Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the presentation of our colleague from The Battlefords-Meadow Lake. I think that his position was clear and well put.
I would like to ask him a few questions, perhaps two, particularly on the issue of an elected Senate. But before I get into the subject, I would like to justify, just a little, my participation in the debate.
As a sovereignist member of Parliament from Quebec, it might seem strange that I would want to get involved in the representation of Canadians in the House of Commons, but it should be well understood that constituents gave us the mandate to be the official opposition in the House. I think that it would have been inappropriate for us not to deal with this issue claiming that it does not concern us.
It concerns us, first, because of the mandate which we received, as I just mentioned, and also because, in view of the association with Canada that we want to promote, it is in our best interests, as Quebecers, to ensure that Canadian Parliament works in the best way possible.
I would like to remind my colleague, whom I was interested to hear mention that the representation of Saskatchewan's members in Parliament would be reduced in the future, why we, in the Bloc Quebecois, were moved to present an amendment which was defeated by the House. The aim of this amendment was to ensure that, should Quebec remain in Canada, its representation would never drop below 25 per cent.
Why are we insisting on that figure? I think that this 25 per cent is very small if we consider what we have been. When you come into the lobby of the House of Commons, there is the opposition door and the government door. If you look above the opposition door, you can see two medallions. In one of them, there is Louis XIV and in the other, François I.
Above the government door, you notice two English kings. What does that mean? It means that you can see, carved in stone, what Canada was when we entered Confederation. By the way, we entered Confederation on a vote by the Parliament of what was then Lower Canada. There was no referendum. At the time, Canada was a duality, what people used to call the French Canadian people and the English Canadian people. That is how people saw Canada.
In 1982, Canada changed. Canada was a country with ten equal provinces, and in those provinces there were citizens who were all equal, irrespective of their origins, but that is not really my point. My point is that the nature of the country in which we live was changed and it was done forcibly, and, I may recall, by means of a law passed by the Parliament of England. So this is not exactly conducive to good relations between peoples, and
when I say peoples, I am referring to the people of Quebec and the people of Canada.
The hon. member for The Battlefords-Meadow Lake rose to complain that Saskatchewan would have fewer members. As members from Quebec, we also rose to complain about this eventuality, and the House of Commons ignored our complaint. We protested on the basis of our historic responsibility as the homeland of French Canadians. Today, French Canadians call themselves Quebecers, possibly to the dismay of some people in English Canada.
And now my question is about the Senate. The hon. member for The Battlefords-Meadow Lake suggested, to compensate for the decrease in representation of the provinces, an appointed or elected Senate that would act as a kind of counterweight to the fact that the House of Commons would then perhaps represent more ridings and the Senate would then represent the provinces and play a kind of protective role.
Considering his experience in the House of Commons-the hon. member is an experienced member of Parliament who was here throughout the Mulroney era-does he really believe that in the present situation, Canada will ever achieve the kind of constitutional reform that would allow for making changes in its institutions?