Madam Speaker, it is conceivable that I and others outside the Bloc Quebecois either do not appreciate the gravity of what is before the supreme court or have a different view of the gravity of what is before the supreme court.
My understanding is that whatever is before the supreme court in no way impinges upon the ultimate political freedom of Quebec to determine its future. My understanding is that what is before the supreme court has to do with process.
I think members of the federal government, and perhaps all of us, are playing catch up. For the longest time there was sloppiness on the federalist side with respect to what would happen if there were a vote for separation. It was a bit of a parlour game. We had a referendum. We had debates. We had whatever. But there was a confidence on the federalist side that the separatists would never win such a referendum. That confidence bore a certain laziness with respect to asking questions about what we would do if the separatists ever won the referendum. It was always assumed that they would not.
In October 1995 when separation was that close, all of a sudden the people on the federalist side woke up and said that it was not a parlour game any more, that it was not just some kind of ongoing Canadian amusement. It was real.
Perhaps we need to ask ourselves more fundamental questions than we have asked ourselves in the past about how this would transpire if in some future referendum there was a victory for separation. I think that is in part the genesis of the supreme court reference.
I just want to make it clear that in our minds it is a legal thing. It has nothing to do with the ultimate political question of how Quebec is either to be kept in Canada of its own free will by arriving at new arrangements that satisfy the desire of Quebeckers to feel they are being recognized and treated as a distinct or unique society within Quebec or, having failed to do so, Quebec leaving Canada.
Part of the answer for that from the point of view of the NDP is to rebuild the social democratic consensus that once existed in this country. Part of the problem is that for the past 10 or 15 years we have been governed from the right and we had a history of being governed from the left of centre federally. That is partly what kept the country together.
We have seen a diminution of our national institutions, of the ties that bind us thanks to free trade. I always remember during Meech Lake that the Tories were singing the praises of Canada while they were destroying it with free trade, deregulation and privatization. Had they given some thought to their other policies, maybe they would have been able to achieve what they set out to achieve. Instead they were destroying the country on one hand and trying to save it on the other.