Thank you, Chair. Thank you for your remarks, Mr. Rankin.
I don't have any prepared remarks, but I do have some thoughts about this motion. I take as the basis for the request your very well-expressed belief that this issue is important to study. I may or may not agree with a little context that you've woven into the discussion, but I think the basis of the motion is to have a study about the use of section 33.
There are many disadvantages to being older. One of the advantages, however, is that I remember 1982. I was a sentient human being at the time, just starting law school in 1983. The debate, of course, was captivating the country. It was a genuine debate. I remember many voices that wanted to ensure that Parliament and/or legislatures had an option to voice public opinion or to defend rights that they felt needed defending.
One of the most articulate members of this was an NDP premier, Premier Blakeney, who wanted the notwithstanding clause, as I recall, to ensure that workers' rights would have the benefit of protection of a legislature. I remember, from the other side of the coin, Sterling Lyon, who is no longer with us, who did express, on behalf of the people of Manitoba, the belief that there were times when the legislature still had to be supreme in those cases.
Those voices were there, as well as some of the other voices that we've heard in recent weeks, about their interpretation of why the notwithstanding clause was present in the final draft of the Canadian Constitution and the charter.
There's also, of course, the evidence of legislatures using the notwithstanding clause. Of course the Government of Quebec, as part of their protest on the charter, regularly invoked the notwithstanding clause for many bills over a period of years, I recall—I stand to be corrected on that—to express their disagreement with how the Constitution was repatriated. I am advised by a Saskatchewan parliamentarian that the notwithstanding clause was deployed by the legislature of Saskatchewan just three weeks ago. There wasn't much of a hullabaloo about that. There's been a little more hullabaloo about another provincial legislature.
All of which is to say, Mr. Chair, that I think it is appropriate for us to have such a study and to hear from experts from the academic world, as well as some who perhaps were witnesses at the time of the patriation of the Constitution. It might be of good use to have this committee record those views in an environment that I hope would be devoid of political grandstanding, so that we could get to the root of the issues and have that discussion in a respectful way and generate some light rather than just heat.
I'm inclined to support the motion. As I say, I don't want to be on the record agreeing with everything that Mr. Rankin has said in his introduction, but when I look at the essence of the motion, I can sign on to it.