Mike Scott

[Marine Conservation Areas Act, November 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize. I too have heard words that raised my level of anger. I feel very passionate about this issue because it directly affects constituents of mine. People I know, people I feel for and people I care for have been displaced as a result of this. The same kind of thinking that went into the creation of South Moresby park has gone into the creation of this nonsense.

We who live in regional parts of Canada, we who live in the north depend on access to resources for our livelihoods. We have to have it. People do not go up to northern British Columbia to go shopping. They do not go to northern British Columbia to bask in the sun. They go there primarily to work in a resource industry or in some other commercial venture that is most likely there to support a resource industry or the commercial industries that support the resource industry. Everything feeds on each other; it is a domino effect.

If we are going to have an economy in northern B.C., if we are going to have an economy in regional Canada, we have to have reasonable access to resources. We have to have reasonable access to water. We have to have reasonable access to the land base. This bill is specifically designed to prevent this from happening. This bill is cobbled together by a bunch of misguided politically correct soft heads on the other side who are listening to the environmental agenda and the radical preservationists. They are not considering what the impact is going to be on ordinary Canadians.

In the case of South Moresby we are not talking about hundreds of thousands of people. We are not talking about a political voice that is going to be loud and vociferous and heard in Ottawa on a regular basis. We are talking about a community of 500 or 600 people, but that community is dying on the vine. That community has been blindsided by government. How do they feel about mother Ottawa forcing on them something they had no involvement in? They are not in agreement with it. This has been forced down their throats.

Frankly, I am tired of seeing the people of the north who have put everything they own, their life, their property, their future and their children's future on the line only to have the rug pulled out from under them by this kind of nonsense.

In the last parliament the government was asked to basically rubber stamp a decision that was made by the province of British Columbia. The Tatshenshini River is in the northern part of British Columbia. It is on the Yukon border. There is a copper-cobalt deposit in the Tatshenshini which is probably one of the top two or three copper-cobalt deposits ever found in the world.

I talked to one of the senior geologists at the Geological Survey of Canada who told me that they do not even know the whole extent of that deposit. Conservatively it was estimated that the deposit contained, at a minimum, $10 billion worth of copper-cobalt ore. It was estimated that, at a minimum, it could provide 1,600 permanent, full time, year-round jobs for approximately 40 years.

The geologist I talked with said that in his experience, based on some of the further testing that was being done and some of the samples they were starting to see, this deposit could actually be anywhere up to four times as large as they had actually proven. Just consider that for a minute.

When we go to a manufacturing facility that closes down and people are put out of work, it is easy to see the sadness, the pain and the hurt because these people have been displaced. We can put a name and a face to that. However, we cannot go around and interview the 1,600 people who never got jobs up in the Tatshenshini region because of this ridiculous decision.

This government rubber stamped the NDP government's ridiculous decision to create a park by having this nominated as a world heritage site at the United Nations. I cannot fathom what was in their minds when they agreed to this.

Let me give the House more examples. In British Columbia the Fisheries Act, which is an act of this parliament, is a very powerful piece of legislation. That act states that there shall be no development of any kind on the coast of Canada that would involve any net loss of fish habitat.

If we carry that to the extreme it means we cannot walk down to the beach and kick a stone over because somebody could come along and argue that was fish habitat. If anyone thinks I am being ridiculous, let me assure them I am not. I have had meeting after meeting with constituents in Prince Rupert who cannot get access to the waterfront because every time somebody comes along and proposes to develop the foreshore, to build a dock, a berthing facility or a log dump, or proposes any kind of access to the waterfront, the first person on the scene is the local DFO biologist who shuts it down and says that it poses a danger and a threat to fish habitat.

Prince Rupert right now, because of the downturn in the fishery and problems in the forest industry, is looking at very serious unemployment and economic situations. Prince Rupert is not alone. The people in the larger communities in the riding that I represent are suffering and they are suffering a great deal. They are looking for alternatives. They are looking for ways to offset some of the downturns that have taken place. They cannot get access to the waterfront to do anything because DFO will shut them down.

I am not making this up. I am telling members that DFO will not allow a pile to be driven in the water, will not allow a dock to be constructed, will not allow somebody to build the most rudimentary access of any kind from the foreshore to the water because it might interrupt fish habitat.

Let me tell members that British Columbia is a province which has literally thousands and thousands of miles of waterfront. Let me say as well that British Columbia is a province which, outside of the lower mainland, does not have much of a population base and has not experienced much development. Really there is no threat to the integrity of the environment in British Columbia, but that is contrary to what most of the preservationists and radical environmentalists would have us believe. That is the truth.

This legislation is one more chink in the armour. It is one more step down the road.

The radical environmental agenda is becoming clearer as time goes on. These people are profoundly anti-human. These people think we are nothing better than pestilence. Some of these people have even voiced that thought.

David Suzuki, who is the founder of the Suzuki Foundation, has opined that what should take place is a mass die-off of human beings in order to preserve the environment. Can we believe that? I am not making that up.

I should point out that this environmental movement is a very well-funded movement, controlled predominately by large estates in the United States. Most of their money does not come from Canada. Most of their money comes from the United States.

Their agenda is becoming clearer as time goes on. Some of them have publicly said: “Would it not be great if human beings were all living in rural communes with rudimentary housing and no hydro-electric power?” Some of them have said that all the dams that have been created in British Columbia should be dismantled. Can we imagine that? There would be no power. There would be no means for people to generate electrical power for industrial or commercial use. But that is what these people see. That is their vision for the future.

I say that this legislation is driven by that kind of mentality. The goal is to further limit human activity of almost any kind and this is one more step in that direction. These people want to limit economic activity with the eventual goal of eradicating it altogether.

As I have already said, the environmentalists and the preservationists have been saying a lot about the environment in British Columbia and across Canada. Let me tell members that there is very little truth to any of it.

They have been saying, for example, that we need to stop logging in order to preserve habitat for wildlife. I know a little about wildlife, since I have spent most of my life hunting and fishing in the backwoods. Do members know what the aboriginal people did in this country when wildlife was becoming scarce? They went on a controlled burn. They burned the forest because they knew that a heavy forest canopy did not allow for the growth of small deciduous plants and berry bushes, the plant life that is important for wildlife to live on.

If we go into the so-called old growth areas of British Columbia, I assure members they will find very little wildlife. I can take a boat down the Douglas Channel, which is down from my home town of Kitimat, and see every place where some logger has a-frame logged old growth. There is regeneration and the berry bushes are reappearing. That is where we would find the wildlife, the bears and the deer and the moose, because something is available for them to eat. If we went to where the old growth was, there would be nothing available for them to eat.

The wildlife population in British Columbia is extraordinarily strong at the present time. As much as the people who run the bear watch campaign would have us believe otherwise, I can say from living in the Kitimat Valley all of my life that the bear population in that region is as high as I have ever seen it.

When I was a kid, prior to logging in the Kitimat Valley, it would be a very rare occasion that a moose would be seen. Now that the valley has been logged and we have a nice regeneration taking place, the moose population has probably quadrupled.

When the radical environmentalists and the preservationists talk about old growth logging and how it hurts wildlife, I can say that nothing could be further from the truth. Their agenda with this bill is to further limit human activity on Canadian soil. Their eventual agenda, if this bill is adopted, is to make sure that we do not have access to the waterfront at all any more. There will be no chance to revise the Fisheries Act to bring some sense to the development of the Canadian waterfront.

I am a British Columbian. I am a Canadian and I love Canada. I would not be in this parliament if I did not feel strongly about the federation, but I have to agree with my friend in the Bloc Quebecois. This is provincial jurisdiction. Why in the name of God is the federal government getting involved? Does it not think that when it gets involved it puts up big red flags, not only for members in the Bloc but for members in other parts of Canada as well?

I say this bill should be defeated on its face for those very reasons.

[Marine Conservation Areas Act, November 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, hopefully it will be a little quieter in here for the next few minutes.

The people of South Moresby were promised at the inception of South Moresby park that there was going to be an alternative economy for them. It would not be logging any more; it would be tourism. This was going to be the way of the future for South Moresby and the community of Sandspit. For several decades it had been a logging community employing several hundred people on a full time basis who made very good wages.

South Moresby is one of the richest, most productive forests anywhere in the world. It was taken out of forest land and turned into a park. Parks Canada runs that little park like a fiefdom. It limits the number of Canadians who can go into that park every year. For these bull hards down here who do not want to listen, the number of people who can go into the park is limited to under 2,000 every year.

You would have to be somebody special to get into the park, if you can afford it. It is only wealthy lawyers from Toronto and New York who can get in there. As northerners who live there, we cannot afford to go into the park because it costs so much. It is cost prohibitive.

[Marine Conservation Areas Act, November 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, this bill is so important I had to rise today and speak to it.

I do not often find myself in agreement with members of the Bloc Quebecois but on this particular bill they are absolutely right.

What on earth is the federal government doing dictating to the provinces what their marine conservation strategy should be? These are provincial jurisdictions. They always have been. I do not understand where the federal government gets off thinking it is going to somehow make our national unity problem easier to resolve when it keeps forever intruding into provincial jurisdictions on a more and more draconian basis.

I come from northern British Columbia. I have lived all my life there. I think I represent the point of view of most of the constituents I represent who live in northwest British Columbia. I am a skier, a boater and a recreational fisherman. I do a lot of hiking in the back country. I am a hunter. I spend a great deal of my recreational time in the great outdoors. I for one am very concerned and very interested in seeing that it is there for my children and their children, but in Canada we have gone completely overboard in pursuit of this radical environmentalist and preservationist agenda.

One of my colleagues in the Progressive Conservative Party who spoke earlier was lauding the accomplishments of the previous government in the creation of South Moresby park in the Queen Charlotte Islands. That certainly waved a red flag in front of me. It is easy for that hon. member to pontificate on what the creation of South Moresby park meant because he lives 4,000 miles away. He is not the one who has to go out in the middle of the night when some poor family is moving out, taking everything they own in the back of a pickup.

People have been forced out of work. There are no economic opportunities left for them any more. The logging industry was shut down on the strength of a bunch of lies and half truths and mistruths on the part of the radical environmentalist and preservationist agenda.

The Queen Charlotte Islands are an archipelago comprised of two major islands. South Moresby is the large island on the south part of archipelago. In the mid-1980s radical environmentalists, preservationists and others with a hidden agenda made a concerted effort to convince ordinary decent Canadians that something which should not be happening was taking place on the Queen Charlotte Islands. They tried with the help of the media to persuade Canadians that clear cutting was taking place, the Queen Charlotte Islands were being decimated, the environment was being ruined, wildlife was being driven out and there was going to be no future if something was not done.

In 1986 the Government of Canada under Brian Mulroney and the provincial government created South Moresby park. The effect was that it stopped all logging in South Moresby. People were told that there was going to be—

[Aboriginal Affairs, October 30th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, not only did this family receive absolutely no benefits from the grief counselling money that was forwarded to the reserve, but an access to information request has shown that $22,000 was given to the same reserve for media expenses following this tragedy.

Can the minister tell us what the $22,000 was used for and how it helped the family of Connie and Ty Jacobs?

[Nunavut Act, October 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I will make it short because I know you will not let me have it any other way.

Obviously the government is cherry picking, to answer the member's question. The government says “Heads I win, tails you lose”. It will not allow any notion of Senate reform when it comes to Nunavut but it will embrace changes to the justice system if it deems that is what it would like to see happen.

[Nunavut Act, October 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure I fully understood the member's question, but I am reluctant to believe that the people who will be looking to justice under the bill we are debating will have the same access and the same disengaged treatment other Canadians expect from the system.

It is vitally important in a civilized nation such as Canada that all citizens fundamentally believe that the justice system is unbiased, disengaged and will render justice in an even-handed manner which takes into account no factors other than the facts of law any justice system should recognize.

When I look at and contemplate the thinking behind the bill it causes me some concern. It does not cause me as much concern as the whole concept of Nunavut in the first place, but I am certainly not embracing the notion that some Canadians by dint of their geographical location or other distinguishing reasons ought to have access to a different justice system with different rules and regulations and different protocols than the rest of Canada has access to.

I do not know if I have answered the member's question succinctly enough. I hope I have. It is the best I can do for the member.

[Nunavut Act, October 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his excellent question. He has put his finger on a big part of the problem.

According to the notions that were inculcated in me as I grew up, Canada was founded and based on the notion of civic nationalism. That means our participation in this democracy does not depend on our gender, our colour, our language or our religion. It does not depend on any identifying or distinguishing characteristic. It depends on the fact that we are of the age of majority and we have one person, one vote. We all have the rights and freedoms afforded to us under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Before that rights were extended to us under the British North America Act.

The legislation is another indicator that we have to be on guard against a danger. Canada is in danger of breaking away from the notion of civic nationalism into what I would consider to be a regressive and less attractive notion of ethnic nationalism. We see this expressed in many areas. We even see it expressed in the House. I say that with the greatest of respect, because I do not want to unfairly or without warrant attack any other members of the House.

Let us consider the section of the Constitution that guarantees and spells out our rights and freedoms. The next paragraph states that notwithstanding that we have these rights and freedoms, the government has the right to abrogate them when it feels it is in the best interest of the nation. I do not see how any right thinking person could ever accept that somebody's rights would be taken away for any reason whatsoever. Those rights should be immutable. They should be there as a pillar or a cornerstone never to be affected by any action that government may take.

What is being proposed under the whole concept of Nunavut gets dangerously close to breaking away from the notion of the equality of all Canadians before the law and the right of all Canadians to equal access to the institutions of government, including the institution of justice. It falls perilously close to the notion of ethnic nationalism, which is something I could never support and I believe a majority of Canadians would never support.

[Nunavut Act, October 28th, 1998]

Yes, they still want to dictate to us. That is why Reform is here. That is why it is important that we do not abolish the Senate. That is why it is important that we have an effective Senate, an elected Senate. It is one way of assuring the regions of Canada, including the north of Canada, that there will be an opportunity for balancing the very strong representation by population that we have in the House of Commons. This is the fallacy in the thinking of my friend who raised the issue a few minutes ago.

On the surface it is immediately attractive but in the long run it will not serve the regions of Canada. As a matter of fact it closes the door forever for them to have an opportunity of equal and effective representation based on a regional model rather than representation by population.

If we abandon the idea of a triple E Senate we forever resign ourselves to having central Canada dictate to the rest of Canada and the regions how we will live our lives. That lets down our constituents, particularly those of us who come from rural parts of Canada.

I see many parallels in the thinking that has gone into Nunavut, the institutions that are being created including the justice system, and the thinking that has gone into and is currently going into the treaty process in British Columbia.

For example, in the Nisga'a agreement in British Columbia, the first land claim agreement to be resolved or supposedly to be resolved—it is not resolved yet—the government intends to create a separate justice system, exactly as it is attempting to do with the legislation on Nunavut. This somehow leaves the impression that these people do not have access to justice at the present time, are being left out or being hard done by. I simply argue that this is not the case.

I do not understand the justification for telling a group of people, whether it is on an ethnic basis as in the case of Nisga'a or on a geographical basis as in the case of Nunavut, that they are entitled to a separate justice system which will cost an extraordinary amount of money for the number of people it is designed to serve.

Members on this side of the House have a great deal of difficulty with the lack of responsiveness in the justice system at the present time and the feeling that it is not achieving what it ought to achieve. However it is still there for all Canadians. I do not see how members opposite can make a legitimate argument that somehow people are slipping through the cracks and need their own justice system to be better off. I just do not understand that thinking at all.

The intellectual justification for the $300 million cost of Nunavut does not stand up to the light of day. The legislation is in furtherance to that whole bad idea. This is meant as no disrespect whatsoever to the people who live in the high Arctic but is simply a recognition of fact.

Therefore I cannot support what is being proposed. As much as I would like to recognize the contribution of people who live in the high Arctic, I will have to vote against the legislation when it comes before the House.

[Nunavut Act, October 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I begin by acknowledging clearly the contribution those people who live north of 60 make to Canada and the contribution they have made in the past. Let me acknowledge for example that their presence has been extremely important for the maintenance of Canadian sovereignty in the high Arctic in the past.

These people live in an area of Canada that experiences a harsh climate. It is a difficult lifestyle. It is a difficult place to earn a living.

As a member of parliament who represents a northern riding in British Columbia with many small and remote communities, I have some understanding of what it would be like to live north of 60, although obviously I do not understand it completely.

Let us examine what this bill is about and ask ourselves some very serious questions with regard to where we are headed. To listen to some of the members in this place today we would think the people who currently live north of 60 do not have a justice system and have no access to justice.

We know that is not right. We know these people have had access to justice since the inception of Canadian sovereignty in 1867.

What we have come to understand, certainly from the Reform Party's point of view, is that this is another piece of legislation that is a furtherance to the whole concept of Nunavut. Nunavut from the perspective of many people in the Reform Party is a very badly flawed and fiscally irresponsible idea which is bereft of intellectual discipline.

Acknowledging that people who live north of 60 live in a harsh climate and difficult circumstances does not mean that it is somehow a good idea to adopt the notion of Nunavut and then spend $300 million of taxpayer money just to implement it.

For the 25,000 or so people who live in this area to be covered under Nunavut, equivalent to a medium size town in rural Canada, these people are to receive an expenditure per capita of about $12,000. Let us not forget that about half these people are children below the age of majority. It is not a very large population at all but it is a huge expenditure.

In order to implement Nunavut the government now has to set up a judicial system, to set up a legislature, to set up a senate and all these trappings that go along with the concept of the territory of Nunavut.

Nunavut in the opinion of many, including some constitutional experts, people who were around the table in 1980-1981 when former Prime Minister Trudeau was in the process attempting to patriate the Constitution to Canada, is actually the creation of a province through the back door.

In strict terms, if the Government of Canada and the provinces were in agreement that a new province should be created there is a process that must be followed in order to effect the constitutional change required to see that come about.

However, the Government of Canada arbitrarily and in isolation has decided to create this new territory called Nunavut and it is a province in everything but name.

I suggest there will come a time when somebody, some province or some group will challenge the constitutionality of the legislation which brings Nunavut to life. I suggest there is a good likelihood the challenge will succeed.

For the expenditure proposed, and the $300 million implementation cost is only a small part of the overall cost, we can only wonder what could have been achieved for the people who live north of 60 and what they are getting. What they are getting is a huge bureaucracy. Along with that the idea that large bureaucracies somehow increase people's standard of living and create wealth is being reinforced. We know they do not.

We know that for many decades now both Liberal and Conservative administrations in Ottawa have attempted to practise this faulty fiscal policy and it has nearly bankrupted the country. We now have, even among Liberals which is something I never thought I would see in my lifetime, the acknowledgement that we have to look at ways of increasing people's living standards and improving their lifestyles other than through government intervention.

What is being proposed for Nunavut is a massive infusion of federal dollars to implement and on an ongoing basis maintain, which is somehow supposed to improve the standard of living of people in that area. I suggest this is not about wealth creation but about an ongoing transfer of wealth from the rest of Canada to a very large geographical area, very sparsely populated. I believe the thinking behind Nunavut is faulty.

There are a number of questions that come to my mind when I look at the bill before us. What is missing? How much will this piece of legislation cost? How much is it going to cost to implement and maintain? Who is going to pay that?

I do not think 25,000 people in the high Arctic will be able to underwrite the cost of this on an ongoing basis through their tax base. I just do not see that.

What we are saying in effect is that the Canadian government, i.e. Canadian taxpayers from coast to coast, is going to underwrite the costs of this new justice system in perpetuity. I say there is something fundamentally wrong with that. A justice system can be made available to people who live north of 60 and all the other departments of government available to most Canadians can be made available on a much more cost effective basis which would be much more fair to the taxpayers in the rest of Canada.

Again I say this is the result of an intellectual process which is at best faulty and which is at worst bankrupt.

The people who came up with this brainchild and passed it through the House of Commons in form of legislation continue to support it and to enact further legislation to effect the implementation of Nunavut. They have not been honest with themselves or with the people north of 60 whom the legislation is supposed to benefit. Nor have they been honest with the rest of Canada.

There are many parallels. I know this is not a land treaty or a land claim agreement, but in the great deal of the thinking behind Nunavut and what has gone into supporting it is the notion that people north of 60, who are predominantly of aboriginal extraction, Inuit, should have a greater degree of say and control over their own lives.

I do not think anyone in the House would disagree. I do not think anyone wants to say that these people should be dictated to from Ottawa. Lord knows that as a British Columbian growing up during the sixties and seventies I certainly got a bellyful of Ottawa dictating to British Columbia and to me as a citizen of British Columbia how I should live.

[Aboriginal Affairs, October 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, surely the minister can understand that people who are freezing and starving in tarpaper shacks are not being frivolous when they ask for these forensic audits.