Madam Speaker, we are debating today report stage of Bill C-9, the Nisga'a land agreement. Last year, after years of closed door debates, talks and consultations, the Nisga'a agreement was signed, but the people of British Columbia had no input, nor were they given any opportunity for input. I think that denial of democracy is one of the main reasons the Reform Party is against the agreement.
My colleague from Wentworth—Burlington gave a very good speech. It was a speech from the heart. It was not one that was simply cranked out in the back rooms and sent over to him to be delivered. This was a speech that he had researched and he spoke from the heart, without notes I noticed. He gave a very good speech.
However, I find it rather ironic that his government has moved closure on this bill every time it has come before the House. If it had not moved closure, other members of his caucus would have been able to speak and we would have been able to debate the question. I naively thought that was how the House should work. It should operate in a manner in which we can have divergent points of view and debate them. We should be able to use our persuasive powers on the government and the government should be able to persuade us that perhaps we are not right and do not have the proper point of view.
In this case I think we have the proper point of view. I refer to the member for Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys. He spoke about the Reform Party being like General Custer. General Custer was massacred. We are not being massacred; we are simply pointing out what is wrong with this agreement. The only possible way that we could compare members of the Reform Party with General Custer is that we stand alone. Reformers are the only ones who have said that this agreement needs to be rejigged or looked at again. We have also said that it needs to go before the people of British Columbia in the form of a referendum. However, the government, taking a page from of its cousins in British Columbia, the B.C. NDP caucus, has decided that no matter what stage this bill comes before the House it will impose closure and ram it through before Christmas. I do not think that is the way things should be done in this place.
Government members on the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development admitted that the only reason they went on the road with the committee was because of pressure brought to bear on them by the Reform Party. I find it appalling that the government would say that it is not in its best interests or it is not one of its priorities to take the standing committee to the people this agreement affects the most, but to do it only because it was embarrassed or forced into it by the official opposition.
Whether we are on that side of the House voting for the bill, in one of the three opposition parties voting for the bill, or in the Reform Party, which intends to vote against the bill, we have to agree that this will have a lot more effect on Canada than simply on the residents of British Columbia. It has a lot more to do with Canada than simply how it will affect the residents of British Columbia. It will affect the people of British Columbia. There is no question about that. However, it will affect everyone else in Canada as well.
We all know that there are at least 50 more of these deals to be negotiated in the province of British Columbia alone, and many more across Canada. I heard from members opposite that they do not think this agreement will be held up as a template for other agreements. I think that anyone who believes that has their head in the sand.
Why is it that every time this comes up we cannot even debate it? The Reform Party carries the debate for the entire day. Occasionally we touch a nerve and a member of one of the other parties will jump up and grace us with some thoughtful and insightful points, as in the case of my colleague from Wentworth—Burlington. Other than that, we have people coming in from that side of the House with predetermined notes which they simply recite. I guess that is allowable in this place, but it is hardly debate. Something that is as groundbreaking as this, something that is as precedent setting as this deserves a lot more debate than we have been giving it. Where are the people? Where are the debaters?
When I go to the schools in my riding I tell them that things are settled in the House of Commons by good, spirited debate, with speeches that are well thought out and well researched. When the students come here they find that is not always the case. They find that the government has a majority. We cannot expect the government to be hamstrung by a handful of people who want to completely derail its agenda, but debate should take place and it has not taken place in this case. That is a terrible travesty.
One of the things that we have said we do not like about this deal is that it sets a precedent by which all other agreements will be measured and argued. Therefore, we have to make sure we get this one right. This one above all has to be right. It has to be one that we can live with and that our children's children can live with, one that actually empowers native people and gives them freedom. I do not think, from what I have seen of this bill, that it accomplishes those things.
A couple of summers ago, on one of the Indian reserves in my riding, a group of people had a sit-in in an administration building. Their problem was that they were not being dealt with fairly. They said there was bias in how things were done by their band council. If they were in the in group, they were in; but if they were in the out group, they would never be in. They also said that huge amounts of money were not being accounted for. They wanted to have something done about it.
The member for Wild Rose, I and other members brought those problems to the House. We asked the former minister of Indian affairs if she would cause a forensic audit to be done that would either prove that the people who were making the claims were right or prove that the council had acted properly. The minister said “No. This is strictly their business. This is entirely up to them”.
There was no recourse for those people at that time. We think that there should be some sort of recourse in here for people who have complaints. My colleague for Wild Rose talked about—
