Jean Crowder

[Indian Act, November 22nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this important issue but I will not be recommending that the New Democrats support the bill.

However, as the member who introduced the bill rightly pointed out, there has been excessive delay in dealing with this serious issue. It has been identified through the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, three parliamentary committees, seven United Nations human rights bodies, first nations women's leaders and the Assembly of First Nations.

It is actually unfortunate that this has been identified for 20 years or more as a very serious problem and yet we have not seen the resolution that men, women and children in first nations communities rightly deserve.

A number of members have mentioned the fact that there is a consultation process in place. I think that is really the crux of this.

In the past, we, as parliamentarians, have often gone about making decisions without the appropriate consultation in place. We have often gone about making policies and legislation without ensuring that the people who will bear the brunt of those decisions were included at the table, not just in consultation but in the decision making and in the solution identification. Oftentimes what consultation has looked liked is a very cursory conversation and then we tell people to go away while we close the doors and make the decision.

I would argue that this is such a fundamental issue for first nations men, women and children that it is critical that the people who will bear the impact of this decision are at the table throughout the process. In fact, it is that kind of philosophy that actually underpins the way the New Democrats believe decision making should be made when we are talking about first nations, Métis and Inuit people. We are talking about decision making on a nation to nation basis. We are talking about having first nations people at the table in a meaningful way so they are truly partners in this decision making process.

In a letter that came from the office of the national chief, the chief himself talked about the fact that our work would be guided by the recognition and implementation of first nations governance and jurisdiction and that the key principle of that solution had to be first nations driven. Therefore, when we have a bill that comes before the House that is not first nations driven, I would argue that we are violating that fundamental principle.

In the event that people think women are not also asking for this, the Native Women's Association of Canada is involved in this extensive consultation process that is currently underway and it is a fairly rapid process. It was initiated in June. It needs to be completed with the Assembly of First Nations and the Native Women's Association of Canada by, I believe, December 2006. Ms. Grant-John is committed to sending a report to the minister by early spring and the minister has committed to, shortly thereafter, putting legislation forward.

Surely we can wait for this process to unfold to ensure meaningful consultation does happen. The Native Women's Association is saying that it is critical for women's voices to be heard and that those who are and will be directly affected must also be involved in the consultation process over the next couple of months.

The Assembly of First Nations has put out a very good resource handbook that has good background information. I would encourage members, who have some additional questions to which they need answers, to go to the Assembly of First Nations website and check out this material because it lays out some of the concerns.

There is some concern that even if the bill were to pass that the imposition of provincial laws on first nations land may not be constitutional. Therefore, that question itself has not been answered.

We must try to gain an understanding of why this needs to be done in such a respectful way. One of the things in the handbook concerns legislative gaps on reserve. It says that while first nations have traditional laws which could help couples to determine how to divide the family home and land when divorce or separation occurs, the federal government does not recognize these laws.

Therefore, it is not that many first nations communities do not have laws governing this; it is that the federal government does not recognize some of these existing laws.

The document goes on to talk about the importance of ensuring that people's voices are heard. It recognizes the legislative gap, but it also talks about the fact that this matrimonial real property is one factor in a wide gamut of factors impacting on people's lives in first nations communities. It is part of a chronic housing shortage. It is part of poverty on reserves. It is part of the fact that many women and children do not have access to transition houses that assist families when women are involved in domestic violence.

Certainly there have been recent announcements about 35 transition houses, but there are 633 first nations communities in this land and many of the women in many of those communities will not have access to those transition houses. Again, what we have is a one-off piece of legislation in isolation of the complex issues facing many first nations communities.

I talked about the chronic housing shortage and the lack of transition centres, but I am also talking about the lack of appropriate consultative processes. They have not been in place. As I talk about consultation, I note that the courts themselves have said that consultation must be undertaken with the genuine intention of substantially addressing first nations concerns and that first nations representation must be seriously considered and, wherever possible, demonstrably integrated into the proposed plan of action.

That is what the courts have said. In that context, I do not see how we could support the current bill before the House. It does not have that consultation process built in. If the consultation process were to take place in the context of this current bill, it would be many months before we would even begin to see a solution. In the meantime, this appropriate consultation phase that is under way will be finished, so I would suggest that we need to wait for this current process.

There are many issues that need to be considered. That is why, as the member opposite rightly pointed out, this is a complex issue. The Assembly of First Nations has identified a number of issues that need to be considered in this complex matter.

One issue is aboriginal title and treaty rights. Reserve lands are protected by subsection 35(1) of the Constitution Act. That cannot be disregarded in this.

I have spoken about consultation and accommodation previously, but I will note that any attempt to infringe upon some of the constitutional rights must be justified. I would argue that we cannot justify imposing provincial legislation without agreement from first nations communities.

There is judicial recognition of first nations jurisdiction over land use. There are collective rights versus individual rights. We need to recognize that people have different approaches to these things. My document says, “Custom allotments also form part of First Nations customary law, and it is questionable whether provincial laws can apply to this traditional form of First Nations land management of reserve lands”.

Next is judicial recognition of first nations jurisdiction over family matters. Again, many first nations have laws that already are in effect around matrimonial breakdown. Those laws must be considered when we are looking at solutions in first nations communities. This relates to the federal recognition of first nations jurisdiction over family law.

I have touched on just a few of those issues, but I think these are the kinds of things that demonstrate the complexity of this issue. Various bodies, as I have pointed out, have taken a run at this, but nobody has actually taken on the necessary hard work to develop a solution.

When we talk about this consultation process that is under way, I note that it does not mean just gathering more information about what the current state of affairs is. The current consultation process that is under way will result in recommendations for solutions, so it is not just fact gathering. It is actually solution gathering. That is an important piece of this very complex puzzle.

When we talk about solutions, we must recognize traditional values. We must recognize the protection of aboriginal treaty rights. There must be no abrogation or derogation of collective rights, protection and preservation of first nations lands for future generations, strengthening first nations families and communities, recognition and implementation of first nations jurisdictions and community based solutions.

I suggest that members of the House should vote the bill down. They should be supporting the good work that is being done in first nations communities from coast to coast to coast.

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, November 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it is absolutely appropriate that people from Hamilton are speaking against the softwood lumber agreement. I have said it once, I have said it twice and I will say it many more times. I call upon the House to develop an industrial strategy that takes a look at us keeping good manufacturing jobs in our country, good processing jobs across a variety of sectors.

The people from Hamilton would be very pleased to see the House stand up and protect our industry and talk about what is good for it and good for our workers and communities. I think it would be incumbent on us to take those kinds of initiatives and protect those good paying jobs.

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, November 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, this is a broad and vast country. One of the benefits of our country is that we are allowed to have different opinions.

The United Steelworkers, which has representation across the country and in British Columbia, has asked us to vote against this agreement. It has made a number of suggestions about how we need to take a look at softwood lumber. One of them is that we should immediately withdraw support for the Prime Minister-Bush softwood deal. It also suggests that we should curb log exports, equalize the Mexican export log prices through an equivalency tax to dramatically increase the cost of exporting raw logs, that we should have a reinvestment fund, which is earmarked to recoup softwood duties and revenue from the export tax for investment, and that we should have a new social contract that reinstates the fact that we use our resources closer to home.

Just as the member could pull one group out of a hat that says it supports the softwood agreement, I can pull another group out of the hat that is absolutely opposed to the softwood lumber agreement, saying it is bad for communities, bad for workers and bad for industry.

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, November 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, what the member for Hamilton Mountain addresses is the great failing by both the current Conservative government and the former Liberal government.

I can hear an echo in the background that at one time would have talked about shipbuilding. The member for Sackville—Eastern Shore would certainly talk about the fact that we are lacking a credible industrial strategy from coast to coast to coast. We do not have a credible industrial strategy that talks about the forestry sector, or the auto sector or shipbuilding.

The country has had a proud tradition of not only using its raw resources, but also of manufacturing its raw resources. This is a vital element of how we keep our economy healthy and whole.

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, November 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased today to speak in support of the good work that my colleague, the member for Burnaby—New Westminster, has done on highlighting the challenges with the bill.

The member had put together 25 reasons why the House, as Canadian parliamentarians, should not support the bill. I will not read all 25 of them, but there are a couple I want to highlight.

One is it gives away $500 million in funds owned by the Canadian softwood industry to subsidize the U.S. Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports. This coalition is the Canadian industry's main competitor. Everybody fully expects it to us this money to fund its next round on why the Canadian lumber industry is unfair to coalition members.

The deal can also be cancelled unilaterally at any time. It does not provide stability and predictability to the Canadian softwood industry. In basic terms, this agreement can be terminated unilaterally after 18 months without cause or explanation. The agreement can be terminated immediately by the Americans if they feel Canada has not complied with the terms of the agreement.

This leads me to a really important reason why we should oppose this. It infringes on provincial constitutional prerogatives by both Ottawa and Washington.

We do not want to have any kind of foreign oversight on our lumber industry in British Columbia. The softwood lumber industry in British Columbia is a critical element in our economic prosperity. We do not want somebody from outside telling us how to run our lumber industry.

The agreement does nothing for thousands of workers who have lost their livelihoods over the past five years. It will also potentially trigger significant job losses through further consolidation caused by quotas and export taxes which could cap market access and growth.

It is on these two points that I want to spend some time.

Back on October 13 the member for Burnaby—New Westminster issued a press release about 2,500 jobs lost in the softwood sellout and more to come. In the press release he talked about these job losses on the first six days after this agreement was announced and predicted there would be ongoing job losses.

Just recently, on November 16, Western Forest Products announced that it would be shutting down a mill in New Westminster. One of the offshoots of this is we know that some of these logs will be shipped south of the border as raw log exports and will have no benefit whatsoever to our local communities. I wish to read this quote from the United Steel Workers Western Canada director, Stephen Hunt, about the company's decision to close the mill. This encapsulates what we are seeing. He said:

It's crazy. It's like having food for nine kids, feeding eight and selling the last one's cheeseburger out from under him. When a company is given access to enough of our trees to run a mill and is still allowed to close it down, there is something very wrong in this province.

We have seen that happen so many times in British Columbia. This is just the last in a long line of mill closures. Ninety-five per cent of the land in British Columbia is Crown land. That means it is owned by the citizens of British Columbia. Surely in any other enterprise we would say that the beneficiaries of a publicly owned facility or any other owned facility would come back to the owners. We would say that the owners should receive direct benefits from that.

In British Columbia we are allowing, and the softwood lumber agreement exacerbates this, our resources to be shipped out of the province to be processed somewhere else with no direct benefit to the people there.

Let us talk about dollars and cents just for one moment. If we mill those logs close to home and if we look at secondary and tertiary manufacturing, we actually contribute to a tax base.

We cannot reduce everything to dollars and cents, but we certainly know that when we have mills operating in our local communities, we employee workers and they paid their taxes. This means we can continue to pave our roads and pay for our school taxes and all the other good benefits that come from good paying jobs in communities. Not only that, there are spinoff jobs. There are truck drivers, caterers, cleaners and mill repair companies. All those jobs stay in our community when we process the logs close to home. However, what we are doing is shipping the logs somewhere else for processing.

I know I have talked about Youbou a number of times in the House, but in this last ditch effort to hold back the softwood lumber agreement, it is incumbent upon me to remind people what happens to a community when we close down a significant operation. This is the Youbou story. It is an abridged edition. I would love to read the whole thing, but it is called “The Last Hurrah”. It is an article written by Keith Dickens shortly after the mill closure. It says:

On Friday, 26th January 2001 at 3:10 p.m. the last log was cut in Timberwests Youbou Sawmill. The thirty-six foot long fir log brought to a close seventy three years of continuous production at the Youbou plant and a proud sawmilling history for the communities of Youbou and Lake Cowichan. As the last moments approached a radio call was relayed throughout the plant, it simply said, “Last Log.” This was the signal for virtually every employee to gather around ‘A’ Mills, 42ft Carriage...

We are talking about 73 years. We are talking about generations. When I met with some of the Youbou sawmill workers, they told me about how their fathers, their brothers, sometimes their grandfathers had worked in this mill. It had been a proud tradition in the Youbou community, 73 years worth of proud tradition, and the company that it was closing it doors. One of the reasons it closed was because of raw log exports.

The article goes on to say that TimberWest wanted to close the mill so it could increase its raw log exports. After the mill closed, local citizens staged a log truck count to track the number of trucks leaving the Cowichan valley. Over four days, 450 full logging trucks were tallied. This represented about 9,000 cubic metres per day, or 1.8 million cubic metres per year, enough to keep a good sized mill running for between three and four years and provide 200 well paid sawmill jobs and probably 400 to 600 jobs in spinoff industries. Put another way, over a three year period, these jobs could have put as much as $19 million into the local economy.

We often have a tendency often to boil everything down into dollars and cents. We talk about the bottom line and about profit and loss. What we fail to talk about is the impact that this kind of sawmill closure has on people's lives. We had people who had worked at that mill for 25 or 30 years, and all of a sudden they were turfed out. To many of them, it was their whole life's work. It was their proud tradition to have worked in that sawmill.

I talked to these workers a couple of years later, and I continue to have ongoing conversations with some of them. Some of them have never gone back to full time, full year employment. Not only did we destroy the sawmill workers hopes and dreams for their future, but we also took apart their families. Some of these workers had to travel to other communities for work. Some of them have been unable to find steady work. We have not found a way to measure in dollars and cents the impact on these people's lives.

One thing I did not talk about was the lack of first nations, Métis and Inuit consultation in this process. It is another very good reason why we should not support Bill C-24. We should turn it back to the committee. We should ask it to do further investigation and a much more extensive consultation with the communities that are affected.

I urge each and every member of the House to vote against this flawed legislation. Let us do the good work we need to do to protect our forestry industry, our workers and our communities.

[Aboriginal Affairs, November 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, first nations, Métis and Inuit peoples from coast to coast to coast are supporting this agreement. Yet we have a Prime Minister who insists that human rights will not be trumped by the almighty dollar when it comes to China.

The UN declaration affirms human rights that already exist. Why is the Prime Minister and the government willing to support human rights for Canadians in China, but not for Canadians in Canada?

[Aboriginal Affairs, November 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, Canada has refused to participate in negotiations with the UN indigenous peoples caucus for eight months. Canada is causing havoc on the United Nations floor, and our nation is opposing a declaration that will reaffirm our own Canadian Charter of Rights.

Talking about ducking, dodging, dithering and delaying, how can the minister continue to object to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples?

[Federal Accountability Act, November 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, we know there are many kinds of accountability in the House. Certainly, I have seen a disdain for the will of the House. I wonder if the member could comment on that specifically.

Over the last couple of days the Prime Minister talked about the fact that human rights will not be trumped by the mighty dollar in reference to China. Yet, we have a situation right now with the declaration of indigenous rights that is before the United Nations. Opposition members have supported that declaration and yet we have a Conservative government that will not listen to the will of the majority of the House and support that very important declaration on indigenous rights. I wonder if the member could talk about that kind of accountability and disregard for the will of the House.

[November 9th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the Correctional Investigator laid out a series of recommendations to deal with the situation. For example, we should build capacity for and increase the use of section 84 and section 81 agreements with aboriginal communities; implement a security classification process that ends the overclassification of aboriginal offenders; significantly increase the number of aboriginal offenders housed at minimum security institutions, and significantly increase the number of aboriginal offenders appearing before the National Parole Board at their earliest eligibility dates.

I would like to add one of my own. Correctional Service Canada should set up a senior management committee to meet with first nations, Métis and Inuit leadership intensively for a six month period with a mandate to develop an implementation plan for the recommendations of the Correctional Investigator.

Which one of these recommendations is the minister going to act on, and when?

[November 9th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising today on a question that I raised with the Minister of Public Safety on October 17. In that question I talked about the fact that while aboriginal peoples form only 3% of the population in Canada, they are 18% of the prison population. I also talked about the poverty that contributes to higher incarceration rates.

In his response, the Minister of Public Safety indicated that it was not a matter of discrimination in the prison system but a matter of personal responsibility being taken. The Office of the Correctional Investigator's annual report was a damning document outlining the problems with the corrections system in Canada and how it discriminates against aboriginal peoples. The problems are with the system, not the people.

There are a number of areas where discrimination occurs. For example, more native people than non-native people fail to get parole. There is discrimination before they even get into the system. First nations, Métis and Inuit peoples are more likely to plead guilty and to not receive legal advice. They are more likely to receive longer sentences. The statistics are incontrovertible.

The 2001 Speech from the Throne stated:

Canada must take the measures needed to significantly reduce the percentage of Aboriginal people entering the criminal justice system, so that within a generation it is no higher than the Canadian average.

We have seen the Liberals and the Conservatives back away from that promise.

The prisons are full of aboriginal people, not because they are crime prone but because they are much younger and much poorer than Canadians in general. Statistics show that poverty and youth very often lead to problems with the law.

There is also discrimination because many of the people who make the decisions, the guards, parole officers and wardens, use standards and approaches that are culturally inappropriate. This leads to misunderstandings and a breakdown in communication.

Canada cannot afford to neglect this problem. It will fester and worsen for generations to come. The jails and remand centres will become the residential schools of this generation and we know what they cost the aboriginal peoples and Canada.

The minister refused to commit to any program to end this discrimination. Will the parliamentary secretary tell us what plans the minister has to honour the promise made to reduce the number of aboriginal people in prisons to the Canadian average?