B.C. Conservative MP John Cummins ramped up his attack on his own government Thursday by making public a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper critical of the $121-million treaty to be announced today with the Tsawwassen band.
"The proposed Tsawwassen treaty poses long-term trouble for the residents of Delta," wrote Cummins (Delta-Richmond East) in a letter provided exclusively to The Vancouver Sun.
Cummins said some of his constituents on treaty lands will be subjected to taxation without representation. The riding itself will see prime farmland turn into an "industrial wasteland," while the prized Burns Bog conservation area will be used by band members to hunt, gather and cut trees, he alleged.
Tsawwassen Chief Kim Baird did not respond to The Sun's request for an interview about the MP's assertions.
Cummins, in his Dec. 6 letter to a prime minister known for accepting little if any caucus dissent, said Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice will be announcing today in B.C. a "seriously flawed and quite dangerous" treaty that will be entrenched forever in the Constitution.
"If Mr. Prentice goes forward with signing the Tsawwassen final agreement, I will be forced to vigorously oppose Mr. Prentice and the treaty which he has signed," Cummins warns.
Prentice told The Sun Thursday the Tory government, which tossed outspoken MP Garth Turner from caucus recently, won't punish Cummins, saying "there's room for reasonable disagreement amongst people."
The Tsawwassen treaty is being valued at $121 million, about $50 million of it due to the likely removal of 207 hectares of valuable farmland that will be used for industrial port development.
The Tsawwassen first nation will also have the first option to purchase another 278 hectares of Crown-owned farmland now being used by farmers, though only if the current farmers choose not to buy it first from the government when their leases run out. That land would have to go through normal rezoning processes.
Prentice and Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn made public a joint letter to Cummins stating that the B.C. treaties being struck won't shut out 15,000 commercial and 300,000 sport fishermen.
"It must be clear that any access to a commercial fishery facilitated through treaty would be within an integrated and regulated commercial fishing regime and not a segregated fishery," they wrote.
Cummins is campaigning aggressively against the attempt by the B.C. and federal governments to accelerate the B.C. treaty process, which has come under heavy criticism for not producing a single finalized treaty despite $1 billion in taxpayer costs over 13 years of negotiations.
The two governments have already initialed the $76-million deal with the Carrier Indians of the Lheidli T'enneh First Nation near
In a scathing 39-page critique Wednesday, Cummins said the deal violates Harper's July 7 vow to oppose "racially divided" fisheries on the West Coast by establishing the band's right to a share of the
Prentice will announce the Tsawwassen deal today and the third treaty, a $319-million agreement with the 2,000-member Maa-nulth First Nation on
Fishermen opposed to the Tsawwassen treaty are also planning to fight back once they see the treaty's final details.
"It's a massive betrayal," said Phil Eidsvik, of the Fisheries Survival Coalition. "The guilty parties will pay."
Environmentalists also warn that the treaty will lead to a major expansion of the Roberts Bank superport.
"Man, we can't put our head on the sand on this one, we're going to see a large chunk of our farmland cemented over," said Joe Foy, a spokesman with the Vancouver-based Western Canada Wilderness Committee. "This is ground zero in a major change of life here."
Foy said environmentalists have been watching the development of the port with trepidation and will try to speak out against it. But he also acknowledged it is tough to attack the Tsawwassen treaty because many in the green movement want to see native land claims resolved.
"I think the biggest problem is people are loathe to speak up because it's a first nations agreement," he said. "What the federal and provincial governments have done is to use the treaty process to get around the agricultural land commission and have the largest chunk of farmland removed in recent history in one swoop.
"There could be hundreds of hectares more farmland removed from the ALR as roads are built," he predicted. "It's going to be a massive change to our region and I think it's really, really wrong-headed."
Cummins also predicted fisheries-management chaos as similar treaties are signed with the roughly 90 bands along the river, including the Tsawwassen.
Prentice said federal officials will still be able to regulate the fishery, and he stressed that commercial fishing deals with bands are in essence side deals to treaties and are therefore not given constitutional protection.
Among Cummins' allegations in his letter to Harper:
- The 700 non-aboriginals living on reserve land, who now vote for the Delta mayor and council, will become "resident aliens" who will pay taxes to the band but have no right to vote on the Tsawwassen government.
- Prime estuary farmland, which also serves as habitat for migratory birds, will be "lost forever" from B.C.'s Agricultural Land Reserve to become an "industrial wasteland" storage site for shipping containers.
- The Burns Bog Ecological Conservation Area, a part of the Tsawwassen traditional territory, will be subjected to a "race-based" regime in which band members can "hunt, gather, cut trees and in general do whatever the band or band members wish."
Prentice pointed out that non-natives are living on properties leased from the band.
"These people have always been in a circumstance where they hold their property rights from the first nation, so that isn't changing."
Prentice, who was interviewed just before the start of Question Period, said he didn't have time to discuss the Burns Bog issue.
The B.C. government is hoping it will be able to pass the treaties in the spring session of the legislature, even though Tsawwassen Chief Kim Baird said she expects her less than 400 band members to vote on the treaty mid-summer. The spring vote, however, is hoped for by the province because it means the treaty could be in place before another federal election, which could delay ratification by a year or more.