Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in tonight's debate on the Prime Minister's motion concerning the recognition of Quebec's distinct society within Canada. In supporting this motion, I would like to talk, first of all, as an Acadian from Nova Scotia. As you know, Acadians were among the first people to settle in Canada after the First Nations, and, since the founding of the first settlement at Port-Royal, four centuries ago, we have had our share of upheavals, struggles and turmoil.
Protecting our language and culture has never been easy. We have had to fight, and we still do, to get our share of recognition. But we realized a long time ago that our chances of survival as a cultural community were much better if we joined forces with the francophones of Quebec, Manitoba and elsewhere in Canada.
We know that the preservation and blossoming of our language and culture inevitably depend on our being part of a larger country which has been able to include our concerns as well as those of other cultural communities in a larger entity and a broader vision. This is Canada.
The Official Languages Act and the bilingualism policy have provided a concrete example of this broader vision of Canada.
I consider myself lucky to have had a chance to personally experience the distinct nature of Quebec. For four years, in the early 1980s, I was a student at Laval University, where I made a lot of close friends among Quebecers. I had a chance to have lengthy discussions with them about their vision and their place both within Quebec and within Canada.
I found that, in general, the distinct nature of Quebec and of Quebecers is not based on a separation from the rest of Canada, but rather on an affirmation of oneself and a feeling of solidarity that finds its expression and its soul in the vitality of the French language, as the singer-songwriter Michel Rivard says so beautifully: "The language of my heart is the heart of my life".
But despite all the political rhetoric and the sovereignist movement, the Quebecers that I know have a profound attachment to Canada. And I think that if all cultural communities across Canada can work together, we can contribute to the growth and prosperity of our wonderful country.
I have no trouble with the notion of Quebec being seen as a distinct society within the context of this motion. Nor do I see any contradiction in the notion that while not conferring special powers to the Government of Quebec, this motion is by no means symbolic, although it carries some important and powerful symbolism.
By recognizing the distinctive character of Quebec in its policies, its laws, its regulations and its programs, this motion provides one more prism among many others through which the Government of Canada commits itself to be guided in the development of its laws, its regulations, its policies and programs before they are enacted and as they are implemented.
The members of the Reform Party have a hard time understanding this because they do not really understand how modern government functions. When government policy is developed and presented before cabinet for consideration or when a change is made to a body of regulation or when a new law or program is adopted and advanced and presented before Parliament, it must be evaluated according to many different angles or dimensions. One of these is the balance of impacts of the program across gender lines, socio-economic lines, and regions and provinces so that the balance of these impacts is fair and equitable.
A good example of this is the legislation that was tabled last week by the Minister of Human Resources Development. In the package of information that accompanied the legislation creating the employment insurance program, one of the first tables presented is a table describing the financial impacts of employment insurance by province. No government would contemplate a major change in a program such as employment insurance without considering the impacts across provincial lines.
Another example of a prism through which government policy has to be evaluated is provided by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which since 1982 has been enshrined in the Canadian Constitution. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms ensures that laws and regulations and programs introduced by the federal government respect the basic freedoms and rights of Canadian citizens that we have enshrined in the Constitution through the charter.
A third example is provided to us by the official languages legislation enforced by the official languages commission for Canada and the whole policy and infrastructure promoting official bilingualism in Canada, which ensure that linguistic minorities in Canada, including Acadians and other francophone groups throughout the country, as well as anglophones in Quebec, receive
the recognition of their language and receive services in the language of their choice.
These are commitments the federal government has made for itself and for its programs. They are part of the prism through which all laws, regulations, and programs must be evaluated by the Government of Canada.
The distinct society motion the Prime Minister has brought forward this week will in a different way act as a prism and a guide and an opportunity for the federal government to commit and ensure that the programs and its policies reflect this particular cultural aspect of Canada, which is the distinctive character of Quebec in those very important categories of unique language, culture, and civil law tradition. That in a sense is the genius of the Prime Minister's approach to recognizing Quebec as a distinct society and putting into practical effect the application of that respect as far as the Government of Canada is concerned.
One of the reasons Canadians continue to be so supportive and have such great confidence in the Prime Minister of Canada is because largely through his great experience in government he has found a way to give concrete effect to the commitments and undertakings he made to the people of Quebec and to the people of Canada for change and for recognition of their particular place in Confederation in a way that does not violate the rights of other Canadians and the rights of provinces but acts as a positive discipline on the Government of Canada.
If other Canadians and provinces through the constitutional discussions choose and can agree on the enshrinement of such a principle in the Canadian Constitution, that would strengthen the notion of the distinct society we have adopted and will adopt through this Parliament.
I will conclude my remarks by saying that I know this initiative will never satisfy the separatist members of the Bloc Quebecois and the Parti Quebecois.