Madam Speaker, the hon. member on the government side said that the Catholic bishops were in favour of this change. No. I want to say to him that on March 6, 1996, 15 members of the permanent council of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, of which six bishops were from Quebec, agreed to the following recommendation.
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops asked the members of the House of Commons and the members of the Senate of Canada to weigh carefully the implications of this proposal and to indicate that they cannot associate themselves with the passage of legislation that would deprive minorities of religious and educational rights.
As well, when this was first discussed about linguistic school boards, the protection of section 93 was not even being considered at that time. Therefore I have a major concern. I want to ask the hon. member, abrogating the constitutional rights of a minority without their consent is a terrible precedent in our country, I cannot imagine that this government or this member would be part of that—