Mr. Speaker, I would like to split my time with the member for Edmonton Northwest.
At second reading, Conservatives raised a fundamental question about Bill C-10 and the government's proposal to create a new commissioner for modern treaty implementation. The question was not whether Canada must honour its treaty obligations. Of course it must; there is no question there. It is not whether the federal government should be accountable to indigenous peoples when it fails to meet the commitments it has made. Of course it should. The question is actually much simpler: Will creating another federal office actually fix the failures of the last 100-plus years?
The Conservative position throughout the consideration of this legislation has been that Canada's problem is not a shortage of reports, commissioners, bureaucracies or oversight mechanisms. It is a shortage of accountability for the people already responsible for negotiating and implementing Canada's treaties. That distinction is important. Bill C-10 would establish an independent commissioner and office to audit, review and report on federal institutions, ministerial responsibility, measurable implementation requirements, parliamentary oversight and consequences when departments fail to fulfill treaty obligations. After this bill has proceeded through Parliament, that fundamental concern is still on the table.
The Office of the Auditor General already examines treaty negotiations, modern treaty implementation, self-government agreements and treaty land entitlements. Its work in this field stretches back decades. The federal government has also created the modern treaty implementation office, the assessment of modern treaty implementation process, the performance management framework, the modern treaty management environment, the deputy minister's oversight committee and the reconciliation secretariat.
The argument Conservatives are making and have been making this whole time is not that nobody is watching. It is that too few people are being held responsible. Events outside this chamber since legislation was first debated make that question even more important. We should be looking at the actual results.
I know that government members have said a few times in their speeches that now is the time to have results. Well, I will give one example, from May 4, 2026. This is from an Auditor General's report, the first one on the page:
Overall, Indigenous Services Canada did not effectively implement, monitor, or assess the New Fiscal Relationship initiatives it committed to with First Nations. The Government of Canada and the Assembly of First Nations agreed in 2016 [which is pretty recent] to establish the initiatives to advance First Nations’ right to self-determination and support efforts to close persistent socio‑economic gaps between First Nations and other Canadians.
This agreement was signed between the government and the AFN. We have had 10 years and an Auditor General's report that says nothing has been done and that they are not being held accountable.
The government is not seeing changes at its own end. We have all these departments already looking into what the government is doing wrong. We have report after report. We just have to go to the Auditor General's website to see there is a whole slew of reports going back decades noting where the government and governments before it have been failing, yet nothing is changing within the departmental structure. All that is changing is that we are adding one more department after another, with more reports and more reports. We are just piling them on, but no one is being held accountable.
It was even said at committee when we studied this bill that Bill C-10 is basically a name and shame bill. We see that in the Auditor General's reports when the Auditor General puts forward analyses on different governments, programs and departments.
Not only that, but Indigenous Services Canada, which I mentioned in the story just a few moments ago, has over 8,000 bureaucrats right now. This government department is relatively new, but its whole mandate is to put itself out of business, and it is going in the complete wrong direction. If it is going to put itself out of business, we need to see more power given to indigenous communities, less power controlled in Ottawa and less reliance on nations coming to Ottawa to seek more money for various programs. It is not supposed to work that way.
The government says it is working on it. The government says this is its vision. We heard that from the former prime minister. It somewhat continues today but it is just getting bigger. It is getting bigger and more bloated and we do not have any accountability from the government bureaucracies themselves. Why is that happening? That is the fundamental question. That is what we should be asking each other today, not whether we need another department to name and shame for one day. Maybe it circulates in the media for a day or two, longer if a Conservative is in power, and then we look at it and nothing really changes. That is the problem.
The Auditor General is an officer of Parliament. We are going to create another officer of Parliament to create another report. See how this goes? See what happens? It is just more circular action. Nothing actually changes. We do not actually see any measurable changes for indigenous communities. That is the whole problem. I would have loved to ask the member for Winnipeg North, who was talking about accountability, a question, if I had had the opportunity when he was talking about that.
Let us use the Auditor General's report that I had just talked about a few seconds ago. Given that there has been 10 years of failure, who has been held accountable? Has anything changed within the department? Clearly, nothing has changed. They had 10 years to work on that new fiscal agreement. It was signed by the government. The government is still here. Nothing has changed. We have another report that says it has not. What is actually changing? Nothing is actually changing. This is the whole problem.
The commissioner for modern treaty implementation cannot negotiate a good treaty. That is for the government to do. The commissioner cannot substitute for the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations. A commissioner cannot substitute for the Minister of Justice. A commissioner certainly cannot be a substitute for Parliament.
The question for Parliament, because nobody is being held responsible when things go wrong, and clearly there is a lot of that, is how Parliament can better hold governments to account. We cannot do that because there is no accountability within the departmental structure. That is the whole problem.
I look at the Auditor General's website. There are failures in education, in clean drinking water, in emergency response and the list goes on and on. Most of the reports that I am looking at on the Auditor General's website are just follow-ups from previous reports. There is very little action.
If we are saying that we want Ottawa, which has created the problem in the first place, to fix the problem, and if it is not doing that, we need to name and shame for a day, but nothing actually improves. Again, we are going in a circle. Nothing is changing. By creating another office with another bureaucracy, with more and more reports and staff and offices, we are not actually fixing the problem.
Conservatives, on this side of the House, agree with the diagnosis. There has been a massive problem. What we disagree with is the prescription the government has presented to us today, and that is Bill C-10, which would create yet another level of bureaucracy but little to no action.
