John Duncan

[Marine Conservation Areas Act, September 27th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, for further clarification, will you have to repeat for the next grouping the request for whether there is debate or not?

[Marine Conservation Areas Act, September 27th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Just for clarification we are on Bill C-8. Do we have provision for debate on these amendments that are being put forward?

[Questions On The Order Paper, September 27th, 2000]

How much federal money was spent supporting the production of the 1999 National Film Board film L'Erreur Boréale or Forest Alert and in particular, how much federal money went to the organizations listed in the credits of this film as supporting this film financially: ( a ) Telefilm Canada; ( b ) Government of Canada—Canadian film or video production tax credit program; ( c ) Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; and ( d ) National Film Board?

[Softwood Lumber, September 26th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the federal government is exposing taxpayers to a risk that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Pope & Talbot Lumber Company is suing under NAFTA because of what it says is unfair treatment in its amount of softwood lumber quota. The government is refusing to provide background documents to explain how its softwood quota was established. Without these documents the NAFTA tribunal is more likely to decide against Canada.

The government must demonstrate that favouritism and political considerations did not influence quota decisions. By agreeing to the 1996 softwood lumber agreement and then setting up a secret and flawed administration, the government has invited this NAFTA challenge. The softwood agreement has already cost Canadians billions. It is time for the government to demonstrate that it has nothing to hide.

[Manitoba Claim Settlements Implementation Act, September 26th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-14. I was involved earlier in the agreements that derived from the Manitoba flooding of the 1970s. In the last parliament we had Bill C-36 dealing with the Split Lake Band, Bill C-39 dealing with the York Factory Band, and Bill C-40 dealing with the Nelson House Band. This is now the fourth bill dealing with five bands. We only have the Cross Lake Band that is currently not addressed by new legislation and is still subject to the Manitoba northern flood agreement of 1977.

Specifically Bill C-14 deals with Norway House. I had the experience of going to Norway House in the summer of 1995 as part of my party's task force on aboriginal affairs. We were trying to develop policy at that time.

I well remember the charter flight from Winnipeg to the airport at Norway House. We had made arrangements previously with some women from the Norway House community to meet us at the airport. There were several members of parliament from my caucus. The first words that came out of one of their mouths was “Congratulations, you have now been at Norway House one more time than our chief has this year”. That was actually the forerunner and the first clear example in my mind of the way in which aboriginal women were making decisions. When they are dissatisfied with the way their community is being run, they will do something about it. That is one memory that is etched in my mind.

The 1977 Manitoba flood agreement was laced with problems. It did not become a very good document to implement a lot of the necessary things to address the huge displacement of community lands. There were new hazards for residents of the communities because of the change in the waters and water levels. Resources were displaced. A whole new way of life had to be put in place because the flooded lands had changed the way the water oriented communities had operated up until that time. Clearly no one could reasonably argue that compensation is not an important part of this whole agreement.

We have supported all of the compensation agreements. We have been very consistent in doing that in Bill C-36, Bill C-39, Bill C-40 and once again today we are supporting Bill C-14. We have actually debated this since June 1994. That was the first set of debates.

I will just give an idea of what happened when the flooding occurred on the Nelson and Churchill rivers along with the Lake Winnipeg regulations project. Almost 5,000 hectares of reserve land belonging to these five first nations were flooded as well as over 200,000 hectares of non-reserve land that was traditionally used for hunting and trapping.

In the 1970s when the flood agreement was put together, it was very loosely worded. With these agreements now, not only is implementation better served, but we have clearer questions of how liability will be addressed. The project proponent, Manitoba Hydro, now essentially has the ongoing and unanticipated future liability. I think everyone would agree that is just and proper as it is the major proponent for the project.

There are some interesting elements to these agreements. In many ways we should be looking at these as enlightened things that we can build into future agreements.

The fee simple lands that are being transferred are not necessarily being transferred into typical reserve status. This will give the bands a lot more flexibility and opportunity to deal with those lands in a way that will not necessarily involve all the bureaucracy of the department of Indian affairs.

On the transfer of moneys, the compensation package, the moneys are going into a trust arrangement that will necessarily have an accountability function built in which I think is highly appropriate. We know for example that under the Liberal government the accumulated deficit of native bands across Canada has gone from $130 million to over $300 million. That lack of accountability is something to be avoided. This arrangement avoids that lack of accountability.

Those are the main points I wanted to get across. A couple of other things are worth pointing out.

The fee simple lands held by the respective native corporations are held outside the normal encumbrances of the Indian Act. They are also subject to property taxation. Any business originating from these lands is also taxable. In addition, individual band members may appeal under the Manitoba arbitration act if they are unsatisfied with band decisions which affect them personally.

We have some new thinking here that is worth putting under a microscope a few years down the road to see what real changes it has brought about. My suspicion is that this will lead to some good changes in the way governance is applied within these communities.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

[Fisheries, September 22nd, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, Bob Rae has reported that the situation at Burnt Church is hopeless. It only took days for Bob Rae to determine that the situation is hopeless. Why did it take the minister months?

[Fisheries, September 22nd, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the minister said that his department has not been allowed to monitor the fishery in Miramichi Bay. That is an astounding thing to say. After all, the minister is the one who is responsible. If the minister is not in charge, then who is?

[Fisheries, September 21st, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, despite the minister's assurances, there are more traps in the water today than there were yesterday.

Yesterday the minister wrote to the chief at Burnt Church and said “The fishing activity to date is detrimental to conservation. The current situation cannot continue if conservation and an orderly fishery are to be insured”.

There is no orderly fishery and no law and order. The illegal fishing at Miramichi must stop. When will the minister pull not just some but all the traps?

[Fisheries, September 21st, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the minister of fisheries has no credibility when he talks about closing the lobster fishery in Miramichi. The fisheries department's own estimates show that the Burnt Church lobster catch is already over four times what was approved. The minister's regional director general has said, and I quote, “Continued fishing will have a serious detrimental effect on the stocks”.

The minister must uphold his oath of office. He must enforce the law. When will he pull all the traps?

[1911 Census Records, September 20th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me pleasure to speak to this subject matter after the mover of the original motion. It does not give me great pleasure that we now have an amendment which basically guts the motion. However, it allows me to speak to this subject again. I previously spoke to it on April 10 and it would have nullified my ability to speak tonight if that amendment had not occurred.

As explained by the hon. member for Calgary Southeast, the mover of the original motion, essentially what we have here is a circumstance where it is obvious that the Minister of Industry, who is responsible for the census data and the Statistics Canada operations, does not want to release this information for his own purposes.

There is much fuzziness around the issue and it has been exploited to the government's advantage because of that. We are one of the jurisdictions in the western world without clear statutory rules for when census information shall be released.

The most critical period of time in terms of mass emigration particularly from Europe to Canada is the period 1910 to 1930. That is very important historical information for us. It is also very important information for the country to the south of us, the United States.

Our set-up is diametrically different from the standpoint that the U.S. is getting ready to release its 1930 census data next year. It has a 70 year rule. The motion does not propose a 70 year rule. It proposes that the 1911 census data be released in 2003, which is 92 years. We can argue all day about what is an appropriate length of time but we need clear statutory rules as to when Canada will do that. The current situation is open to political manipulation.

The minister asked Statistics Canada to produce a report on what it thought about the whole situation. The Statistics Canada report essentially stated that there was an everlasting promise to keep the material secret. It has been able to make that statement without any documentation.

A review of all the statutes, proclamations, the Canada Gazette and newspaper clippings of the day would indicate quite the contrary. The more one thinks about why Statistics Canada would take such a position, the more one is led to the conclusion that Statistics Canada is actually in a conflict of interest situation on this matter.

Very pervasive, invasive questions have been asked recently by Statistics Canada. There are members of the public, including myself, who do not believe that the level of inquiry is appropriate for census material. By using coercion, the threat of penalty and other measures, we are told that we have to respond to the questions.

That accumulated data becomes a saleable commodity by Statistics Canada. It is in business with this data. It does not want to threaten its ability to coerce the public into responding to those questions. Therefore it has to hold out this guarantee, or at least favour that end of the spectrum.

I do not believe we should be giving any plausible credibility to its report. The motion is clear in stating that nationally we have a vested interest in actually releasing our census data. We will lose too much of our history if we do not do so. We will be out of step with other parts of the western world. We will leave an unsatisfactory circumstance to be cleaned up later.

There is no better time than this year to clarify what the rules of census data collection are because we are going into a census year next year. Let us deal with more than the 1911 census. Let us deal with the 1911 census and subsequent ones, as well as the 2001 census.

This motion deals with the most immediate priority, the 1911 census. I urge everyone to reject the amendment and to vote for the motion.