Mr. Speaker, would you please tell the hysterical member opposite to keep it down while I am speaking?
My colleague, the member for Roberval, quite rightly pointed out that the Standing Orders had been infringed in several respects. First of all, as I pointed out to you earlier, you yourself had issued a ruling. In this respect, parliamentary tradition could not be clearer, and I will later quote article 333 of Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms , fifth edition.
I will cite Standing Order 10, which is also mentioned in article 168.1 of Beauchesne. It says, and I quote:
- The Speaker shall preserve order and decorum, and shall decide questions of order— No debate shall be permitted on any such decision, and no such decision shall be subject to an appeal to the House.
You yourself made a ruling. That ruling notwithstanding, our members, in their spontaneous enthusiasm, returned to the charge a few minutes later. Standing Order 16.2 states that, when a member is speaking, no member shall interrupt him or her, except to raise a point of order.
Obviously, the spontaneous interventions of our Liberal and Reform colleagues were not for the purpose of raising points of order. Their sole purpose was to interrupt, intimidate and poke fun at our colleague, the member for Rimouski—Mitis. In so doing, they were in contravention of the Standing Orders.
Props were also mentioned. The Speaker ruled on this yesterday. Article 333 of Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms , fifth edition, to which I referred earlier, stipulates that speakers have consistently ruled that it is improper to produce exhibits of any sort in the Chamber, except written documents, of course.
Until further order, this category does not include Canada's flag. It therefore had to be considered a visual prop that should not have been used for the purposes to which it was put.
Furthermore, as soon as the House disintegrated into confusion, the Speaker rose to call members to order. Despite that, our colleagues carried on their heckling to the point of singing the national anthem, thereby contravening another section of Beauchesne, paragraph 168.1, which I also referred to a little earlier. It provides, and I quote:
No member may rise when the Speaker is standing.
Members must accordingly remain silent. That is not what happened. In all respects, yesterday's ruling by the Chair was fair.
Getting back to the incident itself, we have been told, in connection with the remarks made by my colleague from Rimouski—Mitis and sovereignists in general, that we have no respect for the Canadian flag, for the national anthem and for the symbols of Canadian sovereignty.
The Bloc has never questioned in any way the presence of the flags in this House or the singing of the national anthem. In fact, it co-operated with the political parties present in the 35th Parliament to permit the singing of the national anthem here on Wednesdays.
When the Bloc arrived in the House in 1993, there was a single Canadian flag behind you, to your right, as flag etiquette provides. The flag is to be to the right of the Speaker, therefore on the observer's left. This is the way it had been for many years in the House.
Oddly enough, the day after the 1995 referendum, a second Canadian flag appeared, this time to your left, Mr. Speaker.
Although this decision was made obviously for political reasons, the Bloc Quebecois never questioned the relevance of Canadian parliamentarians having a second flag behind the Chair.
So it is not a question of lack of respect by the Bloc members for the symbols of Canadian identity. We are very proud of them. We are very proud that Canada chose as a symbol of its identity what were symbols of French Canadian identity. We are proud that Canada chose the maple leaf in the 1960s, with all the debate it provoked.
I am pleased to see that Reform members are now very proud of this flag. A reading of the debates of the day shows just how opposed members from the West were to the maple leaf flag, which they claimed was not representative of their region, their part of the country.
As for “O Canada”, much has been said about it. It was played for the first time at Quebec City in 1882, on June 24, Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, to be exact. The words were by Justice Basile Routhier, and the music by Calixa Lavallée, a native of my riding, incidently.
It must be pointed out, moreover, that when the decision was made to adopt it as the national anthem of Canada, only the first verse was selected, as the rest did not perhaps represent the notion of a national anthem to be sung from coast to coast.
When Basile Routhier wrote of the Canadian “living close to the giant river leading to the sea”, I am certain he was not thinking of the people of the Yukon or Saskatchewan. He was, of course, thinking of the French Canadians, those who had been called “les Canadiens” for centuries, and whose name was taken over as the centuries passed so that it now applies to everyone here.
Much can be said about the Canadian national anthem, but the fact is that, returning to the object of today's debate, this motion by the Reform Party demonstrates that party's duplicity. There were negotiations among the leaders and they were going well. The only party that stood aloof was the Reform Party.
The purpose of the negotiations was to enable us to raise the flag question in the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs in order to determine whether or not it was appropriate to have Canadian flags on our desks. But no, the grandstanding Reform Party wanted to get TV coverage by forcing Parliament to commit itself and vote on a motion permitting the presence of the flag in this House.
Had they really been serious in this desire, had they really wanted to advance this idea, they would simply have allowed this matter to be dealt with by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, but they did not.
This totally partisan attitude on the part of the Reform members must therefore be punished and condemned.