I would appreciate the Deputy Prime Minister allowing me to speak. This is perhaps one of the last speeches she will have the pleasure of hearing me give in this House. Would she let me speak?
Mr. Speaker, the Meech Lake accord of June 1987-and it is important to keep this in mind-required the courts, from the Supreme Court on down, to interpret all of the Constitution, including the Charter, "in a manner consistent with the recognition that Quebec constitutes within Canada a distinct society". There was nothing to qualify this, no definition of content which would thereafter represent a limitation, simply the strong and clear statement of the principle to be recognized.
This, therefore, constrained the courts in future to recognize and implement a principle which imbued the Constitution with a new spirit. Each and every provision of the Constitution, with the amendments and everything that dates back to 1867, was tinged with something new: the recognition of Quebec's distinct nature. It also introduced, formally, in terms of a legal instrument, a new criterion for interpreting all the provisions.
When I say all the provisions, I also mean the provisions of the Prime Minister's Constitution, the 1982 one. It, let us remember, did a lot of things. One of the things the 1982 Constitution effectively introduced into Canada and Quebec's legal and political landscape was the notion of a single country, a Canadian nation-this was a first.
This was the first time constitutional and legal texts talked about Canada as a single nation, the nation of Canada. The corollary, needless to say, was that Quebecers found their existence as a people being denied, implicitly, if not explicitly. Up to this point, there had been lots of discussion, but, under the Constitution of our forebears, the one we Quebecers agreed to, not the other one, the Prime Minister's, the prevailing spirit was that there were two founding peoples.
It was not expressed this way in so many words, but this is what our forebears had in mind when they agreed to sign the 1867 confederation agreement. Otherwise, Lower Canada would never never have agreed to sign the Constitution. This is what convinced Quebec parliamentarians of the time to enter into confederation, because they thought that French Canadians, as they were then called, could move about freely within Canada, could feel at home wherever they were and could be the equal of the other founding people everywhere.
What happened in 1982? A principle was introduced, which basically knocked the stuffing out of the concept many Quebecers had of Canada, including Quebecers who were still federalists.
The Meech Lake accord came back to this very point. It provided, in addition to the initial interpretation criterion-recognition of Quebec's distinct nature-for a second criterion, which was recognition-I will read the text, it is very short-that: "the existence of French-speaking Canadians, centred in Quebec, but also present elsewhere in Canada, and English-speaking Canadians, concentrated outside Quebec, but also present in Quebec-"constituted a fundamental characteristic of Canada.
This extremely important principle is enshrined in the text of the Meech Lake accord. This means there is a duality. I am sure that many lawyers, with a little bit of imagination, could have argued before the courts that this implied the recognition of two peoples and not a single Canadian people with the existence and the identity of Quebec mixed in with the lot and therefore annihilated. That was in the Meech Lake accord.
So when they say the accord did have teeth, it is true that it was an important document. Furthermore, it recognized something very important. It was the fact that Quebec's distinct nature was not subject to the charter of rights and freedoms. This is a very significant principle and it convinced many Quebecers to accept the Meech Lake accord, despite the fact that many sovereignists opposed it. My colleague here, the member for Roberval, opposed it. I approved it. A lot of sovereignists like myself decided at the time to give federalists a chance-this has been referred to as the "beau risque"-and support Mr. Mulroney in this, which was leading to the recognition of something that had never yet been accepted.
This should be recognized as very important for it marked the beginning of the crisis that deeply divided the country and the Tory cabinet and led to my resignation and the resignation of several Tory MPs to form the Bloc Quebecois. It is important to note that the original Meech not only recognized Quebec's distinctiveness without limiting it, but also ensured that this recognition was not subordinate to the pre-eminent charter of rights and freedoms, which, as we know, is the Prime Minister's baby.
If someone should know that the first Meech Lake accord protected the principle of recognizing Quebec's distinctiveness against the application of the charter of rights, it is the Prime Minister. That is the reason why he was so vehemently opposed to it. As many people must remember, a milestone in the Prime Minister's philosophy and political journey was the very important speech he delivered on January 16, 1990, here at a university, in Ottawa, in which he sounded the death knell of Meech.
You may wonder why, since he was not even a member of Parliament at the time. He may not have been an MP, but he was a candidate-still undeclared, I think-for his party's leadership. He had not yet declared his candidacy, but everyone knows that the intention comes before the formal declaration. Everyone knew that this former MP and minister, who spoke before Ottawa university students on January 16, 1990, had every chance of becoming the
next Prime Minister of Canada and that his words therefore had weight.
What he said at the time is very important, because it marked the fatal attack against the Meech Lake accord. The Prime Minister had a lot of credibility, and he still does, I think, with all Canadians, and perhaps to an even greater degree in English Canada. I am not criticizing him but at the time-at least in English Canada, where there was a great deal of muted, latent opposition to the Meech Lake accord-his voice was heard as being extremely effective in destroying any political chance of success for the Meech Lake accord.
What he did was to invoke basic rights and the need to preserve the effectiveness of the charter of rights. He said this, and I quote: "By proposing that the distinctiveness of Quebec society be affirmed in a constitutional interpretation clause", an effective interpretation criterion, as I said, "they are in fact splitting the country in two, with Quebec on one side and the other nine provinces on the other". In his speech, the Prime Minister was desperately trying to demonstrate that recognition of Quebec's distinctiveness should not be an interpretation principle, because it is too broad, because it would undermine the effectiveness of court rulings under the charter of rights, and that the substance of the Meech Lake agreement should therefore be drastically altered.
What the Prime Minister said in January 1990 throws an almost blinding light on his subsequent behaviour and successive positions, which are all in line with his efforts to water down recognition of Quebec's distinctiveness.
Why did the Prime Minister, who is an honest man, a responsible public figure who wants what is best for Canada-and no doubt for Quebec as well-throw such a monkey wrench in works that were bringing hope, at the time, for a moment of grace, harmony and agreement? Why did he do that? I respectfully submit-I could be mistaken, but this is a possible explanation-that he did it first because, in his opinion, and I respect his opinion, Canada is a nation. In his view, there is only one people in Canada, the Canadian people, comprised of a number of components, including one called Quebec.
The bottom line for him, and this is another principle of his, Quebec is like any other province. Quebec is one of the good little chicks around the federal hen.