Mr. Speaker, it is both a pleasure and a duty to speak to a motion so well characterized by the previous speaker as wishful thinking, a motion of the House of Commons on the recognition of Quebec as a distinct society.
In this country people have long misunderstood the so-called identity of the province of Quebec. Quebec is not a province like the others. It is a people, a nation. It is a nation forged by history, a society that included aboriginal peoples and the many immigrants that came to change that society and be changed by it, that would enrich it and absorb its identity.
Quebec is not a province like the others, and until this fact is recognized other than by a motion on distinct society or some
Charlottetown accord on an equally hollow concept, Quebecers will have no choice but to ensure that in the next referendum, the result will not be 49.9 per cent, which is a close defeat or a close win, but a clear majority.
I hope so, not only for Quebec but also for Canada which as long as this issue is around, will not be able to consider its own potential and problems and guide the development of its economy and its own history in the best interests of Canadians.
We in Quebec claim and will continue to do so, that the best thing for Quebec and Canada would be to agree to a partnership.
We realize that the outcome of the referendum does not give us a mandate to negotiate this partnership immediately. However, Canada should not get the impression that symbolic gestures as frivolous as a motion on distinct society will do anything at all to deal with the problem facing both Quebec and Canada.
In my youth, which, I must admit, was a long time ago, I was very keen on history. History is an impassioned quest for understanding what makes a people and a nation. The Quebec people, the Quebec nation has come a long way since the first French colonists immigrated to Canada, which is an aboriginal name. These French immigrants quickly mixed in.
I need only mention the Carignan-Salières regiment with its many soldiers, mercenaries from every country in Europe. They settled here. When the English conquest left no choice but compliance, their intermixing explains why every historian studying this point in history says that, even at that time, the Canadians or "Canayens", like the Americans, former English settlers, would not have taken long to become independent in a country with a different name.
Fortune, if we can use such a term for the English conquest, dictated that there would be a colony within a colony and that, after all these years, Quebec through its complex but clear and unilateral history, would succeed in making itself felt as a people and a nation, ever increasingly. Increasingly clearly, and certainly since 1960, when, at the end of a period in which middle class business and economics had again taken root after 1760, young people spoke with one voice calling for "maître chez nous" and for "égalité ou indépendance", through the Ralliement pour l'indépendance du Québec, the RIN, or even the FLQ, leading this people, already a fact, to speak for itself. General de Gaulle did no harm either with his "Vive le Québec libre" from the balcony.
Quebec's history has passed through the election of the Parti Quebecois, the failure of the first referendum, a bitter pill for those who had worked so hard. But it was, however, productive, because 15 years later, in 1995, the 1980 referendum almost won.
In these few minutes, it is not possible to express the density of Quebec's history. I want to say that I have tremendous respect for all of the Canadians who are speaking up here, today, and who are attached to their country. I say to them the only way the countries of Canada and Quebec can develop and flourish is through mutual recognition.
It is by mutually recognizing not Quebec's distinct society, which is practically meaningless, but the depth, the profound nature of this people and this nation, of both Quebec and Canada, that we can mutually and collectively prepare for the future by building on a real foundation.
Unfortunately, instead of bringing us closer to a future to which Canadians and Quebecers are entitled, this situation is a setback, because it tries to fulfil a wish that has absolutely nothing to do with the real underlying needs.
I sincerely hope that our position will help Quebecers and Canadians take a real step toward their future.