Mr. Speaker, I wish to tell you that I am splitting my time with the member for Ottawa-Vanier.
I have been torn as I thought through what I might say tonight on this resolution. I am profoundly saddened that I am standing here and talking on this issue at this time in our history. We have so many issues to deal with in this country. However we are once more drawn back into a debate that at its roots is not going to put
bread on the table, is not going to do anything to alleviate poverty, is not going to create a job, is not going to enhance the capacity of people to work, to learn or to earn. It is a debate that if I understand what the members of the Bloc have been saying tonight is based on a constant bringing forward of a history that has not served them or the rest of Canada particularly well.
What confuses me as I think about it is that shortly after I was elected to this Chamber I had several opportunities to travel into Quebec; one as a student in Jonquière. I spent some time there at the CEGEP studying French and meeting with the Bloc member for Jonquière who most hospitable. He took me around, showed me his constituency and introduced me to people there. We had wonderful discussions about what Canada needed to do to deal with the debt, with social programs and with all of the kinds of things that we talk about all across the country.
Some time after that I had an opportunity as a member of the HRD committee to go into Montreal, Quebec City, Lévis and Rivière-du-Loup to talk to people and receive submissions, in particular, about unemployment insurance but really all of the social programs that were encompassed in that rather large review.
Three members of the Bloc toured with us across Canada as part of that committee. We started in Vancouver and travelled right across the country. What struck me about that experience is that when we got away from the opening moments of the hearings, when the organized groups would come in and demonstrate, wave and shout and scream in Vancouver, in Toronto and in Montreal, and sat down with people to talk about what they were concerned about and what did they wanted to see the government do and what were the issues they wanted us to confront, I did not hear the word "Constitution", I did not hear the word "embarrassment", I did not hear the word "insulted".
I heard people talking about how we can help our kids get an education, how we can build skills, how can we find jobs. I heard people in Lévis and Rivière-du-Loup talking about being very concerned about their future and about the fact that their children were having to move out of town to find work. I heard unilingual French people saying the same things in those communities as unilingual English people were saying in Saskatchewan, Alberta and in my own province of Manitoba.
I do not mean to make light of what occurred. Any time 50 per cent of any area votes to leave a country that is as strong and wonderful as Canada, there is a problem.
I have talked about this with members of the Bloc. Lots of conversations go on in this House, some of them across the floor like tonight. I have a conversation two or three times a week in the gymnasium with the member for Quebec-Est. We talk about what is at the root of the concerns that is driving people in Quebec to want to leave Canada. I have had many long talks with the member for Mercier about her views of social programs in Canada or in Quebec. Frankly they are very consistent with my views of social programs in Quebec. To try to understand what is driving this desire to break up this country is something that has been very difficult for me.
I want to share with the members of the Bloc something that I hope will help their understanding of the feelings in other parts of Canada about this issue. When the Meech Lake accord failed to pass the Manitoba legislature, I was the House leader for the opposition. When the constitutional amendment was brought to Manitoba, there was a very detailed and thorough public examination of the proposals.
A committee was struck, with representatives from all three parties in the legislature. That committee travelled all over Manitoba. Committee members went to Indian reserves in the northern part of the province. They went to small rural communities in the north, the south, the east and the west and they spent many days in the city of Winnipeg, allowing Manitobans to come forward and speak to them about their feelings on the Meech Lake accord.
As a result, Manitoba put forward some amendments to the accord as it was then struck. When I hear the language used by previous speakers here about how people did not respect Quebec and how that was an insult to Quebec, I want to tell them that subject never came up in these hearings.
The Meech Lake accord says in subsection (2)(i):
The Constitution of Canada shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with
(b) The recognition that Quebec constitutes within Canada a distinct society.
(3) The role of the legislature and Government of Quebec to preserve and promote the distinct identity of Quebec-
That was what the Meech Lake accord said if I understood the members opposite correctly.
After holding hearings all over the province, after researching it, considering it, debating it, this is how the three parties in the Manitoba legislature said the clause should read:
The Constitution of Canada shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the recognition that the following constitute fundamental characteristics of Canada:
(d) Quebec constitutes within Canada a distinct society;
In the Meech Lake accord the recognition is that Quebec constitutes within Canada a distinct society. The recommendation of all parties of the province of Manitoba was that Quebec constitutes within Canada a distinct society.
My province has recognized and supported that fact since 1990. This resolution, which calls on the House to recognize that Quebec is a distinct society within Canada, is simply consistent and affirms the very statements that the member holds up as an example of the things that Quebec wanted. It is the very thing that the three parties in the legislature and the people of Manitoba were prepared to support and the very thing that the Prime Minister asks us to support now.
When I look at the role we have as legislators, there are six practical things we do. We pass, amend or rescind legislation. We deal with expenditure or the withholding of expenditure, the cutting of expenditure. We regulate. However, there is an intangible thing we are called on to do in this Chamber and that is provide leadership.
It is time we began to talk about not how we drive this country apart, but how we pull it together, how we collectively provide some leadership that will improve the lives of people in this country, not harm them.