Debates of March 13th, 1996

Privilege

[Suzanne Tremblay, Bloc, Rimouski—Témiscouata, QC]

And it seems there is also the Reform Party definition of sedition.

[An hon. member]

That is surely not in the dictionary.

[Suzanne Tremblay, Bloc, Rimouski—Témiscouata, QC]

Their influence has not been strong enough yet for that type of sedition to be entered in the dictionary.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear.

[Suzanne Tremblay, Bloc, Rimouski—Témiscouata, QC]

So, sedition means "a rebellion against the government in power". I do not think it applies to our colleague. The little communiqué was quite innocuous, and did not incite to very much-

[Some hon. members]

Ha, ha.

[Suzanne Tremblay, Bloc, Rimouski—Témiscouata, QC]

No, no, innocuous in the good sense of the term.

There are also synonyms. I always said to my students at the university-male or female, but I always spoke in the feminine because in my opinion the majority should prevail in grammar as well-that when you really wanted to define the meaning of the word you had to look at all the synonyms to be sure to properly define the concept. It is important to define concepts, especially when you are trying to change a definition and include it in the dictionary. It takes time.

The word sedition in its larger sense has three synonyms. The first one is tumult. Sometimes, seeing the comments of the Minister of Human Resources Development, you wonder whether there is not a bit of sedition in his comments which certainly give rise to tumultuous reactions.

Another synonym is insurrection. Mr. Trudeau was really afraid of that. He talked about apprehended insurrection, and we know the result in Quebec in 1970: revolt.

Fortunately, on October 27-the day after the famous communiqué-the people of Quebec behaved with dignity, because the action of that Canada that loved us was a huge provocation that could have led to revolt. So, this government could have been accused of sedition.

Now, the military sedition. This is the one which we must deal with, because my colleague was vice-chairman of the standing committee on defence and official opposition critic for defence.

Military sedition is very interesting because, according to the dictionary, we ought to refer to two words to better understand the concept, the first being "pronunciamento". This is a Spanish word which is found in the French dictionary. It is defined as an act by which a military leader-you are accused of many defects, my dear friend-or a group of military officers declares its refusal to obey the government, or as any coup organized or favoured by the army. Oh boy! It was not the right word, it does not make any sense.

The other synonym was putsch. You know, we are not very used to this kind of thing, we are so distinct from the anglophone community that we do not have a French word for "military sedition". There is no such thing in our past, so we have to use a Spanish word or an English word, putsch.

Under putsch, we find "uprising", " coup de main by an armed political group''. We are a political group, but we are not armed with a view to taking power. You know that we have absolutely no intention of assuming power here. So, there you are.

This little demonstration had to be made in the House to clearly show that the Reform Party is very poorly organized, and there is more to come.

Now, there is one thing that is very surprising. English Canada woke up-as we know-on October 31, and has been having terrible nightmares ever since. English Canadians have not read, among other measures, Bill 1 tabled by Mr. Parizeau. There was a great deal of discussions here on "the question", but they did not bother to read the bill, including clause 17 which provided that the government would take necessary measures for Quebec to continue to participate in defence alliances of which Canada is a member. The fact is that we would need soldiers to participate in these alliances. We already had soldiers in Quebec. It would have been silly to train more. I now go on: "Such participation must, however, be compatible with Québec's desire to give priority to the maintenance of world peace under the leadership of the United Nations Organization".

In our meetings with soldiers, we explained that. We had a nice little document with questions and answers. We had to give them

some information, as was pointed out by the hon. members for Richelieu and Portneuf, among others. "What will Quebec do, about defence?" Here is what we will do: "We will have a small army whose mandate will be to protect our territory, to give assistance in natural disasters and to participate in the UN peacekeeping missions. A sovereign Quebec will assume its responsibility in collective security and defence through existing international treaties like North Atlantic Treaty Organization and North American Aerospace Defence Command".

For that, we needed soldiers. We needed officers. We needed all kinds of people. So, my colleague had the idea, the brilliant idea I must say, to tell the members of the armed forces-like the government had the idea to reassure our seniors by telling them that it would cut their pensions-that if a majority of Quebecers were to say yes, we would offer them a job. We never went further than that. Finally, we had very interesting arguments that maybe we should table in this House.

The House resumed from March 12 consideration of the motion and the amendment.

Supply

[The Deputy Speaker]

It being 6.30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred division on the amendment.

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the amendment, which was negatived on the following division:)

[The Speaker]

I declare the amendment defeated.

The next question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Speaker]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Speaker]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Speaker]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if you were to seek it I believe you would find unanimous consent that the members who are recorded as having voted on the previous motion be recorded as having voted on the motion now before the House with Liberal members voting nay on this motion.

[Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral, Bloc, Laval Centre, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Official Opposition members will be proud to vote yes.

[Bob Ringma, Reform, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we will need a recorded vote because I do not have unanimity.

[John Solomon, NDP, Regina—Lumsden, SK]

Mr. Speaker, the New Democrats in the House today, including the member for Burnaby-Kingsway, will be voting yes on this motion.

[The Speaker]

I do not know if I understood or I heard correctly. The hon. whip of the Reform Party.

[Bob Ringma, Reform, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the majority of my members will likely vote yes to this. There are some who would choose to vote no. We are going to have to canvass at least the Reform to get their vote.

[The Speaker]

We do not know at this point how many members we are talking about.

[Bob Ringma, Reform, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, may I suggest that you simply canvass the Reform to see how many nays there are, the rest will vote yes.

(The House divided on the motion, which was negatived on the following division:)