Madam Speaker, I am happy to rise in support of Bill C-110. If there is one overriding purpose here it is to put an end to the 30-years war.
For the last 30-35 years since the quiet revolution in Quebec the best minds in Quebec and in Ottawa have been preoccupied with a constitutional debate. It is good fun. It has brought forth an army of special constitutional carpetbaggers and others, highly paid professional lawyers, professors who are available to give opinions on either side, open line talk show hosts and journalists who have grown up in one profession. They will all be sorry to see it go but it must end.
There are more important problems today. Those are the economic problems that face us all of creating jobs, unemployment, and promoting economic growth.
Even within the narrow area of government and public administration the excessive preoccupation with a Quebec problem too narrowly defined has been at the expense of examining rationalization and modernization of the constitutional governmental system. It is time to move on. What we can call the Chrétien package is an attempt to do that on a basis which the country will accept.
It does have the two elements, the distinct society and what perhaps incorrectly has been called the constitutional veto. I was not part of the committee that drafted it, but in an open caucus where all ideas were put forward I brought together ideas that reflect those of my own constituents and the people in British Columbia who want one Canada and want Quebec to be part of it.
If distinct society is defined it should restate what historically is a matter of faith but also law, has been accepted by Canadians and is reflected in those great constitutional international acts of 1759, 1763, 1774 and onward. In so far as changes are made, they should not be formal constitutional amendments and thus be a roadblock to constitutional change in the future. That has been done. These matters are recorded in acts of Parliament and in accordance with the sovereignty of Parliament. Within the constitutional limits established by the Constitution they are capable of being re-examined and changed by ordinary legislation.
In a certain sense these are yesterday's problems. The attempt is honourably to dispose of them and to move on to the new problems, to get away from this excessive preoccupation of the last 35 years that at some times seems to occupy 85 per cent or 90 per cent of the time in Ottawa and Quebec City. That is much too much.
Since Bill C-110 is directed to the issue of constitutional change and its process, the issue of how do constitutions change has been raised. We have to recognize honestly that the constitutional amendment of 1982, chapter V, is a réforme manquée. It was an attempt to make a change, but it was not made.
Under the old conventional system that ultimately turned on an act of the British Parliament passed at the request of Canada, the Constitution had a large degree of flexibility. Today it is rigid, virtually impossible to change. In fact the only two measures put forward in the last 13 years, Meech and Charlottetown, have both failed.
So we do face the paradox that we have a rigid constitutional system and indeed any attention to this in a certain sense borders on being frustrated in the future.
Constitutions are living documents. If they are not, they fail. Constitutions do change. Large masses of our constitutional law change by constitutional convention and custom.
I would have said that the role of the Senate as a non-elected body conventionally follows that of the House of Lords. If you do not have the legitimacy of election, you do not interfere with legislation that is passed by a democratically elected lower house. I notice the Senate has been avoiding this in recent days. We may perhaps have to remind it of this.
I simply point out that constitutional conventions through executive glosses is one way of changing a constitution. Constitutions change by judicial legislation. In 1982 I and others suggested to Prime Minister Trudeau that we consider a constitutional court, as they now have virtually throughout Europe in this post-communist reform and in Germany and other countries. Even so, the constitution changes through judicial interpretation.
Lastly, a constitution changes through the exercise of constituent power. Ultimately, all constitutional power comes from the people. It is quite clear that the country has the capacity to renew itself through an act of total revision at some time. It is not defined in the Constitution, but it is the ultimate source of power.
For those who worry too much, and I think unnecessarily, on reading this law and ask if we have put ourselves into a second constitutional strait-jacket after the 1982 amendments, the answer is no. I believe this generation of Canadians and British Columbians, many of whom I have taught, the many hundreds of thousands who have communicated their desire for one Canada, all have a rendezvous with the Constitution Act, if not this year then certainly by the end of the century. I think the new plural society we are getting in Canada today makes us a very unique country, a very distinct country in relation to the rest of the world. Multiculturalism is a living example of co-operation. I think we will find people will sit down and ask for a new constitutional charter, but not now. These people still have to be integrated in the political process. But it is occurring, and it is occurring before our eyes.
In the meantime, the government is committed to pressing for constitutional change in other areas, using the fact that by executive example and discussion and negotiation-friendly relations and co-operative federalism-the system can be changed. Transfer of power, not in an abstract sense, with those battles of the 1960s and 1970s before the courts, but identifying common problems all three levels of government need to work on together, is what the government is focusing on.
We have seen this in the third element in the Chrétien package that has been brought forward. It is going to occur in many more areas, such as in the electoral system and actions on the Senate, which may require going to the Supreme Court. We cannot do it through the 1982 amending procedure. There is the role of the cities. We are responding to the new transnational societies of which Canada is a part. This is key to the 21st century. All these things are going on.
The Prime Minister has responded to the Quebec referendum vote in a way that can rally enough support throughout Canada. It has to be an all-Canadian response. However, constitutional change will go on. We will see more and more emphasis on co-operative federalism, change through give and take and discussion at all levels of government. Federalism, if it involves power sharing and common decision making, also recognizes that federalism is more, as Prime Minister Trudeau once reminded us, than a collection of shopping centres. There is a national role, national norms.
That is the challenge. The message is let us move on and bring peace to the Thirty Years War. Let us move on to the real economic and social problems. If we get that message, frankly, we have done honour to those who voted in the Quebec referendum on both sides and we have done something the people of Canada will understand and support.