Mike Scott

[Canadian Wheat Board Act, November 20th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I was under the mistaken impression growing up that this was a free country. I listened to what the hon. member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands was saying about the Gulag Archipelago and the treatment of Soviet citizens who dared to challenge the government. That was their crime. It was not that they challenged another member of society. It was not that they committed serious criminal acts but that they dared to challenge the government and paid the price.

That is why we see the disparity of treatment in this country. When anybody dares to challenge the government by directly defying what the government has ordered shall be, they will pay a very severe price indeed. I started out by saying that I thought this was a free country. As I grew older, I began to recognize that we actually live in a police state, and we do. We have environment police, we have tax police, we have land police, we have regulatory police. We even have in this country egg police and milk police.

Can you imagine the serious circumstances of the Canadian people if by God we did not control the production of eggs and we did not control the production of milk, butter and cream? What a threat to our national security that would be.

The only thing that we do not have is pork police. We should have because we know about all the pork that goes on on the other side.

As a person who lives on the west coast of British Columbia, and there is virtually no grain farming taking place in the riding I represent, I come to Ottawa and I get to understand the grain issue a little more. I find out that we have grain police and we have a country where a man or a family on their own piece of land, which they own and have bought and paid for, grows a crop, reaps that crop and sells it where the government tells them they are not allowed to sell it. What does the government do? As my hon. colleague said, it takes them away in shackles and chains, fines them tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, confiscates their equipment and just about drives them out of business.

This is not marijuana or heroin or cocaine. We are talking about grain. What does the government do? It takes the people and treats them like that.

I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that you can get away with this kind of treatment of your citizens for a time. The Liberal Party members are the ones who dreamed up the egg police, the milk police and the grain police. They want the government to control all aspects of our lives. There are also the gun police—

[Criminal Code, October 31st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the hon. member. I appreciated his remarks. It is important to remember that what precipitated the current debate and this legislation is a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Canadians need to ask the question of who holds the keys to the criminal justice system in this country. I submit that Parliament is the right institution to hold those keys and not the supreme court. While we respect the supreme court, its current method for appointing judges leaves the public no way of holding any of those justices accountable for the decisions they make. We know that at times there is the appearance that appointments are made on a political basis.

We certainly understand that we as elected parliamentarians are responsible and accountable to the people who send us here. We ultimately are the ones who make and pass the laws and we are, therefore, accountable to the people for the laws that we make, change or amend.

Does the member not agree that a big part of the problem with the Feeney decision is that of a situation where the public is going to have to live with the results of this absolutely unacceptable decision of the Supreme Court of Canada and yet the supreme court is not accountable?

Is there not something wrong with this picture and does it not need to be changed?

[Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, October 28th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, I will try to respond very succinctly.

I thank the hon. member for his intervention. I disagree with him on one point he made. He said that resources were the wealth of the country. I beg to differ. People are the wealth of the country and resources are the tools. I submit the bill being debated today provides no vision for the future.

The very best we could do for aboriginal people is to treat them as equals and with respect, the same respect we have for everybody else.

There are areas with high populations of aboriginal people. There are concerns about land use. There are concerns about resource extraction. This is not because of the aboriginal people but because they have a vested interest in the land. They live there. They are local to the area. I certainly believe they ought to have the right to exercise some control over the decision making but not on the basis of being aboriginal.

[Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, October 28th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, when the member refers to treaties, in many cases in Canada treaties were signed more than 100 or 200 years ago. In the case of the Sahtu Dene and Metis and in the case of Gwich'in, those treaties were signed a very short while ago by this government in the last Parliament. These are not treaties the government was bound to 200, 300 or 400 years ago.

The government had a historic opportunity in negotiating with aboriginal peoples in Yukon and the Northwest Territories to change direction and say it was not going to go down the road it had been before because it did not work. We have seen the results and live with the results. It is not an accident that the aboriginal infant mortality rate is twice as high as for the rest of Canadians. It is not an accident that the social pathologies on reserves are so much worse than for other Canadians. It is not an accident that the suicide rate is six to seven times as high in reserve communities as it is elsewhere in Canada.

The Government of Canada has created welfare colonies right across this country, encouraged welfare colonies, built up a welfare dependency cycle around these people and put them in a position where it was very difficult, some would argue well nigh impossible, to break that welfare dependency cycle.

What is the government doing now? It is constructing more of the same. It is finding new and better ways to do the old thing which is separation and segregation rather than inclusion and equality. The people who pay the price every time, by far the highest price, are the aboriginal people who are signed into these treaties.

The government had a historic opportunity to do something different but it is so tunnel visioned and so caught up in the old ways. Here we are about to enter the 21st century and they are talking about 17th century thinking on that side. I cannot believe this.

I cannot believe these people do not understand democracy and democratic principles and that the fundamental principle of democracy is the equality of all people before the law. When those principles are violated there are consequences. The consequences in this case are going to be paid mostly by the aboriginal people who are affected by these agreements.

When the member looks at me and asks if I recognize that these people have rights, they have human rights and democratic rights. They ought to have the same rights as I. They have never been afforded these rights and it has been largely Liberal governments that have denied them those rights.

I would ask the hon. member not to look at me. There was no Reform Party 20, 30, 50, 100 or 200 years ago but there was a Liberal Party and that is where it came from.

[Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, October 28th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, as I was saying, the fact that we in North America enjoy one of the highest living standards in the world is not an accident. If we look at the resource rich country of the former Soviet Union, we can see very quickly that it did not fare nearly as well as we did. This is simply because it had a political system which did not allow human beings in that country to achieve their potential.

That system is democracy. It is a fundamental cornerstone upon which not only our country is based, but on which our economy is based. We cannot achieve without the freedom to achieve. We cannot achieve without the freedom of contract. We could not have achieved what we have in North America without democracy.

Let us compare that with the situation in the former Soviet Union. The system there said that government and not the people was the centre of all power, that the communist party was the only political party. There was no option or choice. If one were to belong to a political party it had to be the communist party. The communist party determined that it was going to own the means of production and dictate how the economy would run and dictate how people ran their lives. It was going to even dictate whether or not there would be freedom of religion in the country and it determined that there could not be freedom of religion.

There were so many things about the former Soviet Union that I cannot reiterate them all in this short intervention. Suffice it to say that human liberty was suppressed to the point where the economy could not work. The economy crumbled in on itself and the people of that country during that time suffered a very low standard of living which resulted in a virtual collapse in 1990-91 when the Soviet regime finally ended.

Now we see the emergence of a democracy, albeit not a total democracy at this point, but it sure has come a long way from the days when I was a kid and I watched the news at night and saw what little there was coming out of the Soviet Union. Certainly there has been a lot of progress made there and we are very hopeful that is going to continue.

We have a democracy in North America. As I said earlier it is democracy that is responsible for giving us so much in this country. I would argue strenuously that without it we would not be where we are today and we could not be where we are today. If we abandon democracy, we do so at our peril because we will start slipping backward.

But the forgotten people in North America who have always been precluded from joining our democracy are the aboriginal people of this country. They have been precluded from becoming a part of this democracy from the beginning contact and colonization.

The system of governance in this country and successive governments in this country have ignored, belittled and marginalized these people from the beginning of Confederation. They have been largely Liberal administrations I might add, largely Liberal governments. I would ask any aboriginal people watching today to remember that. Liberal governments for the most part have dominated the House of Commons during this century. It is the Liberals who have constructed the welfare state and the dependency.

Native people in this country did not get the right to vote until 1960. How could we possibly consider that they were part of a democracy when for the first almost 100 years of this country they did not even have the right to vote let alone run for office? It is a small wonder that the level of anger and hostility and hopelessness is so pervasive and so high on aboriginal reserves in this country.

It is a small wonder that these people are bitter and angry and confused and are wondering what the future holds for them. They see this Canadian dream being lived all around them and they are not participating in it. They do not know why and they are angry and they are looking for answers. They are looking for some respect.

This government gives them the kind of respect as to set up these phoney baloney management boards and says “Yeah, we are going to give you half the seats on the board”. What kind of respect is that to show to a human being? It is like “You could not make it on your own, you could not do this unless we created this special situation for you so that you would have a chance to sit on these boards. If we do not do this, you cannot do it. You are not good enough to do it on your own”. I reject that 100% completely and totally.

Local control or local input into resource management can be a good thing but it should not be based on anything other than the fact that there are people who are local to the area and who have a vested interest in the decisions that may affect them and may affect the land they are living on. It should not be tied to membership in a native band. It should not be tied to membership in anything other than the community of interest that surrounds the area that could be affected by decisions that are made, environmental decisions, land use decisions and so on.

I will talk for a minute about the welfare state that has been built up around aboriginal people in this country. I am not sure if the House is aware that the dependency on welfare in this country by aboriginal people exceeds $1 billion at this time. It is growing faster than the rate of inflation and the rate of aboriginal population growth combined. That did not come from me, it came from the auditor general.

The auditor general also points out that over one four-year period the department spent an additional $1 billion over its regular spending for economic development. One billion dollars in addition to its regular spending because the department had this elite top down arrogant attitude that it could solve all the problems on reserves by micromanaging from Ottawa. Guess what happened.

That $1 billion expenditure translated into a progressive increase in the unemployment rate, the dependency rate and in the social assistance envelope that the department has to provide every year for social assistance on reserves. In other words, it had no affect. The auditor general said in his report that if it had any effect whatsoever, the affect would have been a negative one rather than a positive one. One billion dollars, it did not help the people it was designed to help and cost every taxpayer in this country a serious amount of money.

I want to talk about what the auditor general said in his most recent report to Parliament on aboriginal health care. The most revealing aspect of the report was that the Government of Canada and the Ministry of Health are so unconcerned about the fate and health of aboriginal people that over a 10 year period dependency on prescription drugs was actually facilitated by the department to the point where in one three month period there were more than 700 people who had 50 prescriptions or more for mood altering drugs. The government has known about this problem for 10 years. The auditor general said so and has harshly criticized the government because it has done absolutely nothing about it.

I submit that the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development is without accountability. The government is without accountability. What it is trying to do is window dress the whole affair by creating these so-called management boards and land claim agreements to try to give people the appearance that the government is actually concerned, that it is actually doing something. The reality is it sits on its hands and does nothing.

Look at the issue of the Stony reserve in Alberta. The people on the reserve had to cry out through the media. They lived under the threat of their houses being burned down before they could finally get the minister of Indian affairs, kicking and screaming, to agree a forensic audit of that band. Now we see, as a result of the forensic audit, charges are being laid. The truth is coming out. Hopefully the whole truth will come out. I still think there are still some people on that reserve who are concerned that the whole truth does come out.

Again this is the Liberal way. It is the way obfuscating what is really going on by creating the impression that something is being done about the very serious problems which exist on many Canadian reserves.

I was speaking with some aboriginal people yesterday who came from southern Ontario. While we agreed during the meeting that we would not agree on all points, at least we had some common ground. These people said they could not understand why a minister who had fiduciary responsibility to them was actually intervening in a court case and trying to undermine their position in that case. I will not get into the details of it. It is one more example of the Liberal way of speaking out of both sides of your mouth at the same time. It is one more example of creating an illusion for the benefit of your political numbers in the next poll that you are actually doing something when you really are not.

I believe that aboriginal people across the country have caught on to the system. I think they know the system better than the government. The aboriginal people of this country are not going to be satisfied with these kinds of initiatives in the future. I submit to the House and to the aboriginal people of this country that the way out of this mess is for them to be included as full and equal partners in this democracy, for them to be afforded every opportunity as any other Canadian. The way for the future in Canada is the equality of all Canadians, recognizing that aboriginal peoples have unique culture, unique characteristics and a unique language.

I think most Canadians embrace the notion of that. Most Canadians find that something to be proud of, that we have this kind of a culture within our nation's boundaries. We have a culture that people from other parts of the world, Japan, Germany and so on, come over here to see for themselves. I have people coming to my riding from Japan who want to see for themselves aboriginal culture, who want to see a display of aboriginal culture, who want to watch a dance, who want to tour a museum or who want to view aboriginal art. I think that is a great thing for our country.

I submit to the House and to the aboriginal people of this country that being a country that embraces the notion of expressing our culture and our diversity does not mean entrenching inequality and special rights within the laws of our land. I submit that is not the way of the future for this country.

That is principally why I oppose this bill. I believe it is undemocratic. I believe it does not reflect the true values of Canadians and, most of all, I believe in the long run it will do nothing to assist aboriginal people who really want to assist themselves at the present time, who really want to have a future for themselves and their families within this country, who really want accountability, who really want to have an opportunity to see themselves in the future with the same opportunities and with the same economic circumstances as every other Canadian. That is why I oppose this bill.

[Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, October 28th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House today for my first intervention in this Parliament addressing the House on this very important bill.

I would like to sincerely thank my constituents for once again sending me back to this House to represent them. I pledge to do my very best for them, to do the job that they expect of me.

I begin by reiterating what my colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca so eloquently said a few minutes ago about the need for aboriginal and non-aboriginal people to work together in this country. Clearly that should be a very important motivation for all of us for the future.

On the surface this bill seems to work in that direction. It appears that it is going to get aboriginal and non-aboriginal people working together. The reality is that it will not really achieve that because participation on the environmental and resource management boards is specifically tied and allotted to individuals based on membership in either the Gwich'in or Sahtu Dene bands. It is not because they are local to the area. It is not because they have a vested interest in the future of that area. It is because they are members of the Sahtu or the Gwich'in bands that they will receive membership on these boards.

I submit that when we single out groups in our society and assign them special rights based on distinguishing characteristics, we do them a disservice and we denigrate the fundamental principles of democracy. I will argue that undermining democratic principles is always harmful to society and in the instant issue will prove most harmful to those whom we most wish to help, aboriginal people.

Let us examine for a minute a world without democracy to better understand how human circumstances fare in such a world. Let us look at the history of this world going back several hundred years, going back actually more than a millennium where kings and feudal systems and fiefdoms were the order of the day, where there was no democracy.

Under those systems, who had rights? We all know how those rights were determined. Kings had all the power. Kings were not elected. When they came down the birth canal they were already elected to be king. They did not have to run for office. They did not need anybody's consent. They were going to be king or queen, whatever the case might be, because it was their birthright.

Under the kings there were others such as barons, earls and so on who had progressively less power but who were still above the lowly serfs. The serfs comprised the great majority of the population. They were people with absolutely no power, with absolutely no say. They were people who were virtually owned by the king. They were the property of the king. The king could do whatever he wanted with them. He did not need to ask permission. He was an absolute ruler and they were absolute servants to the king.

History evolved, thankfully for us who live in this day and age, with great thinkers like Plato and Aristotle and later Thomas Paine and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and others. They envisioned and refined a new social order, a new social contract which had at its foundation and core the rejection of elite special status in favour of equality of all people under the law.

The emergence of democracy was a very slow and painful process, first experienced in rudimentary forums in ancient Greece. Later the evolution of our modern democracy had its beginning in 1066 with the signing of the Magna Carta, a very important document. This document was hard won and began the slow process of stripping the kings of their immense power and devolving that power to the people.

Through the following nine centuries after the signing of the Magna Carta democracy became much more entrenched in Europe and North America. In fact I would argue that North America and later Canada and the United States became the apogee of democracy owing largely to the fact that the ties to the monarchy were less strong in North America than they were in Great Britain. As a matter of fact, the ties to the monarchy were severed completely by the United States in their War of Independence. Consequently it was very easy for the United States to adopt a truly modern democratic system without any ties to the monarchy whatsoever. North America, Canada and the United States have since become synonymous with democracy.

I would argue that the fundamental reason we as Canadians enjoy one of the highest living standards in the world is not an accident. It is not as a result of the fact that we live in a resource rich country, although it certainly helps. Look at the Soviet Union, a resource rich country. For the most part the people there live in dire circumstances. It is not an accident. Now we see some hopeful signs with the emergence of democracy.

[Petitions, October 24th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition I have to present on behalf of constituents is with respect to the criminal justice system. It is a lengthy petition requesting a number of amendments to the criminal justice system.

On behalf of constituents, I would like to table these now.

[Petitions, October 24th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the petition concerns the massive increase in CPP premiums that are proposed by the government.

The petitioners ask Parliament to enact legislation to wind down the CPP, protecting the pensions of current seniors and that Canadians contribute to mandatory RRSPs of their own choosing.

[Petitions, October 24th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to table two petitions today on behalf of constituents. The first one reads: “We the undersigned citizens of Canada draw the attention of the House to the following”—

[Parliament Of Canada Act, October 24th, 1997]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-265, an act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act and the Canada Elections Act (change of political affiliation).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce this bill today. Its effect, when enacted, would ensure that the seat of a member of the House of Commons becomes vacant when that member gives up membership in the political party for which that member was elected or where a member of the House sitting as an independent informs the House that he or she is joining the membership of a political party.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)