Jim Gouk

[Nisga'A Final Agreement Act, December 6th, 1999]

moved:

Motion No. 150

That Bill C-9 be amended by adding after line 29 on page 7 the following new clause:

“20.1 Every two years, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development shall table in each House of Parliament a report on the state of the Nisga'a Final Agreement.”

[Aboriginal Affairs, December 6th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, those are the words of the premier of British Columbia.

Let us go to the words of Liberal cabinet ministers. The Secretary of State for the Status of Women acknowledged that there are in fact problems in the Nisga'a treaty regarding the absence of rights for women. On Friday, the minister also agreed with her that the rights of women are left out of the agreement.

Why is he in such a rush to shut down debate on a treaty that does not ensure the rights of Nisga'a women?

[Aboriginal Affairs, December 6th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the Nisga'a treaty is a template for all future settlements in British Columbia. That is a quote from the then premier of British Columbia who signed on behalf of the NDP government.

Recently, at a standing committee on aboriginal affairs meeting, the minister admitted that there are flaws in the agreement but that he will not accept amendments.

Why is the minister allowing this precedent setting treaty to go through unamended when he acknowledges there are problems with it?

[Aboriginal Affairs, December 3rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the Gitanyow testified before a parliamentary committee that their hereditary lands were being given to the Nisga'a. The Nisga'a got to vote on accepting these lands, but the Gitanyow did not get to vote on giving them up.

This Nisga'a treaty has an impact on aboriginal and non-aboriginals alike throughout B.C., including ranchers in the Okanagan, fishermen on the west coast and loggers everywhere. Why is the government refusing to allow all affected British Columbians the vote in a province-wide referendum on this precedent setting treaty?

[Nisga'A Final Agreement Act, December 2nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, as you well know, I could probably fill the entire day of debate on some of the things that the Reform in general have been doing and I, in particular, have been doing. However, in the limited time that I have and as has been stated by our critic from Skeena, we would like to put into record some of the things that were provided to us by people who were denied access to the main committee by the Liberal government but came before the special hearings held by Reform to give these people an opportunity.

One particular individual, Ehor Boyanowsky, is a professor of criminal psychology at Simon Fraser University. His area of expertise is individual and group violence and inter-group violence and conflict. Mr. Boyanowsky stated that he is also a writer and he finds that sometimes things can be put in better perspective with a story than with a long string of facts and figures. Mr. Boyanowsky told us a story which is an extrapolation of current facts into a future scenario.

The year is 2025. A young woman has arrived in Vancouver with her small children to seek her fortune.

The azure of the sky and ocean, the green of the forested mountains filled her with exhilaration and hope. Not for long. Vancouver, bounded by Musqueam, Sto:lo, Squamish and other national territories, though vital at its core as a city-state, inhabited by an international population, was crumbling at its extremities where aboriginal government had the purchased land and incorporated it into the national territories ceded by recent treaties, thereby removing them from provincial and municipal tax base. Tenants faced with sky rocketing rents, no longer able to vote for local government, and no longer fully protected by the Canadian constitution, were bailing out. As a result, rents both on Indian lands and in the city centre were among the highest in the world.

Despite heavy subsidies provided by the federal government, since the signing over of over 5 treaties, aboriginal leadership claimed they could not finance the infrastructure for the rapidly expanding land base. Animosity toward treaty aboriginals was so high they no longer were safe to walk the streets of Vancouver unprotected. She decided to head up north. There were teaching positions advertised in the Nisga'a national territory, a vast area at the time of ratification of the treaty, about four-fifths of the size of Vancouver Island. With the recent expansion and incorporation of surrounding lands, the territory had now grown to 125 per cent of the size of Vancouver Island. It had taken two days passing through interminable aboriginal territorial check points to get there. Twice she had been checked by aboriginal militia for contraband, fish, wildlife, meats or plants prohibited from being transported from one tribal territory to another.

Twice she'd been fined for being in possession of goods without a bill of sale from an establishment in that territory. Twice she'd had to buy permits for legal access on to lands away from the highway. The countryside was littered with abandoned houses, those of white settlers, peoples whose families had been there for nearly a hundred years.

They'd suddenly found themselves, as a result of treaties, or through the expansion of aboriginal lands, either on or surrounded by aboriginal homeland territory. Ironically, those disenfranchised citizens of a diminishing Canadian nation regarded themselves as native Canadians born and bred over many generations. Now they were dispossessed and bitter living in city enclaves like Prince George and Prince Rupert. As she went farther north, the encounters at borders got more tense.

Young men of the various aboriginal militia dressed in camouflage fatigues sat on armoured all-terrain vehicles nervously fondling their assault weapons. There had been clashes among Gitanyow and Nisga'a militia and others, and the Gitanyow were specially bitter about the original Nisga'a Treaty ratified back in the turn of the century. They claim that they had been cheated out of much of their traditional territory. They cursed the politicians of the time, both white and aboriginal. She arrived in New Aiyansh, the major Nisga'a centre. To her surprise, it looked much like an Indian reserve of old, but bigger. Unprepossessing tract houses, most fewer than two years old, were scattered to the horizon.

Until she came to a very posh suburb of large, palatial houses more reminiscent of southern California than northern British Columbia, patrolled by uniformed security and guard dogs. It was where the chiefs and the executive council lived. The charming young man from the Nisga'a University explained to her that these standards of living were necessary to attract capable people into politics and administration. Since the resources were held in common, you couldn't borrow against individual land or resources to build a business.

She got the job and as she lived there, she discovered that individual Nisga'a trying to get ahead would move any finances they acquired off-shore buying condos in Hawaii, et cetera, to avoid them being reabsorbed by the nation when there was a change in the administration and a rival family got into power. She fell in love, got married and ended up living with the young Nisga'a man for four years. He spoke longingly of united native nations that would opt out of B.C. entirely, but several forces colluded and produced a crisis. Canada racked by the financial demands of treaties renegotiated across the country, reduced subsidies drastically.

The Nisga'a nation having expanded quickly, was over-extended and things grew worse as border clashes increased with the discovery of oil and gas in the disputed territories. Resources, especially precious, as the nation paid no royalties to the Canadian or B.C. governments.

Her partner was voted out of office and went into a downward spiral personally. Eventually he asked her to leave and she moved with her children into an empty house. Her lawyer informed her that under Nisga'a law she had no right to any support or compensation. She received notice she was being terminated in her teaching position. Non-Nisga'a did not qualify for tenure. The Nisga'a administration building was blown up soon after. A group of disaffected, displaced, residents calling themselves Canadians Against Racism claimed responsibility. As a result, all whites on Nisga'a land were told their movements would be severely restricted. Given the sudden instability, the Nisga'a deal with the Japanese oil developers fell through. She took her children and headed north and east, perhaps to Ontario or Nunavut, where she'd heard that a non-aboriginal still had rights.

Though this story may appear to be fiction to many readers, the conditions making it possible have already been created within the Nisga'a treaty operating in concert with recent supreme court decisions. We can prevent such an outcome by replacing the Nisga'a treaty with one that allows compensation without segregation, settlement without disenfranchisement. Canadians must act on the courage of their convictions if they believe that an egalitarian, non-conflictual vision of Canada should exist.

Those were the words that were presented. This is a very troubling vision but also one that he points out could come into reality because the conditions necessary are now being put in place by the government.

I would like to close with two points of my own because I mentioned the Gitanyow being concerned about a conflict with land. When the all party committee held its meeting in Smithers members of the Bloc Quebecois stated to the Gitanyow that they were interested in supporting an amendment to the treaty which would take the disputed lands out of the treaty at this time and hold them apart. I have yet to see that amendment come forth from them.

The government has told us that the people of B.C. will have a vote. We have called for a referendum. Government members state that the residents of British Columbia will have a vote through B.C. members of parliament. B.C. members of parliament, represented largely by the Reform Party, in consultation with their constituents are voting against this treaty.

I hope the government will honour its own words and allow B.C. MPs to represent their constituents, recognize that it is a B.C. treaty and withdraw this legislation. At the very minimum the government should give them a vote. If it will not allow their MPs to direct the government then those people should be allowed to vote themselves. It is a troubling word to the party on the other side but that is democracy.

[Canadian Institutes Of Health Research Act, November 25th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I thought the member made an excellent speech, in particular when he spoke about these things touching someone close. We tend to make statistics out of people. It is nice to get in touch directly with the plight of an individual person. It sometimes helps to put things in a better perspective.

One area of concern that I have with Bill C-13 is that it sets up yet another bureaucracy. The intent of the bill is that it will keep the administrative costs to 4% to 5% of the total budget. Reality says that is not what turns out. Once we start creating a bureaucracy, more and more of the money intended to help people ends up going to drive this great bureaucracy.

I wonder if my colleague could touch on that and advise as to whether he has any concerns about the way government structures these types of things and how it uses money which should be going to help people, such as those he described.

[Municipal Grants Act, November 25th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. He raised a couple of important points, including the whole concept of special status. He asked if there should be special status for the federal government. No, there should not be special status for anyone.

During my speech I raised the Nisga'a treaty as an example. One of the biggest objections we have to the Nisga'a treaty is that it provides special status for some. The word equality is used all the time. We hear it used by both sides of the House, yet the government grants special status to the Nisga'a under the Nisga'a treaty. It grants special status to itself under Bill C-10. Now we can see where it is coming from when it had no problem with that aspect of the Nisga'a treaty.

There is an old adage about things that flow downhill. We know what that is and where the source is. There has been a lot of downloading. The federal government has downloaded a lot of costs for things onto the provinces. But the provinces are also taxing authorities so they keep it flowing downhill until it reaches the municipalities.

In their own respect, municipalities, towns and cities are also taxing authorities but they are extremely limited. They have no actual power. It is a delegated power, unlike that of the Nisga'a who have actual self-government that is entrenched in the constitution. Municipalities have only those powers delegated to them by higher authorities.

The government with this bill is saying it may pay or it may not, and because the government has power over the municipalities it will decide whether they get paid or not. It is extremely unfair for the biggest brother in Canada to download on the little brothers, the provinces, who then download on the non-status towns and municipalities throughout the country while saying it is transferring all of its costs downhill.

For the federal government to look good it passes it to the provincial governments. For the provincial governments to survive, having lost the money but which are still expected to provide the same services, they download some of it to the municipalities. Now big brother back in Ottawa is saying it is downloading but it may not, and in some cases likely will not, pay its share of the bill. When I say likely, and in some cases definitely, I mean Canada Post in particular. The mint is also in that category but it is somewhat isolated. Canada Post is all over the country, and for the government not to put it in schedule IV is an absolute download on municipalities and towns with no hope of their collecting.

It is a shameful thing when the government forces new costs on those small areas and then refuses to pay its bills.

[Municipal Grants Act, November 25th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-10 today. I will start by dealing with a bit of a problem that opposition members have with various bits of government legislation.

When I first came to parliament I made what is euphemistically known as my maiden speech. I am surprised feminists nowadays have not insisted we change that name. In any case, I made my speech in which I said that I was not here to oppose for opposition sake, that if the government came forward with good legislation I would be the first to congratulate it. If it came forward with legislation that had merit but could be improved, I would try to suggest constructive improvements to it. Only when it was clearly bad and virtually unfixable would I then try to oppose it very strongly.

One of the other problems we have is what to do with legislation in which there is a bit of good and a bit of bad. What do we do in that situation? Do we really congratulate them because they have actually come out with some good? Or, do we criticize them for all the things that are missing and the things that are wrong in it? In the case of the particular bill I will do both and I will do it concurrently because the merits and the deficiencies of the bill are intertwined.

Under the bill interest may now be paid by the federal government to municipalities. This is one of the good parts of the bill. However, it is only if in the opinion of the minister the payment has been unreasonably delayed. Likewise, supplementary payments can be made but only if the payment has been unreasonably delayed as defined by the minister.

Some government property is currently leased to non-government third parties. In some cases these parties do not pay their taxes. Of the hierarchy of people who get tax revenues, the ones that can least afford to be hit are the municipalities, cities, and particularly small towns.

Bill C-10 proposes that the Department of Public Works and Government Services would make payment in lieu of taxes at the end of the taxation year, provided the taxing authority has made all reasonable efforts to collect the taxes and there is no likelihood they will ever collect them, if in the opinion of the minister the necessary conditions have been met. At this point I think everyone can clearly see what kind of pattern is starting to appear.

In 1983 the Minister of Public Works and Government Services established a municipal grants review committee. Its function was to provide advice on resolution of disputes between the taxing authorities and the federal government. The advice was non-binding and thus most people felt it was meaningless. We hope that this will finally be corrected under Bill C-10. Essentially Bill C-10 puts this whole process into legislation.

However, let us look at exactly how it does so. The minister hand picks the members and appoints the chair as well. With this kind of control over the advisory panel, its recommendations are non-binding to the minister. This is really a lot of show because we can see the predominant pattern once again.

Schedule IV of the Municipal Grants Act lists corporations involved in profit oriented activities and therefore pay both property and business occupancy related payments in lieu of taxes. The joint technical committee on payment in lieu of taxes recommended that Canada Post Corporation and the Royal Canadian Mint be added to schedule IV. This recommendation has been ignored.

As we know Canada Post now has a mandate to make a profit and has indeed been making a profit. Even more notoriously the Canadian Mint has been going nose to nose against private sector companies for the minting of not only Canadian coins but foreign orders and business as well. It stands to put an Alberta company out of business because the highly subsidized Canadian Mint is going into competition with it and using the stature of being a crown corporation, on top of the subsidies it gets, to compete against this private sector company.

This certainly sends a message to those who might wonder how the minister will deal with other non-binding aspects of the bill. If he ignores this recommendation, why would anybody believe he would follow a recommendation in favour of a taxing authority in any of the other circumstances I have previously listed?

At the beginning of my speech I implied that the bill had some good points. In review, those good points are so softened by the discretionary powers of the minister to suggest that they are worthless. However these problems could be fixed and could be fixed very easily.

All we need to do is remove the discretionary power of the minister and make interest for late payments a requirement for payment of delinquent third party taxes, recommend that the recommendations of the advisory panel be binding, and include Canada Post and the Royal Canadian Mint in schedule IV of the Municipal Grants Act. It is that simple and that fair. I hope the government would seriously consider putting these kinds of amendments into its bill.

Sometimes it is a stretch, but I have to assume that the government actually wants to write good legislation. When we see things like Bill C-68, like the Nisga'a legislation and a lot of others, we have to wonder if in fact it wants to write good legislation. In this case I think there has been at least a half hearted effort to write something with some decency in it. Perhaps it will consider these amendments.

Also the legislation gives cause to look at another situation which is in direct conflict with the alleged intent of Bill C-10. Bill C-10 sets out certain rights for local taxing authorities which in essence are local, civil, municipal or regional governments. It also makes clear that those rights are extremely limited and given only through the discretion of the federal minister. This means they can be taken away or never even granted in the first place despite the legislation.

What a contrast this makes to the unprecedented constitutionally enshrined self-government powers of the Nisga'a under the Nisga'a treaty. The Nisga'a will have the only recognized government outside the federal and provincial governments. What a comparison when we compare Nisga'a rights against those of the small towns in my riding. Towns like Oliver, Osoyoos, Grand Forks, Trail, Castlegar and Nelson will get absolutely no guarantees of anything under this legislation. Neither will large cities like Vancouver, Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, Toronto or Montreal.

The Nisga'a legislation gives powers to approximately 2,000 people living on Nisga'a lands. It gives them the ability to direct even the federal government in certain areas. They have powers in terms of such things as schooling, policing and a variety of things over which municipalities have no say whatsoever. They even have in their treaty a special provision for future potential taxing rights which no other town, city or municipality in Canada has.

Would it not be interesting if we went to the Nisga'a and said that there were a lot of payments they should be getting from the Canadian Government but we have made them discretionary and will decide on a case by case basis whether or not we think we should pay them? If we think we should not pay then we will not and they will have absolutely no say in it.

Let us compare that to what the Nisga'a actually get and what all the other towns I have listed get. These are towns like the ones that everybody in parliament represents. If the government wants to be fair it has to remove that discretionary consideration and at least give some pretence of giving something not only to small towns like those in my riding but even to the largest cities.

Right now the mayor of Toronto is talking about seceding from Ontario. The Bloc must have really loved that when he came out with that one. Toronto would secede from Ontario and set up a new province of Toronto. Heaven only knows it has enough people. I suspect that it would probably be the fourth or fifth largest populated province in Canada.

As it stands on the edge of expressing a desire to do this, even Toronto does not have the powers the government is giving to 2,000 people living on Nisga'a lands. What a comparison when we start talking about discretionary powers where the government may make some payment to a town or a municipality under Bill C-10.

I would like to end my comments by making an analogy that gives some perspective on Bill C-10. It promises certain things to municipalities and towns but in fact is only teasing with it because they may never see it.

I said the bill had good things and bad things. I would like to leave members with the picture of going out to a store and buying a great big meaty bone for a dog. That is good thing to do. The dog will be happy. Animal rights people will be happy. They will feel good about the good thing they have done. Then if they bring the bone home and use it to tease the dog by dangling it in front of it and snatching it away every time it reaches for it, that would be bad. That is exactly what the bill does.

The bill issues a potential of living up to its obligations to the municipalities, of making the payments that many of the municipalities desperately need, because they are providing services to crown owned properties inside their areas. The federal government is saying “Here is this tax. We think we will give it to you but if we think that you do not deserve it, we will not pay and there is not a damn thing you can do about it”.

The government has started with something that has a little bit of potential. I hope it has the integrity and fortitude to make the changes and turn good intentions into reality.

[Petitions, November 25th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the final petition deals with child poverty.

The petitioners point out that in 1989 the House of Commons unanimously resolved to end child poverty by the year 2000 and that notwithstanding that resolve it has actually increased.

They therefore call upon parliament to use the federal budget for the year 2000 to introduce a multiyear plan to improve the well-being of Canada's children.

[Petitions, November 25th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition deals with immigration. This one is largely arising out of the situation with the recent boat people coming into British Columbia.

In this case the petitioners are asking that the government invoke changes to the Immigration Act to ensure that bogus refugees are dealt with swiftly and surely.