Mr. Speaker, I thank the previous speaker from Cochrane-Superior for his remarks, not because I necessarily agree with them all but because they were on the topic of the bill which has been sadly lacking in this debate.
This is a debate about Bill C-69, an act to provide for the establishment of electoral boundaries commissions and the readjustment of electoral boundaries, specifically to scrap the process under way last year to redraw our boundaries based on the 1991 census and establish a whole new process.
We are now winding up a parliamentary debate on this that started over a year ago which in our view has yielded only minimal improvements to the electoral boundaries process.
The motion that had initiated this bill had asked the procedure and House affairs committee to examine methods of capping and reducing the size of the House of Commons, to improve the process by which boundaries commissioners are selected, to consider how the boundaries commissions conduct their work and to consider the involvement of the public. In three of these areas there were some minor improvements. However, the bill fails to address the already excessive and growing numbers of
members in the House of Commons. That failure in particular prevents our party from endorsing the bill.
The changes made to the boundaries process while useful for future census in our view do not justify scrapping the commission or rejecting the reports of the existing boundaries commissions.
While we are opposing this bill members of the Bloc Quebecois have been opposing this bill for an entirely different reason, one to which I will address my remarks.
The Bloc position on this entire process for bills C-18 and C-69 has been very inconsistent. It supported going through this process and then opposed it again.
Initially the concern was about boundaries. Now the concern is about Quebec's not having a guaranteed 25 per cent of the seats. Under the formula coming forward I will point out what we are actually talking about in terms of substance. We are talking about the demand from the Bloc Quebecois that Quebec be guaranteed 25 per cent of the 301 seats we will have out of this redistribution; in other words 75.25 seats. Quebec will get under the formula 75 seats. This is probably the most verbiage we have expended in the House over one-quarter of a seat.
I am not entirely sure this position is not changing again. Over the Easter break we learned from the leader of the Bloc Quebecois that apparently Quebec now wants 50 per cent of the seats. The position keeps shifting.
I want to address it seriously because there has been much misinformation and many misstatements made about this. I will outline the facts. The Bloc has made at least four assertions which need to be challenged, assertions of fact, assertions directly related to the bill and to the issue of 25 per cent of the seats.
The first and most obvious Bloc assertion is that this kind of guarantee could be achieved without a constitutional amendment. We know that is not the case. This was a provision of the Charlottetown constitutional accord opposed by the Bloc Quebecois which I will talk about later. It was in that accord precisely because it required a constitutional amendment.
The Constitution Act of 1867 lays out the formula for the redistribution of seats in the House of Commons every 10 years. That formula is contained primarily in section 51. Section 52 makes it clear that while the number of seats in the House can be changed, the House is not free to amend its formula in a way that would depart from the proportion of population among the provinces. Section 52 makes clear that principle is protected.
Furthermore, under the Constitution Act of 1982 under section 42(1)(a) the amending formula is explicit that changing the proportion of seats in the House can only be done with a constitutional amendment approved by Parliament and by two-thirds of the provinces representing at least 50 per cent of the population.
The second incorrect Bloc assertion is that under existing constitutional formula only New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island are guaranteed certain representation in the House of Commons. This is also not true. Section 51(a) of the Constitution Act of 1867 makes it clear all provinces are guaranteed in the House of Commons at least the number of seats they have in the Senate. That was a provision added in 1915.
Obviously under that provision it has an immediate effect on the representation of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, whose seats would fall below 10 and 4 respectively if that were not there. It also applies to all provinces. Quebec is in effect guaranteed 24 seats by that provision, many more than New Brunswick or Prince Edward Island, although Quebec has many more seats.
As well, the Constitution Act of 1982, section 41(b), the amending formula, makes it clear this particular provision as it relates to any of the provinces can only be changed with unanimous consent. We are all aware of the difficulties in getting unanimous consent. I will talk later about some of the things we would like to see. Clearly that is not in the cards today if for no other reason than all governments in the country realize they could never get the support of the Government of Quebec for any step, for any constitutional change, for anything positive or negative.
Another point where the Bloc is not correct in claiming that only New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island are protected is there is an additional grandfather clause in section 51 of the Constitution Act of 1867. It is not an especially protected section but it guarantees to all provinces the representation they had in the House of Commons in the mid-seventies, a provision my party does not support and a provision that can be changed through an act of Parliament but which this bill does not change. Under that provision Quebec is guaranteed the 75 seats it has today. Were it not for that provision Quebec's share would probably fall by one or two seats.
The third Bloc assertion in this debate that has not been correct is that the demand Quebec be guaranteed 25 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons is one of the historic demands of the province of Quebec. I found this particularly interesting. I worked for the no side in the constitutional referendum. An argument frequently made both inside and outside Quebec was that this provision of the Charlottetown accord guaranteeing Quebec 25 per cent of the seats had in fact not been a historic demand of the province of Quebec and had
really just come out of the hurried negotiations in the summer of 1992. I decided to do a little bit of research and confirmed that was the case.
Perhaps we have overlooked something, but I cannot find any record of a major Quebec actor demanding a guarantee of 25 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons prior to the Charlottetown accord.
I would say that there are some origins, which may be in the Victoria conference proposal. In 1971 the Victoria constitutional agreement proposed that every province that at the time had at least 25 per cent of the population be guaranteed a constitutional veto indefinitely. This would have given Ontario and Quebec a veto over any changes to the Constitution. Of course it was ironic that that accord also failed, partly because of the attacks by the Parti Quebecois and the separatists in Quebec at the time. But ultimately, the accord was rejected by Quebec federalists as well.
Once again, the fact of the matter, as far as we can tell, is that this is not a historic demand, although like so many things in this country it has become a demand from the very separatist element that rejected it in the first place, much in the way certain versions of the Confederation agreement are now endorsed by the separatists who rejected that agreement at the time.
I want to get to the fourth Bloc contention, that somehow the failure to give Quebec a guaranteed representation in the House of Commons represents a violation of the agreement of Confederation. It is particularly interesting how it can represent a violation of an agreement that never existed. There never was any such provision in the Constitution of 1867.
In making this argument the Bloc Quebecois has pointed out the fact that in the old Canada, the union of the two founding provinces we hear so much about, the union of 1841 to 1867, Quebec had 50 per cent of the seats and there was a dual premiership, as members will recall.
Confederation came about because that arrangement broke down. It was completely unworkable to have the principal House where the guaranteed number of seats is invariant to population and where there will be some kind of equal marriage. It did not work. It brought about Confederation. And if Confederation were ever to fail for Quebec, as the separatists suggest it will, then of course the rest of Canada would never enter into an agreement that would recreate a union that already fell apart in the 1800s.
It is important to remember what the agreement of 1867 did. It did not guarantee Quebec a percentage of seats in the lower House, as we had had prior to 1867. It had three separate elements that dealt much more creatively with the concerns of Quebec and with the other regions and the new partners of Confederation.
First, it created the House of Commons, where representation would be on the basis of population, a principle understood in every democratic country in the world.
Second, it created a federal system. This is something we should not forget. Colleagues in the Bloc always say that Quebec's power at Confederation fell from 50 per cent to 35 per cent. In fact it did not. Its share of the seats at this level of government fell from 50 per cent to 35 per cent, but the most important feature of Confederation was the creation of a federal system and the creation of the province of Quebec as a separate legal entity. The Confederation agreement gave Quebecers local autonomy through their provincial legislature over a number of exclusive provincial jurisdictions.
I should add that my party is opposed to the historic attempts of the federal Liberals to undermine those exclusive provincial jurisdictions. Those jurisdictions should be respected, and in our view the federal spending power should not be used in a way that intrudes upon those exclusive competencies.
Third, the agreement of 1867 created the Senate. It created a separate chamber, one of the purposes of which was to provide guaranteed representation for various regions of the country. I have spoken on this many times, as members will know. That is in fact the chamber where regional representation for Quebec and for other provinces was to be guaranteed.
That part of the accord has not worked out the way the regions of this country would like it to work out. One of the things that constantly mystifies us as western Canadians is the demand of Quebec separatists to abolish the upper chamber, rather than make it the very basis of regional representation that we in the regions of the country want against the enormous population weight of Ontario. That is rejected time and time again, although it is a feature of virtually every democratic federation in the world.
The history of that, I should point out, is quite interesting. Quebec was originally guaranteed 33, a third of the seats in the upper House. Later, as this country grew, as western Canada entered, that guarantee fell to 25 per cent, since we recognized four regions. Today, of course, we have seats for Newfoundland and the territories, which are outside of the original regional agreement.
There has been a guarantee in this Parliament for Quebec to have a certain representation. That representation is guaranteed in the Senate. Our provinces in the west would like to see that chamber become more effective. We would like to see ourselves guaranteed effective representation as well. That is the way to address this issue.
Members will recall that the Charlottetown accord was rejected through most of the country. The Bloc Quebecois, which suddenly finds it is fond of the 25 per cent guarantee in the Charlottetown accord, forgets that that guarantee was part of a package-not just the whole accord, but specifically part of a package of reforms to both the Senate and Commons.
These reforms were rejected for a number of reasons, not simply because of the issue of departure from representation by population but also because of the expansion of the size of the House of Commons, an expansion that would have gone dramatically to 337 members overnight and would have moved even more quickly into the future. That was one reason for rejection, something we are now replicating with this act, although not as badly.
Of course it was also rejected because of the obviously inadequate provisions as they related to the Senate, the failure to guarantee election to the upper House, the failure as well to guarantee effective powers for that body to protect the various regional interests that chamber is supposed to secure.
I do not want to go on too long because I have talked at length over the past year about this bill. We remain opposed to the provisions of this legislation, to the idea that we should scrap the existing boundary commissions and start from scratch. The few worthwhile improvements here can certainly be deferred to the 1996 census. We would save the taxpayers $5 million.
I do want to emphasize that in opposing this bill we in no way endorse the obstructionist tactics of the Bloc Quebecois, who are opposing this bill for entirely different reasons related to the separation of Quebec. The 25 per cent guarantee they have demanded for Quebec and the rationale they have used to back that demand simply do not stand up to factual scrutiny.
I should add in closing that it is increasingly clear that the reason the members of the Bloc Quebecois are so interested in guaranteeing a certain number of seats for Quebec in the House of Commons is that I think they are coming to realize that Quebec will be here in the House of Commons by the time the next election comes around and will be here for many more elections after that. We look forward to that.