Madam Speaker, because I did not have the opportunity to address the minister's comments on debate, I will take the first few minutes of my intervention to address some of the remarks which he made.
It is difficult to listen to the sheer arrogance of the minister and the government on the subject of aboriginal issues. The minister talked about it being a democratic process. He talked about the Government of British Columbia being a democratically elected government which has a mandate to engage in the negotiations which are currently taking place. I beg to differ.
The current NDP Government of British Columbia was elected by 40 per cent of the popular vote at the last general election. That means six out of ten people who cast a ballot did not vote for the policies, the platform or the party which is now governing British Columbia.
When we speak about democratic principles, we have to recognize that the system of voting does not allow for a proper representation of the views of a majority of citizens on many issues, and this is one of them. This is a very important issue for British Columbia.
The second thing I want to address with respect to the minister's remarks is that he made the comment that natives have waited for 200 years in Canada to have the issue resolved. I do not dispute the fact that since Confederation the federal government has had the clear constitutional responsibility to deal with the issue in British Columbia and in other parts of Canada. However, in British Columbia for whatever reason, the federal government chose to abrogate that responsibility. It is not the province of British Columbia which has the responsibility to deal with the issue, it is the federal government. I might also add that for the majority of the time since Confederation there have been Liberal governments in Ottawa. What is the minister doing throwing stones at the Reform Party or anybody else when it is clearly the federal government and a host of Liberal governments since Confederation that have created the problem in the first place?
The third point the minister made, and one which needs to be responded to most strenuously, is the point that the Reform Party is not interested in helping the poorest of the poor. It is his government and him, as minister of Indian affairs, who is really deeply concerned about these poor people who live on reserves in Canada. I suppose he has a lock on caring.
A lot of native people live in my riding. There are a large number of reserves and nine Indian bands in total in my riding. I have written on behalf of many people who have come to see me who have demanded financial accountability from the minister. Can they get it? This $5.8 billion a year that the minister and the government is funnelling into aboriginal affairs is going to benefit a very few at the top.
The minister does not have any lock on caring for the poorest of the poor because it is the very people in these communities who are the poorest of the poor and they are not receiving the benefits the taxpayers of Canada are contributing. It is because of the minister's refusal to take on his responsibility and demand accountability that these people are in the position they are in.
I ask the House to recognize that although the minister may be making these grandiose statements and engaging in the flaming rhetoric that he loves to engage in so much, the reality is that the minister cares more about the entrenched leadership in Canada's aboriginal communities than he does about the poorest of the poor or the ordinary people. It is very clear to me that the leaders in the aboriginal communities are as much out of touch with their constituents as this government is out of touch with the people of Canada.
In talking about the land claim situation in British Columbia, we started by saying that almost nobody in British Columbia disagrees with the proposition that we have to resolve these longstanding disputes between aboriginals and the Government of Canada. No one disputes the fact that we have to get these outstanding claims resolved and get on with life. No one disputes the fact that there have been injustices done to native people historically and I might add in contemporary terms.
How did we get to be where we are today? The government is saying that there is a a huge problem out there which has to be dealt with. The government says it has a mandate to deal with it, although there are many who would disagree with that, so it has get on with it and it is going to engage in a modern treaty making process in British Columbia.
We have to go right back to the Act of Union by which British Columbia joined Confederation to understand where we are today. By that Act of Union in 1871 British Columbia joined Confederation with an agreement that the federal government would be responsible for all existing and future obligations to aboriginal peoples. That is stated in the Act of Union. The federal government has a clear responsibility going right back to the day that British Columbia joined Confederation. However, it has never addressed that responsibility and that is why we are in the situation we are in today.
Going back to the 1970s some Indian bands decided they were going to commence legal actions to have their grievances aired and dealt with because they could not get them dealt with any other way.
The most famous legal case, the one that is the pre-eminent legal case in Canada today with respect to aboriginal issues, native land claims and the inherent right to self-government, is the Delgamuukw case. This was launched by the Gitksan-Wet'suwet'en people who also happen to be within the riding I represent.
The B.C. supreme court listened to 360 days of testimony, to all kinds of anthropological evidence, oral evidence presented by the elders of the Gitksan-Wet'suwet'en people, listened to all kinds of legal arguments made on their behalf. At the end of that process when the court rendered its decision it found clearly that there is no inherent right to self-government and there is no aboriginal title to land.
The court also found that the federal government had a constitutional obligation to address the issues of concern to aboriginal people and urged it to get on with it. In the meantime, after the court decision was rendered the Government of British changed. We had an outgoing Social Credit government and an incoming NDP government with an ideological bent on this issue, fervent in its belief it has to deal with the land claim issue in a way the province has never considered doing until then.
What did it do? The Gitksan-Wet'suwet'en people are continuing with their court action. They have appealed the decision to the B.C. court of appeal. The province of British Columbia fired the successful legal firm of Russell & DuMoulin, which had won the Delgamuuku case on behalf of the people of British Columbia, and replaced it with the firm Swinton & Company, a registered paid federal lobbyists in 1994 on behalf of the very people it was to be squaring off with in court, the Gitksan-Wet'suwet'en people.
Furthermore, Swinton & Company was also engaged in an action on behalf of the Gitksan in the B.C. supreme court against the province of British Columbia at a time when it had accepted this landmark legal case to represent the province of British Columbia on the very issues it was fighting the province with on behalf of the Gitksan at the time it was appointed. Talk about a conflict of interest.
This is the way the NDP government in British Columbia has behaved with this issue. It wanted a political decision from the court. It was not prepared to allow the process to be followed through as it should have.
In following the ideological rather than the legal decisions of the court and totally ignoring how the people of British Columbia, and in Canada for that matter, voted against the inherent right to self-government in the Charlottetown accord, British Columbia in concert with the federal government went ahead and started to try to implement these things anyway, much as the federal government is trying to do with distinct society and a veto for Quebec in the unity issue right now.
This is a slap in the face to British Columbia and a slap in the face to democracy. When the people have spoken in a democratic referendum and the government ignores that decision and goes about implementing the decisions anyway, legislatively rather than through constitutional change, that is a clear slap in the face to the people of Canada, particularly the people of British Columbia.
The native population in British Columbia voted against the Charlottetown accord with almost the same percentage as the non-native population did. I have talked to enough native people to know very clearly they do not favour this notion of inherent right to self-government. I am talking about the ordinary grassroots people, not the chiefs, not the people benefiting from it.
Now we have a process in place designed to achieve ends the public does not support. They are not supported by legal jurisprudence. The public is shut out of the process. There is no opportunity for the public to even be involved. What do we have but a bunch of bureaucrats getting their marching orders from Ottawa and Victoria. They are up in my riding negotiating with the Nisga'a. We hear rumours of these negotiations although we do not even know for sure what has or has not been put on the table.
We hear rumours of a potentially massive conveyance of land, $175 million in cash, 2,200 square kilometres of land and a constitutionally protected right to 30 per cent of the Nass River fishery on a basis of forever and ever. Let us not forget the deals will be set in constitutional concrete. They will be forever. It is vital that we not make mistakes. Of course, the governments of the day are totally ignoring that.
I took the time to canvass people in my riding. One of the reasons I became so deeply involved in the issue is that I was receiving hundreds of letters and phone calls from constituents extremely uneasy with what they perceive to be a process taking place behind closed doors with the potential to alter the social fabric and the economic fabric of British Columbia with no legitimate opportunity for public input.
As I said before, there are many parallels to the current national unity issue we are seized with. There are two agendas in Canada, the government's and the people's. Most of the time those agendas are not in sync. The government is proposing to give distinct society status to Quebec and to provide vetoes on a regional basis, but it is not in sync with what the people of Canada want. We can understand why the people of British Columbia, in particular the people of rural British Columbia, are uncomfortable with the
current process. There is no legitimate opportunity for them to be involved. This is all going on behind closed doors.
The ratification process proposed by the government is that once an agreement in principle is signed it will be brought to the House for a vote. That means for the most part there will be members of Parliament from the rest of Canada voting on legislation which will have major, long term, far reaching consequences for the people of British Columbia, which has a leaderless, lame duck administration in Victoria that has lost virtually any shred of credibility.
That is the thrust of the motion today. It is in recognition of the fact that the Government of British Columbia has no mandate and has never sought a mandate to be involved in negotiations of this magnitude. It has no credibility with the public. Its administration is in shambles. It is caught up in scandal. The aboriginal people of British Columbia, the ordinary grassroots people, are saying: "We are not represented in this process. The people negotiating on our behalf do not have a mandate for us. We do not feel comfortable with it. We do not feel comfortable that this will ever benefit us. We think it will benefit the leaders. We think it will benefit the negotiators".
We are in the process of entering into agreements which will forever change the landscape of British Columbia. They have the potential to do that.
In canvassing my constituents, which I have taken the time and the care to do, they have said very clearly they are looking for finality and extinguishment. They want an end to the division. The root cause of most of the problems in which native people find themselves is that we have treated them separately from day one. We have never given them the opportunity to be ordinary Canadians. We have never treated them as if they are able and capable of looking after themselves. We have built a pervasive welfare system around native people in Canada which has robbed them of their dignity, their self-esteem and their initiative.
The minister was talking about the poorest of the poor and what we will do about aboriginal housing and about the plight of these people.
Friederich von Hayek talks about the Liberal philosophy and the socialist philosophy, which are virtually indistinguishable in this country, and he talks about fatal conceit. The fatal conceit is that people elected to government somehow feel like they have a God given ability to correct all the problems of people and society rather than letting those people have the opportunity to resolve their own problems.
It is because of these interventionist, elitist, arrogant, top down policies created by government and driven by government, supposedly to solve all the problems, that we have the problems we see on native reserves today.
What we are doing in this process right now, from my window, is creating new and better ways to separate people by race. We are saying the way we kept them separate and distinct and apart from Canadian society in the past has not worked. It has been a failure. The Indian Act is no good. Virtually everybody agrees with that now. We will find a new and better way to keep them separate. We will find a new and better way to give them a status different from that of ordinary Canadians.
In the long run and maybe even the short run that as well intentioned as some members opposite are on this issue, and they feel this will resolve the problems of native people, it will entrench them that much deeper. It will not solve their problems.
As the member for Esquimalt said in his remarks a few minutes ago, we should be considering what is right, doing what will actually work; an encouragement to these people to take control of their own lives on an individual basis and forget about expecting the government to solve their problems because the government has a disastrous track record in that regard.
