Mr. Speaker, it is now my turn to speak to Motion P-22 from the Reform Party, which asks that all documentation—including correspondence, documents, reports and minutes—relating to the Calgary Declaration be made public.
In the speeches, I also heard reference to polls and public opinion analysis. At the time of the Charlottetown accord, the federal government spent millions and millions of dollars analyzing public opinion, and it is no doubt doing the same thing in this case. We can assume that, behind all of this, a lot of money has been spent on assessing the impact on public opinion of this Calgary Declaration.
Incidentally, has anyone in this House recently heard about the Calgary Declaration? That document may be one of Canada's best kept secrets. They keep it in a drawer somewhere. They figure that, at times, they can use it to make Quebeckers believe that some other minor change will eventually take place. That document is so limited in scope that they are uncomfortable talking about it, because there is so little in it.
The hon. member for Simcoe North alluded to public opinion polls. If this is what they are going to lay before the House, then it is nothing new. That information is already available on the Internet site for the Calgary Declaration.
We wanted to look at the issue more thoroughly. We did not have much faith in the kind of Mickey Mouse polls sponsored by the government. Therefore, we had our own poll conducted by Léger & Léger in Quebec, and by Comquest outside the province. Of course, we were quick to release the findings of that poll in the spring, to show how Quebeckers and Canadians were appreciative of the Calgary Declaration.
Since I could not remember all the figures, I brought the results of that poll here with me. The first finding was that no one knew about the Calgary Declaration. I will give the exact figures later, but that was when people were asked if they knew the Calgary Declaration.
Without getting into numbers, I remember a television report here in Ottawa—which is, after all, the national capital and a city where people follow politics rather closely. People on Sparks Street, not far from here, were polled and the results were broadcast on CBC or CTV. People were asked what they knew about the Calgary Declaration. It was lunch time, and there were probably many public servants around, since Sparks Street is so close to Parliament. Out of the seven or eight people interviewed at random, none knew what the Calgary Declaration was, or whether it was related to politics, sports or business. No one knew about it. Yet this was in Ottawa, the national capital, where the Liberals get all excited whenever this issue comes up. However, it generates very little interest on the streets.
I now come to the first question in our poll. People were asked whether they thought Canada had made a new proposal to Quebec since the 1995 referendum. They were asked “Have there been any proposals?”, because the Calgary Declaration was supposed to have been a form of response to the last referendum in Quebec. When all regions of Canada are taken together, 25% of those polled said yes; 56% said no; and 19% said they did not know. One person in four, therefore, thought there had been some sort of offer. No details were provided; one person in four thought that maybe something had been put on the table.
It gets even sadder when the Calgary Declaration is mentioned. People were asked if they had heard of the declaration, but they were not asked if they knew what it was. One person out of three, or 33%, had heard of the Calgary Declaration.
They were then asked if they had a general idea of the content, even if they did not know the details. This will be a big disappointment to those who think the public has any great interest in the declaration: 17% of those polled had heard it was something about the unique nature of Quebec; 6% had heard it was something about provincial equality; and 12% gave other answers. But 70% of people had no idea what it was about.
And now they tell us that a large number of people support the declaration. I heard the parliamentary secretary tell us that people throughout Canada, including Quebec, support the Calgary declaration.