By hook or by crook --The Liberals are determined to have their way

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Opposition members and First Nations leaders opposed to the proposed First Nations governance act say there is still hope that the bill can be prevented from becoming law.

This in spite of a determined effort by Liberals to rush Bill C-7 to a vote in the House of Commons by limiting debate of the act by members of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs.

The committee heard the testimony of hundreds of witnesses who appeared at 57 fact-finding sessions held across the country during a six-week period and several weeks in Ottawa.

What the Liberal chair of the committee proposed was that each member of the committee be limited to speaking only 10 minutes on any one amendment to the bill put forward, and have the bill sent on to Parliament for second reading in just three days.

Several Parliamentarians told Windspeaker the Liberal majority on the committee dug pretty deep to find a way to advance the bill. But Opposition members scuttled their efforts.

A bizarre series of events began to unfold when committee chair, Ray Bonin, called a closed session of the committee on March 27 to discuss "future business."

Opposition MPs say the subject of time allocation-time limits on debate to speed the process along-was on the agenda. This agenda item was raised even before the committee concluded hearing testimony, they said.

After hearing the proposal of the chair, Pat Martin, the New Democrat member for Winnipeg Centre, suspected that the Liberals felt the bill was under attack, and were attempting to ram it through committee without allowing committee members to give due consideration to the testimony presented. So he took action.

A filibuster is a political tactic used to stall proceedings with exceptionally long speeches to prevent the adoption of motions, like the motion that was before the committee to limit debate on the bill.

Once Martin got to speak to that motion, he spoke non-stop for 12-and-a-half hours. That was just Day One.

Windspeaker reached Martin on Wednesday, April 2, just minutes before he was scheduled to resume his filibuster on Day Two.

"I'm glad people are aware of it because I'm not really allowed to reveal too much. The unfairest thing of all is they had this meeting deemed to be in-camera, which means no public is allowed," he said.

He criticized the government for bringing up the subject of time limits on debates in a private session.

"It's legitimate to go in-camera to discuss future business, but it was in the context of that in-camera meeting that they sprung this motion on time allocation or moving closure on the debate," he said.

He vowed to continue speaking for as long as it took to make the government back down.

"There is no limit as to how long a member can speak at the Aboriginal Affairs committee on any motion or amendment or anything else. They're concerned that our opposition to Bill C-7 is so extreme that we would be using every opportunity to delay things-and maybe we would-but that's a fair, legitimate thing to do," he explained. "Their proposed deadline [to have the bill passed into law] is early May. If we use every stalling tactic available to us, we may be able to stall it so that it can't be passed before we adjourn for the summer break. If we can stall it until the fall, part of the strategy is that they'll be so seized with their own internal [leadership] machinations within the Liberal Party that there'll be very little done or attention spent to any kind of legislative agenda come fall. That's our best hope, actually."

He was asked if he saw it as strange that a governance bill that seeks to increase accountability and transparency for First Nations governments was being debated in a closed meeting.

"Yes, it really does make it a mockery. People assume that at the standing committee at least there's an opportunity for meaningful dialogue to take place, but they're putting an end even to that. And it's cynical to the extreme to be saying . . . thei original deadline for the introduction of amendments would be this Thursday, tomorrow, even though we were still hearing witnesses as of Monday. I've never seen a time frame that tight ever before. This is what we're objecting to and we believe we have legitimate grounds to object to them trying to fast-track something when clearly the reason they're fast-tracking it is they realize how incredibly unpopular this bill is, judging from our cross-country tour."

In other words, he said that the government's plan was to have the committee members process what one Opposition source described as "dozens and dozens and dozens of binders of paperwork" in as few as three days.

Martin said that has him convinced that the minister of Indian Affairs and the Prime Minister are willing to do whatever it takes to get this bill passed.

"This goes right to the top. We have good reason to believe, judging from what the Prime Minister has said in Cabinet meetings, that he fully supports and is the one directing the First Nations governance act," he said.

"It's business that was left undone when he failed to implement the 1969 White Paper. The whole subject or the whole theme of assimilation has been re-introduced with the First Nations governance act. We believe that the minister is driving this at the direction of the Prime Minister. It really does go right up to the PMO."

Most of Windspeaker's Ottawa sources agree that the bill must be passed before the summer recess or it's in big trouble.

"If we can interfere with their legislative agenda to the point where it's difficult for them to schedule it back into the House, we believe that even though it has Cabinet support, it certainly isn't a priority for anyone other than the minister of Indian Affairs," Pat Martin said. "If we can have it bumped back in priority just by having it an inconvenience for the minister, then there's reason to believe we can have it stalled until the summer recess. And if we can have it stalled tha long, maybe it'll die a natural death and it'll simply go away."

But Martin's card-the filibuster?was trumped by the Liberal's with a political tactic of their own.

When a government member asked the chair to rule that the filibuster was out of order, Ray Bonin said the rules didn't allow it. But then he said his decision was open to challenge if anyone disagreed. When the chair is challenged, it becomes a simple majority vote. And the government always ensures it has a majority in standing committees. The challenge opened the door for the Liberals, who are now accused of playing fast and loose with procedure, to vote to overturn the chair's decision that there was no rule that would allow him to stop the filibuster. And that made the filibuster go away.

Tempers flared when the opposition members saw what was happening. Robert Nault's Parliamentary Secretary, Miramichi MP Charles Hubbard and Bonin were accused of cursing at Martin and Bloc Quebecois MP Yvon Loubier.

Alliance MP Dave Chatters said he heard Hubbard threaten to punch Loubier.

"What we've been seeing the last few days can only be described as the tyranny of the majority," said First Nations leader Charles Fox, who was acting as Assembly of First Nations national chief while Matthew Coon Come was out of the country.

"Liberal members of the standing committee have been insisting on closed door meetings, using procedural tricks to cut off legitimate debate, physically threatening committee members from other parties, and arrogantly disregarding the testimony of hundreds of First Nations witnesses. The minister himself has taken punitive action against our peoples and governments for not supporting his new Indian Act. And they claim they can lecture First Nations about openness and accountability?"

The Bloc member agreed.

"The fact they're resorting to cursing and name-calling reveals their desperation," Loubier said.

Warren Allmand, a former Liberal minister of Indian Affairs who spent 31 yearsin Parliament, told Windspeaker the Liberal chairman of the standing committee pulled a bit of a fast one to stop the filibuster.

"When the Liberal members tried to stop the filibuster, they asked the chair, Mr. Bonin, to stop it. He said there was no rule that would allow him to stop it. Then he said, 'You can appeal my ruling.' But if they appealed his ruling, all it would mean is that they didn't agree with his ruling that he couldn't stop it. It doesn't mean that they could stop it," Allmand said.

"So then what [the Opposition] tried to do then is, I think they tried to appeal it to the Speaker of the House of Commons. But the Speaker never interferes with the procedure in a committee."

Allmand agreed with First Nation leaders who say the government tactics are a sure sign that the standing committee hearings were for show only.

"[T]he whole thing is cynical. They asked to hear the views of people and the committee went across the country and they're not incorporating the views," he said. "The whole thing was a bloody farce. But I have to tell you that I've seen this done by both parties with majorities over the years."

Liberal House Leader Don Boudria defended his government's actions during a speech in the House of Commons on April 3. He said there were two precedents in Canada's history where similar moves were made by committee chairmen-in 1990 when debate was limited on an act to implement the goods and services tax, which was based on a case that occurred in the standing committee on Justice and Legal Affairs in 1984, where the chair had made an identical ruling in similar circumstances.

David Chatters (Athabasca, Canadian Alliance) told the House that Boudria was missing the point.

"The issue of using closure in committee is a big issue and sets a big precedent in this place. We have operated for some 130 years without closure in committee and I would hesitate to support starting to do that now," he said.

Alliance Indian Affairs critic Brian Palli