This is not the place to discuss personal issues. The Deputy Prime Minister should not express any animosity she may have towards a person during this debate.
Here are the facts: at the time, that man, Brian Mulroney, was Prime Minister. He had succeeded in having the Meech Lake accord signed on June 3. No one had ever managed to do something like that in Canada. Never. Obviously, the Prime Minister is not on his way to achieve that either.
If I am not mistaken, the opposition organized by the current Prime Minister, then a possible candidate, and later an official one, for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada, convinced Mr. Mulroney and his entourage, of which I was no longer a member, that he had to negotiate with him. So, without many people knowing about it, I certainly was not awareof it, people decided to move closer to the views held by the future Prime Minister, so that he, since he controlled the leaders of the provincial Liberal parties who were blocking the Meech Lake accord, could remove the obstacles and ensure that the accord would be signed, albeit with a revised content.
That agreement was reached by the so-called Charest commission. They agreed on diluting the content of Meech. The Quebec caucus of the Conservative party, which was under my responsibility, had pledged that the substantive provisions of Meech would never be changed. I believe it was in the last days of May that we learned there would be a Charest report which had the support of the Conservative and Liberal parties, and which diluted the recognition of Quebec's distinct nature to such an extent that the charter of rights would apply to it, thus having the effect of making it sterile.
That is when I resigned. I resigned, as did others, as a matter of principle. I had not come to Ottawa to support the views of the current Prime Minister. I had come here to fight them.
So that led in June 1990 to Meech II, son of Meech, watered down Meech, wishy-washy Meech, the Prime Minister's Meech which was even then rejected by English Canadians for still going too far. In Newfoundland, Manitoba and among English Canadians in general, two out of three surveys showed that it was still giving too much to Quebec, whereas it had become unacceptable for Quebec, even for those who had supported it until then.
Then came Charlottetown, where it was diluted still further. This is where they started to define recognition of the distinctive nature of Quebec; by defining it, of course, they restricted it. They started to put it on the same footing as equality between the provinces; distinct, equality for all. Everybody was distinct. Something for everyone, everyone on the same footing. It no longer had any meaning. The people rejected it. Not me, not the wicked separat-
ists, but all of the people of Quebec, all of the people in English Canada.
So, bye bye Charlottetown.
What is this week's incarnation? What are they proposing to us now? I have to admit that I have a compliment for the Prime Minister: this last attempt to water down distinct character is the best yet. This time we do not need a lawyer's opinion appended to the resolution to know that it means nothing.
Remember, in the somewhat comic episodes involving Meech II, there was still some doubt, still some people who were wondering "maybe it does still mean something". Some lawyers signed a legal opinion that it meant nothing, which was appended to the Meech Lake accord.
This time, there is no need to pay any lawyers. There is nothing that needs to be appended; all one needs to do is read it to realize it means nothing. They took no chances this time.
Why? First of all because it leaves untouched the concept of a single Canadian people according to the 1982 Constitution. In other words, the Prime Minister saved his Constitution, the one that is not Quebec's, the one we did not sign but he signed on the steps in front of Parliament. His Constitution is intact.
There is only one Canadian nation; Quebec is part of all that and should live with it and blend in. The identity of the Quebec people? Sorry, some other time.
Furthermore, what we have here is just a simple resolution. Just that. So what does this mean in legal terms, a resolution by Parliament, by the House of Commons? It is a wish formally expressed by a group of parliamentarians but without any legal effect. The courts are not bound by this resolution. A lawyer could not even put it before a court, which would refuse to acknowledge its existence because legally, a resolution does not exist. It is nothing.