Mr. Speaker, Bill C-69 being debated today deals with the establishment of electoral boundaries commissions and the readjustment of electoral boundaries.
This bill would certainly improve the current situation. For one thing, the provincial commissions will now have to hold hearings before starting their work and will have to produce three maps for every region covered, that is, three redistribution proposals. If there is sufficient public demand, the commissions will have to hold new hearings. We must admit that the process has been improved compared to the current situation.
The bill also requires the commissions to consider certain elements in setting satisfactory electoral boundaries. Clause 19( b ) of the bill outlines the criteria to be considered: first, community of interest; second, a manageable geographic size for districts in sparsely populated, rural or northern regions of the province, and; third, the probability that there will be a substantial increase in the population of an electoral district in the province in the next five years.
Finally, clause 19( c ) stipulates that the commission shall recommend changes to existing electoral district boundaries only where the factors considered above are sufficiently significant to warrant such a recommendation.
It is interesting to note that the first criterion refers to community of interest. However, another provision of the bill specifies that an electoral district cannot vary by more than 25 per cent from the provincial quota. For example, if the electoral quota for Quebec is 100,000 voters, the commission can establish ridings that have between 75,000 and 125,000 voters.
The commission can agree that there is a community of interest but that the number of voters does not meet standards.
Take, for instance, the riding of Bonaventure-Îles-de-la-Madeleine which is now below the provincial quota but has a vast territory.
The bill does, however, provide that under certain circumstances, the commissions are not obliged to apply the 25-per cent rule. However, these circumstances are so restrictive that one wonders in what cases they would actually apply.
In accordance with subsection 19(3), a commission may depart from the 25 per cent rule if an electoral district or territory is geographically isolated from the rest of the province or is not readily accessible from the rest of the province.
What does geographically isolated mean? Who is going to define this? The provincial commission? The courts? The bill gives no indication. To get back to the case of the Magdalen Islands, they are, of course, geographically isolated. Should the population rule apply? Residents had their own federal electoral district until 1968, and to this day, Quebec law has guaranteed them their own provincial riding. With all due respect for the work being done by the hon. member for Bonaventure-Îles-de-la-Madeleine, we think it would make very good sense for the Magdalen Islands, located in the middle of the ocean, 210 kilometres from the Gaspé coast, to have a member exclusively for the islands.
It will therefore be up to the residents to make a case that the islands are geographically isolated. That should not be difficult. Complying with this initial rule should not be a problem. Subsequently, they will have to show that the population of the islands would justify establishing a new riding. Of course, this
would have certain consequences. If the Magdalen Islands are entitled to have their own member, the riding of Bonaventure will lose the constituency that would form the new riding on the islands. So there is still a problem for the Gaspé peninsula.
What happens to the ridings of Gaspé, Matapédia-Matane, Rimouski-Témiscouata and Bonaventure? What about them? Does subsection 19(3) provide a way to deal with the problem of the Gaspé peninsula? Unfortunately, the subsection is not sufficiently detailed. The Gaspé peninsula is a region with a decreasing population, where members must cover considerable territory. They must deal with problems that do not exist, or at least not in the same way, in the more central areas of the country or province represented. Members are concerned about representation in the Gaspé peninsula.
Subsection 19(3) is far too restrictive to be acceptable to us. We had suggested maintaining in the bill before the House today the rules now in effect. What are these rules?
At the present time, a provincial commission may depart from the 25-per cent rule in any case where any special community or diversity of interests of the inhabitants of various regions of the province appears to render such a departure necessary or desirable. So in fact, provincial commissions have far more leeway when they have to deal with specific cases. They have far more flexibility than they have under this bill.
So a region, like the lower St. Lawrence, the Gaspé or the Islands, would have benefitted more under current legislation than they will under the extremely restrictive legislation they want us to adopt today.
Clause 19 is for the official opposition a major reason for not supporting this bill.
Clause 16 is unacceptable as well, both for what it says and for what it does not say. Its silence speaks volumes. The government is turning a deaf ear to the traditional request by Quebecers and their successive governments for minimum representation in the House of Commons, as enjoyed by some of the Atlantic provinces.
Representation of the Atlantic provinces is guaranteed, as you know, by the senatorial clause which dates back to 1915. We have no argument with this provision.
It enables Prince Edward Island, with a population of 120,000, to have four members in this House, because the senatorial provision specifies that a province may not have fewer representatives in the House of Commons than it has in the Senate. Prince Edward Island is guaranteed four seats in the Senate. The same rule applies to New Brunswick. It has a guarantee of ten seats in the Senate.
Although its population does not warrant its having ten seats in the House, New Brunswick is entitled to ten seats. We have no problem with that. The Terms of Union of Newfoundland with Canada of 1949 also covered this point and could be used to guarantee proper representation of Newfoundland in both the House of Commons and the Senate. This is just what it did; it guaranteed Newfoundland six seats in the Senate.
If we accept the senatorial clause that guarantees are to be given to Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, why is there such an impediment to giving guarantees to Quebec on the subject of minimum representation?
Quebec is one of the two founding nations of this country. The collective memory of Quebecers has not forgotten that, in 1867, we were one of the two founding peoples. Allow me to remind you that on June 30, 1867, on the eve of the day the British North America Act was to come into force, Quebec, then called Lower Canada, had 65 of the 130 seats in the Parliament of the Province of Canada, that is half the seats, 50 per cent of the members.
Through its representatives, that is to say those elected to represent us, Quebec accepted at the time of the British North America Act to be limited to 65 seats out of 181 in the Parliament of Canada. This was the agreement reached by the Fathers of Confederation which was to come into force on July 1, 1867.
There was no referendum at the time. There was no consultation of the people of Quebec before the decision was made. It is also important to note that women were not consulted, since they did not have the right to vote at that time. There was no constitutional provision for a minimum representation for Quebec. The only guarantee we got was that Quebec would have 65 seats, although it did not say out of how many. On that point, there was nothing in the act.
Then, with the expansion of the Canadian territory and the inclusion of new provinces in the Confederation, the proportion of seats held by Quebec in the House of Commons constantly diminished until, in the last few decades, it stabilized at somewhere slightly above 25 per cent. Clearly the Fathers of Confederation erred when they failed to include a clause guaranteeing Quebec a minimum representation and, at that time, it should have been 50 per cent.
It is rather difficult to rewrite history and to claim 50 per cent today. What we are asking for is a guarantee of at least 25 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons. Should Quebec participate in the elections for the thirty-sixth Parliament, for
the first time in its history, its representation would fall below 25 per cent, since it would have only 75 seats out of 301.
This explains our proposal which, basically, is the same as the Liberal proposal of 1992, when they were in opposition. Let us see what the hon. member for Papineau-Saint-Michel and present Minister of Foreign Affairs was saying at the time. He was happy to seek for Quebec a guarantee of at least 25 per cent of the seats, saying that it would be a major gain for Quebec.
Yet, none of the Liberal members who were in this House in 1992 and are still here today supported our motion for a minimum of 25 per cent. How is it that these members changed their minds in so short a time? Why do they refuse Quebec something which is really minimal? Why do they refuse to make a move in the right direction? Why do they refuse a simple overture to Quebec? Why do they refuse a small sign of attachment to Quebec?
Why is this government refusing to show that it cares about Quebec, that it wants it to remain in Canada? Canada has no interest in having Quebec under-represented or diminished in the House of Commons. Quebec must keep its representation because it is a nation. It is one of the founding peoples. As a founding nation, francophones occupied all of Canada and went even a little farther, since our territory went as far as Louisiana.
It goes without saying that this request from Quebec must be supported since the large majority of Quebec members in this House voted in favour of guaranteeing Quebec a 25 per cent minimum representation. Daniel Johnson, Leader of the Official Opposition in the Quebec National Assembly, presented the following motion: "That the National Assembly of Quebec reiterate the goal of maintaining a representation of at least 25 per cent for Quebec in the House of Commons of Canada and request the Government of Quebec to make representations to that effect".
Thus we know that there is a large consensus in Quebec, going beyond party lines, to claim this minimum guarantee of 25 per cent. When we see the Progressive Conservative Party, the official opposition that is the Bloc Quebecois, and the independent member for Beauce support such a motion to include in Bill C-69 a guarantee of a 25 per cent representation, it is obvious that this issue achieves a large consensus in Quebec.
Needless to say that Senator Rivest also supported this provision. Even the governments of Quebec which requested that such a provision be included in our legislation have given it their unwavering support, and as far as I know, the current government had never retracted what had previously been agreed to.
How strange it is indeed to see the government finally recant on something that it supported in September 1992. This government reneged on what our Canadian partners had unanimously accepted. Of course, it was in the context of the Charlottetown accord. But should Quebec be punished because the rest of Canada decided that this accord was not to their advantage?
You will therefore concede that the bill before us today for third reading is incomplete. Especially when it comes to the criteria used to determine whether there can be a departure from the boundaries of a riding or those used to designate special ridings. It is also incomplete because it fails to deal with the issue of the representation of one of the country's two founding peoples. The vote on the amendment proposed by the official opposition demonstrates without a doubt that the federal government's failure to guarantee in this bill fair representation in this House for Quebec was not an innocent oversight: it was deliberate.
Would Canadians have been against the government finally recognizing Quebec's distinct society status, status as a founding people, as a nation on which this country was built? I am convinced the answer is no. This is the smallest request Quebec has made over the past 50 years.
I would be helpful to go back to the beginning and to remember that Canada's history all started with the arrival of Jacques Cartier in Gaspé, in 1534. Then comes the founding of Quebec City by Samuel de Champlain in 1608; the founding of Trois-Rivières and Montreal in the decades that followed and afterwards, the establishment of the first public government in New France, as Canada was called then.
Our first public institutions were created in 1663, when the King of France established the Sovereign Council of New France. We slowly stopped being French, became Canadians, then French Canadians and, ultimately, Quebecers.
Meanwhile, in 1774, the Quebec Act restored civil law in Quebec and allowed us to have an unelected legislative council. They were afraid to give francophones, who were so peaceful, democratic institutions, institutions to which Quebecers could elect their own representatives. And yet, Quebecers, Canadians of the time, had shown great pacifism and open-mindedness.
Finally, in 1791, thanks to the Constitutional Act, we were granted the right to elect our own representatives to our very first national assembly, in Quebec City. In 1791, we gained partial control over our institutions. Things went fairly fast after that, except that Canada was divided into Upper and Lower Canada. The assembly elected by Lower Canada has no extraterritorial power and cannot legislate on matters concerning Upper Canada and vice versa.
In 1867, the institutions we still have today were created. It may seem somewhat paradoxical for a sovereignist to rise in this House to ask for a 25 per cent representation. We have not left yet. We are still part of Canada. It is our duty and our responsibility, in accordance with our commitment to defend Quebec's
interests, to ask all parliamentarians in this House to grant us 25 per cent of the seats.
We were here first, we joined the union in 1840, we decided to live together. You will lose nothing in giving us 25 per cent of the seats. It would be a nice gesture toward a nation, a people you claim you want to keep within your ranks. It seems to me that if the government wants to give an obvious sign of its love for Quebec and is serious about keeping us in Canada, it must guarantee us a 25 per cent representation.