Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your understanding.
Here we are again with the governing Liberals, the NDP, the Bloc and the fifth party all supporting the bill and the Reform Party standing alone in opposition to this bill. It reminds me somewhat of the Charlottetown accord when Reform stood alone. We were the only national party in the country that stood alone against the Charlottetown accord. Yes, we were on the side of Canadians from coast to coast, including many natives.
We have the rest of the parties extolling the Nisga'a treaty, which is a template for many settlements to follow. It is a tragedy that the Nisga'a treaty is cast from the same mould as most other treaties that have formed the reservation system in the country.
The reserve system must be a shining light, just an extolling example of how well the system works. Let us have a short look at one of the wealthiest reserves and bands in the country, which is in my home province of Alberta at Hobbema. It is one of the four bands in my riding. It is the Samson Band. It has lived under a treaty for over 100. I believe it was Treaty No. 7 that that created this particular reserve system. We should look at this to understand a modern reserve to see whether a reserve system is a good example to follow, to perpetuate. This should be a model reserve, a shining example.
There was a recent study of the Samson band which really shatters any notion that the reserve system is a shining light. We should examine whether the reserve system has worked in the past, whether it is currently working and whether it has the potential to work in the future.
The Samson band receives millions of taxpayers' dollars in addition to the millions from their oil and gas revenues. In 1996, the Samson band had an income of about $100 million for just over 5,000 people. However, most of the members live in wretched poverty in one of the wealthiest bands in the country.
Let us talk a little about their leaders. They jet off to Paris, London and Geneva. They hold council meetings in Las Vegas with all expenses paid while 80% of the members of the band are on welfare and 85% are unemployed. This was in 1996, just a few years ago. The majority live in shacks, many without windows and many without any form of heat whatsoever.
How did it come about that we are perpetuating the reserve system in the Nisga'a treaty, because we are forming another reserve in British Columbia, or at least verifying the reserve system through a treaty? I will comment on the framework of how this bill has come about and on how other legislation comes about in the House.
One of the country's most alarming attributes is the expanding gulf between the views of the Ottawa establishment, the bureaucracy and some politicians, in other words the Ottawa court party, and the views of the average taxpaying Canadian who lives out there in the general populace.
This gulf is discernible in many areas of government, from the state of government wasteful spending to the state of the huge debt that Canadians are facing. Nowhere is this huge expansive gulf more evident than on the whole issue of native affairs. Hence, we get Bill C-9, the provisions of which are entirely divergent, completely out of sync and out of step with the views of the average Canadian.
If average Canadians were familiar with the provisions in Bill C-9, they would think that these provisions came straight out of coo-coo land. Let us look at some of the most basic provisions in Bill C-9.
The treaty calls for a a big injection of cash of almost half a million dollars to be handed over directly to the Nisga'a in the Nass Valley. It does not stop there. There is an annual payment, which goes on for years and years, that could well bring the total cash injection by Canadian taxpayers to around $1 billion. That is a huge cash injection.
The other issue is the land mass. What about the land mass, the kind of reserve that is being set up? It is approximately 2,000 square kilometres. To put that a little more in tune with the way people can understand it, that is almost a half a million acres. That is the size of the reserve. In addition to that there are 10,000 square kilometres that are given over for the Nisga'a to control: the resources, forestry, timber, fisheries, whatever resources there are. That is given to the Nisga'a to control.
Those 10,000 square kilometres are two and a half million acres. Put it together it is three million acres, a big percentage of B.C.'s land mass that is turned over in just one settlement, one treaty. There are between 50 or 60 more that are to be settled in the province of British Columbia alone. As is well known, the claims call for over 100% of the total land mass of British Columbia.
I want to read into the record comments of submissions made to our own Reform Party hearing in Vancouver last Friday. This is from a former premier of British Columbia. In his submission he states:
That natives have been discriminated against is self-evident. Entrenchment of the reserves, which have kept natives apart from the rest of us has clearly been a disaster. The reason many have had to live in third world conditions in the midst of a land of prosperity is that they have been demoralized by a welfare state which has denied them the same opportunities as everyone else, and by essentially making many of them prisoners to remote, isolated reserves with little economic opportunity and even fewer business opportunities. Native people have been forced to live in poverty, whether they want to or not. The Nisga'a Treaty will entrench the situation even more deeply than it is now. It will Balkanize our province into groups of people based on the colour of their skin.
I see my time is up, Mr. Speaker, but I want to ask one question of the government opposite. If any member can show me one reserve in this country that has at least the average living conditions of a non-native community, I would like to see it.