Mr. Speaker, I will share my time with my esteemed colleague from Edmonton—Strathcona.
It is with some pleasure that I enter the debate, because as I read out to the parliamentary secretary, the New Democrats, the official opposition to the government, have asked the House to confirm the government's commitment to follow the law. We have asked the government's commitment to actually begin and fully implement treaties and consult first nations before the government enacts laws that affect first nations.
For Idle No More and the concerns that have happened across the land on specific resource projects or any of those disruptions, the government only has itself to blame. Time and time again, the Conservatives say the words we hear in this place about consulting and respecting first nations' rights and title, then they bring in another law without consulting first nations' rights and title and wonder why first nations from coast to coast to coast rise up against the government and say that they expect and demand better.
I come from northwestern British Columbia, and 35% to 40% of the constituents I represent are from first nation backgrounds. Not only are the first nations a profound part of our history and culture, but a crucial and critical part of our future. First nations are informing the way that we work, the way that we live, the way that we think about our land and our communities. This is an important lesson the government would do well to serve.
I remember the Prime Minister visiting in his Challenger jet with all his security into the northwest at one point. He flew in for an exclusive fundraiser at a lake that was very nice. By some coincidence, the same day, the first nation territory was raising four totem poles. It was the first time they had done such a thing in almost a century.
Being a good parliamentarian, I extended an invitation to the Prime Minister through his office to say, “Why do you not come down? There is a feast happening. The first nations there will treat you with honour and respect, even if they disagree with your policies, because they know what honour and respect actually look like”. The response of the Prime Minister's Office was, “Not a chance, ever”.
The Prime Minister went to his exclusive fundraiser while the first nations were raising four totem poles. While the extension of the offer and the invitation had come from the first nations themselves, the Prime Minister's Office, and one would only assume under the direction of the Prime Minister, felt that it was not an appropriate way for a Prime Minister to spend his time.
There is a problem that happens too often in politics, and particularly with Parliament and first nations, where we only hear the negative stories, the hard stories, because there are so many of them. In first nation communities, we are all too familiar with the statistics and the realities of first nation people. We know about the elevated suicide rate. We know about the depression and the economic backwardness in which government after government has left first nations. We know that first nation students going to school this morning received one-third less funding than non-first nation students, students who do not live on reserves.
It seems to me that there is also an important conversation to have about the successes, and not the cherry-picked successes. The government likes to play favourites and say that all we have to do is free up property rights. Then places such as Kelowna, Kamloops, downtown Vancouver and the oil patch will be the examples that all first nations can use, because obviously all the reserves around Canada are situated on such absolutely high-value property as the ones outside of Kelowna or in the oil patch in northern Alberta. That is in fact not the case for the vast majority of reserves that the Canadian government saw fit to place first nations on. That is a fact.
The success stories that I talk about, coming from the northwest of British Columbia, are homemade success stories. They are success stories that pushed and fought and struggled against government doctrine, against the ignorance of the government of the day.
I think of the Haida First Nation, who fought on the line with the Government of Canada and British Columbia to defend their island of Haida Gwaii. They fought to establish a regime in which land management is a co-management process, where half of the boards on land management use in Haida Gwaii are Haida and half or non-Haida. They find ways as neighbours, as partners, to develop the land but not the way the Canadian and B.C. governments wanted to do, which was to strip-mine the soul of the island. They actually foresee a future in which our children have an opportunity.
I think of the Tahltan First Nation in northern B.C. faced with the prospect of Shell Canada, this government and previous governments wanting to drill for gas and frack at the very heart of the Sacred Headwaters of the Stikine, the Skeena and the Nass rivers, three of the most critical rivers in all of British Columbia. They wanted to drill and frack for gas at that very same place and had no ability to actually confirm that there would not be poisoned wells coming up everywhere.
The Tahltan First Nation, without any money, without big support and without any help from people in the government, stood up against one of the most powerful companies in the world and got it to see reason, to see that there are better prospects and better places to be. Just recently, Shell, against all odds and against the advice of the government, decided to forgo its leases in the Sacred Headwaters. The B.C. government finally came on side and said that maybe it was time to protect certain places, that drilling for oil and gas everywhere might not be such a great idea. It was the Tahltan First Nation that led that.
I think of the Kitsumkalum and the Kitselas nations that just recently signed a deal with CN. This was quite an amazing day. On a day just next to the day of national action for Idle No More, I was at an event in Kitsumkalum, just outside of Terrace, B.C. We stood on the railway track of a new railway spur, with the first nations in full regalia standing across the railway line in front of a train. They stopped that train. The RCMP and the broader community were in attendance. We were there to cut a ribbon because CN had negotiated with the first nations to have a revenue-sharing agreement to allow that rail spur to be built to a quarry that is now building jobs for the entire community.
It was somewhat ironic to see a model of what it looks like if the parties actually negotiate in good faith with first nations. All seem to benefit. I think of the Haisla First Nation that has stood up against the northern gateway even though money gets splashed around, even though the government tries to bully anybody who happens to have an independent thought on putting an 1,100-kilometre pipeline from Alberta to the port at Kitimat, and then driving 250 supertankers through some of the most narrow and treacherous waters in the world.
When the Haisla First Nation stood up, they said they were open for business but under their management. They were able to sign deals with resource developers on their terms. They will not be bullied. They lawyered up. They invested in their young people and got education going a generation, two generations, three generations ago, despite all the adversity of the residential school and the travesties that government after government set upon first nations.
I think of the Nisga’a signing the first modern-day treaty. They are still pleading with the government to actually have a relationship. The government talks about respect. It talks the talk but will not walk the walk. It will not even meet with the Nisga'a, who are a model for first nations across this country on how to develop a full first nation governance and constitution. The government simply washes its hands of the entire experience.
The Canadian government and the Crown's relationship with first nations is well documented as a dysfunctional relationship. I sat in the House as the Prime Minister welcomed in first nation, Métis, Inuit leaders to this place to express what I believed was a sincere apology to the first nation, Métis and Inuit people of Canada for the travesty of residential schools.
We can all agree, whatever our political persuasion, that when such a thing is prosecuted upon young people and families as an official policy of the Canadian government, generation after generation, there comes a time to face up to that reality and that history and apologize. An apology often means that behaviour will be corrected. If someone apologizes to me and they mean it, then I suspect that the thing that they did that brought on the apology will not be continued.
However, what was the very next thing the government decided to do? It was to cut the funding to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, which had been established to help people deal with the effects of residential school experiences. That was the next thing it did after it apologized.
The Conservatives wonder, as they are attacking first nation leadership, why the first nations are so upset. Why will they not trust the government when it only wants to be friends? Yet time and time again when first nations come to the table with their hands extended to try to reason and negotiate with the government of the day, the government has other voices in its ear, other friends it would like to listen to first.
If there is some inconvenience for the oil companies in environmental assessments and first nation law, then it will try to shuffle those out of the way and create profound uncertainty in the resource sector. I have heard this, not from first nation leaders alone but from those in the oil and gas sector. They say that the government hands them, time and again, a poisoned chalice where they cannot acquire the social licence to build a project because the public watches the government in action, watches it strip down environmental laws, watches it treat first nations with total disrespect, calling them radicals and enemies of the state.
What do first nations and people who have any concern for first nations' rights and title, and the environment do? They stand up to that bullying. They stand up and resist and join hands, community to community, family to family, friend to friend. That creates the very uncertainty that the Conservatives think they are somehow not a part of, but they are implicated.
We must be allies in the true sense of the word. We must find a way to get over the arrogance and inability of Canadian governments, Liberal and Conservative, consistently down the line to listen and understand the realities of first nations. The government must not just talk the talk, but walk the walk. It means not bringing in legislation that overrides first nations' rights and title and the duty to accommodate and consult, or forcing first nations into courts and costing the Canadian taxpayer untold millions of dollars fighting court case after court case and making lawyers rich, when the Constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms clearly defines what is going to happen at the end of the day.
Now we find out from government lawyers in the Department of Justice that in fact the government consistently gets advice that legislation the Conservatives bring in will end up in court because it is fundamentally unconstitutional and would not pass a charter challenge. Thereby the government knowingly brings in things for politics that ultimately cost millions of dollars. It serves to make no one better, but helps the Conservatives score a cheap point for some photo-op for a minister they think is on the ropes again.
This has to stop, and it will stop when a government actually sits down, listens and attends that pole-raising ceremony and attends the feast with respect and humility as one does nation to nation. Until that happens, all of these kind words and sentiments of economic development and prosperity for one and all do not mean anything because they will not happen. The way they will happen is with respect, sincere friendship and finally the Canadian government, if we can imagine the day, acting as an ally to first nations rather than what it is.