Mr. Speaker, I am standing in the House on behalf of my constituents of Kanesatake who have outwardly expressed their opposition to this. I have consulted with the band and spoken with Ellen Gabriel, a member of the band of Kanesatake, and can clearly and without reservation say that first nations do not agree with this legislation.
Bill S-2 makes changes to the Indian Act that will allow provincial family law to apply on reserves in the event of a matrimonial breakdown or the death of a spouse or a partner. While the intention of the act is to give equal property rights to both spouses in the event of a separation, the problem is that the bill cannot be implemented and that the government completely ignored any consultation when preparing the legislation. Otherwise, it would have known that the bill could not be implemented.
There is a legal vacuum concerning real property on reserve due to the jurisdictional divide between provinces and territories, who have jurisdiction over property and civil rights within provinces, and the federal government, which has a jurisdiction to legislate regarding “Indians and lands reserved for Indians”.
The Indian Act does not provide for the division of MRP upon marriage breakdown, and first nation jurisdiction is not explicitly recognized by Canada in this area. This is a problem. However, anyone who is paying attention to the situation and issues facing first nations in Canada knows that it is the Indian Act that is flawed beyond repair.
New Democrats support the will of the Assembly of First Nations and the many individual nations that have explicitly called on the House to scrap the Indian Act of 1876. We need to begin anew. We need to do this through a broadly consultative process with equal partners. That is key. We need to understand that we are talking about equal partners in Confederation. That is the only way we are going to move forward out of this existing colonial structure.
We need to write laws for indigenous peoples that are not founded on colonialism and racism, like the Indian Act is. We need to do it while recognizing that first nations have an inherent right to their land and to govern themselves. That would be the way to move forward, through collaboration, consultation and in good faith. I believe that Canada can take effective steps toward de-colonialization of aboriginal peoples in this country. The Indian Act is not the road map toward de-colonialization; it is a template through which Canada colonized indigenous peoples in the first place.
The legislative gap surrounding matrimonial real property, MRP, is a problem created by the Indian act, which neglects to account for the division of property in the event of a matrimonial breakdown. It is a function of the Indian Act to place all reserve land and care for status Indians under the fiduciary responsibility of the Government of Canada. I do not think it is a matter of opinion at this point in history that Canada has not lived up to its responsibility and that it continues not to provide equality for first nations, as exemplified by the fact that first nations child welfare and schools continue to be grossly underfunded compared to non-first nations children by about 30%, according to the Auditor General.
When it comes to matrimonial real property, the obvious problem that arises from the jurisdictional gap created by the Indian Act is that an aboriginal woman is often not entitled to the lands or home she once shared with her spouse. Therefore, it would seem logical from a very shallow perspective, like the government has, that we should simply write a law that gives women on reserves the benefits of provincial matrimonial laws, thus neatly filling a legislative gap. However, this simply does not work in reality for the women living on reserve. First nations people do not own the land they are on. They cannot simply sell or divide the land in way that a non-first nations person can own, sell and divide land.
Even if the band council wanted to give a woman her own property on reserve, it would not be able to do so, as there is not enough land. We are seeing this problem in Kanesatake. The government is constantly causing problems and delays and changing the rules of the game while Kanesatake is trying to move forward. It is trying to have jurisdiction over its land for future generations. The government is not doing that for them; it is just continuing to cause problems.
We cannot talk about land without actually addressing the problem that first nations do not have jurisdiction over the land, or do not have the ability to control what is going on with their land, and cannot access the lands that are traditionally theirs.
As I was saying, the trouble with Bill S-2 is that, practically speaking, it is impossible to implement. Therefore, Bill S-2 has become an insincere and overly simplistic attempt to rectify a very complex problem caused by the Indian Act.
There are obvious gender discrimination problems with MRP on reserve, but the reason we cannot implement it is the lack of financial resources to support first nations governments actually implementing laws, including a lack of funding for lawyers. This is a problem, again, in Kanesatake. It is resulting in more and more debt whenever it has to defend its land from a mining company.
There is also a lack of funding to address first nations' limited geographic access to provincial courts. First nations, particularly aboriginal peoples living in remote areas, cannot necessarily easily access a provincial court, where they would have to go to defend MRP.
Moreover, there is a lack of on-reserve housing and land mass, which would be necessary to give both spouses separate homes on reserve. In a sense we would be doubling the amount of land needed for some people. The land just is not there. The housing is not there. There is the difficulty of getting more resources to maintain and build more homes on reserve, let alone the lack of space to put them on.
The government would know all of this if it actually took the trouble to consult and actually do the consultation required. By the way, consultation does not mean the government receiving a letter from first nations indicating what the latter want and then ignoring it. It means actually having a real discussion and coming to solutions together on equal footing.
According to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, UNDRIP, consultation requires consent. Canada has conducted limited consultation, but no consent was given. Therefore, Bill S-2 is in violation of UNDRIP, something to which we are a signatory, although it was difficult to get us on board. The Government of Canada, in all its previous forms and its current one, does not actually want to address meaningfully the problem of colonialism and racism toward first nations people. UNDRIP requires free, prior and informed consent on any matter relating to the lands and welfare of rights holders—not to mention the fact that we are basically continuing to ignore the Constitution Act, which states that first nations have jurisdiction over their own internal affairs.
Accordingly, New Democrats are not going to support this legislation. We need to have non-legislative remedies to problems that are occurring in the government's relations with first nations. We need to actually address violence against aboriginal women. What we have been doing up until now has not actually been addressing that. If the government were on the ground, if it had consulted, it would know this. If it had not ignored the testimony given at the status of women committee, it would know this.
We also need to address the housing crisis. We need to end the systematic underfunding that is perpetuating discrimination across generations.
The Conservatives just want to put a law on the books and say that they have solved the problem without actually dealing with the underlying problem. They continue to ignore first nations women's voices that are calling for us to have a meaningful discussion, to stop managing first nations like colonial subjects and to truly understand that they are partners in this confederation.