Madam Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-9 at report stage, Group No. 1, an act to give effect to the Nisga'a final agreement.
I want to first assure the Nisga'a people, other native groups and all my constituents, despite what the current powerholders say about our questioning of the deal, that my interest in the bill is to address the need for a better future for the Nisga'a people and all those under the Indian Act and in relation to each other and with other Canadians.
We understand that after years of negotiation within a framework dictated by the Indian Act but controlled by the federal government and Indian affairs, most Nisga'a leaders feel that they have no alternative but this agreement. British Columbians have been wrongly told that it is this deal or nothing. Sadly, it is just more of the same that has already failed.
Opposition MPs are not similarly tainted. We question and oppose because we do not believe this agreement, in the long term perspective, is in the best interests of the Nisga'a people, in the long range interests of aboriginals throughout B.C. or in the interests of the people of Canada.
It may be noted that the official parliamentary aboriginal affairs committee shut out many astute witnesses. So with a view to being more responsive to citizens than the traditional parties in the House, Reform conducted additional hearings to let others have a say. For example, one witness was Kerry-Lynne Findlay who was on the constitutional section of the Canadian Bar Association. She was asked for her views. Somewhat in this vein, I said to her that I was sure she had reflected a lot about these matters and of society's relationship with aboriginal people and that it was not just a Canadian problem. I told her how I had discovered during my visit to Taiwan that it has aboriginals who it has to work out a relationship with.
I asked her if she could reflect on society's general relationship with aboriginals, what would be a better way, in general principles, the main things we must not forget, if we are going to actually ameliorate the situation, raise standards of living, try to modernize democracy and try to get to a situation where we might say that we have one land, one law and one people.
I will paraphrase her comments. She said “—people really get confused with the notion and the idea of assimilation—People say that if you are treated the same, somehow you will be assimilated if you are being treated equally”. She went on to say:
Of course, I don't think that's what anybody is talking about, and clearly antiquated policies that try to achieve that hurt everybody and I don't think anybody quarrels with that today. However, that is not the same thing as bringing aboriginal peoples along with other peoples who live here, some of whom have arrived recently, into what we call sort of the mainstream of Canadian society. That means that the opportunities are equal for all, even some recognition, perhaps, for those who need a little help to get where the opportunities are equally applied. But it doesn't have to mean that your culture disappears. It doesn't have to mean that you language disappears. It doesn't have to mean that your traditional ways and points of view and, particularly, your religious beliefs disappear.
Somehow...in government circles, the distinction between the two has been entirely lost and, therefore, there's been a buying into this concept that rather than getting rid of separation of peoples we will actually entrench it. Again, most of the problems with the way it was done historically is that we took whole groups of people and said, “You will live there and please don't cross the line,” and in some cases even moved them into that place they were going to live.
Yet here we are now putting a (legal) fence up around those places and saying, “We're going to help you keep the outside world out”. It isn't realistic in modern terms at all and I don't think it will work. Over time I really fear we are headed toward civil unrest and more of the standoffs of the kind we saw at Oka.
These occurrences will happen again...when people feel left out and that's what we are talking about. My solution is to bring people on board. Bring everyone on board and have everyone part of the process. So many of these decisions aren't even being made by the minister or the politicians, they're being made by the bureaucratic system in Ottawa and by faceless and nameless bureaucrats who do not have to stand up before the people and be accountable for their decisions, and that's a shame.
Those are some of the comments she made. Certainly, Ms. Findlay ought to know as she was part of the Liberal policy development machine in times past.
A Reform member on the committee put it to her further and said that often in the development of the treaty process we have a problem with government policy toward aboriginals and that it was very difficult at the beginning to get people to understand what the issues were because they simply were not involved. He went on to say “I think that has been a problem, to a large extent, with some of the treaty process, that until it hits you directly”—such as the fishermen, many who are aboriginals, who will, as a result of this deal, lose their share of the catch—“it is merely an academic problem that you may or may not become interested in. I think that's a pretty fair statement of the situation in the real world”.
In response to the member, Ms. Findlay, the lawyer, responded this way about the political legitimacy and the broad community consent and awareness. She said:
I think it is, but I believe it is changing, I really feel, because I think finally, now, for whatever reason, linkages are being made right across the country, and I am certainly experiencing that. When I send out an e-mail now, it goes all across the country, because I have people from across the country contacting me and saying, “We want to link with you and we think that the fishermen who are affected, and the loggers who are affected, and the non-native leaseholders who are affected, and the other people in the resource-based economies who are affected, we want to know you, and we want to support you and be part of this.”
So you see groups springing up, the United Canadians for Democracy, that is a group that the leaseholders are part of forming, but it is based out of Ontario. CanFree is a new group that has been set up right here in British Columbia. I think that you are seeing this more and more now, and certainly that's why I know who Phil Eidsvik is now, and he knows who I am. This is why, when I was back in Halifax, I contacted fishers back there because of the Marshall decision that had just come down. So I think it's changing. Again, though these processes take time, and time is something we don't have with the Nisga'a treaty, but it may be something we have with other treaties coming up and maybe so with this one.
I think the government, the federal and the provincial government, are being, themselves, very naive now if they feel that they can continue to use that divide and conquer approach and that Canadians are not linking, because they are.
Our effort today in the House is to do our constitutional duty, to require the government to make its case to the electorate. The point is that the Liberals are out of date. When failed policies, wrong ideas and false assumptions narrow the range of choices, the shape of destiny will always be sadly lacking if not bringing deep sorrow.
The mandate to negotiate and the manner in which it was done by B.C. politicians is discredited. The arrangement will not bring about lasting reconciliation, and it is just one treaty down and fifty to go. The legal expectations are there now and the template is set.
Much is to be worked out in the future and so much is written in vague terms. Fairness guarantees are very elusive in the package. Its emphasis is to separate rather than bring together. Legal equality principles have been sometimes abandoned. In such experiments, we must support equality, democracy, accountability and the coupling of entitlement with responsibility. Tolerance and diversity and mobility rights are there entwined in the settlements with Canadian natives. It is of grave importance when we assess the proposal for embedding by treaty small closed societies in a large, complex and open society, that is itself struggling to keep its place in a changing world.
We can ask how the treaty will help to engage the peoples in the World Trade Organization. It is because I care about my neighbour that I serve. It is because I know we can do so much better as a country, for all not just a few, that I speak to the mistake parliament is making today. For where there is injustice we must right it, where there is discrimination we must denounce it, where there is violence we must stand against it and where there are wounds we must heal them. May we be generous, be fair and be honest in our deliberation and learn to be guided as we go forward determined not to reflect the mistakes of the past.
Nothing informs the public mind to understand and evaluate an issue like a public referendum. First, let us have one. Second, the government needs to ensure in better terms that we are not amending the constitution and that all of it applies to us. Third, the government needs to ensure all Canadians that the competing overlapping claims will be accommodated and properly dealt with.
At this late hour, I call the government to at least do these three things and the next time to be guided to negotiate more honourably.
