Debates of Nov. 7th, 1996

Speech From The Throne

[The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais)]

I will now recognize the hon. member for Mégantic-Compton-Stanstead. The hon. member may start on the first five minutes of his speech.

[John Harvard, Liberal, Winnipeg—St. James, MB]

Just the truth, just the truth.

[Maurice Bernier, Bloc, Mégantic—Compton—Stanstead, QC]

You will hear the truth now.

First of all, I would like to say that I only have three or four minutes left until the end of this sitting. I will resume speaking on the next day of debate on the Throne speech. I do not have time to get into the main part of my speech, which was supposed to be about the government's record on dealing with the disabled, but I will get back to this later on.

For the time being, I will merely refer to some statements by my colleague from Simcoe North who, I think, is a reasonable man who is usually able to make a fairly correct assessment of a political situation, but when he talks about the situation in Quebec, I should remind him of certain facts, just to fine tune the facts he already has. He said, if I am not mistaken, that about 65 per cent want a new and improved Canadian federation, that is, improvements within the Canadian system.

I do not know to which poll he is referring but, depending on the questions asked, you can get the results you want. It is like the Prime Minister, who at his convention about two weeks ago gave himself a score of 78 per cent when referring to his government's achievements. If we dig a little further, we get far different results.

I just want to take one poll as an example, since my colleague from Simcoe North was referring to polls to support his own figure of 65 per cent. A poll published today in the daily papers found that the level of satisfaction with the Prime Minister and the government has been dropping since the beginning of the summer. It now seems that 35 per cent of Canadians support the leader of the government, the Prime Minister, while in April this was 39 per cent and a few months ago it was 44 per cent.

We see there has been a major drop in the level of satisfaction, which is a strong indication, before an election, of the kind of support a government would get if there was an election tomorrow morning.

So figures can be made to say what we want them to say. The fact is that if we want to get involved in a constitutional debate, we are looking at something that is impossible within the Canadian federation. Federalists with the federal government or in the provinces who, over the past thirty years, have tried to change the system in response to the legitimate demands of Quebec and also of the other provinces, have always come up against a dead end. We were always faced with an impossible situation following negotiations, and the hon. member was referring to Charlottetown, when the people spoke for the first time.

But apart from this exercise, we always came up against the situation where Quebec was isolated, having come away disappointed from discussions. And I think it important to repeat this. I have said it I know not how many times in this House, and I will say it again. This was after discussions between federalists, not discussions between federalists on the one hand and separatists on the other, as my colleague for Simcoe North mentioned just now, when he said that it would never be possible to satisfy the wishes of the Bloc Quebecois and the Parti Quebecois.

I know that the period provided for debate has expired, so I will close by saying that, if political partisanship were put aside, and the proposal made by sovereignists and almost approved by a majority of Quebecers read carefully, it would be understood that sovereignists in this House and in Quebec basically want two things: first, recognition of the people of Quebec, the means we have and the means that go with this recognition in order to be able to affirm ourselves; and second, a partnership agreement with our preferred partner, Canada.

That is what we want and that will be the key in the future to resolving our present problems. I will continue these thoughts another time.

[The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais)]

It being6.30 p.m., the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m.

(The House adjourned at 6.31 p.m.)