Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the motion to refer this constitutional resolution to a committee. However, the NDP caucus reserves the right to listen and to pay attention to what goes on in the committee and to make a decision on how we will vote on the final outcome of the committee's deliberation when the resolution comes before the House in the future, depending on what we perceive as the appropriate position during that process.
I do not think that it would be appropriate for all of us to make up our minds before the committee is even struck, although I know that is often the case with respect to ordinary legislation. In the case of this constitutional resolution there are a lot of things that need to be considered. There are a lot of conflicting values, conflicting priorities. There are conflicts between our respect for provincial autonomy and our respect for the democratic process as it is reflected in referendums. On the other hand, there is our concern about whether it is ever appropriate for minority rights to be overcome by a majority vote in a referendum. There are the matters that have been raised by others on the floor before I came to my feet having to do with the rule of law and whether this is in fact constitutional.
In that respect, I am very sympathetic to the view that perhaps this matter should be referred to the supreme court before it proceeds any further. I know the government does not seem to be inclined to do that. I recall other constitutional debates in the House where a reference to the supreme court was helpful and where the government was found to be wanting in its position.
I think particularly of the patriation package in 1981-82 where the matter was finally referred to the supreme court and the supreme court ruled that the government—at that time it was the federal government that was acting in a particular way—was acting in contravention of the conventions of Canadian constitutional change.
It might well be useful for all of us to know, rather than debating it endlessly, whether what the Newfoundland government proposes to do is constitutional or found to be so by the supreme court if it were referred to the court.
Just a little bit of history. Some members may recall when term 17 came before the House in the last Parliament, the official NDP position at the time was one in support of passing the resolution but that we were not unanimous in that regard. There were NDP members of Parliament who voted otherwise because they were concerned about many aspects of this change.
At that time some members of Parliament, not just in the NDP but other members of Parliament, shared the concern of the religious communities outside Newfoundland that this action might have a precedent setting effect, if not legally at least politically in terms of how minority or denominational rights could in future be changed.
There was a great deal of concern that, at that time, just the changing of these minority rights by virtue of a referendum might set unwanted precedents. It would seem to me that that concern is amplified in this case where the referendum and the subsequent constitutional resolution do not propose to change, but rather, to eliminate those denominational rights.
I would hope that this is something that the committee would take very seriously, whether or not this is, in fact, something of which we should approve as a Parliament. An interesting question that I would recommend to the committee—this is where the question of minority rights and democratic process interact—is where those minority rights reside. Do those minority rights, in this case, the rights of denominations to set up their own schools, reside in the churches as institutions or do they reside in the people who might send their children to these schools?
If the rights reside in the institutions and it is the Catholic church or the Pentecostal church or the Seventh Day Adventist church or any other church that has these rights, if it is the church's right to set up these schools then it seems to me that the outcome of the referendum is not as relevant.
If these rights reside in the people rather than in the institutions, then one has to look at the outcome of the referendum and ask a variety of questions. On the one hand one has to ask the question about the turnout which some have described as high but which in some respects is still low.
On the other hand and given that it is low, one has to ask the question why. If these denominational rights are being taken from everybody in Newfoundland because the vast majority of the population has the right to attend denominational schools, why did they not turn out in force to protect these rights? I asked myself this question.
Having met with representatives of the Catholic and Pentecostal churches, I think they make a decent argument that there is a small proportion of Pentecostal and Catholic schools in smaller communities that will be disproportionately affected by this amendment.
One still has to ask why the entire Catholic community in Newfoundland did not come out and vote to save the schools of their Catholic brothers and sisters. I have to ask that question. Perhaps there is an explanation for it.
The argument is that people demonstrated their willingness to support denominational schools by virtue of the great numbers that registered their children in denominational schools after the last change. Registering a child in school is a public thing, something the church and neighbours know about, that everybody knows about.
Voting or not voting in a referendum or a secret ballot is perhaps a more anonymous way of sending a message that one might not want to publicly send. This is another thing that occurs to me as I try to analyse the outcome.
At the same time it seems to me what we have or may have—and this is something the committee would want to look into—is a case where certain groups had these rights under the constitution and the terms of union. These rights were changed by virtue of the last change to term 17. These groups saw fit, in the course of implementing those rights, to exercise their rights by taking the government to court on the constitutionality of the implementation of the previous change.
When they did that the response of the provincial government, as I understand it having been found by the courts not to be implementing the changes properly or constitutionally, was not to say that perhaps they could do it better or perhaps do it differently. The response of the provincial government was “You are exercising these rights in the courts. You are irritating us. You are getting in the way of our implementation. We have a solution. We will have a referendum and take away these rights from you altogether”.
It is not a stretch to imagine, without knowing the mind of the premier, that this could be characterized as a form of retaliation or bullying. I do not know but I can certainly see where some people may have a legitimate case for perceiving it as such. That is another concern the committee should look at in its deliberations.
I listened very carefully to my Bloc colleague. He was making an argument which assumed that there was no difference between an amendment such as the one before us to change something with respect to education and minority rights in Newfoundland and a constitutional change that would follow on a referendum in Quebec, the question which would pertain to the separation of Quebec and the destruction of Canada as we now know it. I do not accept the equivalency of these two amendments.
In the case of an amendment whereby Quebec would propose to separate from the rest of Canada and bring the rest of Canada and Canada as we know it into danger, there is such a thing as the Canadian national interest.
I would argue that this does not necessarily mean a sovereignist or separatist outcome of a Quebec referendum would have to be disregarded in the Canadian national interest. The response to a clearly worded question might be so overwhelming that it would be in the Canadian national interest to respect that particular outcome rather than try to keep Quebec captive in a country it no longer wanted to belong to.
I would certainly reject what I take to be the view of the Bloc in this debate. It finds one of the criteria in the Reform amendment, Canadian national interest, to be objectionable on first principles. I do not think that is something we can accept.
Having said all these things, we look forward to the deliberations of the committee. On the amendment by the Reform Party we may want to have somebody speak to that later today. We will see about that, but I do not see anything objectionable in much of what is contained in the Reform amendment.
Certainly the idea that the committee should go to Newfoundland is a worthy one and one we would want to support. I do not see anything wrong with the three tests the Reform Party wishes to embed in the criteria by which the committee is to judge the appropriateness of the constitutional resolution.
I do not see anything wrong with an amendment which separates the House of Commons from the Senate and which makes the point many of us have been trying to make. Some parties have been making it since 1933. It was a party called the CCF, a predecessor of the NDP. It is inappropriate and a blemish on the Canadian democratic process to have constantly intertwined with the House of Commons, whether it is in the form of a special joint committee or in any other way, this undemocratic appointed body at the heart of our democratic process.
If we were to run into this in the third world we would say “What a banana republic. They have all these guys appointed for life and they never have to face the electorate”.
I do not know, Mr. Speaker, if you have ever been on a international delegation where you have had to try to explain this to people and say he is a senator or she is a senator. They immediately assume the American model of a senator where the senators have even more status than members of the House of Representatives because they are elected for longer terms, there are fewer of them, and so on. You say “No, that is not the case in Canada. They are appointed at age 42, 55 or 63 until they are 75”. Trying to explain that is sometimes really tough, particularly when we are the ones who are leading seminars around the world to try to instruct people on the democratic process and at home we have the Senate. This is really embarrassing.
We should go beyond the point of being motivated simply by embarrassment or by our commitment to democracy. We should realize it is high time the Senate was reformed to make it elected and to make it a place where the regions of the country could have more clout at the centre and more meaningful and equal participation in the deliberations of our country.
I did not rise to make a speech on Senate reform, so I have to watch that I do not get off track.
I go back to saying that we support the motion to refer it to committee. We look forward to hearing witnesses in committee, watching the issue unfold and making sure that all things I have raised today are taken into account by the committee.