Mr. Speaker, when I was elected to the House of Commons, I never thought I would have to speak to a motion like this one. They taught me in school what sedition means and the seriousness of that word.
The Reform Party presented a motion which is unfounded and not supported by facts, but which has dangerous negative effects because it challenges the right to democratic debate.
One could say that the motion may have been presented because the Reform Party does not know Quebec well enough, because in the end it is a very bad political move for a party to attack the democratic value of decisions made in Quebec. This is certainly not the right way to obtain support in Quebec. All Quebecers know that the referendum debate, held in the fall of 1995, was democratic and quite proper. The opponents may have been serious, they may have been rough, but the debate was clear.
I believe Quebecers made a choice with full knowledge of all the different issues at stake. There were questions on the future of federal public servants. What would their future be? The yes committee answered the questions and indicated what guarantees it could give them, what their situation would be like in the future. Members of the armed forces asked similar questions. The committee for the yes answered their questions. The committee for the no answered their questions. This is no sedition material.
As a matter of fact, in Quebec, nobody was offended by this statement. It did not stir up any passionate debate. Nobody said the Canadian government was being overthrown. A clear choice was made in Quebec many years ago with the emergence of the sovereignist movement, which has been in existence for at least 25, 30 or 35 years. Democracy would prevail.
In 1980, we accepted and lived with the results. Forty per cent of the people had voted yes. Mr. Lévesque, who was the sovereignist leader, said only: "À la prochaine". We took note of the results.
We tried to make changes in the federal system. We supported the Conservative Party in Quebec and took "le beau risque" in the hope of amending the Constitution, but it did not work. Quebecers sent sovereignists to Ottawa as the official opposition, and they elected a sovereignist government in Quebec City.
Our traditions are democratic, which makes us trust the position of people, and we will continue to trust people in the future.
I have nothing against the Reformers. In a sense, we see there is a blatant lack of knowledge of Quebec in this motion. I could just tell them that this should be a lesson to them, because if they repeat this once or twice, well-We wonder what their objectives are. Do they need a bigger following? Why have they moved this motion when there is no substance to the issue itself?
What I do have a problem with, however, is this government, the Liberal Party of Canada, supporting the merits of the question, the merits of the motion before us, by proposing a purely cosmetic change, an amendment that will in no way prevent the member in question-who, as far as I am concerned, cannot be accused of sedition in any way, shape or form-from being hauled up in front of the committee. Nowhere does the Liberal Party say that it does not want the matter to be referred to committee. The only thing this amendment does is to delete the part of the motion that has no real impact.
In that sense, in light of Liberal tradition and given the fact that it has ruled the country for many years since Confederation, the Liberal Party of Canada is acting very reprehensibly in making such a decision.
It should have clearly rejected right off the bat this hare-brained, unacceptable proposal with no basis in reality. I am sure that the Liberal Party of Canada will have to pay the political price for this in the future.
There is also what I would call perhaps the subliminal or somewhat perverse impact of this proposal. We as Bloc members might think that this is a way to influence the future. They are going to give a hard time to anyone making statements, however appropriate, so that, during the next debate on the national issue, they will all be afraid to speak out for fear of being accused of fomenting sedition.
You can be sure that this will not fly in Quebec. No Bloc member will leave this House with a guilt complex or feel that he or she should not say certain things regarding Quebec's future. For 25, 30 or 35 years-5 or 10 years in the case of younger members-we have fought to make sure that we will always be free to decide our future with full knowledge of the facts. We have turned Quebec voters into intelligent voters, voters with an extensive knowledge of politics who make choices accordingly. And you can rest assured that we will continue to do so. When over 90 per cent of the population votes in a referendum, one cannot say that unacceptable threats were made.
Given what Reformers are implying, and what Liberals are supporting, could it be that, in six months, if a Bloc member says something about submarines it might viewed as a seditious statement? Will that statement be viewed as an attempt to have the army or the navy turn against Canada? This makes no sense at all. If we try to recover tax points, is that going to be interpreted as a measure to break up the country? Tax points have existed for 30 or 35 years. Mr. Duplessis got them through the democratic process.
As regards the Canada Health Act, if Quebec makes choices that differ from the national standards that the federal government wants to impose, would that be seditious, since it would not comply with the will of Ottawa? There is no end to that. It is imperative that this motion be soundly defeated. Otherwise, parties supporting it will have contributed to a lowering of the quality of democratic debate in Canada. This is unacceptable, and it is not what Quebecers and Canadians want. The resilience of a political system depends on the quality of its democracy. When democracy is respected, the decisions and the outcome of the political process are accepted.
In the 1995 referendum, the yes side got 49.4 per cent of the vote. Had our democratic system not been very strong, there could have been a temptation, like what happened when other countries became independent, to say that the results were not credible and that all voters were not informed. It did not happen in Quebec. We all accepted the outcome, and I think Quebecers have demonstrated the quality of their democracy and their determination to have an interesting democratic life.
Speaking from my personal experience, I cannot help but notice a striking difference between this motion and the contacts I have had with Canadians.
Last year, for example, I spoke to the Rotary Club in Edmonton. We had a discussion with federalists who are Canadians with strong convictions and who believe in the future of this country. We had a very straightforward discussion on our vision and theirs. We probably even talked about the army. But none of the Canadians who were there said I was being seditious for saying that, once independent, Quebec would respect international agreements, would have a small army and ensure that people with some military expertise could continue to work in that field within the Quebec military if they wanted to do so. We never asked that the army rise up against the Canadian government. That is pure fabrication.
A word of caution is in order here. This must happen again. Basically, blowing situations like these out of all proportion amounts to manipulating information. Indeed, there is an old saying that goes something like this: people will believe that an untruth, if repeated often enough, is the truth. Parliament, and all the members of this House who are looking at this situation and have actually read the communiqué, should send a clear message.
We can speak in legal terms. Under the law, to be blamed with something, that something must have had an impact somewhere. Have you seen even one French speaking soldier from Quebec stand up and decide that he would support the Government of Quebec? I do not know why he would have done something like that, because the government accepted the outcome of the referendum. So, the motion before us is unwarranted. This is quite amazing.
In a court, as we have seen in civil court already, I do not think a judge would have found that there were grounds for prosecution. I think the House should come to the same conclusion. We are like a grand jury here. We will be accused of not doing our job properly, if we go through with this. This is why I say the Liberal amendment seems quite bland. We do need to use parliamentary expressions, but this makes for a wishy-washy position.