Mr. Speaker, I thank you for giving me the floor. I wish to put a few questions to the hon. member. He spoke in particular of the referendum results in Quebec.
Of course, we lost the referendum with 49,4 per cent of the vote. The government, the Prime Minister, keep on repeating that we should accept our defeat, and the Canadien government recognizes that we have lost.
If the Canadian government recognizes that we lost the referendum, should it not also recognize that with 51,4 per cent of the vote, Quebecers would have had a legitimate victory?
There is another striking example. Would the province of Newfoundland, having decided to join the Canadian confederation in a referendum, also be free to leave it in another referendum? Would that not be logic? I wonder why there are these great debates to say that you need 60, 65 or 70 per cent of the vote to leave the Canadian confederation. It looks completely ludicrous to me. You need 50 per cent plus one. This is the democratic rule we work with. This is our culture and democracy as we know it.
I would ask the hon. member to elaborate a bit on the matter because the Liberal government seems to be hard-of-hearing on this issue.