Mr. Speaker, members will be happy to know that after the first five minutes I am already half way through my speech which does not change the fact that we are going to be opposing this bill for three fundamental reasons. Just before the break we were dealing with reason number one which is that it represents bad government.
Good government has to do with having people elect some leaders who are responsible to ensure that public services are provided at a cost people can afford by the level closest to the people best able to perform the service efficiently.
Instead, the Nunavut water board is appointed by the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development who in turn was appointed by the Prime Minister after being elected by the people of Sault Ste. Marie, a long way from Nunavut. Its costs will be paid by the people of Canada who have no say whatsoever about the board; all we get to do is pay for it.
Regarding my second reason for opposing Bill C-51, namely the process the government used, the government has been ridiculously slow. The Nunavut land claims agreement passed in 1993. It required the federal government to establish three major governing institutions, including the Nunavut water board within three years, by July 9, 1996, or the board members would be appointed and proceed as though the legislation had been passed. This Nunavut water board has been up and running for several months without the limits imposed on it by legislation.
We are all aware that Bill C-51 was tabled so late last spring, on June 14, that there is no way it could have passed before the July deadline. It was totally irresponsible of the government to delay its consultations about the Nunavut water board with both industry and northern residents until August 1995. Because it was a foregone conclusion that especially given the great distances and the severe climate of the Northwest Territories it would simply not be possible to receive widespread public input and draw suitable legislation to get through Parliament before the July deadline, this government should have started the necessary consultations very shortly after it took power three years ago.
Were the officials in the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development so lax in their duties that they failed to make the fact known to their minister or did the minister simply not care? Clearly the Liberal government is totally unfamiliar with the process of thoroughly consulting with the people of Canada's north. Despite a lot of fine talk, the federal government has been run by unaccountable bureaucrats both in the south and especially in the north who, plain and simple, do not realize that it takes time for people to provide input.
The result is that this legislation was not brought to Parliament with enough time for proper debate before the July 1996 deadline.
Another defective part of the government's process is that it has repeatedly refused to provide a briefing to our caucus critic and other members of the Reform caucus despite our repeated requests ever since Bill C-51 was tabled last June. Only on the morning of Friday, October 11 this year when Bill C-51 was quite possibly to be debated that same day did the government offer to brief the Reform caucus on Bill C-51. Clearly once again the government is treating this House with contempt.
Parliament is not a rubber stamp and the Reform Party is doing everything possible to thwart the Liberals' efforts to depreciate this Parliament and the democratic process in Canada. That fact should probably be raised as a question of parliamentary privilege because the lack of a departmental briefing on legislation proposed by the government makes it extremely difficult for my colleagues and me to perform our proper role of holding the government accountable and providing our own thorough input about the content and likely effects across Canada of legislation that the government is proposing.
However, this government does make it a practice to trample on the rights of parliamentarians, which means trampling on the rights of the voters who elected us. Now we must proceed with consideration of Bill C-51, even without a departmental briefing.
This enactment creates the Nunavut water board to license uses of waters or deposits of waste on other water users. The board must also establish agreements providing appropriate compensation for any loss or damage due to changes. The board must work closely with the Nunavut planning commission and has input on all Nunavut land use plans involving water, which is to say that this Nunavut water board will have a remarkable influence once it is in place within the new illegal province of Nunavut with its sweeping powers. The powers are so great that Parliament had to add a special clause to ensure nothing in the original Nunavut bill gave this illegal province greater powers than those enjoyed by the legal provinces. That clause is subsection (2) of section 23 of the Nunavut Act, which should never have been allowed to pass this House in the first place.
This is my final point of objection and certainly the most serious. It was raised in the book Our Home or Native Land? , written by constitutional scholar and lawyer Mel Smith of Victoria, B.C. Mr. Smith wrote that perhaps the only way out of the terrible waste and
over government of the Nunavut deal would be to declare the entire issue unconstitutional. I quote page 22 of his book:
Since 1982, the Canadian Constitution requires that the establishment of new provinces requires the approval of not only Parliament but also at least seven provincial legislatures having 50 per cent of the population of Canada. If this new territory is not tantamount to establishing a new province without the consent of the other provinces and therefore subverting the constitutional requirement, then I do not know what a new province would look like. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, the chances are it's a duck.
Therefore I ask my hon. colleagues, very few of whom were elected to Parliament when it passed legislation to create the vast new bureaucracy called Nunavut, to join me in opposing Bill C-51, the Nunavut waters act, not only because it represents bad government and was advanced by a bad process but because the original Nunavut legislation should be declared unconstitutional.
