The legislative council. We got rid of it such a long time ago that I even forgot how it was called.
When we applied to the legislative council to change our education system, we were told that would lead to total decadence. We wanted our own education department and all the rest. There has not been an increase in problems since then, but we can now carry out reforms and can keep the system up to date and change it anytime we want things to progress.
Since 1723, churches have been in charge of schools, but each Church brings its own people to its own school. This afternoon, one Newfoundland member made a great speech explaining clearly that in his province, where the population is equal to that of Calgary and the territory is quite large, the system can no longer afford a situation where there are six schools in one municipality because there are six different religions and that the province wants to make some changes.
I think we have to push aside all pettiness. We must not meddle in Newfoundland's affairs except to check whatever comes under our own jurisdiction. In my view, our jurisdiction is about two things. There is, first of all, section 43. Did Newfoundland abide by section 43? Yes. Section 43 states that we can amend the Constitution if the amendment applies to one province only.
If some people fear that Quebec will use that precedent to deny rights to English-Canadians, they should not lose any sleep over that because the anglophones' rights are protected by the Quebec charter. The charter would have to be modified in Quebec City, not here, before we could hurt the English-Canadians in Quebec.
Therefore, we would not ask Ottawa's permission to do so, we would do it directly in Quebec and accept the consequences of such a measure. You can sleep like logs all over Canada tonight and not worry, because the rights of anglophones are well protected in Quebec.