Madam Speaker, first of all, I would like to tell the hon. member for Saint-Denis that her remarks about cultural communities, which she said are disregarded by the PQ government, are not only false, but also disrespectful to the PQ government and to the people of Quebec, a community that is not self-centred, but, on the contrary, quite open to immigration and newcomers. Let me give her just one example. One of her co-nationals, Nadia Assimopoulos, chaired the executive of the Parti Quebecois in the 1980s. That is a telling example of the openness of Quebecers to cultural communities.
I would also like to comment on the so-called undemocratic character of the PQ process. I would like to remind the hon. member for Saint-Denis, as I set out to do a few minutes ago, of four events in the history of Quebecers that were instigated by the federal government, and ask her to consider whether they were democratic or not.
The first one is the Constitution of 1867. Quebecers never got a chance to have their say on that Constitution. Then, there was
the conscription crisis. In 1940, the Mackenzie King government, which had made an electoral commitment not to impose conscription, reversed its position by holding a referendum in which 70 per cent of Quebecers voted against and 70 or 71 per cent of Canadians outside Quebec voted for conscription. Despite his previous commitment, Liberal Prime Minister Mackenzie King imposed conscription on all Quebecers.
More recently, the Trudeau government decided to proclaim the War Measures Act in Quebec and proceeded to arrest hundreds of people, and search the home of thousands of honest citizens. As a result, 20 people waited for months for charges to be laid against them.
Is that the Liberals' idea of democracy? Those people have the nerve to teach us lessons in democracy. The last event is the patriation of the Constitution in 1982. The current Prime Minister was one of the main players in what was a tragedy for democracy, when they shoved down Quebecers' throats a Constitution they did not want. If that is what they call democracy, my Liberal colleagues and the hon. member for Saint-Denis do not know what they are talking about.