Madam Speaker, I would first like to thank the member for Lac—Saint—Jean for a bright and interesting intervention. If I may say so, he has a promising career ahead of him. I will be sharing time with the member for Waterloo—Wellington.
Let me enter into the substance of the debate. The Prime Minister has stated, and it is the reality of our times, that the next century is the knowledge century. Without knowledge, we are left behind in the competition of historical forces, not simply the economic forces and the social forces, and education is the key to that. The key to this element in the federal budget strategy was the recognition of a national emergency, that we have fallen behind other countries and other post-industrial societies in the educational battle.
This has no specific relationship to Quebec, but the provinces have not fulfilled a constitutional mandate in education. They have invested federal moneys in many cases that were intended for education, in highways or other projects that were no doubt interesting, but they did not direct it to the main element of the time, that is to say education.
Facing this situation of national emergency the Prime Minister, with proper constitutional advice, decided on the series of measures members have seen in the last federal budgets; the Foundation for Innovation which is dedicated to creating new infrastructures for medicine, science, technology, engineering; the centres for network excellence, the moneys again for advanced research in science, medicine, technology; the greatly ameliorated programs for student assistance, student loans and aids to their parents.
Now, you would say if we were addressing this to all the provinces, where is our constitutional base. If I may say so, one of the elements of sadness that I have with the constitutional debate as it has developed to date is that it began so promisingly and has dissipated into rather sterile and mundane arguments over constitutional divisions of power.
I can remember the early days of the “quiet revolution”. I can remember my students from the University of Toronto Law Faculty saying to me, as they came to give evidence before the Bilingual and Biculturalism Royal Commission, why do we not have a revolution ourselves? What a pity there is not a “quiet revolution” in English Canada because the thinking is not enlightened, the thinking is not exciting and there are no new feisty ideas.
I hearken back to the days of Paul Gérin Lajoie, Gérard Bergeron, my dear friend Jacques-Yvan Morin, Jacques Brassard, Claude Morin and Gérald Beaudoin, who is in the other chamber here. The “quiet revolution” had a lot of interesting ideas. I do not see much advance in federal thinking in either English speaking Canada or French speaking Canada. This is one of the “what might have beens” of the “quiet revolution”, the lack of contribution to a general process of constitutional modernization.
I took part in the B.C. unity panel. The Prime Minister was asked to delegate a member. He asked me to sit on this. The message we conveyed to the members of this panel was that in this period, act with generosity, do not seek quid pro quos, recognize the uniqueness of Quebec, recognize it generously without demanding return, and that was done. It is a dramatic reversal of the 70%:30% vote against the Charlottetown accord in the referendum in British Columbia. It is a unilateral act of good will.
One might ask on the other side could you not offer something in relation to federalism.
The reality of federalism is that the studies in Canada as a whole have been sterile studies rooted in the a priori truths of British scholars who never themselves lived under a federal state. Their new prime minister, Mr. Blair, has taken them kicking and struggling into a new century by recognizing that perhaps Scotland and Wales are unique societies and that they should do something about it.
The British have never lived under federalism. They exported it to their dominions and gave us essentially a very rigid sterile system of federalism in which the debate was about division of powers in the abstract without focusing on the fundamental issues which the European Union is now facing.
There are social problems and the problem of community decision making. If we try to solve the problems and agree on the solutions, the issue of who has the power will fall logically in place. That is key to the concept of subsidiarité that the European Union is concerned with. It is already clear in Canada that many of our problems were viewed by the privy council and others in the old days in watertight compartments, either federal or provincial, which do not yield themselves to intelligent, useful, long range solutions if one government acts alone.
Co-partnership, cogérance and co-management are the order of the day. All the new federal systems, the non-Anglo Saxon federal system, realize that. I regret that in some ways this debate remains an abstract exercise in a priori concepts instead of facing up to the modern issue of what to do about solving the problem.
If there is an approach to power sharing in this area, come and join us. The facts are that no province has moved substantially to modernize its educational system to face the demands of post-industrial society. That is the real tragedy.
Who can object to money being spent on students? Why cannot any government take the initiative? Why cannot other governments join in and say “we will join with you; we will share with you”? That was the real challenge.
I noticed my colleagues, the lady members of the House, are honouring the people involved in the persons case with a monument on the Hill. Not to denigrate the ladies, but I would say the real hero of the persons case was Lord Sankey, an unknown British Liberal lawyer in the House of Commons who was suddenly promoted to lord chancellor. The Labour government did not have any Labour lawyers so it put him there. Lord Sankey discovered the elemental truth that it is obvious that women are persons. He gave the ruling.
Later he announced the doctrine that the constitution is a living tree. It is not rooted in the concepts of 1867. The period at the end of the century we are approaching requires a new attitude to constitutional powers, a new emphasis on power sharing.
In the last few days, in his response to the B.C. unity panel on the fisheries issue, the B.C. premier who was widely viewed as intransigent on fisheries matters indicated areas of co-operation with the federal government. If we are to beat the Americans on the Pacific salmon treaty the federal and provincial governments have to work together with no issue of division of power.
On the immigration issue, Quebec and Ottawa have worked together. René Lévesque signed the Cullen-Couture agreement with Prime Minister Trudeau. Quebec and Ottawa share power on immigration.
With respect to education the question is come and join us in this new adventure. Education is the key element in constructing the new society for the new century. That is the challenge in my view that this debate has not fully responded to.
On that particular attitude I will end my formal comments.