Val Meredith

[Supply, June 3rd, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I am privileged to stand today to try to bring some clarification to the Nisga'a final agreement which the government has already endorsed. I am afraid that the government will take the same route that the provincial NDP government took to limit debate and move time allocation or closure on this debate when it reaches the House in the fall.

It distresses me that there seems to be an unwillingness on the part of governments, both in British Columbia and here in Ottawa, to look at this agreement with an open eye, to really look at the document and try to answer some very serious questions that the people of British Columbia have and that the people of Canada should have.

The concern that we have in British Columbia is that the precedent setting Nisga'a final agreement will have ramifications across the country and Canadians should be aware of what those ramifications might be.

Already in Alberta we have Treaty 8. There is talk about re-opening that treaty. Treaties which have been agreed to and have been in place for a good number of years may be changed because of the final agreement that has been settled with the Nisga'a people.

What is also a concern from British Columbians' point of view is that the Nisga'a agreement will be a template for 60 other treaties that are under negotiation. However, we should understand that those 60 agreements which are being negotiated now do not represent the total number of aboriginal communities trying to reach agreement. There are a good number of aboriginal communities. The first nation in my riding is not taking part in the treaty negotiations because it does not believe that it is a process which it wants to follow. We are not talking about 60 treaty agreements, we are talking about many more.

While this treaty has yet to be ratified by the House, which would put it into the position of being considered under section 35 of the constitution, there are already four law suits pending.

People can say it is just the non-aboriginal people who are concerned. No, it is not. The Gitanyow band from up north has a court case against the Nisga'a and against this treaty because the Nisga'a have seized up to 84% of its traditional territory in the Nass Valley. Eighty-four per cent of the land that is claimed by another first nation is being absorbed in this agreement.

A leader of the Gitanyow has stated that they are concerned that the Nisga'a were never required to prove the extent of their title to resolve the overlaps in land claims. They feel it is a violation of aboriginal law and federal policy.

According to one individual, it is not right to sacrifice the land entitlement of one nation to obtain a treaty with another nation.

It is not just non-aboriginals, it is aboriginals themselves who have taken the Nisga'a to court to resolve some of the issues that are not clear and to try to resolve some of the conflicts which this agreement has already established.

We feel very strongly in the Reform Party that we must settle some of the things which are not clear, the uncertainties, through the courts on this agreement before the House ratifies it. How can we ratify an agreement when there are four lawsuits before the courts concerning its legality and the land it entails? How can we possibly ratify this agreement with those four cases before the courts?

One reason we brought this motion to the House today for debate is because there are so many constitutional and legal issues that must be clarified.

We have heard over the past number of months when we have raised this issue in the House the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development claim that the Nisga'a government will be subject to the charter of rights and freedoms.

I want to read directly from the Nisga'a final agreement, which states that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms applies to Nisga'a government in respect of all matters within its authority, bearing in mind the free and democratic nature of Nisga'a government as set out in this agreement.

If this agreement is going to recognize the charter of rights, why does it include “bearing in mind the free and democratic nature of Nisga'a government as set out in this agreement”? Why does it not just say that the charter of rights and freedoms applies to Nisga'a government?

I would suggest that the reason is quite simple. It is that the government is wanting to leave the ambiguity in the agreement so that the courts understand clearly that they are expected to treat the Nisga'a people differently and not to apply the charter of rights as it would apply to any other Canadian. I can think of no other reason than to force the courts to treat the Nisga'a people differently under the charter of rights.

I had many experiences in my previous life of aboriginal communities taking on responsibility for themselves. I was an observer of 11 aboriginal communities in northern Alberta taking on the responsibility under the Lesser Slave Lake Indian Regional Council to provide education, welfare and social services to their people and to co-operate to provide good regional government for their people. However, it was never done with constitutional protection. It was never done by forming another level of government. They were very successful over a large number of years in providing these services without the need to form another level of government.

In British Columbia we have seen a number of cases where aboriginal communities have achieved more authority in running their programs and their communities, but they have not shown a good degree of responsibility. I refer to the Musqueam Band and the Semiahmoo Band. In both cases they were not fair in their treatment of non-aboriginal individuals within their communities.

The Musqueam Band has raised rents extraordinarily, out of reason. One individual got a bill for $73,000 for 18 months' rent from the Musqueam Band. Although their rents skyrocketed, the actual value of the land and their property plummeted. It now has no value at all.

All of this is because of an attitude of an aboriginal people who are being supported by provincial and federal governments which allow them to completely disregard fairness and equity for non-aboriginals.

It also happened in my own community where there were nine non-aboriginal residents who lost their homes. They lost those homes after 40 or 50 years with absolutely no compensation. They were evicted. I would question if that would be allowed to happen if it was a white Anglo-Saxon male making the decision.

There are too many questions left unanswered in this final Nisga'a agreement. The uncertainty of the legal status of the Nisga'a treaty and the Nisga'a government must be resolved in the courts before the agreement is ratified here in the House. Nobody can predict what the courts' reaction and decisions will be.

I would suggest to the House that when the Prime Minister helped to introduce the charter of rights and freedoms many years ago he never for a moment contemplated that pedophiles would have a legal right to child pornography. I do not think we can leave uncertainty and ambiguity in our agreement. We cannot ratify this agreement. We must be more certain of what it means and what its ramifications will be across the country. I would like to think that parliamentarians and Canadian people as a whole have a right to know what the legal ramifications will be before parliament ratifies this agreement.

[Supply, June 3rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre asked whether or not the Nisga'a law would be superseded by provincial or federal law. I would just like to ask the hon. member what it means when paragraph 32 says that in the event of an inconsistency or conflict between this agreement and the provisions of any Nisga'a law, this agreement prevails to the extent of the inconsistency or conflict.

Paragraph 36 states that in the event of any inconsistency or conflict between a Nisga'a law under paragraph 34 or 35 and a federal or provincial law, the Nisga'a law prevails to the extent of the inconsistency or conflict. Paragraph 40 again refers to in the event of inconsistency.

I could go on. I understand it says 14 times that in the event of inconsistency or conflict between Nisga'a law under paragraph whatever and federal or provincial law, the Nisga'a law prevails to the extent of the inconsistency. Could the hon. member tell me what this means?

[Supply, June 3rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I do not believe the hon. member answered the question. The question was: Can this agreement be amended without a more complicated constitutional amendment formula? I would like to add to that question: Is it not true that it takes the agreement of all parties to amend this agreement? Is it not true that this treaty will become part of the constitution under section 35, and protected under that section, and therefore any changes to it would have to go through constitutional amendment processes?

[Petitions, May 28th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, my third petition concerns the Nisga'a treaty which has been proposed and supported by the provincial and federal governments.

The petitioners pray and request parliament to reject the Nisga'a treaty as it may divide Canadians forever. I honourably submit these petition on behalf of my constituents.

[Petitions, May 28th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition concerns the definition of marriage.

The petitioners pray that parliament enact legislation, such as Bill C-225, so as to define in statute that a marriage can only be entered between a single male and a single female.

[Petitions, May 28th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it is my great pleasure to present three petitions. The first petition is from my constituents and others in British Columbia.

Because of poor decision making by the government, which often disrupts the peaceful nature of Canadian society and financially encumbers the average Canadian, the petitioners call upon parliament to enact legislation that gives voting Canadian citizens a citizen initiative referendum system by which they can vote on major issues that may affect the well-being of the nation.

[Nanoose Bay, May 28th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, for years the government has bragged about its improved relations with the provinces, but actions speak much louder than words. Let us examine the recent actions in British Columbia.

Two years ago when the B.C. government announced that it would not be renewing the lease for Nanoose Bay, the federal government immediately launched a lawsuit against the province. However, when the federal government found it did not have a legal leg to stand on, it quietly dropped the lawsuit and finally started negotiations two months ago.

After three weeks of negotiations both parties signed an understanding on May 5, but less than 10 days later the federal government proceeded with expropriation.

The B.C. government may have made a dumb decision on this issue, but if dumb decisions lead to expropriation, then this Liberal government would have been expropriated years ago.

[Reform Of International Organizations, May 27th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, it is very distressing to me to hear that the government is once again going to invoke closure or time allocation to limit our debate on another bill in the House. I find it abhorrent that this government continues this practice.

I am also sorry that the hon. member who last spoke has left because he reconfirmed something that I have thought for the last six years, that this government has no ability to walk and chew gum at the same time. He talked about fuzzing up the issue and bringing in too many things to consider at any one time. I would like to think that it is only the Liberals who do not have the ability to look at a much broader vision of how the world can work together and how Canada can participate in working with other countries to resolve some of the situations in which we find ourselves.

I would like to speak to private member's Motion No. 338 that my hon. colleague and seatmate, the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, has submitted to the House. I do not feel that he is placing the government in a difficult position at all. All he is asking is that the government convene a meeting of like-minded nations to develop foreign policy, to develop a concept to prevent conflict around the world and to step in before it becomes war. When the signs are there that it is inevitable, the nations of the world could figure out how to determine what the signals are, what we should be looking for and then what our response to those signals should be.

I cannot understand how government members can see any reason for not supporting the motion. I do not understand it.

We have many world organizations—NATO, the United Nations, the IMF—which have the jurisdiction or the ability to talk to nations about various issues, to sit down and try to come to some resolution, but it is not working.

There are many reasons it is not working. We all have identified and even the organizations themselves have identified the need to reform these organizations. It would not hurt to have like-minded nations sit down to talk about how things could be changed and to reform the various institutions of which we are a part.

We have the situation now where NATO is in the former Yugoslavia. There are criticisms that NATO stepped in when it should not have, that it should have been the United Nations. However, the United Nations was not prepared to move. Even if it had moved, it is after the fact. Conflict has broken out. It should have looked at the evidence, at the situation and at the signals that this was going to happen and it should have stepped in many years ago to try to resolve the issues.

The hon. member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca has written a number of papers on this issue. He has looked at it very deeply and has come up with a number of ways in which these issues could be sorted out and various responses that could be developed.

I want to share with the House some of the issues that he feels could be dealt with. He has listed a number of things which indicate that there could be difficulties which could lead to crises and he reports on the ways that we could respond to them. For example: to have diplomatic initiatives to diffuse the tensions between ethnic groups and encourage peacekeeping initiatives between these rival groups; to introduce positive information to counter the negative information that is being spread; to have an international arms registry that deals with specific arms, which would go a long way to adding a measure of transparency and accountability where there are military organizations.

The member feels that one of the most important ways is to bring in the international financial institutions, especially the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Why I would agree with my hon. colleague that these are important is because so often in world crisis situations the provinces with the wealth, the developed nations, are asked to enter into a conflict in terms of a military or peacekeeping venture, as we have seen with Kosovo, but when the conflict is over they are asked to be the primary supporters in the post-conflict restructuring.

I would suggest that perhaps through these international financial institutions we could have the ability to extend that lever or carrot to those nations that have conflict so perhaps they could find more peaceful resolutions and be rewarded with financial support for resolving those issues that are bringing this conflict to a head.

When countries enter a conflict and show a lack of response to their citizens by not recognizing the human rights of their citizens, those nations should be sanctioned by those international monetary organizations. They should not be funded for the building up of arms or for the setting up of governments that do not respect human rights.

I appreciate that our western civilization puts a lot of emphasis on individual rights and that the European tradition is perhaps not geared that way, that the European and Asian traditions are geared more to collective rights as opposed to individual rights. However, I think there is a respect worldwide for the need to recognize human rights. No nation, whether it believes in collective rights or individual rights, has the right to kill, to hold in captivity or to expel their minorities or their citizens who they have problems and difficulties with.

Even though there might be a different approach to individual or collective rights, as an international community we have to use the ability we have, either through foreign aid or loans through the International Monetary Fund, to reward those countries that are developing in a humane way and treating their citizens with respect and sanction those that are not. That is a powerful tool.

A meeting of like minds is all the motion is suggesting. It is suggesting that Canada initiate a meeting with nations that can start to collectively put their minds together on how to identify nations that are reaching a position of conflict or are getting into a situation that may go beyond what is considered to be acceptable behaviour or treatment. It is to get these nations to start thinking on how we can avoid such situations. It is to consider what kind of sanctions or methods we can use to intervene in those cases.

My colleague deserves a lot of credit for being far-reaching in his outlook on international affairs and for not being afraid to consider what others would think might be impossible. I would like to join my hon. colleague from Fraser Valley in saying that my colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca chose once before to reach out on, what other people thought was impossible, the landmine issue. He showed them that it can work.

I would like to commend the member for those efforts with the landmine issue. I would like to commend him for making us think that something else that looks impossible might be possible if we put our minds together.

I hope the Liberals will see fit to support the motion.

[Division No. 428, May 13th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to be added to the list of the official opposition, please.

[Aboriginal Affairs, May 5th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it is the government, not the opposition, which is denying Nisga'a women their rights.

In the event of a marriage breakdown the Nisga'a women have no legal protection under the treaty for property rights.

Can the minister give me the section and verse of the Nisga'a agreement that guarantees Nisga'a women property rights protection?