Mr. Speaker, this private member's bill deals with accountability for native people. Accountability is something that everybody claims we should have. There are many people on the government side who do their very best to ensure that many do not. Nowhere is the lack of accountability any more blatant than in the case of Canada's aboriginal people.
The two biggest problems that governments generally have foisted upon native people are the reserve system and the Indian Act.
I had occasion to be present at a service club where a native woman was the speaker for the evening. She was university educated and married to a Vancouver city police officer who was non-native. She was a very articulate woman. She pointed out that under the Indian Act, should she die, she is not even allowed to leave her estate to her husband or her children because the Indian Act makes her a ward of the government, a ward of the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.
Another problem is the reserve system. It is nothing more than the ghettoizing of Canada's native population. In my riding I have the largest concentration of Russian Doukhobor people in the world, bar none. Not even Russia. It was the Doukhobor people's custom to live in a communal lifestyle when they came to Canada. That is the way they established themselves. Over time they have chosen to integrate into society, to have regular jobs, to have homes and to participate in all the benefits and responsibilities of being Canadian. A few have chosen not to do that and have stayed in a communal lifestyle. The operative word is chosen.
That is something that is being taken away from Canada's native people. There are things being done that virtually force them or at least put a tremendous amount of pressure on them to stay on reserves. The money that goes to the various reserves is done on the basis of the population of the reserve. It is incumbent upon native leaders to find ways to encourage native people to remain on reserve. For people who are not already on reserve they try to force them, in one manner or another, to become residents of the reserve. It is nothing more than a feudal system.
One of the big problems is elections and how people are democratically elected. When I was talking about the Nisga'a treaty and some of the problems of potential autocratic leadership, some people asked if the leaders were not elected in most cases. The answer is that they are. As I pointed out to them, I am elected. I am the member of parliament for my riding. I am elected by the people of my riding to represent them. If I do not do a good job, they are entitled to write to a newspaper, go on radio, stand on the street corner and rail against me, and run against me in the next election. If they beat me, fine. If they do not, life goes on.
What if I owned all their houses, owned their bank accounts and controlled where they worked? What kind of accountability would people have if they became leaders with that incredible kind of power or if someone ran against them and was not successful? When the same people was back into power, what kind or retribution would they force upon the people who had the temerity to run against them and to speak out against them? What is holding those leaders accountable to native people when such things happen?
We have documented case after case of situations where that has happened. That is not to say that some native bands cannot act benevolently on behalf of their people. We have some excellent cases of that. The Sechelt band operates very effectively with a municipal style native government.
We have other examples. I mentioned the Nisga'a so I will start with them. Many Nisga'a people live in poverty on reserves, in very oppressive conditions, but there are only 1,700 native people on Nisga'a lands at this point in time. Yet $29 million a year go into their treasury from the provincial and federal governments for 1,700 people. Of course there are individual incomes. How come so many of them are living in such poverty if they have $29 million a year?
If that is not bad enough, we have the Stoney just across the B.C. border in Alberta. They total 3,300 people and have $50 million a year in income. Yet again many of them live in poverty, some to the point of living in basements of condemned homes. What happens to that money and where is the accountability?
Who speaks on behalf of native people who are looking for help and looking for better living conditions on reserves with the money coming in that is supposed to be theirs in part and supposed to be handled by the leaders on their behalf? Somehow magically it disappears and they are not getting help.
We have many other examples. The 5,500 Samson Cree have an income of $92 million a year and yet many people on those reserves are living in very trying conditions.
The government reluctantly agreed under pressure from us to the Nisga'a committee travelling. It made a procedural mistake in the House and had no choice but to agree to it in spite of the fact that it publicly stated it did not want to be there. The government rigged, and I use that word without any hesitation, the witness list to ensure that people who had something to say were not allowed to do so.
We held an additional day of hearings for people who were frozen out by the Liberal list. We heard from members of the Squamish band who own a great deal of very valuable, very expensive commercial real estate in West Vancouver. They get tremendous royalties and revenues from that as well as the usual provincial and federal government payments. They told us that they received an income of $900 a year from the band in terms of help. We heard cases of people living in rat infested, rusted out trailers. That was the housing provided by the band. There is no accountability, none at all.
Welfare or social assistance is not paid directly to natives who live on reservations. It is paid to the band council. When that money is paid, the government looks upon the council to fairly distribute it to people in need.
One of the four tribal councils of the Nisga'a is under investigation for welfare fraud. The money that has been going to aid people in need on reservations has in fact not been reaching them. The preliminary investigation indicates that tribal council members' wives and children have been placed on the rolls to receive the money themselves.
What are the solutions? One of the first problems we always encounter is getting the government to admit there is a problem. It seems it has at least done that. A letter was written to a constituent by the then parliamentary secretary. I believe he still is the parliamentary secretary. There is much that can be said on the issue, but my time is coming to an end. We think the government should be held accountable. It was acknowledged in the letter which I do not have time to read now that there was a need for accountability. An article in the paper indicated that funding was going to leaders of various special boards to assist people but that it was not getting to them at all.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development is indicating that I should be cut off. I can well understand why he would want me to be cut off. The Liberals do not want the truth to get out, but it will get out through newspapers, through us and through native people speaking out.
When will the government start listening and start helping people instead of shovelling money at the people who support them? When will it be accountable and start dealing with the real problems of native people instead of trying to buy them off through their leaders?
