Madam Speaker, my friend from Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou and I like to joke with one another from time to time. My background is Irish and that is how the Irish show their fondness for someone. In all sincerity, the prospect of sharing some time with him today in Parliament on this issue, which he has fought for for more than 30 years, fills me with nothing but pride and humility. His expertise on this issue, his personal story, and the stories shared by so many first nations and aboriginal people across Canada makes me feel wholly unqualified to join in such a debate with him, yet here I am. I thank him for this opportunity.
It may seem strange to some Canadians who have been following this issue as to why the New Democrats have chosen one of our few opposition days to bring forward a motion on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to reaffirm our support of this declaration. Less than a week ago we voted for my friend's bill, declaring that same declaration would become part of Canadian law. As my friend from Edmonton Strathcona just pointed out in her questions, even as we are moving legislation through from a Liberal government that has promised to include that declaration in the way it writes legislation, the Liberals are refusing time and again to accept any changes to bills we are dealing with right now.
Therefore, we need to reaffirm our support of this declaration because the Liberal government just a week ago voted for it and the very same Liberal government refuses to include it meaningfully at all in our legislation and to apply it over a very contentious and difficult issue, which has become the Trans Mountain crisis, much of the crisis of the government's own manufacturing, its own making.
From the very outset, when the Liberals were campaigning for office, they promised things for the people of Alberta, that they would bring forward a process that would receive the support of open-minded and progressive Canadians as to how to review pipelines. In fact, they promised to redo the review of this pipeline. The Prime Minister said that the government would redo the process, because the previous process, the one that Stephen Harper designed, was a failure of basic common sense and the understanding for the need of science and proper consultation. We arrive at that word again, “consultation”, meaningful consultation.
The Prime Minister voted for a resolution, my friend's bill, that said, “free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories” of aboriginal people. A pipeline and the associated oil tanker traffic to that pipeline clearly affects the lands and territories of aboriginal people, certainly along the route and certainly on the coast. Did the government achieve that? Did it fulfill its promise, not just to aboriginal Canadians but all Canadians, and avert this crisis we now face, a crisis that has driven the Liberal government to buy the project wholly from a Texas oil company for $4.5 billion?
I would not want the Prime Minister to handle my private affairs. He just bought a 65-year-old pipeline, which had been bought less than a decade ago for a half a billion dollars, for $4.5 billion 10 years later. My goodness, with that kind of investment strategy, I worry for the general finances of the country.
It may seem strange to Canadians as to why we have to reaffirm this just seven days later, but we do. Aboriginal people on the coast are wondering who the Prime Minister actually is. They saw the version of the Prime Minister, who repeated many times that there was no more important relationship to him than that with Canada's aboriginal people. The possessive in that statement has bothered me for some time, “Canada's aboriginal people”, our aboriginal people. It has a certain neo-colonial ring to it, that it is a possession, that it is a people who are ours, that they belong to us somehow. As one aboriginal leader said to me on the coast just this weekend, how colonial could it possibly be that the Government of Canada has now purchased a pipeline and has not waited for the court cases to finish before it says that this pipeline will get built, construction will begin?
Over and over again, the Liberals say that they believe in the rule of law. Do they? No, they do not. There are substantive first nations cases in court right now, from the Tsleil-Waututh, the Sto:lo, the Coldwater, and other groups, which say that the consultation process is a joke and is insufficient. What do they base that on? It is based on the jurisprudence of the northern gateway decision that came down, the Gitga’at decision. They are saying that they are now finding through these leaked documents from federal lawyers that what they need to do is have their legal case ready for approval prior to approving. It also said, “Let 's make this thing Gitga’at proof.” It does not say that their consultations were complete and meet the requirements of the law. They have said that they must do whatever they can so they do not get sued again.
As Ruben George from the Sacred Trust, a Tsleil-Waututh organization, stated, “They haven’t learned...What is crazy about it... is we’ve (won) over and over again in court.“ Who are they? The crown, the government. It seems to need this lesson over and over again. What does it do? It costs a lot of money. It costs a lot of heartache, particularly for aboriginal people who are seeking self-determination. How radical is it in 2018 for a people to seek self-determination from a government that has said the relationship is the most important to it than any other in the country?
It also seems strange to me, as somebody who represents the northwest of British Columbia, that we have seen this movie before. The Harper Conservative government proposed a pipeline, insufficiently consulted with first nations people, and slammed its fist on the same desk as the current Prime Minister is doing, saying that the pipeline would get built. We wonder if the House of Commons our Constitution means anything. It seems not to because the Liberals think that bullying will work.
I do not know if my friends remember, but I remember when the then Harper government said that anyone who opposed that pipeline was an enemy of the state, was a foreign-funded radical for raising radical questions, like what happened to diluted bitumen when it went into water, and how would we clean it up, a question that still has not been answered. We think that would matter to a government that states it cares about the environment, not to worry, that there will be more tugs. What will it do when it hits the water?
We just had the report on the Nathan E. Stewart, a relatively small vessel that sunk of off B.C.'s coast three years ago. What happened? The second mate fell asleep, that this happens. The alarm was turned off, that this happens. The response was inadequate and insufficient over a small incident that did not contain diluted bitumen, which is much harder to clean up.
What is frustrating for a lot of Canadians on both sides of this issue, those who want to see the pipeline built and those who oppose its construction, both for valid, decent, sound reasons, is that they look to a government that promises everything and does nothing.
This is a very dangerous thing for the Liberal government to do because it repeats the mistakes of the past. First nations are engaged by companies and government. I have been at these meetings, so I have seen the conversation actually take place. The company and the government comes in and says, “Here is a memorandum of understanding.” It is a basic business contract. It says that if the project goes ahead, this is how they will handle things like revenue and job creation. However, they say that they do not need the first nation's consent, that it is clear. The government then takes those agreements out to the public, as the Prime Minister has shamefully done, saying the government has 34 to 40 agreements with first nations. He says that they want to see it built. This divide-and-conquer strategy has been used time and again against Canada's aboriginal people, and here we are again with the possessive. The government takes the possessive and says, “We're going to divide you.” It is pitting aboriginal group against another, and it lies to them all the way to the bank. No, that is not going to happen anymore. Parliament needs to reaffirm the vote it had, and reaffirm, finally, to aboriginal people that we truly respect their rights and title.