Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to conclude the debate on Bill C-457, An Act to repeal the Clarity Act.
Liberal and Conservative MPs both delivered their usual speeches. They stuck to their guns, which was to be expected. The Liberals brought forward the Clarity Act after being shaken by how close we came to a yes vote in the 1995 referendum. They came up with a plan B. This plan B was the Clarity Act.
I heard some fairly unbelievable things in those speeches, which is why I should inform all my colleagues that the Clarity Act was condemned by the whole of Quebec's National Assembly. By that I mean that every member of every party, federalist and sovereignist alike, rejected this ignominious law called the Clarity Act.
As for the Quebec Liberals, we know that the former leader of the Quebec Liberal Party, Claude Ryan, said that the Clarity Act placed Quebec under trusteeship. We know that Daniel Johnson, the leader of the “No” side and also the leader of the Quebec Liberal Party at the time, criticized the Clarity Act, just like Jean Charest who, when this legislation was passed here in 2000, said that Quebec was the master of its destiny. All these federalists felt that Quebec was the master of its destiny regarding its decision to become sovereign, or to remain part of Canada.
As for the leader of the NDP, he was the most surprising in this House. He too arrived here and criticized the Clarity Act. Like all NDP members who spoke to my bill, he said that the Liberal Party's Clarity Act passed in 2000 had no reason to exist and that it was disrespectful of Quebeckers' rights. He also said that the debate was useless—that was also mentioned this evening—that there were other priorities, that this was an old issue, an old quarrel, and that the Bloc Québécois was only looking for trouble.
In short, he used a bazooka to kill a fly. He said he would introduce Clarity Act No. 2. He said the Clarity Act should be abolished because it deals with an old issue, it is a sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of Quebeckers, who want a democratic process to decide whether or not they want Quebec to achieve sovereignty. However, he comes up with Clarity Act No. 2. The first one is useless, but Clarity Act No. 2 is so useful. So, he perpetuates the old debates by introducing this legislation.
Bill C-470, introduced by the previous speaker, the member for Toronto—Danforth, is just a bill which, like the present Clarity Act, imposes trusteeship on Quebec regarding its perfectly democratic right to decide its own future in the Canadian Constitution.
Clarity Act No. 2—that is what it is—is not simply about oversight in Quebec's affairs. It gives the federal government—the Conservative government in this case —the right to decide whether a referendum question is clear. It is written in black and white in the bill. It even goes further and unilaterally provides the wording of two questions that the NDP considers to be clear. According to the NDP, the Quebec National Assembly and the people of Quebec do not have the last word on the question to be asked in a potential referendum. The NDP has the last word in its Bill C-470.
Even if the National Assembly agreed on the wording, with this bill, the federal government could oppose the question and send it to the courts, which would certainly bring Quebec's referendum process to a standstill.
I think this comes down to trading four quarters for a dollar. The speeches we are hearing from the NDP make no sense. They are all saying that the Clarity Act should be repealed, but they do not want to vote in favour of my bill, even though the only thing my bill would do is repeal the Clarity Act.
In conclusion, I want to reach out to all members of Parliament, especially those from Quebec. I urge them to do some soul-searching, to look at themselves in the mirror and say, like Robert Bourassa and a number of federalists said, that Quebec has the right to its own destiny, the right to choose its own future, and that these decisions should happen in Quebec, not in the federal Parliament.
