Joe Clark

[First Nations Governance Act, June 3rd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I have to begin by disagreeing with my colleague who just spoke. I believe that rather than respecting the pillars of democracy and of autonomy, the bill undermines them and does so in a way that, apart from being bad law, is an abandonment and betrayal of our fiduciary responsibility to the first nations people of the country.

Let me list some of the fundamental faults with the legislation. The first nations communities in Canada are beset by poverty, illness, discrimination and a simply unacceptable level of suicide and despair. Those are the problems the Government of Canada should be addressing as a priority. Instead, those problems are ignored and its priority is to bring in this piece of so-called governance legislation.

Why is the government doing that? It is doing that because it feeds the caricature in the country, the caricature that aboriginal people are unable to care for themselves, that they will behave in a way that is unacceptable, that they have to be called to order by the paternalists in Ottawa. That is why it is introducing the bill now.

No one with any experience with first nations people would deny that there is abuse in some bands. Of course there is. Abuse is not limited to band councils and to aboriginal people. I have to say that, to my knowledge, no chief of a first nation has yet been rewarded for his abuse by being appointed as ambassador to Denmark.

Everyone agrees that there are problems of governance but if those problems are to be resolved in a way that works, then the people who are seeking to govern themselves and who have a right that predates our Confederation to govern themselves, they should be fully involved in these discussions and, blatantly, they have not been.

A second fundamental problem with the bill is that it will not work. It is premised upon co-operation between the government and the first nations people. They have made their opposition to the bill known across the country, and emphatically so. Anyone who believes that people who consider themselves betrayed by the legislation will suddenly step into line and co-operate with the government is living in some kind of dream world.

I do not know what the motivations of the government were in bringing it forward, but surely there comes a time when moving through a piece of legislation that we realize it is creating its own roadblocks, that it has built within it the seeds of its own destruction. This requires the co-operation of the first nations people. It requires their trust. It does not have their trust. It does not have their confidence. It will not have their co-operation.

Therefore, we have a piece of legislation that simply will not work. It is not only a waste of the time of Parliament to be dealing with legislation of this kind, but it is a running abuse. It aggravates the relation, which is always difficult, always tender, between first nations people and Parliament.

A third fault is that the bill purports to offer aboriginal people the right to govern themselves, to take steps in that direction. It does the opposite. What it does is empower the capacity of Ottawa to run their lives for them. It is the opposite of what it pretends to do.

It is the opposite of the commitment made by successive governments and parliaments here, in Canada, both in constitutional debates and in debates in the House of Commons. It is the opposite of our commitment to respect the inherent rights of aboriginal peoples and their capacity to govern themselves.

I was around the House when the so-called Penner report came forward, a report that was extraordinary in its approach to aboriginal people in that it allowed them to take part as equals in the discussion of matters affecting them.

I had the duty, not as a volunteer, to chair the Charlottetown round of negotiations where aboriginal groups were present at the table. They were not able to vote but they were able to take part as equals in every other respect in discussions of their future.

Let us put aside the fact that the Penner report has not been adopted and the fact that the Charlottetown accord was rejected. We must note the principle that was established. If we are going to make progress on these fundamental issues we have to treat the aboriginal communities as though they have rights of their own and a respect which we, in turn, will extend to them.

Let me tell members about something that happened regularly during the Charlottetown accord. Aboriginal people, who would come into the process bearing centuries of suspicion, nonetheless, sat down around a table with elected leaders of the country and worked out agreements which, in retrospect, were historic. The salient fact is that they did not survive a referendum but they demonstrated that when there is a genuine willingness on the part of Canadian governments that are not aboriginal governments to work honestly and openly with first nations people then the first nations people will reciprocate.

The agreements in that situation were not imposed on anyone. They arose from honest discussion. Aboriginals were not demonstrating outside the room. They were participating inside the room. Surely that is the practice that should be followed here. Indeed, that has been the precedent. It was the precedent and the momentum that guided us right through the establishment of the royal commission on aboriginal affairs, a royal commission that was widely hailed in the country and which earned, although it was not easy, the respect of aboriginal communities across the country and which, in its recommendations, was rejected as surely as the recommendations in the Penner report were.

I will not elaborate now but the decision of the Chair earlier today to rule out certain recommendations that were made by the Penner commission and the royal commission, which were adopted by the other place with respect to the capacity of first nations people to be involved in these processes, is again another turning away of a process that had begun to bear fruit on matters of fundamental difficulty and importance to the country.

The amendments that are in this first package deal, in essence, with two broad matters. One cluster of amendments has to do with ensuring that the legislation proposed here respects the rights, customs and traditions of aboriginal people. They are not major amendments in and of themselves except for what they symbolize, which is respect for the cultures of people who were here before the rest of us were here. It shows a fundamental respect for those cultures. It provides some kind of guarantee that the law we pass in legislation, which they have not been able to influence, will take into account their histories and their traditions, and those should be supported.

I was sorry to hear, if I understood him correctly, the parliamentary secretary say that the government would slam the door also on that recognition of the cultures, the rights and the history of the people the government purports to govern in legislation which falsely pretends to give authority of self-government to them themselves.

The other amendment, which is a government amendment, would in effect establish and enlarge the power of the Government of Canada, the minister, to intervene in the activities of band councils. The minister, or a person or body designated by the minister, may carry out an assessment of a band's financial position and require that remedial measures be taken on a range of others. On what basis? On what proof? That the minister has reason to believe that there is something wrong.

We have reasons to believe every day in the House that there is something wrong with the way the Government of Canada operates. Yet that standard of proof is not adequate in the House. That standard of obligation should not be seen as adequate with regard to the minister's right to intervene willy-nilly, as he or she chooses, without any kind of spelled out criteria in the affairs of aboriginal people.

I realize, Madam Speaker, that my time on this package has expired, and I thank members for their attention.

[First Nations Governance Act, June 3rd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the minister you named as the seconder of the motion is not in the House.

[First Nations Governance Act, June 3rd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I think the only thing I can do is reserve the right to raise this matter at a later point.

I must tell you, sir, that no one who was present in those committee hearings would believe that there was an opportunity to move the amendments that you have ruled were capable of being moved in committee. That is simply not the case.

There have been points raised on the floor of the House about the proceedings in the committee. I believe there is a ruling still outstanding from the Speaker with regard to precisely that point.

However, what is incontestable is that that committee was conducted in such an unruly way and conducted in a way that rammed through the government's agenda without the opportunity for parliamentarians to propose amendments. It is simply not credible to anyone to suggest that the amendments could have been made at that time.

In one meeting last week, in the space of less than an hour and a half, the chair of that committee suspended hearings to his own call six separate times. There was no opportunity to present amendments. For the suggestion to be made now that there was an opportunity then and that it precludes our opportunity now to improve the bill is an affront to democracy and to Parliament.

I do not know under the rules what we can do about it. I want to signal now my intention to reserve my right to raise parliamentary matters with regard to behaviour which is not only unfair to Parliament, but fundamentally unfair to first nations people.

[Points of Order, June 3rd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, this discussion deals with very fundamental questions in our country. I am not of a mind to challenge the Speaker's ruling on the matter because he may well be interpreting the rules as we have them in a way that is defensible.

We often talk about the distinctive nature of this country. We talk more about it now than we have for some time. Two of the elements of the distinctive nature of this country are first, that we are a country that has adopted and respects the spirit of the recognition of two official languages. That is one distinct characteristic of the country that applies to us as much as to other Canadians.

Second, this Parliament, as an instrument of the Crown, has an unusual responsibility with regard to first nations people who have historic rights of self-government that are different and often under threat.

We have a situation now in which a proposed bill has been discussed in committee and where the first nations people, with a remarkable near unanimity, have expressed their profound concern about the legislation.

I do not want to go over the details of it. I simply want to make the point that you, Mr. Speaker, are faced with a decision here where the rules respecting language that you would have us follow and which bind us now are rules that were set before the law was changed.

The second point concerns an obligation that has not been changed and that can never be casually shed. It is our particular obligation regarding the rights of first nations people. The rules may point in one direction. The nature of the country points in another direction. You are the Speaker of the House. You are also consequently an official of this country. We are representatives of this country, its people, its history, and its distinctive nature.

Two of those elements make us a distinct country in the world and make us a community of which so many Canadians are so proud. Two of those elements are at issue here: the official languages and the fiduciary responsibility of this Parliament toward the first nations people.

Mr. Speaker, I do not know how you will resolve this, but I believe it cannot be resolved simply by turning back to the rules and precedents that were taken in other times.

[Points of Order, June 3rd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am bound to accept your ruling of course, although I note that the ruling by Mr. Speaker Macnaughton was made before the passage of the charter and before the passage of the Official Languages Act, which is binding upon this House of Commons. However you have ruled on that matter.

However I hope there will be an opportunity at some other time, including by the government House leader who has always shown his respect for the Official Languages Act, for us to ensure that the act applies to this House of Commons regardless of precedents that were established before the Official Languages Act became the law of Canada.

The other point I want to make, and which I believe is of equally great importance in this matter, relates to our fiduciary obligation to aboriginal people. We are not here debating any old bill. We are dealing with a bill that has to do with the rights of a people who exist in a fiduciary relationship with the Government of Canada, with the Parliament of Canada and with the Crown of Canada. They are in a status that is unlike the status of others whose positions we may be debating here.

There is an unusual obligation upon us in the House to ensure that there is a full opportunity for all members of Parliament who have an interest in these issues and, indeed, a full opportunity for the people to whom we owe a fiduciary responsibility, the first nations people, to know what was discussed in committee and to be sure that they are in a position to bring forward appropriate amendments to deal with matters in the House.

On Bill C-7 the first nations community had only a matter of hours, on a question that goes to the heart of their capacity to self-govern, to make recommendations after the committee reported. The reprinted bill containing the committee amendments was available for less than 24 hours before the government's arbitrary deadline for the submission of report stage amendments.

Mr. Speaker, at the heart of your office is the duty to protect minorities and minority rights. You will be familiar with the great words of the distinguished clerk of the House, Sir John Bourinot. I quote from Marleau and Montpetit at page 210 which says:

The great principles that lie at the basis of English parliamentary law have...been always kept steadily in view by the Canadian legislatures; these are: To protect the minority and restrain the improvidence and tyranny of the majority, to secure the transaction of public business in a decent and orderly manner, to enable every member to express his opinions within those limits necessary to preserve decorum and prevent an unnecessary waste of time, to give full opportunity for the consideration of every measure, and to prevent any legislative action being taken heedlessly and upon sudden impulse.

This is a matter that goes fundamentally to the interests of a minority in the country but a minority that enjoys special protections under our history and under our practice in the House. Regarding no other group have steps been taken by this Parliament to allow them to sit as members of parliamentary committees when matters affecting their future were considered. For no other group was the process of federal-provincial consultation open to include representatives of those peoples during constitutional discussions, as I have cause to know happened during the preparation of the proposals for the Charlottetown accord.

There is no question that first nations people have an unusual status in the country. There is no question that the subject matters here are of great concern to them. We have seen that before committee and in demonstrations across the country. They have not had the time to consider what was being discussed in committee. They have not had the time to make representations to us in the House as to changes or amendments that might improve the bill. First nations people have had about 24 hours to deal with hundreds, perhaps thousands of years of history that could be changed by a quick decision of this House of Commons.

We have an obligation to protect the rights of minorities generally, but certainly to ensure that the people here, to whom we have a fiduciary responsibility and who are most vulnerable to changes that might be undertaken, have the time themselves to bring forward recommendations for amendments that could be considered by the House.

I respectfully hope, Sir, that you will consider the fundamental importance of this issue and not allow the government to proceed with a bill which, as a practical matter, denies the opportunity for first nations people to consider discussions in committee and to make their own representations as to changes that should be made in legislation that would fundamentally affect their lives.

[Points of Order, June 3rd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I will forgo the details of the committee chair's report, simply to say that he indicated at what great length there were hearings and discussions across the country.

The bill has now been returned to the House. We are at report stage. The government itself has introduced new amendments, which indicate that in its own judgment the original bill was flawed.

We must remember the purpose of report stage. In speaking about committee stage and report stage, the Speaker said on March 21, 2001:

Accordingly, I would strongly urge all members and all parties to avail themselves fully of the opportunity to propose amendments during committee stage so that the report stage can return to the purpose for which it was created, namely for the House to consider the committee report and the work the committee has done, and to do such further work as it deems necessary to complete detailed consideration of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, it is impossible for the House to consider the work that the committee has done without the transcripts of the committee debates. The work of the committee extends beyond the passage of amendments.

The committee travelled. It took evidence. The committee debated and deliberated on the record. Why would it keep and publish a transcript if it were not primarily for the reason of assisting the House at this report stage and at third reading?

Members of the House are entitled to have the entire case in front of them before we are called upon to judge the work of the committee. I make this case emphatically. We are entitled to have it “dans les deux langues officielles du Canada”, in both official languages of Canada.

These transcripts are not yet available in both official languages. Members of the House were and are today precluded from being able to examine the work of the committee in their language of choice. If we cannot know the evidence, we cannot decide if amendments are needed at the report stage.

The Speaker should not assume that the report stage is simply a matter of setting out party positions. At the report stage all members of the House, especially those who are not members of the committee, have an opportunity to propose amendments. The Chair should not assume that members are always acting as party representatives. There may well be members, who have an interest in the bill, who may have been shut out of the process by their parties or for other reasons. I think, for example, of the member for LaSalle—Émard who is known to have an interest in this matter.

The report stage is the members' opportunity to suggest amendments. However they cannot do that in an informed way unless the full record of evidence taken by the committee is available in both languages.

All members, regardless of party affiliation and regardless of the language they speak, have that right. The committee blues are not in both languages. They are in the language used in debate, but they are not available in translation. This puts a large number of unilingual members at a disadvantage and makes it impossible for them to consider the work done by the standing committee.

The majority of the committee's discussions were held in English. It was almost impossible for the more or less unilingual francophones to understand exactly what was happening during the committee's debates.

As of yesterday at least six meetings, including the most contentious and important meetings, have not been available in both official languages.

One thing is certain, if committee evidence is withheld from members in a language they can understand it is not likely that they will propose amendments.

Bill C-7 is about the rights of first nations. The government is now infringing on the linguistic rights of the members of the House by calling the bill for House consideration before members have available the full record of the standing committee.

The government is making it impossible for members to do the job the Speaker described in the ruling of March 21, “to consider the work the committee has done”.

I want to quote the Constitution of Canada, the charter of rights--

[Points of Order, June 3rd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I have a point of order concerning the government's intention to call Bill C-7, an act respecting leadership selection, administration and accountability of Indian bands, and to make related amendments to other acts.

This bill was reported back to the House on Wednesday with amendments, in fact, with over two dozen amendments. That is proof that at least in the mind of the committee this bill was flawed when the cabinet approved its introduction into the House of Commons at first reading.

This bill was the subject of considerable committee work. When he presented the report last Wednesday, the chair, the member for Nickel Belt, said the following, and I quote from Hansard , Wednesday, May 28:

The committee held a total of 61 hearings on this bill from January 27 to May 27, 2003, travelled over a period of four weeks from Prince Rupert, British Columbia--

[Public Service Modernization Act, May 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I thought we were waiting for members to be called and then I heard you make a reference to a date. I was not clear as to, first, what it was you had said or, second, the reasoning that led you to say it. I wonder if you might elaborate.

[Points of Order, May 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, you will recall that on May 16 I advised you that I would be considering putting certain questions before the Chair relating to proceedings on Bill C-7, an act respecting leadership selection, administration and accountability of Indian bands, and to make related amendments to other acts.

The committee stage of the bill has been completed and the House will once again be seized with the bill at the report stage. I want to raise these points before the clock starts ticking on deadlines for the report stage.

Mr. Speaker, I recognize that you take very seriously the view that you are severely limited in your ability to intervene in the committee's affairs. However, I regret to report that the committee has not felt itself bound by the same respect for the rules of this place. You have already been made aware of proceedings that took place on April 2, during which the government majority on the committee voted to take away the rights of members to examine the clauses of the bill that was sent to the committee by the House.

That happened despite a ruling by the Chair that this action was out of order, so the clear intent of Standing Order 116 of the House was consigned to the trash bin. Members of the committee were denied the right to speak to a motion more than once, and the committee imposed time limits.

Standing Order 116 frees committees from those time limits and permits several interventions. That is not the practice in the House but it is explicitly, under Standing Order 116, the practice in committees.

At the same meeting, on a motion moved by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, the member for Miramichi, the committee also passed an order that required committee members to give notice of all proposed amendments for the entire bill prior to 5 p.m. on April 4.

Sir, the committee began its study of the clauses of the bill on April 8. During all deliberations after that, regardless of the evidence received, regardless of the testimony, regardless of the passage or rejection of other amendments, it was impossible for any member to submit a new amendment for consideration by the committee.

Yesterday I attended as a member of the committee, as I had two weeks ago. Now that I am going to have a little more time for these matters, I was prepared to contribute to the bill. It is a subject on which I have some experience and some feeling. It is in fact the first committee on which I served in this House.

Again yesterday I was confronted with an erratic and arbitrary committee chair. Frankly, I cannot recall anything to compare with it during my 25 years of parliamentary experience, perhaps with the exception of the table-hopping by the minister of heritage. Members of the committee were systematically prevented from participating and the chair refused to hear points of order. It is because of this constrained and chaotic proceeding that I want to seek your guidance.

There is a real concern on this side of the House over the scope of proposed amendments that can be put down at report stage. My question is whether the Speaker will be enlarging on the guidelines that Your Honour laid down on March 21, 2001. At that time, in dealing with the question of amendments that could have been moved at committee, Your Honour stated:

...motions in amendment that could have been presented in committee will not be selected.

Accordingly, I would strongly urge all members and all parties to avail themselves fully of the opportunity to propose amendments during committee stage so that the report stage can return to the purpose for which it was created, namely for the House to consider the committee report and the work the committee has done, and to do such further work as it deems necessary to complete detailed consideration of the bill.

That is the end of the citation of your ruling.

The procedure adopted by the passage of the parliamentary secretary's motion effectively closed off any potential amendments that could have surfaced as a result of debate in committee after the date of April 4. I submit that this action by the parliamentary secretary and the government supporters on the committee has prevented the whole committee from carrying out its duty as described by Your Honour.

Therefore, I am seeking clarification of the guidelines that the Speaker will use in determining the acceptability of proposed amendments at the report stage in a case where the committee to which a bill has been referred adopts a procedure that arbitrarily or peremptorily precludes amendments.

Let me refer back to the words of the ruling on March 21, 2001, when the Speaker said:

...I would strongly urge all members and all parties to avail themselves fully of the opportunity to propose amendments during committee stage so that the report stage can return to the purpose for which it was created, namely for the House to consider the committee report and the work the committee has done, and to do such further work as it deems necessary to complete detailed consideration of the bill.

In the case of Bill C-7, there has been only a very limited ability to propose amendments in committee. There was no capacity, none at all, to take account of new ideas that might have emerged as a result of debate or new evidence or new legal opinions or, indeed, new membership on the committee.

It is clear that there exists in the House, outside of the committee, opinions that have not always been canvassed and concerns that would fall into the description of, to quote the Speaker, “such further work” as the House may deem “necessary to complete detailed consideration of the bill”. The ability of the House to determine its desire to address those other concerns will very much depend on the Speaker's selection of proposed amendments at the report stage. I submit that it would be useful for the House to know if the Speaker is willing to vary the usual practices governing the selection of report stage amendments because of the arbitrary actions that took place in committee.

In doing so, I should make it clear that this is not just a concern for those of us who sit in opposition to the government. The Speaker may be aware that strong supporters of the government have stated that this bill is in need of serious re-examination and amendment. Indeed, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development is reported to have challenged the member for LaSalle—Émard to propose amendments to the bill.

Unfortunately, because of the prohibition of consideration of new amendments adopted by the committee on the motion, I repeat, of the parliamentary secretary to the minister, that possibility was foreclosed to the member for LaSalle—Émard just as it was for any other member who might have wanted to bring fresh ideas to the committee. Indeed, yesterday the committee chair said that if the Prime Minister himself proposed new amendments, the chair would reject them.

The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the peoples of the first nations are entrenched and recognized in the Constitution of Canada. The peoples of the first nations have every right to expect that the Queen's ministers and members of the Parliament of Canada would treat any matter touching them with diligence and gravity. That is what is known as our fiduciary responsibility with regard to the first nations peoples. Instead, we have had an erratic and arbitrary committee process that guarantees discord for years to come in the relations between the Government of Canada and first nations peoples.

Therefore, the House and those who would be subject to this bill, should it be enacted into law, would benefit from knowing if the Chair is prepared to grant wider latitude for proposed amendments to the bill, which is widely opposed among the people it purports to govern and has been subject to incomplete examination and arbitrary treatment in committee.

[Auberge Grand-Mère, May 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the confidentiality clause in the charter of client rights of the Business Development Bank states:

All information regarding [clients and their business] is strictly confidential, except when disclosure is permitted by law or approved by [the client] in writing.

The Prime Minister's executive assistant, Denise Tremblay, was present during the consideration by the BDC of at least two loan applications, one for the Auberge Grand-Mère, a second to the Auberge des Gouverneurs.

On whose authority was a personal representative of the Prime Minister present during those confidential discussions of loan applications by the Business Development Bank?