Mr. Speaker, before I get into the text of my remarks I will make a few comments on the parliamentary secretary's remarks.
The parliamentary secretary was discussing the issue of land ownership. He said that in his opinion the land that we know as Canada is owned by aboriginal people. I remind the parliamentary secretary this issue has been dealt with in the courts. It has been dealt with in the Delgamuukw decision which was originally heard in the B.C. supreme court and was appealed to the B.C. court of appeal and is going before the Supreme Court of Canada at some point in the very near future. The decisions of the courts to date
have been that land ownership and ownership of resources resides with the crown.
I will talk for a minute about who benefits from that ownership. Thirty million people live in Canada and to a great extent the wealth of the nation and the standard of living that those people enjoy depend on the land base and resources.
We are talking about the B.C. Treaty Commission. In British Columbia approximately 96 per cent of the land is owned by the crown. The balance is owned by individuals on a fee simple basis. What the Government of British Columbia is talking about doing under the auspices of the B.C. Treaty Commission is negotiating agreements which will convey, in its own words, approximately 5 per cent of the land base to approximately 3 per cent of the population. A good deal of that population does not live on reserves.
In addressing the concerns of people in British Columbia who depend on forestry, fishing and mining for their livelihood and all of the secondary and tertiary jobs that spin from that, it is clear that the issue of land ownership and resource ownership is a very serious one.
I will talk a little about British Columbia's participation in this process and the concerns expressed by ordinary citizens in that province. As I have said, the land base is very important to the economy of the province.
The Government of British Columbia and the Government of Canada are entering into a negotiating process to settle, depending on who you are, treaties or land claims with aboriginal peoples. There has been virtually no public consultation. The beginning of that consultation process is starting to happen, but in my view it is happening in a way that is going to make it very difficult for the real views of ordinary British Columbians to be heard.
On a straightforward philosophical basis, most British Columbians are opposed to the general principle behind the treaty process. With the negotiation of the agreements described by government to date we will have, as my Reform colleague said a few minutes ago, enclaves within Canada which will have a land base and which will have their own governing bodies.
There is a great deal of concern over the divisiveness this will create. The parliamentary secretary referred to South Africa as have other people in the Chamber. In South Africa the people are working to break down barriers between different parts of society, between black and white. They have been working at removing the different status that people received in that country based on their racial origins.
In Canada we are going in the opposite direction. We are erecting further barriers. I suggest there are barriers right now. I think they are inherently wrong. That is one of the reasons native people find themselves in the very difficult circumstances they find themselves in. As a country we have treated them differently.
Most of us on this side of the House believe very strongly that Canada is a very big welfare state. The welfare state that government policy has created around native people is many times larger and it has been very harmful to native Indian people. It has been very destructive. We need to do away with that, to break down those barriers, to do away with the Indian Act and start to treat everybody in our country as equals.
That leads me to the next point. In a democracy one of the fundamental principles of democracy is equality before the law, individual freedom, individual liberty and the notion that we all participate in a democracy on the same basis.
Sovereignty inherently rests with the Government of Canada. The provinces are way stations but in the end, citizens have to a certain degree an ability to exercise personal sovereignty in that they are able to vote, they are able to participate in the democratic process and they are able to influence to some degree at least the direction the government takes.
When we start looking at people, whether native Indian or other racial minorities or groups that have distinctive characteristics and start treating those people differently and we suggest they should have different status, whether that status is supposed to assist those people or not however well meaning that might be, the end result is that we create divisions in our society.
We create an us versus them mentality and we violate the fundamental principles of democracy. We violate the fundamental principle of equality before the law. We do that as a nation at our peril.
We can see what has happened in British Columbia with the implementation of the aboriginal fishing strategy. No doubt it was a well intentioned strategy. The result is that we have native fishermen and non-native fishermen on the rivers in conflict with each other. We have the very real possibility of violent conflict right on our doorstep as a result of that policy. I would suggest to the House that the aboriginal fishing strategy is one component of what the government's agenda is all about.
We are not talking in negotiating these treaties about moving away from the apartheid that we already have and treating people as equals, we are talking about building further walls. We are talking about finding new and better ways to segregate people by race and treat them differently. By doing that, as I said earlier, we are endangering the future civility and peace in our country.
We need to not stand with our backs to the future gazing serenely over the past, over the wreckage of failed policies and massive outlays in expenditures by governments which have not worked and which have created a system of dependency and paternalism. We need to strive toward policies that include all people.
The Government of Canada has a serious obligation to deal with this problem and to deal with it in a manner that is going to at the end of the day bring all Canadians together as equals.
At the time British Columbia joined Confederation in 1871 the terms of union clearly spelled out that the federal government shall take all responsibility for existing and future obligations to native people.
There was one proviso in that agreement. The provincial government had an obligation to designate areas for reserve lands. The provincial government from 1871 through into the 1920s continued to set aside and designate lands as reserve lands to the point where in 1924 the federal government acknowledged in writing that B.C. had met its obligations under the terms of union and therefore was discharged from any further obligations in that regard.
This is a very important and fundamental point because Canadians residing in British Columbia have been contributing through the tax system to the settlements of land treaties in other parts of Canada. They have been required to assist in the underwriting of the costs of the Nunavut settlement, of the Yukon land claims agreement, of the Saulteaux-Dene-Métis agreement and so on.
Now British Columbians will be asked to pay twice: once as taxpayers through the federal system and once as taxpayers and citizens of British Columbia through the alienation of land and resources. That is fundamentally wrong. That is asking the people of British Columbia to accept a situation of double jeopardy.
I believe very strongly the province of British Columbia should not be at the negotiating table other than as an observer. If the federal government intends to convey land and resources, it ought go to the province to find out for what the province is willing to sell those assets, the land and resources, in pursuit of the land treaty negotiations.
When we talk about these land claim issues and when we talk about treaty settlements and so on, as I said in my remarks a few minutes ago, the government tends to treat native Indian people as if they are all the same, whether it is the Gitksan and Wet'suwet'en people in my riding, the Niska people or the Casca-Dene people. They are not. They are individuals like all Canadians. They have many different aspirations, goals and desires. They do not all think the same way. They do not all want the same things; they want many different things.
In many cases the leadership in these native communities is acting in a fashion that is not supported by the majority of people they supposedly represent. I am deeply concerned when native Indian people come into my constituency office and say that they are very concerned about the ramifications for self-government because they do not know what it means. Quite frankly I do not think any of us know what it means. The Government of Canada and provincial governments have been talking for the last couple of years about recognizing an inherent right of self-government but they have never defined it. They have never said what that means.
The implications for that kind of statement are very serious indeed. It is instructive to note the native Indian people of British Columbia voted against the Charlottetown accord at almost the same rate as non-native people did although the provision for native self-government was one of the five key components of the agreement.
The ordinary grassroots people in native Indian communities certainly are not overly enamoured with the idea of native self-government. Their leaders are because their leaders understand the position of power and the position of authority they will end up in as a result. However the ordinary grassroots people in native communities are not in favour of it and certainly have grave reservations.
I remember very clearly that the Native Women's Association of Canada actively campaigned against the Charlottetown accord for the very reason the inherent right to self-government was one of the five key components of the agreement.
It is fine for the parliamentary secretary to stand and say that this is what all native people want, but it clearly is not what all native people want. They voted against it. I suspect that if I were to go into his riding I would find many native Indian people, aboriginal people, who would be very much opposed to the concept of self-government even though the member supports it.
Having given this matter a great deal of thought and having expressed my concerns, particularly in British Columbia, for two years now, I am convinced there has to be a better way. There has to be a way that the Government of Canada in concert with the provinces can negotiate agreements which will be inclusive rather than exclusive, which will bring Canadians together rather than separate them forever on the basis of race.
We have to recognize we are settling agreements that will be set in constitutional concrete. We have to think in terms of 50, 100 and 150 years down the road. We cannot settle the agreements on the basis of a five, ten or fifteen year window.
It is for these reasons that I have grave concerns with respect to the work of the B.C. Treaty Commission. I am convinced that the province of British Columbia should not be at the table other than as an observer. If we continue down the road we are going, I am certain it will only create further problems in our society. The net result will be that those people who we would most like to help will be the people who will be most hurt.
