44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 9, 2023 10:00AM
- Feb/9/23 1:21:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak on this topic today.
I just want to take a few seconds at the beginning of my speech to send my best wishes to the families affected by the tragedy in Laval yesterday, as this is the first time I have had the opportunity to do so in the House. My heart goes out to them.
The motion today is much simpler than many parliamentarians seem to think. It is a reminder of how this provision is written and what function it has served for the last 40 years or so. It works.
The intent of today's motion is not to change anything, it is to remind the government that there is only one part of the Constitution—which we are forced to live with—that we can rely on when we need to protect our uniqueness. I ask members not to fall into the ridiculous trap of asking me to recognize this Constitution today. Everyone already knows the answer. We are simply asking that this part, at least, be respected. That is what we are doing today.
I am going to go back to a couple of comments that were made today. The member for Charlesbourg-Haute-Saint-Charles wonders why the Bloc is still here. It is because we are hard-working people and we do not give up on our cause. Of course, we would have liked it to take less time, but it has not happened yet. Until it is done, we need to be here to salvage what we can. We are doing an excellent job and we will keep doing it wther they like it or not. What I think is a little more outdated is Conservative populism. I would encourage them to come up with constructive solutions rather than sloganeering all day long.
As for our colleague from Lac‑Saint‑Louis, who was referring to what a beautiful, great country Canada is, I could not agree more. It is a great country. However, I regret to inform him that it is not mine, and I will explain why.
Today we are talking about the Constitution, which we have to live with even though the people of Quebec never agreed to it. Governments of Quebec never agreed to it. This is not a new thing. It has been going on for some time. I think this is yet another attempt to weaken Quebec and its ability to protect its social integrity, its unique society and its pursuit of true community, which is stronger than individualism. These are conflicting visions. If that is not the intention, I would like to hear it from government members.
I would sure like to give a little history lesson so people here can see that every constitutional law ever passed was not approved by Quebec. Anytime such a law benefited Quebec a bit, it was only because people wanted to use us. In this Confederation, one government is dominating another, and that does not always work for us. Actually, it never works for us. It should not even be called a confederation. If it really were a confederation, we might have far fewer problems.
The Constitution contains the notwithstanding clause, which allows us to pass reasonable laws collectively. Later on, I will share some examples of reasonable laws so my colleagues can see that this is of vital importance to Quebec, contrary to all the other anti-francophone laws that have been passed in Canada's history and to the federal government's determination to always block Quebec's emancipation.
I would also like to remind the House that Quebec's relative weight within Canada is constantly—
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- Feb/9/23 4:44:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am very pleased that you did not confuse me with the member for Jonquière, which would nonetheless have been a huge compliment.
Furthermore, Madam Speaker, please accept my regards because today is an important day for me, a very special day that I never thought I would see.
For years, the federal government, particularly the current Prime Minister, has told us that no one is interested in the Constitution, be they Quebeckers or Canadians, that constitutional debates are futile, that they are unimportant to our collective lives and, above all, that such things should not be discussed. Today we got his parliamentary secretary, but it got to the point where the Minister of Canadian Heritage, who is also, I presume, the minister for strife, came to tell us that we were looking for trouble by wanting to talk about the Constitution, a document we never signed and which is essentially the framework for this cohabitation within a federation to which I would obviously rather not belong.
By trying to make this a matter for the courts and possibly requiring a Supreme Court ruling, what the Prime Minister is doing is unilaterally changing the Constitution. The Constitution is clear. As most legal experts have said, or at least most legal experts who are not Liberals in the House, the notwithstanding clause is, by definition, pre-emptive. That is why the Prime Minister keeps repeating the word “pre-emptive”, to try to make us believe that it was once otherwise. However, the case law is clear: The notwithstanding clause is pre-emptive.
It exists precisely because of the current Prime Minister's behaviour. It is because of his paternalistic attitude and his tendency to tell Quebec what to do when he does not approve of the governments elected by Quebeckers. That is exactly why the notwithstanding clause exists, as a safety valve for the Quebec government and provincial governments.
Obviously, the Prime Minister is not a courageous man. He is a fraud. He has no courage. It took him 28 months to meet with the health ministers. The Prime Minister will never have the courage to say that he wants to reopen the Constitution. He will let the Supreme Court do his dirty work because it is win-win for him. The Supreme Court will likely say that he is wrong, but there is a small chance that the Supreme Court will create a loophole like it has done in the past because of the judges that the Prime Minister himself appointed.
Today's debate is not on the notwithstanding clause. It is a debate about the Prime Minister's ego and his desire to dictate conditions to Quebec. It is a debate on this individual's ego. We are seeing it again in his desire to unilaterally rewrite the Constitution. He thinks he is above the law. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and he sees no difference between himself, the Constitution, the law and institutions. This is the Prime Minister who caused the WE Charity scandal because he did not know the difference between the government, business, family and friends or between his bank account, the government's bank account and the public purse.
This is the Prime Minister who does not know, when he visits the Aga Khan, whether he is on vacation or on official business, and who does not know which bank account the expenses come out of. This is the Prime Minister who pays thousands and thousands of dollars for hotel rooms with gold faucets when he goes to see the monarchy. This is the Prime Minister who fired the minister over the SNC-Lavalin affair because he does not even like to see his own ministers obeying the law.
It is surprising that the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner's office does not have a chair with the Prime Minister's name on it. It is one scandal after another with him. That is why today's debate is about the Prime Minister's ego.
It is also a debate on the collective rights of Quebeckers that we want to initiate. Let us not forget that Quebeckers never signed a single Constitution. They never signed on the dotted line of any Constitution and they were subjugated.
In 1763, the first Constitution of this monarchy, which we celebrate and commemorate with the mace that lies before us, was imposed on us by force to assimilate us. Later, during the American Revolution, there was the Constitution of 1744, which granted us some rights because our love for the British was so great that they were afraid we would fight alongside the Americans.
They used us, essentially, and turned our rights against us. They gave us some, but only so they could come back more forcefully with the Constitutional Act, 1791, in which they never gave us responsible government, and in which they banned English from the public service because they took us for granted.
That is not even close to what happened with the Constitution of 1840. After the Patriotes rebellion, the monarchy and English Canada committed crimes against humanity in my own riding. They committed murder and rape and caused destruction with no apology or tears of any kind from the Prime Minister, even though we know he rarely misses an opportunity to turn on the waterworks.
The Constitution of 1840 was based on the Durham report, which said that French Canadians were a people with no history, no culture and no literature. That is what they thought of us and that is what they still think of us. I do not know if Lord Durham is looking down on us today, but I wonder what he would think about Canadian culture if he could see Don Cherry on Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday nights making francophobic comments that cause a backlash, but only in Quebec. What a rich culture Canada has.
That being said, the Constitution of 1867 is even worse. We did not sign the Constitution of 1867. Canada was the reject of the western world because England did not want it and neither did the United States. Some people got together, held two short conferences and created a confederation. There was never any democratic process. They went to England to impose this on us. The group was led by John A. Macdonald, a francophobic racist and Orangeman. He was an anti-French racist who spent his career working against francophones. That is how Canada was born. That is what the country is built on.
In 1982, the Constitution was patriated. The notion of parliamentary sovereignty came up again at that time. It was then that it became important to protect the sovereignty of Parliament in the jurisdictions of the provinces and Quebec.
Do members know who asked for this clause? It was British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan. We would have likely asked for it too, but we were not there on the night of the long knives, the night the Constitution was forced on us. The Constitution was signed without us. I understand that members find it strange to see us defending the Constitution.
To hear the Liberals talk, they made one mistake, and that was giving Quebec rights, because this preserved the sovereignty of the Quebec Parliament. When they do something good for Quebec, they consider it a mistake. I can guarantee that I am not going to develop Stockholm syndrome anytime soon.
The great Canadian constitutional scholar Henri Brun said: “In English Canada, the refrain is 'Charter, Charter, Charter.' It has become the symbol of the Canadian nation. The Charter attempts to put individual rights ahead of collective rights and transfers decision-making power from politicians to judges. This concept is stronger in English Canada than in Quebec.” That is what we are seeing today.
Peter Russell, a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, says the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is still interpreted by judges, who are fallible and can make mistakes. Professor Russell says it is right that elected representatives have the final say on major decisions, but that does not mean the clause should be used willy-nilly.
This demonstrates the fact that Parliament must be sovereign.
What does all of today's debate remind us of? What can we conclude? It is that the constitutional history of Canada, from its beginnings to the present day, is the history of English Canada asking itself the following fundamental question: How do we manage this francophone people whom we colonized, crushed and attempted to assimilate by taking away its cultural symbols, including its very name, les Canadiens, so as to prevent it ever becoming fully independent?
What the Liberals are doing with the notwithstanding clause is the same as usual. It is despicable. They are trying to rewrite the rules in a cowardly, roundabout way. We Quebeckers have fought to be able to emancipate ourselves. We have been fixated on freedom for hundreds of years. We will never give up the fight.
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