Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for North Island—Powell River for her speech on Bill C-17, an act to amend the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act and to make a consequential amendment to another Act, and I want to thank the hon. member for Yukon for his hard work on this matter and for his leadership.
We are neighbours. As a British Columbian, I feel very closely connected to Yukon. We share many important values around respect for the environment. Trying to find balance with the environment and the economy is very important to both of us in our province and territory, as well as trying to find balance in working with indigenous people on a nation-to-nation basis and trying to move forward from the wrongs and policies of the past.
The Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act, YESAA, was an opportunity for us to move forward. It implemented the environmental assessment framework set out in the Yukon umbrella agreement. That agreement, which Yukoners worked so hard to get, was a multi-faceted stakeholder agreement led by indigenous people with government. In June 2015, the Harper government passed Bill S-6, amending YESAA. This bill was opposed by the NDP in Yukon, so we share those values.
The opposition was based on four changes to YESAA that the Yukon first nations opposed.
First, time limits were imposed on the review process. I cannot understand why we would put a time limit on looking at something that is going to have an impact on people for generations to come, for hundreds and hundreds of years. Where I live, the indigenous people like to look at the economy and look at a forecast and a plan of what it is going to look like for the next 500 years, not the next five years. It is very important to understand that this is a very in-depth process, especially when development in the north has left environmental damage and a legacy of cleanups impacting the local people.
Second, changes were implemented to allow the minister to give binding policy direction to the board overseeing the environmental and socio-economic assessment process.
Third, the bill provided a delegation of authority that allows the minister to delegate any or all of the federal minister's powers, duties, or functions to the Yukon government and change the requirement for additional assessments to only where the project has been significantly changed.
We led the fight against these changes being unilaterally imposed by the Harper regime and we have fought to reverse them since the passage of Bill S-6. On October 14, 2015, Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, the Little Salmon/Carmacks First Nation, and the Teslin Tlingit Council took these legislative changes to the Supreme Court of Yukon. Their case says these changes are inconsistent with their final land agreements. They have agreed to put the litigation on hold to see if Parliament will pass this bill to roll back these changes.
We support this bill for this very reason. We want to get these cases out of court and work on moving forward together. Unfortunately, these changes did exactly the opposite. They put confrontation at the front of this.
Bill C-17 proposes to remove these four changes that were unilaterally imposed by the Harper government. We have been leading the fight against these harmful provisions, which were aimed at dismantling the environmental and socio-economic assessment process in Yukon. This process was developed in Yukon, by Yukoners, for Yukon, and the Harper government imposed these changes without consultation with Yukon first nations.
We are willing partners in working with the Liberal government to roll back the damage from the Harper Conservatives, but New Democrats know we must do more for indigenous peoples in Canada than merely roll back these damaging changes, and that is where the Liberal government has continued to fall short.
We are still seeing indigenous people in court. In my riding, the Nuu-chah-nulth are still in court regarding their right to catch and sell fish. They won. In the Supreme Court of Canada, the case was thrown out twice in support of the Nuu-chah-nulth and their right to catch and sell fish, yet the government is still dragging it out.
The Huu-ay-aht won a case in the rights tribunal, and the government has also now challenged that case, so we need to do more. We are calling on the present government to stop fighting indigenous people in court.
In addition to the provisions in this bill, the Liberal government must reverse the Harper government's unilateral imposition of a new fiscal agreement on the first nations in Yukon.
In terms of some context or background, YESAA was established in 2003 in fulfillment of an obligation in the Yukon Umbrella Final Agreement. In October 2007, the five-year review of YESAA was initiated, and it was completed in 2012. Due to a disagreement over the recommendations, the review was never made public. The amendments were developed through a secretive process.
Bill S-6 unilaterally rewrote the Yukon's environmental and socio-economic evaluation system. This system was the product of the Umbrella Final Agreement, which settled most of the first nations' land claims in the territory. YESAA is seen by most residents of the territory as a made-in-Yukon solution to the unique environmental and social circumstances of the territory, while the changes proposed in Bill S-6 were seen as being imposed from the outside to satisfy southern resource development companies.
The New Democrats opposed Bill S-6 because it was developed without adequate consultation with Yukon first nations and the residents of the Yukon. It was not supported by the majority of them.
Yukon first nations took these changes to the Yukon Supreme Court. On October 14, 2015, Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, the Little Salmon/Carmacks First Nation, and the Teslin Tlingit Council took these legislative changes to the Supreme Court of Yukon. Their case states that these changes are inconsistent with the final land claim agreements. They have agreed to put the litigation on hold, as I stated earlier, to see if Parliament will pass this bill and roll back these changes.
As we know, Bill C-17 proposes to remove the four changes that I discussed earlier.
We support this bill. A few people have spoken about the situation, and I would like to mention some. In her testimony before the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs on February 25, 2016 , Grand Chief Ruth Massie, from the Council of Yukon First Nations, stated:
You're right. This fiscal policy is being imposed. We have not accepted it because of the language in our agreement. How is it going to affect us if it goes forward? We have no choice but to defend our agreements. That means going back to court because that's not what the provisions in our agreements say.
That is when she is referencing Bill S-6. I could read quotes all day from leaders from the Yukon in support of rolling back these changes.
We know that in this agreement, the Harper government systematically weakened environmental protection legislation, with no public consultation and little parliamentary oversight. Since coming to power, the Liberal government has not done enough to systematically reverse these changes, but we are very happy to see this as a step forward.
I congratulate the member for Yukon again for moving this forward and for working hard so that we can do what we need to do. We need to ensure that laws changing the implementation of land claim agreements can only be made with full and active consultation with and participation of first nation governments. We need to understand that YESAA is a made-in-Yukon environmental assessment process, so any changes to it must only be done with broad public consultation and participation.
The NDP has led the fight against these changes and to support YESAA because we understand they diminished the rights won by Yukoners through the devolution process.
Again, we support this bill. We are excited to see this opportunity for us to roll back these changes and for the people of Yukon in order to move forward.