Mr. Speaker, Canadian historian Desmond Morton maintains that a nation is a people who
have done things together in the past. It is not bound by language or by a common culture but by a shared experience.
We are a prosperous, peaceful and tolerant society. Most significantly in the words of Jacques Hébert: "Quebec and its differences have been accepted since 1867 within a federation that is the most decentralized in the world, precisely to accommodate Quebec's differences, its distinctive language and education systems, its civil code".
Nevertheless, the separatists would diminish what our forefathers have built, a nation which is the envy of the world, a nation which because it is what it is, continues to be a country of choice for many of the world's less fortunate.
Last June, the leader of the Reform Party cautioned that we cannot stand by passively and allow Quebec voters to make a decision without a vigorous defence of Canada, including a positive federalist alternative to the status quo.
It is time we trumpeted the virtues of this land in which we have been blessed to live.