Mr. Speaker, on behalf of my colleagues in the New Democratic Party, I wish to offer a tribute to Mr. Bourassa, as well as to convey our sympathies to his family and friends.
Canada and Quebec have lost one of their masters in the art of politics, and a great public resource. The political life of Robert Bourassa reflects in many ways the history of Quebec since the quiet revolution.
He also played a central role in some of the most important moments in the history of the Canadian federation, namely the October crisis and the negotiations around the Meech Lake accord.
History no doubt will attest to the difficulties he encountered in trying to accommodate the aspirations of Quebecers and those of other Canadians within our federal institutions. It will also attest, however, to the fact that there were people of good will, like Mr. Bourassa, who made that effort, and that the effort is worthwhile.
I first met Mr. Bourassa when I was vice-chairman of the special committee of the House of Commons on federal-provincial fiscal relations. We met with former premiers in 1981 in the parliamentary dining room. We gathered a lot of former premiers to receive their advice on how to deal with federal-provincial fiscal affairs. At that time Mr. Bourassa was a former premier, but he was to go on from there to make one of the political comebacks of the century and to become premier again.
I remember also that he first came to my attention when I was a teenager as the premier of Quebec during the October crisis. All Canada was riveted on the events happening in Quebec at that time.
I see him as someone who tried to balance his perception of Quebec as a community and his perception of Canada as a community where Quebec could thrive not just as individual Quebecers but also as a community.
My sadness today is not just for Mr. Bourassa; it is for the fact that the ambivalence and the ambiguity which he expressed so well has been broken. Many of his critics-critics not of him but of the things which he stood for-have prospered. The kind of Canada which he sought to build is on the ropes.
I say to all of us here that the one thing we could do to honour his memory would be to revitalize the kind of Canada which he had in mind. I did not always agree with him, but he knew that the best place for Quebec was within Canada and that the best kind of Canada was a Canada open to Quebec.