John Duncan

[Indian Affairs, March 11th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, one of the government's major selling points on the Nisga'a deal was that it would end special tax exempt status for the Nisga'a.

That would be good news if it were true, but it is not. The Nisga'a deal just substitutes one kind of tax exempt status for another. It would mean that all Nisga'a lands and any business that is run by the Nisga'a central government is tax exempt.

How can the Minister of Finance justify permanent exemptions from taxation on no other basis than race?

[Canadian Human Rights Act, March 6th, 1996]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-225, an act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act (Indian Act).

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to introduce for first reading my private member's bill, an act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act.

The purpose of the bill is to repeal section 67 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which reads: "Nothing in this act affects any provision of the Indian Act or any provision made under or pursuant to that act".

Because of this section, a federal court judge in 1994 in his decision was unable, as he said, to uphold the human rights of a young Indian student from British Columbia to attend a Catholic boarding school away from her reserve.

The judge has termed the Indian Act racist and one of the causes is that the Indian Act is exempt from the Canadian Human Rights Act. The judge went on to say that if the Indian Act were not exempt from the Canadian Human Rights Act, human rights tribunals would be obligated to tear apart the Indian Act in the name and spirit of equality of human rights in Canada.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)

[Indian Affairs, March 5th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, this is not a balanced deal. There is much controversy among the media. We are not attacking any group. We are trying to place responsibility where it belongs.

The minister can dance around the issue all he wants but his primary function is to spend taxpayers' money wisely and be accountable to the taxpayers when doing so. He has failed in the past. He has failed with this deal. The auditor general has confirmed this fact over time. We deserve better.

Will the minister commit today to giving the auditor general the mandate to exercise full oversight of the spending of federal dollars in the Nisga'a deal?

[Indian Affairs, March 5th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the department of Indian affairs has been repeatedly criticized for its lack of accountability. To this department and the minister, the Canadian taxpayer is nothing more than an afterthought.

The Nisga'a deal is another example of the taxpayer being left out of the equation. The primary accountability for spending in this deal is only to the Nisga'a people.

Why is the minister failing to be accountable to the people he is supposed to be accountable to, the Canadian taxpayer?

[Committees Of The House, March 4th, 1996]

The non-partisan things that go on there are controlled and manipulated by the government. I am sorry, there is no other way for me to say it.

Our committee wasted a long time, in my opinion, looking into what was really the minister's prerogative, which was co-management in Saskatchewan. Because the minister obviously has an agenda, the opposition role becomes one of damage control rather than trying to be a productive member of the committee, particularly if we have a point of view that is obviously quite different.

This gets away from the whole system of checks and balances that are crucial to the proper operation of government on an ongoing basis. The checks and balances in the Canadian system are, assuming that the committee system worked properly, already much less than the checks and balances built into other democracies. One that comes foremost to my mind is the one due south of us.

We need to scrutinize what this place is all about and where it is going. This is a crucial time in Canada's history. We are a young country. This is the wrong time for us to be creating so-called traditions that are anti-democratic, that we have been hearing about for the last while on this debate.

[Committees Of The House, March 4th, 1996]

Second, once the chair was elected my colleagues repeatedly attempted to move a motion to elect a vice-chair, but the chair appeared to be intent on stalling so that a motion to elect a member of the Bloc could be put forward by the Bloc or by the government for the so-called opposition vice-chair.

The chair stalled by insisting that we were going to consider motions for government vice-chair. This is a false distinction. The standing orders do not recognize a government vice-chair per se. The standing orders only require that two of the three positions go to the government side.

As soon as a motion to elect a vice-chair is put forward, whether to elect a government or opposition member, that motion is surely in order. The chair made it clear that he was accepting no motions from the Reform.

Third, once a member of the government moved to elect the Bloc to the vice-chair, my colleagues and I asked for debate on the motion. We were not only cut off; we were not allowed to debate at all. As Your Honour knows, Standing Order 116 makes clear that there is no limit on debate on a regular motion in committee.

Fourth, when we put forward a motion to overturn the election of the Bloc member as vice-chair, the chairman refused to entertain the motion, which was surely in order. The chairman then summarily adjourned the meeting.

We appeal to you, Mr. Speaker, to uphold the standing orders and our rights. This kind of conduct by committee chairs is surely less than acceptable.

This is just one more time when we ran into this but it is one that is documented. That is why I thought I would re-enter it into the record.

Why does the government want to regulate and control every aspect of activity in Parliament? Canadians are not being served. There is no long term vision being displayed of how non-regional representation can lead to the irrelevancy of this place. In the minds of many Canadians this place is irrelevant now and by carrying on this kind of behaviour it is only contributing to that perception of irrelevancy.

Why do the procedure experts in the Liberal government take such great delight in supporting the Bloc at every move and in every one of their tricks in this place to the detriment of democracy?

As I explained before, with the majority the government has, it has a unique opportunity, one that has not been seen for a dozen years, to implement considerable improvements in how committees work. That opportunity has not only been lost, but the committee structures, committee elections, and all that goes with it have taken a step backward. As long as this charade continues those committees are becoming more and more irrelevant.

When I go to committee I have very little influence on the agenda and subject matter to be looked into. The committee that I sit on, aboriginal affairs, has a whole classification of people who live under the Indian Act. They live under one department. There are no checks and balances beyond that department. The government is not only in control of the committee and the department, they are in control of those people's lives. If there is one place where opposition members need an opportunity to pry off the lid, to really try and get to the bottom of the serious things going on that are counterproductive to the aboriginal community and Canadian society as a whole, it is that committee.

[Committees Of The House, March 4th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, every member of Parliament knows the Bloc is being favoured as official opposition. Any objective analysis would also demonstrate and come to the very same conclusion. This is a growing, daunting realization by the Canadian public. Whenever we have that kind of circumstance there is a reaction somewhere down the road. The government should think about that very seriously.

The government has its own agenda and I am not exactly sure what it is. However, with the majority the government holds it has a unique time in our history to really create a circumstance for democratic freedom and for improving the way this place works, but it is blowing it.

We have heard some very weak arguments from the Bloc, especially in my critic area of aboriginal affairs, as to how effective they are in the rest of the country. The Bloc has been happy to run around Canada encouraging spending and the inherent right to self-government among aboriginals as long as they are not in Quebec.

At the same time, I and other members in my party have as a matter of course worked in Indian country in Quebec where the Bloc has totally dropped the ball. Do we trumpet this from the trees? Do we run around making speeches about what a great job we have done in the province of Quebec? No. This is a much more heartfelt item than that. This is beyond politics. The whole area of aboriginal affairs should in many respects be beyond politics.

There is hardly a single thing done by the Bloc where the motivation is not to further the separatist vision of Quebec.

Why should I have to go into committee knowing full well that as an opposition member the government wants to favour that other party member over me? I have sought to remedy the electoral unfairness or favouritism which I observed in committee last September. This was very difficult. Committees are supposed to be masters of their own house and, for very good reason, the Speaker is reluctant to interfere.

The problem starts with the numbers. Government members on a committee outnumber the combined opposition members. The whip can orchestrate what happens in committee.

We obviously need a secret ballot in committee. How the House of Commons, where our federal democracy is supposed to be expressed, does not adopt this bit of progress to prevent the possibility of government backbench coercion is beyond me, other than the government likes everything that happens around here to be in its full control. To elucidate some of my concerns, I would like to read a bit from my submission of September 20 last fall to

demonstrate my observations on trying to even nominate a Reform chair or vice-chair to the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs.

This committee has a history of past irregularities, including the case to which I have drawn your attention. The irregularities from yesterday are as follows.

First, as soon as the clerk's gavel fell I submitted a motion to elect a chairman. As Your Honour knows, under the standing orders the first item of business for an organizational meeting is the election of a chair for the committee. However, the clerk acknowledge my speaking and asked me to wait until he had read his first item of business. I asked that he recognize that I had given notice of a motion. After the clerk read the item of business he proceeded to recognize someone else first.

[Indian Affairs, December 13th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the RCMP investigation of the Ontario Métis and Aboriginal Association, initiated as a result of my questioning in November, is awaiting a report from the minister's department.

Can the minister assure the House this report will be more complete than his answer of November 8?

[Indian Affairs, December 13th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, on November 8 the Minister of Industry, with previous notice, in response to my question stated that no funds had been advanced to the Ontario Métis and Aboriginal Association since 1991.

I have since determined that since 1991 some $270,000 has been advanced to the association. This is over and above the $111,000 advanced to Henry Wetelainen, Sr. Would the minister like to take this opportunity to clear up the information he provided the House on November 8 and set the record straight?

[Supply, December 7th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, this motion has been misread. It depends where you are coming from sometimes how you choose to read something. Nowhere in this motion does the Reform Party suggest that governments cannot sign agreements in the last year of their mandate.

We are saying that when there is a significant, a major, a costly and a divisive issue, in the same way that the Mulroney Tories in the dying days of their government, low in the polls, signed the EH-101 and the Pearson deals, this is a divisive issue in British Columbia. It is precedent setting and worth billions of dollars. It is totally inappropriate for the government in the last year of its mandate to sign this treaty. In actuality the election is most likely only months away. It will be in the spring.

I want to make it perfectly clear that this is a basic assumption that was promoted by the last speaker and it is incorrect. Nowhere are we saying that, nor is that our intent.

There was a suggestion by the member that only a Liberal government is qualified to govern and only a Liberal government is qualified to judge the issues. I find that very difficult, particularly in the context of British Columbia. That is a stretch of unimaginable proportions.

The member made some statements about lands and about treaties. The significant thing in British Columbia is that British Columbia spent many years after Confederation contributing lands to the federal government to reserve for native people. That was a commitment made at the time of Confederation under the Act of Union. It was an unfulfilled commitment up until 1924. In 1924 the federal government, by order in council, agreed that the province of British Columbia had fulfilled its obligations.

British Columbia has two-thirds of all the reserves in Canada. About 18 per cent of registered Indian people in Canada live in British Columbia. Those reserves contain, within a provincial context, 14 per cent of all lands reserved for Indians. This is not insignificant. It is the crux of a very large issue. There is no legal imperative to negotiate treaties.

We are not saying that treaties should not be negotiated. We are also interested in removing the uncertainty from the landscape and from this whole issue. This is an appropriate way to do it. However, right now is not the time to conclude a final agreement.