moved:
Motion No. 24
That Bill C-63 be amended by adding after line 23 on page 33 the following new Clause:
"64. The Act is amended by adding the following after section 301:
301.1 Chapter II of Title III of the Quebec Election Act applies to this Act, with such modifications as the circumstances require."
Motion No. 29
That Bill C-63 be amended by adding after line 27 on page 38 the following new Clause:
"86.1. The Act is amended by adding the following after section 331:
- (1) Before an amendment to this Act is passed, the Governor in Council shall table a draft Bill in the House of Commons.
(2) Within sixty days after the draft Bill is tabled, the Governor in Council shall consult the recognized political parties in the House of Commons."
Motion No. 30
That Bill C-63, in Clause 87, be amended by deleting lines 5 and 6 on page 39.
Motion No. 31
That Bill C-63, in Clause 88, be amended by replacing lines 5 and 6 on page 40 with the following:
"88. Section 4 of the Referendum Act is replaced by the following:
No proclamation may be issued a ) when the House of Commons stands dissolved; or b ) before, or more than forty-five days after, the text of the referendum question has been approved under section 5 or 5.1.
Sections 8 and 9 of the Act are repealed."
Motion No. 32
That Bill C-63, in Clause 89, be amended by replacing lines 7 and 8 on page 40 with the following:
"89. The Act is amended by adding the following after section 5:
5.1 (1) A referendum question shall be approved by a majority of the provinces that includes a ) Ontario; b ) Quebec; c ) British Columbia; d ) two or more of the Atlantic provinces that have, according to the then latest general census, combined populations of at least fifty per cent of the population of all the Atlantic provinces; and e ) two or more of the Prairie provinces that have, according to the then latest general census, combined populations of at least fifty per cent of the population of all the Prairie provinces.
(2) In this section,
"Atlantic provinces" means the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland;
"Prairie provinces" means the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta."
Motion No. 33
That Bill C-63 be amended by adding after line 14 on page 40 the following new Clause:
"91. The Act is amended by adding the following after section 16:
16.1(1) Chapter II of Title III of the Quebec Election Act (financing of political parties) applies to this Act, with such modifications as the circumstances require.
(2) For the purposes of this Act, a reference to "party" in the Quebec Election Act shall be read as a reference to "referendum committee"."
Motion No. 35
That Bill C-63, in Clause 92, be amended by replacing line 28 on page 40 with the following:
"before it are replaced by the following:
- (1) The Government of Canada shall not give effect to a vote on a referendum question or take any action whatsoever with respect to that vote unless a majority of the legislatures of the provinces have first given their consent, and this majority shall include a ) Ontario; b ) Quebec; c ) British Columbia; d ) two or more of the Atlantic provinces that have, according to the then latest general census, combined populations of at least fifty per cent of the population of all the Atlantic provinces; and e ) two or more of the Prairie provinces that have, according to the then latest general census, combined populations of at least fifty per cent of the population of all the Prairie provinces.
(2) In this section,
"Atlantic provinces" means the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland;
"Prairie provinces" means the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta."
Motion No. 36
That Bill C-63 be amended by adding after line 28 on page 40 the following new Clause:
"93. The Act is amended by adding the following after section 39:
39.1(1) The provisions of an Act of a legislature respecting a referendum or referendums prevail over any inconsistent provisions in this Act.
(2) Where the result of a referendum held under an Act of a legislature respecting a referendum or referendums differs from the result of a referendum held under this Act, the result obtained under the Act of the legislature shall prevail."
Madam Speaker, since there are eight motions in this group, I will call upon the generosity of my colleagues to speak on items that I will certainly overlook. A little earlier, my colleague from Calgary West gave an interesting and intelligent speech on the concept of distinct society.
If there is one thing we can be sure of when the hon. member for Calgary West addresses a problem, it is that he will ask the real question. There were no false pretence or political dodging when he spoke on the concept of distinct society and on what it could represent.
The first intrinsic notion we refer to when we speak of a distinct society is the one outlined in the 1987 Meech Lake agreement. What was this notion of distinct society? It was a clause that would have been entrenched in the Canadian Constitution affirming the distinct nature of Quebec. This clause in the Constitution would have had precedence over the distribution of powers between the federal government and the provinces. Any interpretation of the Constitution would have taken into account the notion that Quebec is a distinct society.
This has nothing to do with the unfortunate motion mentioned earlier by the hon. member for Berthier-Montcalm and passed by a majority in this House on November 29, 1995, as part of an exercise in wishful thinking on the recognition of distinct society. We see today that even the bill now before us does not reflect the civil law concept of domicile. We must take these things into account.
But the concept of distinct society is everywhere in this group of motions. What do we want to do? First, we want the Canada Elections Act to contain provisions similar to those in the Quebec Elections Act on the financing of political parties to be sure that, at the federal level as in Quebec, only eligible voters can fund political parties. We want to ensure that large and small corporations, unions, and lobby groups can no longer legally fund political parties.
The chief electoral officer of Quebec, Pierre F. Côté, when he appeared before the House Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, had given a clear answer to the hon. member for Calgary West. What is important in Quebec's election bill is to define properly what we want. Shall it be one person one vote, or one buck one vote?
In Quebec, in the last 20 years-it will be 20 years next year-all governments have respected a principle now well established in Quebec's political custom, a principle according which no corporation, union or pressure group can provide funding for a political party. Only an eligible voter can do it, to a maximum of $3,000, according to Quebec's laws.
It took some courage for a newly elected government to undertyake such a reform, in 1977, because it is not easy to organize funding by the population, to go and visit your constituents week after week, to ask them how they judge your performance, to ask them also to support you financially.
The recall procedure, for the Bloc Quebecois as well as other Quebec political parties, is a year-long process because you sound out your constituents quite well when you ask them one by one to contribute $20, $50 or $100, and not $60,000, like the hon. member for Bourassa mentioned earlier.
You would need 600 constituents contributing $100 each to equal a big $60,000 cheque donated by a company. It is much easier. But then debts can be called in. It is a lot more difficult for a political party to say no to someone who donated heavily to its campaign fund than to someone who made more modest contributions. This is the purpose of one of our amendments.
We have moved that amendment to avoid the sort of hurried debates we are having today, where the only consultations there were were made at the last minute and where everyone is running about every which way to see if it would not possible to obtain an eleventh hour concession that could make the bill acceptable and save a few clauses with cosmetic changes, when in fact the whole process was flawed from the start and Elections Canada and the government ventured dangerously close to conflict of interest, if they did not actually have one.
If the amendment we are proposing today had been adopted, the House would get advance notice when the government wants to amend the Elections Act. Political parties should be consulted before the introduction of a bill on election legislation. As I will repeat tomorrow at third reading of Bill C-63, neither the official opposition nor the Reform Party were consulted. It is a partisan bill that will lead to a partisan decision.
We will also propose to amend the referendum legislation, Bill C-110, which gives a veto to almost everybody and which at the time I called a big fat chicken with legs for everybody, so that the veto clearly applies to referendums.
This is to say that before calling a federal referendum, the federal government will have to have the approval of the regions and the provinces, including Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia, two western provinces representing 50 per cent of the population and two Atlantic provinces representing 50 per cent of the popula-
tion. As for the question to be asked, the approval of the provinces will be required.
Second, there will have to be agreement regarding the results. The federal government will not be able to give effect to a vote on a referendum question if any of the groups I mentioned has objected to the question.
Finally, we propose that, if the result of a referendum held under provincial legislation differs from the result of a referendum held under federal legislation, the one held under provincial legislation will prevail, thus demonstrating that it is the provinces that created the federal government and not the reverse, in case this has been forgotten.
My grandfather would puff on his clay pipe and tell me to remember that confederation was the creation of the provinces, that the federal government was not responsible for our existence. Almost everyone in Canada has heard once in his life that the federal government was a creation of the provinces.
We have created a monster of such proportions that it now thinks it created everything, when the reverse is in fact true. It was the provinces that gave birth not to Canada but to the constitutional government that we know today. Contrary to a certain widely held philosophy, Canada was not created in 1867. It existed before that.
It existed when your Acadian ancestors, Madam Speaker, were there, long before the constitutional order of 1867 existed, long before the Europeans arrived. The First Nations were here when Canada came to be. To think that Canada has been in existence only since 1867 or that it will fall apart because of a constitutional reform is to misjudge tradition, the history that forged the soul of this people. It will withstand another constitutional reform.
My colleagues can add to what I have said. I have tried to deal with the eight motions in Group No. 6, which cover the Bloc Quebecois's major amendments. I would again like to congratulate the member for Calgary West for his solid understanding of the problem I am raising concerning distinct society. He is not in agreement with me, and I am not in agreement with him. But at least he is asking the real questions and giving a genuine response, as he sees it, unlike the people across the way, who pretend not to understand the problems. They sidestep the issue, because they are too afraid of what lies beneath the surface.
It is true that distinct society is a term that gives Quebec greater powers, that makes it possible to interpret the Canadian Constitution so that the division of powers provided in sections 91 and 92 of the present Constitution would be set aside and precedence given to an interpretive clause of this sort. In this regard, the hon. member for Calgary West is right.