Lucien Bouchard

[Recognition Of Quebec As A Distinct Society, November 29th, 1995]

What do you have to say against Mr. Mulroney? What does she have to say against Mr. Mulroney? Let us hear it. What does she have to say?

[Recognition Of Quebec As A Distinct Society, November 29th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, they say that Mr. Mulroney was my friend, as though that was a bad thing. Yes, we were friends for 30 years.

[Recognition Of Quebec As A Distinct Society, November 29th, 1995]

Pardon me?

[Recognition Of Quebec As A Distinct Society, November 29th, 1995]

Indeed, I studied history and I am being modest in saying that I know a thing or two on the subject. And I am not alone in Quebec to have studied history. Bear in mind that Quebec's motto is "Je me souviens", which means I remember. If Quebec's identity survived this long, it is because of its long memory.

Like many other Quebecers, as a student, I was not a sovereignist, but this did not prevent me from being critical of the confederation. And my criticism is on record. I might have put in writing as the editor of the student newspaper and all, but it never occurred to me that, someday, a democratic Canada, English Canada, a nation that is open, tolerant and respectful of individual rights, could actually rely on its weight to crush Quebec's wish, tear up the Constitution agreed upon by our forefathers in 1867 and replace it with another constitution that was not recognized by Quebec but

imposed on Quebec, a constitution repudiated by every democratic entity and political party in Quebec, including federalist parties.

I would never have thought that this kind of thing could happen in my country. I would like to tell the Prime Minister, who feels that I refer to 1982 too often, that I can understand why that makes him uncomfortable. I can understand that, but I want to remind him of that sunny day when, along with Her Majesty the Queen of England, as Queen in right of Canada, and Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Ouellet, he signed, on the lawn of Parliament, the patriation of the 1982 Constitution. That day, which was a great day for the rest of Canada, is the day that Quebecers' desire to achieve sovereignty was exacerbated.

We can now see that, for someone coming back to lead the country, the original version of the Meech lake accord, that is the one signed by the then Prime Minister and by all the premiers of Canada, was a threat. He perceived that agreement as a terrible threat, as something which could undermine what he had accomplished, even by encroaching on the collective rights of Quebecers.

So, what did he do? He did a controlled skid. He realized that he should not oppose the recognition of Quebec's very distinct nature, that he could not deny that-indeed, it would have been somewhat preposterous to say that Quebec is not distinct, given all that distinguishes us, and at such a deep level too. So, he kept the expression, but did everything possible to make it meaningless.

It is at that level that his political work paid off. Make no mistake about it: he is a capable and formidable politician. I am among those who have the deepest respect for his political know-how, as demonstrated by his succeeding in diluting the concept of Quebec's distinct nature. What did he do after his January speech? He made sure that it would become obvious to Mr. Mulroney, who was then Prime Minister, that-

[Recognition Of Quebec As A Distinct Society, November 29th, 1995]

But he is a logical man, Mr. Speaker. I would never challenge his logic, since his logic leads him to conclude, and this is a characteristic of his position, if he does not recognize the distinctiveness of Quebec in its true sense, it is because he came to the logical conclusion that there is only one, real national government, namely Ottawa, to represent Canadian values, make major decisions, decide the basic trust of anything and everything happening in Canada and that the provinces are just that, provinces. They exist under the Constitution. There is not much that can be done about that. There they are.

Since they are part of the Constitution, the provinces have to be tolerated, but nothing keeps this government from cutting funding and putting the squeeze on them. The federal government is in trouble? It is experiencing financial difficulties? They just cut funding to the provinces, while keeping the tax money and points and without cutting taxes.

The provinces are actually viewed as some kind of arrangement, and they are respected as such, entities, administrative entities, perhaps huge municipalities in the eyes of the Prime Minister and other like-minded individuals, including his mentor, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who tried relentlessly to impose as a reality a fiction of Canada.

These people are living with a fantasy of what Canada should be. Their vision of Canada is quite simple. Imagine a circle, the federal system; all around this circle, you have little squares, dots or what not called provinces and, in the middle, you have the basic national state. Very often, their speeches and attitudes have reflected some sort of weariness about the presence of the provinces, whether Quebec or the other provinces, provinces that have identities and aspirations. I know for a fact that the Reform Party has legitimate concerns about this.

So, you can understand now why this reasonable and responsible man did what he did in 1982. I do not think it is justifiable but, in 1982, this man, who had this vision of Canada, went as far as to impose it on Quebec.

Never in the history of this country-and I know a thing or two about history from my studies, and many-

[Recognition Of Quebec As A Distinct Society, November 29th, 1995]

I would appreciate the Deputy Prime Minister allowing me to speak. This is perhaps one of the last speeches she will have the pleasure of hearing me give in this House. Would she let me speak?

Mr. Speaker, the Meech Lake accord of June 1987-and it is important to keep this in mind-required the courts, from the Supreme Court on down, to interpret all of the Constitution, including the Charter, "in a manner consistent with the recognition that Quebec constitutes within Canada a distinct society". There was nothing to qualify this, no definition of content which would thereafter represent a limitation, simply the strong and clear statement of the principle to be recognized.

This, therefore, constrained the courts in future to recognize and implement a principle which imbued the Constitution with a new spirit. Each and every provision of the Constitution, with the amendments and everything that dates back to 1867, was tinged with something new: the recognition of Quebec's distinct nature. It also introduced, formally, in terms of a legal instrument, a new criterion for interpreting all the provisions.

When I say all the provisions, I also mean the provisions of the Prime Minister's Constitution, the 1982 one. It, let us remember, did a lot of things. One of the things the 1982 Constitution effectively introduced into Canada and Quebec's legal and political landscape was the notion of a single country, a Canadian nation-this was a first.

This was the first time constitutional and legal texts talked about Canada as a single nation, the nation of Canada. The corollary, needless to say, was that Quebecers found their existence as a people being denied, implicitly, if not explicitly. Up to this point, there had been lots of discussion, but, under the Constitution of our forebears, the one we Quebecers agreed to, not the other one, the Prime Minister's, the prevailing spirit was that there were two founding peoples.

It was not expressed this way in so many words, but this is what our forebears had in mind when they agreed to sign the 1867 confederation agreement. Otherwise, Lower Canada would never never have agreed to sign the Constitution. This is what convinced Quebec parliamentarians of the time to enter into confederation, because they thought that French Canadians, as they were then called, could move about freely within Canada, could feel at home wherever they were and could be the equal of the other founding people everywhere.

What happened in 1982? A principle was introduced, which basically knocked the stuffing out of the concept many Quebecers had of Canada, including Quebecers who were still federalists.

The Meech Lake accord came back to this very point. It provided, in addition to the initial interpretation criterion-recognition of Quebec's distinct nature-for a second criterion, which was recognition-I will read the text, it is very short-that: "the existence of French-speaking Canadians, centred in Quebec, but also present elsewhere in Canada, and English-speaking Canadians, concentrated outside Quebec, but also present in Quebec-"constituted a fundamental characteristic of Canada.

This extremely important principle is enshrined in the text of the Meech Lake accord. This means there is a duality. I am sure that many lawyers, with a little bit of imagination, could have argued before the courts that this implied the recognition of two peoples and not a single Canadian people with the existence and the identity of Quebec mixed in with the lot and therefore annihilated. That was in the Meech Lake accord.

So when they say the accord did have teeth, it is true that it was an important document. Furthermore, it recognized something very important. It was the fact that Quebec's distinct nature was not subject to the charter of rights and freedoms. This is a very significant principle and it convinced many Quebecers to accept the Meech Lake accord, despite the fact that many sovereignists opposed it. My colleague here, the member for Roberval, opposed it. I approved it. A lot of sovereignists like myself decided at the time to give federalists a chance-this has been referred to as the "beau risque"-and support Mr. Mulroney in this, which was leading to the recognition of something that had never yet been accepted.

This should be recognized as very important for it marked the beginning of the crisis that deeply divided the country and the Tory cabinet and led to my resignation and the resignation of several Tory MPs to form the Bloc Quebecois. It is important to note that the original Meech not only recognized Quebec's distinctiveness without limiting it, but also ensured that this recognition was not subordinate to the pre-eminent charter of rights and freedoms, which, as we know, is the Prime Minister's baby.

If someone should know that the first Meech Lake accord protected the principle of recognizing Quebec's distinctiveness against the application of the charter of rights, it is the Prime Minister. That is the reason why he was so vehemently opposed to it. As many people must remember, a milestone in the Prime Minister's philosophy and political journey was the very important speech he delivered on January 16, 1990, here at a university, in Ottawa, in which he sounded the death knell of Meech.

You may wonder why, since he was not even a member of Parliament at the time. He may not have been an MP, but he was a candidate-still undeclared, I think-for his party's leadership. He had not yet declared his candidacy, but everyone knows that the intention comes before the formal declaration. Everyone knew that this former MP and minister, who spoke before Ottawa university students on January 16, 1990, had every chance of becoming the

next Prime Minister of Canada and that his words therefore had weight.

What he said at the time is very important, because it marked the fatal attack against the Meech Lake accord. The Prime Minister had a lot of credibility, and he still does, I think, with all Canadians, and perhaps to an even greater degree in English Canada. I am not criticizing him but at the time-at least in English Canada, where there was a great deal of muted, latent opposition to the Meech Lake accord-his voice was heard as being extremely effective in destroying any political chance of success for the Meech Lake accord.

What he did was to invoke basic rights and the need to preserve the effectiveness of the charter of rights. He said this, and I quote: "By proposing that the distinctiveness of Quebec society be affirmed in a constitutional interpretation clause", an effective interpretation criterion, as I said, "they are in fact splitting the country in two, with Quebec on one side and the other nine provinces on the other". In his speech, the Prime Minister was desperately trying to demonstrate that recognition of Quebec's distinctiveness should not be an interpretation principle, because it is too broad, because it would undermine the effectiveness of court rulings under the charter of rights, and that the substance of the Meech Lake agreement should therefore be drastically altered.

What the Prime Minister said in January 1990 throws an almost blinding light on his subsequent behaviour and successive positions, which are all in line with his efforts to water down recognition of Quebec's distinctiveness.

Why did the Prime Minister, who is an honest man, a responsible public figure who wants what is best for Canada-and no doubt for Quebec as well-throw such a monkey wrench in works that were bringing hope, at the time, for a moment of grace, harmony and agreement? Why did he do that? I respectfully submit-I could be mistaken, but this is a possible explanation-that he did it first because, in his opinion, and I respect his opinion, Canada is a nation. In his view, there is only one people in Canada, the Canadian people, comprised of a number of components, including one called Quebec.

The bottom line for him, and this is another principle of his, Quebec is like any other province. Quebec is one of the good little chicks around the federal hen.

[Recognition Of Quebec As A Distinct Society, November 29th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, we just heard the Prime Minister's speech. I think we should point out that this speech is a distinct departure from the approach the Prime Minister has taken in the past two years. During the 1993 election campaign and the subsequent two years in this House, the Prime Minister's approach was extremely hard, rigid and, I must admit, consistent, in other words, he did not mention the Constitution, did not feel it was appropriate to suggest any changes and was quite satisfied with Canada as it is.

He took a similar approach during the initial weeks of the referendum campaign, so much so that he put his feet up and relaxed until the last week of the campaign, when he woke up to the fact that the yes side was surging ahead and had become a very real threat to the no side. His reaction was very nervous, very improvised and came on very short notice.

He quickly arranged for a very large meeting in Verdun on October 24, where he said the following-this was the new Prime Minister-and I quote: "We will keep open all the other roads to

change, including administrative and constitutional means. Any changes in constitutional jurisdiction will only be made with the consent of Quebecers".

Back in the House, after a very narrow win by the no side, improvisation has been the name of the game in the federal government. First, it set up two committees-we still do not know what they are doing-which were short-circuited by the debate we are having today. One of the committees, chaired by the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, is supposed to come up with and propose ways to resolve the current constitutional mess and deadlock. Second, we have the announcement the Prime Minister rushed to make on Monday about a resolution that would include a symbolic recognition of Quebec as a distinct society, a so-called veto and a vague delegation of activities in the area of manpower training.

The question is: What is behind this complete about-face by the Prime Minister, who has consistently fought the concept of a distinct identity for Quebec?

First of all, there were the circumstances. The Prime Minister was very surprised and even distressed by the almost irresistible advance of the yes side during the latter part of the referendum campaign. And it was fear, and fear is a very healthy reaction and also, according to the gospel, the father of wisdom, that inspired the sudden statements he made on October 24 and during the last days of the referendum campaign.

This surprising about-face is neither surprising nor an about-face, since the proposal is meaningless and a worthy successor to all the political positions taken so far by the Prime Minister since the beginning of his career with the federal government and on the federal scene. Words can be made to say what we want them to say, and the phrase "distinct society of Quebec" is no exception. Distortion is always possible.

The expression "distinct identity of Quebec" is a case in point. It may be useful to recall that its initial appearance in our constitutional vocabulary and on the political scene in Canada and Quebec actually dates back to February 1965 and the preliminary report of the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission, where the expression was used in a rather descriptive way, devoid of any political or legal content. It surfaced again, this time with a more formal meaning, in September 1970, when Mr. Bourassa, the newly elected Premier of Quebec who was attending a constitutional conference, actually used the expression in the meaning it has had more or less since that time.

However, starting in 1985, the term was to develop some very specific overtones, as in the Quebec Liberal Party platform in June 1985, before the election that would be held several months later, and this recognition of the distinct identity of Quebec was to become a precondition for any decision by Quebec to become part of the Constitution of 1982.

We must therefore examine the context. In 1982, Quebec sustained a blow, a blow with which everyone is familiar, and which was felt very strongly by everyone including the Quebec Liberal Party, which had always refused to endorse the Constitution, even condemning it in a vote in the National Assembly in November 1981. And in 1985 the Quebec Liberal Party, in an attempt to unravel the knot, to bring things out into the open, proposed that Quebec set a precondition to signing the 1982 Constitution-the Prime Minister's Constitution, the one that still has a blank at the bottom of its last page next to the name of Quebec-as a precondition to any negotiation the unconditional recognition by the federal government and all of the provinces of Canada of the distinct character of Quebec.

Then, of course, on June 3,1987, came the signing of the Meech Lake accord. The real one, the real Meech Lake; not the one to which the Prime Minister refers all the time, which is his accord, the one he had watered down later on, and the one I shall speak about later, but the true Meech Lake accord. On June 3, 1987, all of the first ministers of Canada, provincial and federal, reached agreement for the first time in history on the signing of a constitutional accord which would have allowed Quebec to preserve its honour, to return to the constitutional family, and then to come on board with enthusiasm. The words "honour" and "enthusiasm" correspond to two separate phases. First of all, the return to the family with head held high, because our distinct character has been recognized, and second, enthusiasm in redefining the division of powers between Canada and Quebec.

I am recalling a context which I see as extremely important since it offers a very good explanation of the degree to which today's proposal, which is totally unacceptable and does not hold up, will not fly. It will not even make it into the history books, except perhaps as a footnote somewhere. It is a truly minimalist effort, nothing in comparison to previous efforts to attempt to settle the Canada and Quebec problem.

What was there in the Meech Lake accord of June 1987? Let us review this. First of all, there was entrenchment of the accord in the Constitution. Entrenching a formal agreement as part of the Constitution is by no means a trifle. This means there are consequences. This means the courts are obliged to take it into consideration, to apply it. They are bound by the clauses introduced into the Constitution.

You will note as well that the wording is extremely strong. So strong, in fact, that it greatly displeased the Prime Minister who has fought it ever since with all of his might. The formulation is that, henceforth-I shall describe it now. I will quote it verbatim in a few minutes-

[Renewal Of Canadian Federalism, November 29th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I heard "on the right track"; a look at the newspapers is enough to see it is the wrong track.

I want to ask the minister whether he would agree that the government's initiative is off to a very bad start and that the government is heading up another blind alley, since as we saw in the case of Charlottetown, any proposal to Quebec will be seen as too generous by English Canada and not enough by Quebec.

[Renewal Of Canadian Federalism, November 29th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, in view of the very deep split within the committee chaired by the minister, I want to ask him whether he would agree that the hollow initiatives announced by the Prime Minister show that he sided with the four ministers from Ontario who believe they can satisfy Quebecers' desire for change with this measly proposal.

[Renewal Of Canadian Federalism, November 29th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the Globe and Mail reported a split in the phoney committee chaired by the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. I am referring to the committee that is supposed to consider changes in the federal system, to follow through on the referendum promises made by the Prime Minister.

It seems that on one side we have five ministers, including three from Quebec, demanding thorough changes and on the other side, four ministers from Ontario who persist in their belief that Quebecers will be satisfied with symbolic gestures.

My question is directed to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. Are we to assume it was the profound split between members of his committee that led the Prime Minister to announce his proposals on such short notice, even before the committee tabled its report?