Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to participate in what can only be regarded as a historic debate.
I would like to talk about a couple of things that are important with respect to the national unity of our country. These are things members opposite perhaps failed to mention when they talked about what they perceived to be the wrongs or the injustices suffered by their fellow citizens in various parts of the country. I say various parts of the country because this is not a case of complaints only from one province. We hear it from many provinces. We hear it from the provincial premiers when they complain about some of the changes the government is proposing in the amending formula. I know that bill is not before the House tonight, but it is part of the package of reforms the government has introduced, which I am pleased to have the opportunity to discuss.
Although members do not mention it often, always in back of their speeches is the famous battle that occurred in Canada on the Plains of Abraham. I am not going to go through that. But there was a second battle, which I think is virtually of equal importance for the future of the country and which is never mentioned. I want to remind hon. members about this story because it is of tremendous significance for Canada.
The battle happened 220 years ago this year. There was a revolution that started in the United States. The American revolutionary Continental Congress decided to send a force to invade Canada and take over the colony of Quebec, which was then part of the British Empire, having been captured 15 years previously in the famous battle I mentioned earlier.
The Americans dispatched General Montgomery to capture the province of Quebec, or what was then the colony of Quebec. Starting in September he moved up the Richelieu River and captured Fort Saint-Jean and Fort Chambly on the Richelieu River before October 18, 1775. He subsequently attacked Montreal, where the British governor, Sir Guy Carleton, was stationed.
Governor Carleton realized that the defence of Montreal was hopeless, given the fact that he was outnumbered substantially by the American force. He had only 800 British regulars with him to defend the entire colony. He left Montreal by ship and sailed for Quebec on November 11, 1775, and immediately began fortifications of the city of Quebec.
General Montgomery took Montreal on November 13, stationed 500 of his troops there, and then moved on to Quebec City with about 300 men. He gathered with him various people from the countryside, des habitants pour l'aider avec son attaque sur la ville de Québec.
It is estimated that he had between 1,600 and 1,800 men outside Quebec when he started his siege on December 5, 1775. The governor, Sir Guy Carleton, was in a heavily fortified position with apparently adequate food, but of course the city of Quebec was
pounded by a bombardment launched by Montgomery and his forces as they besieged the city.
As winter continued to move into the area and made things colder and more difficult for Montgomery's troops, he realized that in order to maintain his position he had to take the city and get the battle over with reasonably quickly. So he launched an attack on the city of Quebec on December 31, 1775 in the early hours of the morning. It was dark. There were a lot of shots exchanged and ultimately Montgomery was killed in the streets of Quebec. The battle was lost for the Americans. The siege continued until the spring, but a British ship arrived, lifted the siege, and the Americans had to retreat.
That battle was won because the residents of the city of Quebec helped the British governor. They sided with the British governor, the recent conqueror, in order to preserve what they thought was a better way of life under the British crown as an independent part of North America and not as part of the United States. In a way, they were the first United Empire Loyalists, because they made that very significant decision. If they had not made that decision and had sided with the Americans and rebelled against the British force, as they could easily have done, no doubt Quebec would have fallen and no doubt we would have been part of the United States as a result of the revolutionary war.
The men and women who made that decision were residents of the city and of the surrounding countryside. In my view they were the first great nation builders of Canada. We never hear mention of them whenever a member of the Bloc Quebecois or any separatist is busy talking about Canadian unity.
It is a battle that holds tremendous significance. In my visit to Quebec I saw the place in the street where Montgomery was killed. I believe there is a plaque in the street where this happened.
Some of ancient buildings in Quebec bore marks for a long time of the bombardment they suffered from the Americans in that war 220 years ago at the end of this month, the anniversary date of the attack on Quebec led by Montgomery.
This was a very significant event in Canada's history which saved Quebec, basically the only part of Canada that was then of any significance as a British possession that operated as part of a group of colonies that began to grow and prosper, all of them not prospering quite so well but at least growing in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and ultimately in Upper Canada, in Ontario.
By 1840 we had the Union Act of 1840 that put the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada together under a single administration, at least legislatively.
Subsequent to that the debates took place in respect of the union of the Canadian provinces. It is to those debates that I want to turn because I want to quote some nation builders. That is what we are engaged in here in a very modest way today.
It is important to bear in mind some of the words some of these people spoke. I turn first to the remarks of the hon. Sir John A. Macdonald. He was not a knight at that time. He was the attorney general for the western part of the province of Canada and at that time the member for Kingston.
He was one of the senior Fathers of Confederation. I quote what he said in respect of Confederation at that time. This is in the Confederation debates in 1865, talking about the union of Upper and Lower Canada:
It was felt that a dissolution of the union would have destroyed all the credit that we had gained by being a united province, and would have left us two weak and ineffective governments, instead of one powerful and united people.
Those words apply precisely to the situation we faced in pre-referendum Canada a few weeks ago. I submit those words are of importance now just as they were then. He went on to say:
The Lower Canadians would not have worked cheerfully under such a change of system-
He was talking about a different system than the one I was reading about before-
-but would have ceased to be what they are now-a nationality, with representatives in Parliament, governed by general principles, and dividing according to their political opinions-and would have been in great danger of becoming a faction, forgetful of national obligations, and only actuated by a desire to defend their own sectional interests, their own laws, and their own institutions.
He was speaking of having a unitary government where there would not be a federal division of powers as we now have where different parts of the country have the right to decide certain things.
We have a situation in which both the opposition parties are claiming the federal government should give up powers and where the federal government has acknowledged that is so and has chosen to do that.
I refer to Sir John's conclusion:
In conclusion, I would again implore the House not to let this opportunity to pass. It is an opportunity that may never recur. At the risk of repeating myself, I would say, it was only by a happy concurrence of circumstances, that we were enabled to bring this great question to its present position. If we do not take advantage of the time, if we show ourselves unequal to the occasion, it may never return, and we shall hereafter bitterly and unavailingly regret having failed to embrace the happy opportunity now offered of founding a great nation.
I quote another one, Sir George-Étienne Cartier, Macdonald's great partner in putting Canada together. He said, and these words apply today as much as they did then, in the same debates in 1865:
The question for us to ask ourselves is this: Shall we be content to remain separate-shall we be content to maintain a mere provincial existence, when, by combining together, we could become a great nation? It had never yet been the good fortune of any group of communities to secure national greatness with such facility. In past ages, warriors have struggled for years for the addition to their country of a single province.
Here we had the great willingness on the part of all these people to unite and form this great country we now enjoy.
I quote another great nation builder, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, one of the great prime ministers of our country. He said, from page 1842 of Hansard , on March 13, 1900:
If there is anything to which I have given my political life, it is to try to promote unity, harmony and amity between the diverse elements of this country. My friends can desert me, they can remove their confidence from me, they can withdraw the trust which they have placed in my hands; but never shall I deviate from that line of policy. Whatever may be the consequences, whether loss of prestige, loss of popularity, or loss of power, I feel that I am in the right, and I know that a time will come when every man, my hon. friend himself included, will render me full justice on that score.
As our forebearers did, we can do no less but to engage in the nation building which they did in this great and vast country of ours.