Our own laws deal with this. The quality of democratic exercises even serves as a standard around the world.
Do they know that we also have, on political party funding, something that will not be found here in this House? Do they know that the provisions of referendum legislation permit the yes and the no camps to spend about the same amount? Do they know that?
Do they know that, normally, people should not intervene in these referenda with money from Ottawa, which comes and meddles in a process where Quebeckers are deciding their future? No. According to their rules, Quebec's future will be decided here in Ottawa, either by the supreme court, or the Liberals, the Reform members, Senate friends appointed by the Prime Minister. And we should say to Quebeckers: “Don't worry, some wise people in Ottawa will take care of properly defining our future”.
This is a bit too much, and we have had enough of all these approaches, of this race against the clock to determine who will play the hardest.
This morning, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs arrived with a series of highly partisan polls. Did members notice that several of them were conducted on behalf of the Council for Canadian Unity?
Every one here knows what the Council for Canadian Unity is about, but perhaps not all our viewers do. This council's purpose is to ensure that Quebec will never be sovereign, to keep Canada as it is, in a permanent, unchangeable status quo. It is becoming a federal propaganda tool. They took a few elements of a poll and threw them in our face this morning.
But let us take a closer look at reality. Let us take a somewhat historical perspective. In the 1960s, I was not yet born, but from what I heard, there were a few sovereignists in Quebec. There was the Rassemblement pour l'indépendance nationale. There were a few groups, and no one talked about a movement of over 10% of Quebeckers. During the 1970s, a political party was born. At first, it was the Mouvement souveraineté-association, and then it became the Parti Quebecois. Support began to increase, and soon reached 25 or 30%.
The first referendum, the first time where intentions were measured in a referendum was in 1980: 40% of the people said they were in favour of sovereignty, or in favour of giving the government a mandate to negotiate sovereignty and then come back before the people.
Later, in the 1980s, after this referendum was defeated, we were told there would be no more talk about sovereignty, it was over, archaic, and so on. Fifteen years later, we had another referendum and 49.5% of people voted yes.
If we look at it from a historical perspective, not according to some poll conducted yesterday or the day before yesterday, we see that Quebeckers' willingness to take their destiny into their own hands is on the rise. Their number is increasing day after day, year after year. It is an irreversible trend, which explains why Reform MPs and Liberals alike are so panicky.
Since I have only 30 seconds left, I want to say this to members of the government party and Reform MPs: our desire to choose et decide our own future is not negotiable. Whether they like it or not, Quebeckers are going to choose their own future. They said it very clearly. Our specialist on polls should look at those conducted in February, during the reference to the supreme court; they show that over 80% of people think it is for them to decide, not the court, not the Reform Party, not the Liberal Party, and certainly not the Senate.