Jean Crowder

[Petitions, October 30th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the final petition calls on the House to introduce a new volunteer service medal. To be known as the Governor General's volunteer medal, it would acknowledge and recognize volunteerism by Canadian troops.

[Petitions, October 30th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition asks the House of Commons to support an act to amend the Canada Shipping Act in relation to derelict vessels and wrecks. That is the subject of my private member's bill. On the west coast and other parts of Canada, derelict vessels are an enormous problem.

[Petitions, October 30th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I have three petitions that I would like to present to the House today. The first one asks the House of Commons to support an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act's mandatory labelling of genetically modified food.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, October 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for that very impassioned speech.

I want to touch upon the democratic aspects of this piece of legislation. There have been a number of omnibus bills, which some of us refer to as ominous bills, and what we see in this particular piece of legislation in part is to correct a mistake made in previous omnibus bills. The member has very rightly attempted to move a motion dividing out a piece of the legislation. I wonder if she could comment specifically on the lack of democratic process, where members of Parliament are not given adequate amounts of time to fully debate complex pieces of legislation and to avoid the kinds of mistakes that we saw with, for example, the credit union tax.

[Aboriginal Affairs, October 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, adequately investing in first nations education is in the interest of all Canadians. Closing the funding gap for first nations kids attending on-reserve schools should be at the centre of any education proposal. Instead, the minister is treating this critical issue as an afterthought in his proposal for the first nations education act.

Why is the minister delaying any attempt to close the funding gap?

[Indian Act Amendment and Replacement Act, October 25th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank you for the opportunity to pose a question to the mover of the bill.

I am, of course, rising to speak to Bill C-428.

I want to start with a quote from volume 1 of the report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples with respect to recommending a commitment to ethical principles of relations:

To begin the process, the federal, provincial and territorial governments, on behalf of the people of Canada, and national Aboriginal organizations, on behalf of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada, commit themselves to building a renewed relationship based on the principles of mutual recognition, mutual respect, sharing and mutual responsibility; these principles to form the ethical basis of relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal societies in the future and to be enshrined in a new Royal Proclamation and its companion legislation

This report came forward in 1996 and has largely not been implemented.

I read that piece around ethical relations because it would seem to me that those principles of mutual respect and recognition are important when we reform any legislation that has an impact on first nations.

I want to talk a little bit about the Indian Act itself. As the member rightly pointed out, the Indian Act is a paternalistic piece of legislation.

I want to read a couple of pieces from a document, “Like an Ill-Fitting Boot: Government, Governance and Management Systems in the Contemporary Indian Act”.

It says:

Today the Indian Act is the repository of the struggle between Indian peoples and colonial and later Canadian policy-makers for control of Indian peoples' destiny within Canada. The marks of that struggle can be seen in almost every one of its provisions.

It goes on to outline a couple of major problems with the Indian Act. It says:

The Indian Act appears to be a legislative fossil. It reflects administrative and organizational practices that were characteristic of public institutions in the early and mid-twentieth century, but that have been modified and superseded in other governments. The Act relies upon regulation, top-down authorities, fiscal control, and enforcement. Today most Canadian governments and other organizations rely upon collegial decision-making and policy development, policy research, human resource development, management accounting systems, and citizen engagement. The Indian Act does not mention these things, and the basic provisions do not leave much room for them.

The Indian Act has a powerful impact on the quality of democracy in Band governments. Having the force of law and backed by financial power, the Act mandates one particular set of institutions and practices to the exclusion of others. In this way it affects the abilities of First Nations to shape more accountable and democratic governments.

It also says:

Few people are satisfied with the Indian Act, but no one will deny its importance.

This is why it is important to have a very respectful, thoughtful, collaborative process in order to replace the Indian Act.

The author went on to say:

For the individuals to whom it applies, the Act is a basic and specific constitutional document. It defines their rights and entitlements, their citizenship and their relationship to the federal and provincial governments. It provides the mechanisms that include or exclude them from membership in a Band. For First Nations, it creates the framework within which both public and First Nations officials and political leaders must work, profoundly shaping the nations’ political and economic life.

That in itself has been a long-standing argument about why governments of various political stripes should not be doing things piecemeal and taking apart the Indian Act. It has major repercussions and implications for first nations' relationships both among the nations themselves and with the government.

Finally, the author said:

It is obvious that the original Indian Act was not created with the self-determination of First Nations communities in mind. Its original purpose was to permit federal officials to control First Nations and to enable social engineering–the coercive transformation of Indigenous societies and governments to bring them into line with the purposes and visions of the Canadian government.

With that kind of background, it becomes absolutely critical when there are proposed changes to the Indian Act that there be a process put in place which is co-created with first nations. On that point, I want to refer to article 19 in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Article 19 says:

States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.

In that context, with all due respect to the member, he is not the Crown. He is an individual in the House. He does not have the authority or the resources to implement a consultation process. He may well have talked to first nations and other organizations, but that does not meet the test of duty to consult.

With regard to the bill, in April, the committee received a document from Paul Chartrand Consulting. In that document, Mr. Chartrand said:

My first recommendation is a policy that no amendment to the act is to be proposed or introduced in Parliament without first conducting proper consultations with first nations representatives, and that all bills be drafted in consultation with them.

This approach would tend to promote the democratic principle that laws ought not to be passed without the agreement of those who are to bear the burdens or reap the benefits of the legislation. This approach would at least partly remedy the lack of equitable representation and participation of first nations in Canada's Parliament....

In the event that the government struggles with what appropriate consultation would look like, I would like to refer it to its own ministerial representative Wendy Grant-John's report on matrimonial real property. She laid out a process for what consultation could look like. She said:

The Department should develop, as soon as possible, specific policies and procedures relating to consultation in order to ensure that future consultation activities can identify and discharge any legal duty to consult while also fulfilling objectives of good governance and public policy by:

1) Ensuring First Nations have relevant information to the issues for decision in a timely manner;

2) Providing an opportunity for First Nations to express their concerns and views on potential impacts of the legislative proposal and issues relating to the existence of a duty to consult;

3) Listening to, analyzing and seriously considering the representations and concerns of First Nations in the context of relevant legal and policy principles including their relationship to other constitutional and human rights principles;

4) Ensuring proper analyses by the Department of Justice of section 35 issues relating to any proposed legislative initiative are thoroughly canvassed before, during and after consultations;

5) Seriously considering proposals for mitigating potentially negative impacts on aboriginal and treaty rights or other rights and interests of First Nations and making necessary accommodations by changing the government’s proposal

6) Establishing, in consultation with First Nations, a protocol for the development of legislative proposals.

We can see time and time again where legislation is brought forward in the House that does not meet those six criteria, very ably outlined by Wendy Grant-John for the then-minister of Aboriginal Affairs.

There are international conventions around proposals for what consultations should look like in a domestic setting. This is from Convention No. 169 from the International Labour Organization, also known as the ILO. They have a specific section on consultation and participation. It said:

The spirit of consultation and participation constitutes the cornerstone of Convention No. 169 on which all its provisions are based. The Convention requires that indigenous and tribal peoples are consulted on issues that affect them. It also requires that these peoples are able to engage in free, prior and informed participation in policy and development processes that affect them.

The principles of consultation and participation in Convention No. 169 relate not only to specific development projects, but also to broader questions of governance, and the participation of indigenous and tribal peoples in public life.

In Article 6, the Convention provides a guideline as to how consultation with indigenous and tribal peoples should be conducted:

Consultation with indigenous peoples should be undertaken through appropriate procedures, in good faith, and through the representative institutions of these peoples;

The peoples involved should have the opportunity to participate freely at all levels in the formulation, implementation and evaluation of measures and programmes that affect them directly;

Another important component of the concept of consultation is that of representativity. If an appropriate consultation process is not developed with the indigenous and tribal institutions or organizations that are truly representative of the peoples in question, then the resulting consultations would not comply with the requirements of the Convention.

In conclusion, with respect to the member, the process that he has undertaken does not fulfill either domestic or international parameters for duty to consult. I would argue that all members in the House should vote against the bill. The Indian Act changes have far-reaching effects and they must be undertaken in a responsible, respectful manner.

[Indian Act Amendment and Replacement Act, October 25th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly want to commend the member for bringing forward a piece of legislation that he feels is important to him, but I have to question whether he feels that a private member can supplant the government's duty to consult.

The Supreme Court has reaffirmed the fact that the government's duty and the Crown's duty to consult cannot be delegated to any other organization or authority. Although the member says he has taken the trouble to inform his constituents and others about his intentions, I would argue that does not constitute the legal duty by the Crown to consult. I wonder if he could comment on whether he is leading us to believe that a member can supplant the Crown's duty to consult.

[Points of Order, October 25th, 2013]

A point of clarification, Mr. Speaker. I wonder if the Speaker could elucidate for us why those amendments were considered in order, because they could have been presented at committee.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, October 25th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Hamilton Mountain for that very clear and passionate speech.

She referenced the CBC exchange, and I have a bit of the transcript here.

The CBC says, “Who will you deem to be essential?”

The President of the Treasury Board says, “Well, I'm not going to be on your show to decide that right now, but I think we have to be fair and reasonable who we deem essential.”

CBC: “Well, can you give us an example, because...people want to know”.

The President of the Treasury Board: “Border guards.”

CBC: “Okay. I mean scientists, government scientists, would they be deemed essential?”

The President of the Treasury Board: “Look, you're going through a speculative question-and-answer and I am not going to indulge you with that.”

CBC: “Well, when will you tell the public that?”

The President of the Treasury Board: “When we are ready to tell the public.”

I wonder if the member could tell us what happened next.

[Ethics, October 25th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, if the government were being very clear, we would not need to keep asking questions. Conservatives refuse to answer questions, evade responsibility and use their power as a tool to induce others to do their bidding. Yesterday in the Senate, Marjory LeBreton said she and Ray Novak told Mike Duffy he had to leave the Conservative caucus because “this is the only option that can ensure your future livelihood”.

Does the government think it is ethical to threaten senators who do not go along with its schemes with the loss of their livelihood?