Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in consideration of Bill C-10, legislation that would create a new officer of Parliament to oversee how the federal government implements modern treaties.
At its core, I think it is important to note that this bill proposes yet another office and another bureaucracy to monitor the very departments that already struggle to live up to the agreements Canada has signed with indigenous nations. While the intention, I think, is to strengthen accountability, the question before us is whether Bill C-10 would actually deliver on that accountability, or if it would simply create the appearance of doing so.
Because modern treaties govern things such as land ownership, natural resources, financial compensation and more, these are things that we are now talking about more than ever as we see whether the Liberal government is truly going to approve the building of a pipeline to the Pacific, open new mines, get LNG resources to international markets and build the Canada strong that we have heard so much about.
I want to be absolutely clear from the outset that Conservatives recognize the real and long-standing frustration amongst indigenous treaty partners. We support those treaty rights, reconciliation, self-government and, of course, self-determination. We understand why many indigenous governments want stronger mechanisms to hold Ottawa to its word. That is very clear from all of the advocacy that we have heard and the strength of the advocacy from those nations.
What Bill C-10 would do, as it is drafted, would be to replace responsibility with what I think is more paperwork, which would not do what the bill says it is supposed to do. It tries to solve a performance problem by expanding bureaucracy that has already failed. Its latest iteration is a knee-jerk instinct measure, and it would measure its success by the number of reports published, instead of what I think is lacking in this place so often, which is the quality of the results delivered.
Let us go back for a moment to explain where modern treaties came from and what they were meant to fix. They emerged because historic treaties, however imperfectly honoured, did not resolve the indigenous title in large parts of this country. That legal gap remained until the Supreme Court's landmark 1973 decision that forced Ottawa to abandon denial and engage in nation-to-nation negotiation. From that decision came the first modern treaty, the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement in 1975, and 26 similar agreements since. These treaties define land ownership, resource rights, compensation and self-government. They are continually protected and legally binding.
For years, there has been one message from indigenous governments, and it has been a consistent message, that Canada signs agreements but too often fails to implement them, which is, frankly, not a surprise to anyone who has been around for any of these conversations here in the House or over the last number of decades in this country. The Senate recommended, in 2008, that Ottawa create an oversight body to ensure that treaties are actually carried out. Treaty partners have repeated that call many, many times since.
If we rewind to the years when Conservatives were in government, we proved that modern treaties could be signed and implemented when Ottawa stayed focused on outcomes, not simply on bureaucracy and paperwork. Between 2006 and 2015, five modern treaties of self-government agreements were concluded that advanced real economic and governance authority for indigenous communities.
Since then, under the Liberal government, the landscape looks very different. There have been countless new offices, frameworks, strategies and action plans, yet not one modern treaty has been finalized, which brings us to this conversation and why we are having it. The paper has piled very high in Ottawa and places close to Ottawa, while progress on the ground has stalled. If members have heard any of my colleagues speak about this, both in this debate and to wider issues generally, they would have heard that there is a whole bunch of rhetoric, but there are not many outcomes to match the words spoken.
I ask why this matters. This is the backdrop for Bill C-10, the piece of legislation we are discussing today. We are being told that the solution to Canada's poor implementation record is a new commissioner's office, but the oversight mechanisms already exist. The Auditor General has repeatedly examined treaty implementation. Those reports identified concrete failures, named specific departments and recommended very clear actions going forward, yet many of the same issues remain today.
People watching this would ask why that is. It is because nothing happens when a department fails to implement a treaty obligation. No one is held accountable. No one loses their job. No one stands in the House to explain why the commitment was ignored. Meanwhile, the government has built an entire ecosystem of internal bodies: the modern treaty implementation office, the deputy ministers' oversight committee, the modern treaty management environment and so on. Despite all of these federal initiatives, treaty partners still spend their time chasing the most basic compliance from Ottawa. If those structures have not fixed the problem, why should anybody in this place believe that a brand new structure, a brand new office, a brand new title or a brand new bureaucracy would suddenly succeed?
Many indigenous partners originally asked that a treaty commissioner be housed under the Auditor General, an institution that is already built for this kind of work, has already opined on this kind of work and has already given recommendations on the shortcomings of this work. Instead, the Liberals chose the most expensive option, a separate agent of Parliament with its own bureaucracy and its own budget. The real test now is not how many offices exist in Ottawa, but whether the federal government keeps its promises at all.
A commissioner cannot build housing, negotiate a treaty or force a department to meet deadlines it has already blown. Only ministerial responsibility can do that. We have said this time and time again, but only clear performance measures co-developed by treaty partners can do that. It is a real consequence and a failure to suggest that anything else would work.
If a treaty obligation is missed, the responsible minister should stand in this chamber and answer for it. We have not seen that. Senior officials who ignore commitments should not be promoted. Departments that fail to act repeatedly should face consequences from the House. That is what accountability looks like. That is what we want to see. Conservatives believe in a strong, durable, honourable relationship with indigenous nations, and we believe that modern treaties must be more than signed documents.
Here is where we differ and here is what we want, and I will just list them quickly. We want to require departments to act on Auditor General recommendations. We want to mandate public, measurable implementation plans for each treaty. We want to empower indigenous governments as equal partners and not as observers of Ottawa's bureaucracy, and we want to ensure that ministers face consequences. That is the only real way to solve this.