Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise again in this chamber on behalf of the people of Vaughan—Woodbridge.
Today, we are debating Bill C-10, the commissioner for modern treaty implementation act. The bill would create a new officer of Parliament supported by a new federal office, with a mandate to review and audit how federal departments implement modern treaties. The commissioner would examine the performance of government institutions and present findings in Parliament. The stated goal is to improve how Canada lives up to its obligations under modern treaties. The bill is presented as a measure in the federal action plan to implement UNDRIP and respond to a long-standing frustration that Canada often signs agreements and then fails to deliver on them.
Those frustrations are very real. Conservatives recognize that. We support treaty rights and reconciliation. We support self-determination and self-government for first nations, Inuit and Métis. We do not question the sincerity of indigenous partners who see the bill as a way to hold Ottawa accountable. Our concern is that Bill C-10 answers a problem of implementation with more bureaucracy and less accountability. We need accountability in the government to actually meet our treaty obligations.
To understand why that matters, it is worth recalling where modern treaties come from and what they are meant to fix. Treaty rights in Canada go back to the earliest relationships between the Crown and indigenous nations, through the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the historic peace and friendship treaties, and the numbered treaties that cover much of western and northern Canada. Those treaties, however imperfectly honoured, are recognized and affirmed in section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982.
In many parts of the country, indigenous title and rights were never resolved by historic treaties. That is why the Supreme Court's decision in 1973 was so important. The court recognized indigenous title in Canadian law and forced the federal government to move from denial to negotiation. That decision opened the modern treaty era and led to the first modern treaty, the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement of 1975.
Since 1975, Canada has negotiated and signed 26 modern treaties with indigenous groups in Canada, 18 of which contain self-government provisions or associated self-government agreements. Canada has concluded modern treaties with indigenous peoples across the north and in parts of British Columbia and Quebec. These comprehensive land claim agreements define landownership, resource rights, financial compensation and governance authorities. They are constitutionally protected and legally enforceable.
The model has evolved over time. Before 2000, most modern treaties focused on land and resources, with separate or partial agreements for self-government. Since 2000, almost all modern treaties have included explicit self-government provisions. Whether a nation has a modern treaty, a self-government treaty or both, the obligations are legally binding on the Crown. For years, Parliament, indigenous leaders and experts have warned that Canada's record on implementation is inconsistent and often poor.
In 2008, the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples recommended the creation of an independent body, such as a modern treaty commission, to help monitor implementation. Modern treaty partners have repeatedly called for stronger and stronger oversight.
Conservatives take this history very seriously. Our record in government shows that modern treaties can be negotiated and implemented when Ottawa is focused on results. Under former prime minister Harper, five modern treaties were signed in six years. They included a first nation land claims and self-government agreement in 2006, a first nations final agreement in 2009, another first nations final agreement in 2009, the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation Governance Agreement in 2013 and the Déline Final Self-Government Agreement in 2015.
Under the Liberal government, we have seen many new offices, frameworks and big promises, but at the end of the day, it has negotiated zero modern treaties. This is the context in which we look at Bill C-10.
Parliament needs to ask hard questions. Would the bill fix an underlying problem, or would it give the illusion of action while the same departments continue with business as usual? We already have oversight tools. The Office of the Auditor General has repeatedly studied modern treaty implementation and related issues. Audits in the last decade have highlighted serious gaps in how obligations are tracked, coordinated and met. Those reports set out recommendations and named the departments that needed to act, yet here we are years later, hearing many of the same concerns from treaty partners.
The problem is not a lack of reports; the problem is that ministers and departments are not held to account when they fail to implement the very agreements they sign. In fact, the government has already created new federal offices and initiatives to work on land claim implementation issues: the modern treaty implementation office, the assessment of modern treaty implications office, the performance management framework, the modern treaty management environment, the deputy minister's oversight committee and the reconciliation secretariat. Despite that, progress on implementation remains slow.
No modern treaties have been established by the government. Indigenous governments spend too much time chasing basic compliance from federal partners. If these entities have not solved the problem inside the government, it then raises the question of why we should believe that a new external office will do so. Who has been fired for not delivering in the past? Many modern treaty partners originally proposed that a commissioner be housed within the Office of the Auditor General, similar to the commissioner of the environment. That model would have leveraged an existing institution and reduced duplication. The government instead chose a stand-alone agent of Parliament with a separate office, separate staff and separate budget. The real test should be whether a proposal improves outcomes on the ground, not whether it creates an office in Ottawa.
Reconciliation is measured in results. A commissioner would not build a home, sign an agreement or ensure that a department meets a timeline it has already missed. What would do that is ministerial responsibility and clear consequences for failure. If a modern treaty commitment is not being met, the responsible minister should have to explain that to Parliament. The department should have measurable implementation plans, codeveloped with treaty partners, that are reported publicly and tied to performance evaluations to senior officials. If officials refuse to act, they should not be promoted. If ministers ignore repeated warnings, they should answer for that in the House.
Conservatives support modern treaties and self-determination. We want to see a Canada in which indigenous and non-indigenous communities share in prosperity and in which agreements are honoured in practice, not just in words. Where Conservatives part on the bill is not the goal of accountability but on the tool the government has chosen; of course, that is based on their record. I have tuned into previous questions and answers on this very bill, and I know government members opposite may try to twist our words, so I will make this very clear. At a time when Canadians are struggling with the cost of living and when the federal public service has grown dramatically in size and cost, the answer to every problem in Ottawa cannot be more and more offices, more and more layers of reporting and more and more costs. Parliament should be careful not to confuse activity with results.
It is tempting to think that if we pass a bill and create a commissioner, we have solved the problem. The record of past reports and offices tells us otherwise. Instead of building a new bureaucracy and what seems to be the easy get-out-of-jail-free card policy solution to the government's past failures, we should strengthen the accountability of the systems we already have. We should insist that departments act on Auditor General recommendations. We should require transparent implementation plans for each treaty. We should empower indigenous governments as true partners, not as clients waiting for Ottawa to police itself.
This is the approach the Conservatives will continue to bring to this debate. We stand up for treaty rights, for the honour of the Crown and for a vision of reconciliation that is grounded in results, not just in rhetoric.
