We have traditionally supported forms of asymmetrical federalism and we have traditionally supported self-determination for Quebec. Many of the resolutions that were quoted earlier by members of the Bloc in their opening speeches reflect accurately positions taken by the NDP in the past and positions which are held to this day with respect to the ultimate ability of Quebeckers to freely decide their own future.
I did not think there was any dispute about this. I do not really understand Bloc members when they say there is a new consensus in Quebec around this, that Claude Ryan has suddenly done something new.
It seems to me that in all of Canada, in the referendums of 1980 and 1995 and in the debate that surrounded those referendums, there was always the acknowledgement by the prime ministers of the day and by other political leaders that in the final analysis the future of Quebec within Canada was a political question, not a legal question, and that it would be up to the people of Quebec to decide their future within Canada. Any attempt to detract from this principle is unacceptable.
The questions at issue, which unfortunately the Bloc did not try to clarify in the language of its motion, are what is the role or purpose of the supreme court in this matter and what is the role of the rule of law in this matter. There are process questions that need to be answered. The Bloc did itself a disservice by not trying to address some of the process questions in the motion. I heard some of the members address such concerns.
There was a reference to referendum and a clarity of process, et cetera, but they are asking a lot of us and a lot of other members of Parliament—and we may yet do it—to vote for a motion that leaves questions of process up in the air.
This is our concern. It is not an anxiety about or an objection to the principle that Quebeckers might freely decide their future and someday might decide to leave the country. We think that would be a tragedy of historic proportion, but we have never said that Quebeckers should be kept in the country against their will.
However, just as Quebec entered the country by negotiation it is not unreasonable to make the claim that Quebec, having chosen freely in a clear and fair process to leave Canada, would have to leave Canada by negotiation with the rest of Canada. The rest of Canada would have some say in how that would happen, not whether it would happen. That seems to me to be only fair, particularly when we consider that there are outstanding questions with respect to the self-determination of aboriginal people within Quebec, a territory that was not a part of Quebec when it entered Confederation.
These are reasonable questions. They are not raised as threats or in any way to diminish the freedom of the people of Quebec to decide their future. They are raised as reasonable questions of fairness and process which any Bloc Quebecois member would raise in any other context, were they not absolutely preoccupied with making the political point about what is happening at the supreme court.
I understand their objection to the way in which the referral to the supreme court could be and sometimes appears to be used by the federal government in an inappropriate way. When I say that there are questions of process that need to be decided, it is not a blanket approval of the way the Liberal government is dealing with the issue.
I listened to the rant against the supreme court by the hon. member from the Bloc. It made me regret all the more that we were not able to get the Meech Lake accord through.
One of the objects of the Meech Lake accord was to change the supreme court structurally so as not to have it subject to such accusations, however inaccurate they may be, to change the supreme court structurally by changing the way the supreme court was chosen.
There would have been three judges chosen by Quebec and the rest of the judges would have been chosen from provincial lists. All the provinces, not just Quebec, could have had more of a feeling that a court which finally decides federal-provincial matters would be a court that all levels of government participated in creating through the appointment process.
But that was not to be and because that was not to be along with a lot of other things included in that accord, we have the political situation we have today. We have my colleagues in the Bloc, whose genesis is in the defeat of the Meech Lake accord.
I am inviting my colleagues in the Bloc to have more to say throughout the day about process, about how they see the principle which they have expressed in this motion with which we agree being embodied in process and about how many of the questions raised in terms of process will be addressed.
I believe the people of Canada feel they have some part to play in this, not in instructing Quebec or in keeping Quebec within the country against its own will. But, if Quebec makes a decision to leave Canada, they want a role to play in determining the nature of the separation, how it will happen and what the relationship will be after separation.
That leads us to the topics of partnership, sovereignty association and all the things in which presumably the rest of Canada would be involved if it ever came to that.