Thank you. Before I go to the panel for their response. I would like to inform the House that Mr. Mercredi has other commitments to meet with the leaders of the Dene Nation, and he has asked to be excused.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to make a few general remarks, as I have to leave very shortly. If I remember the question, I believe that as the national leader of the Inuit, that the Charlottetown Accord is a best possible compromise for Inuit and other aboriginal peoples in this country.

For the first time, in the history of this country, Canada has made good on its promise, that Inuit and other aboriginal peoples can be full and equal participants in constitutional decision making. There are a number of elements of the constitutional accord that were very difficult for us to accept, but the gains in the accord outweighed the negative impact.

Some of the things that were very difficult to accept for aboriginal peoples, I will just give you a few examples, that I have been stating over the last number of months. What was difficult to accept, was a lack of a constitutional entrenched financing agreement. The judiciability of the inherent right being delayed for five year, and the lack of a guaranteed full participation in all First Ministers' Conferences by the aboriginal peoples.

I think that the important part of the self-government package for Inuit, and other aboriginal peoples, is that the self-government package contains a number of checks and balances, to ensure that federal and provincial governments act in cooperation, and in collaboration, with one another. There are a number of provisions that would discourage one level of government acting in a domination of another.

It may take a number of years, as the Premier has said, for us in the territories to ascend into provincehood, but what the Charlottetown Accord does is that it provides a stepping stone towards that goal. Now, Mr. Chairman, with those remarks, I feel that the Charlottetown Accord is something that is of such significance towards the human rights of aboriginal peoples, that we have no choice but to support it, and to encourage all Canadians to vote "yes" for it, because of the significant progress on aboriginal human rights, this is an opportunity for Canada to meet aboriginal peoples needs for the first time, in a just and equitable way.

With those remarks, Mr. Chairman, I regret that I have other commitments, and must thank the Legislative Assembly for making this opportunity to myself and to the other leaders. I hope that this is not going to be the last time that northerners hear from aboriginal people in this country on the contents, and I will assure you that it is not. We still have a long debate until October 26.

I would like to end by saying thank you very much for this opportunity.

---Applause

On behalf of the committee, and on behalf of each and every Member of this House, I would like to thank Rosemarie Kuptana for making her presentation in this committee of the whole, thank you very much.

If I do not see Mr. Mercredi, Ms. Kuptana, tell him that we thank him very much for attending this meeting. It has been a pleasure.

General comments? Mr. Dent are you still on, because on the list I have Mr. Lewis, Mr. Dent.

Thank you. To the panel, is Mr. Belcourt, or Mr. Fraser going to respond? Mr. Fraser, go ahead.

Well, Tony and I were discussing whether to have the question restated. It has been a few minutes since we heard it. As we understand it correctly, or, at least, I understand it, your question related more to the north moving towards provincehood, and how your representation in the institutions of government would be affected, whether you would remain the same or increase.

I think I agree with your question, or the statement that you were making earlier that if the north, and whatever parts that may be, choose to move towards provincehood, I do not think that it should have any more restrictions, or any less restrictions placed on it than those of other provinces that have come into Confederation. The people of the north will make that decision when they think the time is right, and as that transpires, I think the federal government should move very quickly, and allow for speedy resolution.

I certainly think that if what we have is the so-called Triple E Senate and, as new provinces are created, I think the representation must be equal to what supported the other provinces. I do not think that can be any less accepted anywhere else. If Prince Edward Island has six, or any other province, then certainly the north, or the new provinces should be afforded the same equal status with respect to that.

Where I believe you are at now is another step along the way towards provincehood. I think it is just another stepping stone, where we are at, at this point in time. As you move towards provincehood, we will see different things evolving over time, and I think it will be up to the people of the north how they decide in that progression.

I think that it is vitally important, with respect to your development, that the people are made aware of where they are heading, and have a clear vision of where they want to head. Some of the comments earlier that were expressed about informing people, I have to agree. I think Mr. Nerysoo raised the issue of tactics, in trying to explain one's position.

I do not think one necessarily has to use some of the doom and gloom that has been talked about, but I think there are some real dangers if we do not go into this with our eyes completely open. I think there are some real dangers for this country that affects not only Quebec, and the aboriginal people, but I think it affects every part of this country.

I think Ron George best said some months ago, we have a really easy job, all we have to do is tell the truth, and the issue of the legal text being put before the people, so that they can make up their minds. I am a firm believer that has to be there. People cannot vote on a half package, if they do not see all of the legal wording that is there.

I also understand the difficulties when you have upwards of thirty, forty, fifty lawyers in a room trying to agree on any one thing, and that is a difficult task at best, even when you have two sitting in a room. I think many of the concerns expressed earlier are real. We have to go out and not only promote the package, but have to explain it to our people so that they have clear understanding. We have to explain it to all Canadians, because let us realize that we are not the only ones in this process.

We agreed to come into this process as full partners, and I think that we have agreed that we will either walk together, or we are going to fall together. Thank you.

Mr. Belcourt.

Yes, I wonder if you would not mind just briefly restating the question. I am not sure that I got it completely.

Thank you. Mr. Dent.

Mr. Belcourt.

Mr. Chairman, I guess my feeling is that yes, I do think it is a fair compromise. I do not think that we can predict in the future that we are not going to have unanimous consent on any particular issue. Look at what we have now, we have unanimous consent on a very, very complex package of issues. I do not think, once a territory aspires to provincehood, Canadians elsewhere would say to that new province "we are going to deny you equitable representation in the House of Commons and the Senate, now that you are now a province."

Particularly with principles being established that there will be equality of the provinces. I believe that in the future, when that time comes, it is going to be possible to negotiate that kind of representation in the two institutions of parliament. I think that what we have before us is a question being put to Canadians as a plebiscite, do you agree that this package should be supported or not? I think that, on balance, even though everything in the future has not been taken care of today, that the package should be supported, because what is there, is good. What is there is going to make tremendous change for aboriginal people, it is going to make a tremendous change for all of us in Canada who are going to have a better state of affairs, so that we can then turn our attentions to other issues that are before us.

Not everyone in Canada will be able to say I achieved 100 percent of my goals in this constitutional round, but then again, what we are all going to be able to do is say, boy there were sure an awful lot of goals achieved that are beneficial, let us accept them and carry on. I guess my answer to you is that, yes, I believe it is a fair compromise.

Thank you. General comments? Mr. Lewis.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think it is a tribute to the Constitution of all Canadians, that for thousands, and thousands of hours, people have sat in rooms, like this, debating a very complex, and a very, very difficult issue.

For that reason, I am going to be brief. I think that the biggest problem that we face, Mr. Chairman, is that the people are always looking for perfect things. You want something that is just absolutely bang on, just exactly what you are looking for.

If you cannot find it, you figure that one day, it will happen, so you keep looking. It reminds me very much of the big choices that we make in our life, we decide to get married, you have a mate and you find out more about each other over the years, and you realize that you are less perfect than what your wife thought you were, and so on. We find out things much later on, about the nature of the contracts that we make.

We decide that we are going to buy something, and you see something that you like, you discuss it, you talk about it, you may see a nice piece of furniture, and your wife thinks where am I going to put that in the house, that does not fit, and it does not go with the colour scheme, and maybe we should talk about it again. By the time that you have made up your mind, yes, we should buy it, because overall it was a pretty good thing to do, and when you get there you find that it is gone. Someone else has bought it.

The two issues, it seems to me, are the issue of the search for something that is perfect, and the problem of timing when you do something. People are probably right, that there is a possibility that things could be better. On the other hand, you may find that things could be a lot worse and you have taken a risk, a chance always, if you think you are going to find something better than what you have got, or you just put it off indefinitely.

You may find that when you are ready to do something, it is not there any more. So, when I look at this package, and the tremendous amount of work that went into putting it together, the tremendous number of meetings, and the forum that was held by the various organizations across the country, I am thinking of the Canada West Foundation, the Fraser Institute, those early ones, and then the multilateral conferences right across the country, there is an incredible amount of work that has gone on, much different than to what happened under Meech.

People rejected Meech because it was not fair. That is why they rejected it. People said that this is not fair. It is not fair that we have done nothing about the aboriginal issue, and it is not fair that you have things like a Senate that does not make any sense. It is not fair that you have the territories not being allowed to be admitted to confederation the same way that everybody else was. Canadians are fair people. They did not see it as fair.

Now we have had a chance to discuss this at tremendous length. A lot of hard grinding work, and it is a tribute to Canadians that they have been able to grind this out. I have seen the pain, and I have seen the tremendous efforts that people have made, tremendous displays of patience, and tolerance, that people have displayed, and I was impressed by it.

So, although there was something in here that I had missed, and to my shame, I suppose, has to do with the way in which we have looked at the problems of disabled people in our country. I have been interested in the whole issue of how disabled people operate within a society for most of my life. If there has ever been an example of how many can be intolerant to other people, it is the way in which we treat people who are marginal in our society. I would like to extend this idea of being marginal, not just to disabled people, but to those people who are not empowered, those people that do not seem to matter that much, people that, for some reason or other, are never accepted as being equal within a society.

We have made giant steps in the area of recognizing the equality of people as human beings, to have their rights observed in our Constitution. The clause that appears now under the general Canada clause about respect for the rights of disabled people, is contained in clause (f), which says that Canadians are committed to respect for individual and collective human rights of people. Lawyers, even though the word disabled may have been in the earlier drafts, are always looking to clean up language, to avoid redundancies, that what we have is a clause which perhaps some legal people said covers that. Mr. Chairman, this is my final comment, yesterday there was a program on the radio, which I listened to yesterday morning, about the dreadful history of man's inhumanity to man, because of some of the flawed science which we have pursued in the past. I am thinking of the science eugenics, natural selection, and how some people somewhere in our society do not deserve what other people get.

How, for example, during fascist regimes, people were used as objects for experiment, because they were less than human. Where some members of our society, even in civilized society, like Canada, are used for experiments. Where Metis, for example, have been sterilized against their will, and did not even know about it.

When we are talking about disability, I know we use it in a very narrow sense, but it seems to me that when we talk about human rights, we should be talking about the dignity of all people. It was an oversight, in my opinion, that, that particular clause does not cover that group of people, who for example, can be told, because you are this kind of individual, we cannot expend all our health care money because you are less than somebody else that deserves it more. We cannot expand the health care money to include people like you, because really you are not a full human being, you are less than a human being. That was an omission.

Despite that, Mr. Chairman, despite the real concern that I have, the mistake was made in not making this an issue, and much clearer in the document. I cannot see, because of all the tremendous gains that have been made, how that Canada is going to be completely changed if this Constitution becomes law. The changes are so dramatic, so completely different to what we have now, that I cannot see how anybody can say that little has been achieved, or that not enough has been achieved.

If you hold out for perfection, and for the right time, perfection never comes and the timing is never perfect. So, you seize the moment when you can get it, when you realize that by not doing it, you could have set yourself back.

I would like to address that to our two witness, if I could, the issue of perfection, or a perfect deal, and the issue of timing, if we have time to do that.

Would the panel like to make a comment on that? Mr. Belcourt.

I do not think that I have much to add to what Mr. Lewis has said. I think that he is absolutely right. You are not going to get everything 100 percent perfect, and he has indicated an area where there was an omission. We certainly hear about other areas where certain people would prefer to have certain things differently. We just heard from Rosemarie Kuptana about some concerns that she had. In terms of timing, I think that the chance for us to proceed is now, so that we will be in a position to do something about these other areas in the future. The timing for that has to be now. We have to seize this opportunity, to approve what we have as incomplete and imperfect that it might be, because it will certainly afford us an opportunity to then be able to continue, to come back, and do the things that have to be done.

As I said in my opening remarks, this is certainly not closing the books on constitutional change. This is accepting a certain package from where we are now. I think we will certainly not get anywhere if we do not accept some things as we go along, so I would have to say if we do not accept this, then what?

I do not, quite frankly, think it is easy enough to say that we can go back to the drawing boards, and start all over again. I think it would be very, very difficult to ever do that. Difficult for all kinds of reasons that I have stated before, not because there might not be a will on the part of people like yourself, people of goodwill who would like to do that, but we know that there are some people in this country who have absolutely no intention of wanting to do that. No intention of wanting to accept what we have now, because it is good for Canada.

Thank you. Mr. Fraser.

Looking at a whole lot more, I agree with your statements. I suppose if it were a perfect Constitution, we would not have all these debates, and we would not have to be sitting here every few years. One of the things we recognize going on in this process fairly early on, I think the territorial government recognizes as well, we are new at this. This is the first time we have had an opportunity to sit face to face, in many cases, with the first Ministers and Ministers of the provinces to discussing issues on such a wide ranging scale that are now before us. I know from our end, we are going to make mistakes in this process, and I do not think if we tried to search for the perfect solution of document, our constitutional problems would ever be solved.

We are going to have another date on discussion of the constitutional items, and I think that is a recognition that when you get involved in this process, it is never over. Times change, cultures change, they have all through time, which dictates different circumstances. Who would have thought we would be discuss the issues that we have before us today 20 years ago, or even 40 years ago.

So, I think if we tried to wrap ourselves up in trying to piece together the perfect document, I do not think this country would progress, and the problems this country has seen itself immersed in over the last number of years, would only get worse. I think that would be a far greater danger for this country than looking at something that may be less than perfect. I think we all recognize that this package has its imperfections, but with all its imperfections, it is felt that now is the best time, and we have a possibility of moving forward. Who knows when the right time is to move issues forward on the Constitution arena. I do not think any politician can tell you that. Some would like to tell you that now is the right time, but it is how people feel.

People have got to feel good about what is being put forward, and if they are not comfortable, then that is definitely not the right time. It is tied back to how do you explain what you have before you to the people, and that is a big help. Thank you.

Thank you. General comments, Mr. Arngna'naaq.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is too bad that the other two political leaders had to leave, and I would like to thank them for being able to come for the period of the time that they were able to come in.

I would first of all like to commend the people who have been involved in the discussions regarding the constitutional reform, but from what I can see at this point, as far as my constituency is concerned, timing on the referendum is interfering with the land claim ratification in our area, simply because they are only a week apart. I do not believe that there has been enough time to really digest many issues that were raised, as far as constitutional discussions are concerned. I know that in our area, Nunavut, the size of our land is probably larger than the population itself, but we have an opinion, I have an opinion, and members of my constituency have differing opinions.

At this point, when we talk about inherent right to self-government as a broad definition, I cannot really understand where we have a defined right as aboriginal people. When Members are talking about significant progress, how much we have moved forward, I liken it to a brick wall where I am standing on one side of the brick wall, and our aboriginal leaders are banging their heads against that wall. Occasionally, they crack the wall, and today when we talk about significant progress, I think, we finally have a leader who has thrown an anchor over the brick wall, and is going up it. That is what I see. That is significant progress. I think there is more to be made in the future.

When we talk about perfect/imperfect documents regarding the Constitution, I do not think we should get that far. We do not even have a legal text whereby we can say this is what is going to be in the legal text. We have a campaign that is saying "yes" to this referendum, and a "no" campaign, and then we have a non-partisan group that is giving out facts about something that does not have legal text, something that no one here in this room is really able to say this is what will be agreed upon.

I was disappointed to learn that it would be on the October 26, and again in this room, there is really nobody who is able to say whether this referendum will take place on this day, or another day, because it interferes with the land claim agreement that we are trying to ratify.

My constituency has just been going through a series of discussions on the agreement, they are trying to digest the agreement, now we are coming up with another very difficult question with a lot of varying issues, very difficult questions, and within a week apart of each other, they will be voting. Over the last few days, there has been discussion, or talks, in the media about the access of legal text, and on the political accord. I wanted to get an idea of those Members who have given their support, or have given positive responses, not necessarily their support, but positive responses to the referendum question? Will they still be in agreement if the legal text cannot be prepared, and agreed to, prior to referendum? If there is a contingency plan for each of the Members, and I say again, that it is too bad that our President for I.T.C. was not able to stay, but I would have liked to hear what she had to say about when it has been completed. The second question to that would have been if they have a contingency plan, if there is a "yes" vote in the referendum, and they cannot agree to a legal text? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. Mr. Belcourt.

Mr. Chairman, I certainly sympathize with you, and your problem in your area. This is the first I have known that there are two very complex issues going on in your constituency. I certainly do sympathize because these are big issues, and very complex and confusing. Most of the only people that can really understand a lot of this material are people who are professors of political science or lawyers, but even at that, when you get them in the room, they can never agree.

So, it is a very complex thing, and I sympathize that you have to go through this both at the same time in your area. All I can say is that, hopefully, your people will take the package of information that has been tabled, and more of it that is coming around and being translated, so that it will get into peoples' homes. Once they see the material in front of them, they will see that they have heard these things before.

During our multilateral process, you will all recall, that at the end of everyday at the meetings, the honourable Joe Clark, Premiers and Ministers, aboriginal leaders, would come out to the podium and explain to the media what went on that day, and what was agreed to that day. By and large, almost all of the things that were agreed to in the aboriginal package were agreed to way back in June, so that information has been in our communities now for a long time.

I know that some aboriginal media have taken some time to try to explain what is there. I can only hope that with this some people will be reassured when they see the words in front of them, that they have heard this before and that, while it is very complex, in many ways, it is very straightforward.

On the question of not having legal text, I must confess I am not sure exactly if there is a decision not to provide legal text. I am not clear on that. What I do know, because I have been sitting in those rooms and hate to do it when it is a beautiful sunny day, I would rather be outside, but stuck in these constitutional rooms as I was, all of last Friday, listening to lawyers argue about where to put a comma, and whether it ought to be an or, or an and, or an or/and. I do know, that with the legal text that is being done now, is to put in legal language the leaders have agreed to.

These are the instructions to the officials, and I know that officials for the Government of the Northwest Territories are there to protect the interests of what your leaders have agreed to. Your officials have to make sure that the legal language does not deviate from what has been agreed to.

What has been agreed to is, in layman's language, in this Consensus Report on the Constitution. Now, I think that when you see the legal text it will just be these kinds of words put in legal language. That is the whole purpose of the exercise that we are engaged in now, in the meetings that are going on in Ottawa. What is being asked of Canadians, everywhere, is here is what has been agreed to in everyday language, and even that is complex.

Now, do you agree to support this agreement, that we ought to proceed to amend the Constitution on the basis of this agreement? Once the referendum is over, we will then be in a different kind of a process. Your Legislature will then have an accord put in front of it. First of all, the leaders will all have to get together, again, and say "that this legal language, and look at that, it is about an inch thick, accurately reflects the agreement reached in Charlottetown." Therefore, that is the legal language that we ought to approve in our various legislatures, in Parliament, in the provinces, in the Northwest Territories, and in the Yukon.

It is not over on October 26. What we have to do, by October 26, is come to a decision, as to whether, or not, this Consensus Report on the Constitution, ought to form the basis to amend the Constitution of Canada. Not for all time, but for now. If yes, then obviously we go the next step. Your legislature will be spending hours, I would assume, pondering over this legal language.

I just thought I might mention those things to you, and see if that might help explain where we are at. I understand that there is information being prepared now, if not already available in some of the aboriginal languages, including Inuktitut.

Thank you. There is a number of people on my list for making general comments. I wonder if Mr. Kakfwi would like to further comment on Mike's idea. Mr. Arngna'naaq. Mr. Kakfwi.