Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise in debate on the resolution to amend term 17. I sat as an associate member on the joint special parliamentary committee dealing with this term. I would first like to recognize that it is an extraordinarily difficult issue requiring the wisdom of Solomon to determine how to vote on this matter. I appreciate the fact that it appears to be a free vote in every caucus.
In my remarks I will not be speaking on behalf of my party but rather with respect to my own conscience as it was formed in the process of those hearings and through the contact I have had with many people in Newfoundland.
I would like to comment on the very passionate remarks of the hon. member who preceded me. She spoke about deep divisions in Newfoundland and the witnesses who appeared at the joint committee speaking about the “torture” they underwent over this ongoing and divisive debate.
Many of the witnesses that appeared before the committee expressed deep and passionately held views in opposition to this proposed term. They are among the minority, perhaps the minority of the minority but a minority nevertheless, who feel that this amendment would alienate from them a constitutional right which is central to their privileges as citizens of Canada and of Newfoundland and Labrador.
By no means is there unanimity in Newfoundland with respect to this amendment. In fact every Newfoundlander I have heard from directly as a member of Parliament has been encouraging me to exercise our constitutional authority to oppose this application.
I rise not to oppose a unanimous consensus of the province of Newfoundland but rather to speak on behalf of the small number of people in that province who feel their minority rights are being trounced upon by the process in which we are now engaged.
What does this amendment do? It replaces the original term 17 that was entered into the constitution at the time of confederation of Newfoundland and Labrador in 1949, with a new term which would continue to recognize education as a provincial responsibility, and quite rightly so, and which would remove forever and extinguish permanently the denominational right to govern schools and school systems in a denominational character that was enshrined in 1949.
It would replace those rights with a general guarantee of access to courses in religion that are not specific to a religious denomination and in section 3 to religious observances that shall be permitted in a school where requested by parents. Let us be quite clear about what this does. It removes a right.
Some of the proponents of this amendment will say that we are not talking about minority rights because, after all, 97% of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians come under the coverage of the seven denominations affected. I think that is really pettifogging. I think it is quibbling with constitutional concepts. Whether it is minority rights, religious rights, acquired rights, vested rights or entrenched rights does not matter one whit.
To quote from an esteemed member of the House, the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Louis, in the debate on a similar initiative in the Quebec legislature many years ago, “rights are rights are rights”. I do not care how we cut them up, how we parse them, what terminology we apply, we are talking about guarantees that were extended to certain communities in the formation of the country, in this case in the incorporation of Newfoundland into this great country.
What kind of rights are we talking about when it comes to the rights of parents to direct their children in a particular religious tradition? The Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and many proponents of this amendment have said that the right to publicly funded denominational education does not constitute a fundamental right as long as parents have access to that kind of education, be it privately funded or otherwise.
In other words, they say that this is not like the right to exercise religion or the right to freedom of expression, which they argue are fundamental rights. Instead they suggest we are dealing with an entitlement, namely the entitlement to use the public purse to finance denominational education.
I beg to differ, and in so doing I would like to refer to the universal declaration of human rights from 1948, a document which came out of the atrocious circumstances and the lessons of the second world war. The world gathered together in an effort to define once and for all what constituted basic human rights. Article 26 of that declaration stated that everyone “has the right to education. Education shall be free at least in the elementary and fundamental stages”.
It went on to say under subsection 2 that “education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms”. Under section 3 it stated that “parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children”. It defines education as education that shall be free; in other words, publicly funded education at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. It went on to say that such education will be directed by parents who have a prior right to choose what kind of education they shall receive.
This principle was further enunciated in the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights in 1966, wherein article 13 recognized “the right of everyone to education”. It further stated that primary education shall be compulsory and available free to all, and that the states and parties to the covenant undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.
I refer to the 1976 international covenant on civil and political rights which stated in article 18 that everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Under section 4 it stated that the states and parties to the present covenant undertook to have respect for the liberty of parents, and when applicable legal guardians, to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.
The point is that we are not talking about a mere privilege or a mere entitlement. The right to direct education, as has been understood through these international covenants, means the right to access publicly funded education, free education at least at the elementary stage, which reflects the convictions of parents.
The abolition of the denominational school guarantees in term 17 means the abolition of those rights as defined by these international covenants. I think that is very grave indeed.
That is why we need a very high standard to alienate such rights. I would argue that the only such standard would be that the groups affected, be they minorities or majorities, indicate their consent to the removal of such rights. I submit that in the referendum, the unanimous vote of the Newfoundland legislature notwithstanding, such consent was not absolutely clear. Why do I say that?
We are dealing not with one monolithic group of citizens affected. We are dealing with eight denominational groups that are affected. Each one of those groups has a claim to this fundamental right. It would not be appropriate for a majority of people from different denominations to alienate the rights of a minority of others.
For instance, it was generally accepted in the hearings of the joint committee that the Pentecostal people of Newfoundland and Labrador did not give their consent in the referendum and did not give it in the consultations, and that they voted in the majority in the referendum against the application.
There was also considerable debate as to whether or not the considerably large catholic community of Newfoundland supported this amendment. While there is some evidence that a majority of nominal catholics may have done so in the referendum, there is no way to measure whether a majority of practising catholics gave such assent. One thing that is evident is that the institutional church, the Newfoundland Conference of Catholic Bishops, is clearly outspokenly opposed to this amendment.
I would also mention parenthetically that it was very unfortunate the joint committee chose not to hear representatives of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and representatives of other organizations such as the Catholic Civil Rights League that would have spoken to the national implications of this amendment. Why else do I question the assertion that the affected groups have given their assent to this amendment?
I think the referendum was conducted in an atrocious manner. By that I do not mean to say the people of Newfoundland did not know what they were voting on or were somehow voting in mass sequence. That is not my suggestion.
My suggestion is that the Government of Newfoundland was irresponsible in the manner in which it conducted this referendum and that it conducted it contrary to the basic principles of direct democracy reflected in referenda statutes throughout the world.
Among other things it has been noted in the debate today that the question was released only 32 days before the referendum. The legal text was released two days before the advance polls opened and only a week before the vote itself occurred. I recall in debate on the Charlottetown accord during the referendum in 1992 that Canadians from coast to coast expressed huge anger that they had not seen the legal text of that accord three or four weeks before the referendum.
In this case, Newfoundlanders did not see it until a couple of days before they went to the polls. And most importantly, when the legal text was released it reflected a substantive difference from the question that was put on the ballot and to Newfoundlanders four weeks before that time.
The question stated: Do you support a single school system where all children regardless of their religious affiliation attend the same schools where opportunities for religious education and observance are provided? I am reading from an advertisement the government put out called “A Straightforward Referendum Question” and it seems straightforward enough.
But when the government released the legal text, section 2 of the proposed new term 17 made it clear that such courses in religion are not specific to a religious denomination, an essential qualifier, a caveat which was not reflected in the question. Section 3 of the legal text states that religious observances shall be permitted in the school requested by parents, presumably qualified as well as religious observances that are not specific to a particular denomination.
Many Newfoundlanders who approached me and the committee said that the question they were asked implied that the protection of religious education meant the kind of religious education they conventionally understood to be religious, namely denominational education. But the government pulled a fast one by saying that such education would not be denominational in character. I and many people in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador believe that non-denominational religious education really is not religious education and therefore the question was misleading.
I also object to the government's direct intervention in the referendum. The government used the apparatus of the state and public tax dollars to support the yes side of the referendum. One principle which is consistent to direct democracy legislation around the world is that the state must remain neutral on these matters.
The government, that is to say the premier, his cabinet and his caucus, may take a particular position and can get on their soapbox, television or on talk shows and argue their position persuasively. But to use tax dollars for the benefit of one side is to unfairly outweigh the outcome, and more importantly is to infringe on the basic principle of liberal democracy as best expressed by Thomas Jefferson in the preamble to the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom which states that to compel a man to finance ideas which he abhors is both sinful and tyrannical.
That principle was enshrined at the birth of liberal democracy, that the state must remain neutral when it comes to basic political and moral differences. That was a principle not recognized by the Government of Newfoundland which spent $350,000 tax dollars on one side of the referendum while the no advocates had no such access to public resources.
I say this as a very strong advocate of direct democracy and referenda, someone who is somewhat of an amateur student of direct democracy. I find this offensive. If we blindly assume the legitimacy of this referendum, we are lowering the standard of what constitutes legitimate conduct in a referendum and it is not something I think we should do.
Many of those who have argued in favour of this amendment say that what it really tries to do is to enshrine pluralism, to reflect the important Canadian value of pluralism in the education system in Newfoundland. They claim that among other things there are groups such Baptists and the Jewish community who have no access to denominational education under the original term 17.
I agree it is a legitimate concern. But the proper remedy to that problem is not to extinguish the rights for those who currently hold those rights. It is to expand those rights. A liberal democracy does not create equality by removing rights for some. It creates greater equality by extending those rights to all.
What the Newfoundland government ought to have done in this case in my view is to propose an amendment to the term which would have included a generic right to denominational education. That would have satisfied the interests of equality but instead some people will end up paying the price by not having access to such education.
Those who will pay the price the most are poor people. I want to make this point. The wealthy can afford to send their children to private schools but it is the most disadvantaged, and we know that Newfoundland is a disadvantaged province, where parents cannot afford the extra $2,000, $3,000 or $4,000 to send their children to a private school which is in keeping with their values.
So what about the courses in religion and religious observances provided for in the proposed new term? My concern and that of many Newfoundlanders is that these courses in religion, these non-denominational generic courses will in fact be specific to a particular world view, a world view that might generally be called the secularist world view, a world view which sees no important ultimate distinctions in the truth claims of various religions.
In other words the courses that are implied by this term will not be courses in religion as conventionally understood. They could very well become courses in religious syncretism and indifferentism undergirded by a philosophy of moral relativism. That is to say philosophies which negate the possibility of objective ultimate truth on matters of life and death, on metaphysical matters, on matters of religion.
To tell a Catholic parent or a Pentecostal parent or some other parent who comes from a particular religious tradition that they will have access to religious education and that they should not worry is not adequate. They are concerned that their moral views will be offended by their children by schools providing this—