to vote whether they lived there or not. This was a court case, already settled, which allowed people to have the right to vote on their band elections and issues affecting their band. It was not that the people of Tsawwassen unilaterally decided that they would allow everyone with connections to their band to vote.
It is up to the band to make the agreement work for everyone, because as much as we might not agree with certain issues in any agreement, when 70% of the band members accept an agreement it says that the people have decided to take the risks that come with that agreement. Hopefully people can work out the local matters in a way that will work for everyone.