Mr. Speaker, I am happy to pick up the debate in response to the motion of the hon. member for Calgary West. He is one of the more interesting and promising of the new members of this House.
I hope he will allow me to say I had a feeling of disappointment that he offered a rather turgid complaint about a non-existent issue, access to documents. He should have been uttering a celebration, Beethoven's Ode to Joy that a distinguished western provincial premier had opened the doors to the west to understanding of Quebec's distinct role in the Canadian federal system and the merits of seeking constitutional recognition or accommodation to that fact.
Of course one of the great virtues of the Calgary declaration is that it offered the opportunity for Canadians to understand that we are one country, that we are tolerant people and that people in the west, so far from having fear of Quebec and what it represents, wish accommodation and wish for a plural Canada and a federal system that reflects that. We are all doing our best.
I sat as a member of the commission of the premier of British Columbia to implement the Calgary declaration. We went around the province. I can report that 80% of British Columbia voters saw nothing unusual, in fact everything to commend, in a comprehension that Quebec was indeed a distinct society within Canada and that the constitutional rules could and should recognize that fact. Why not?
There is a coming of age in Canada and the debate, sometimes angry but for the most part I think educational, has helped us on. Constitutional law is a dialectical process. New principles evolve. They are developed to meet new societal facts.
I wrote in 1979 that relatively minor constitutional adjustments on the part of English speaking Canada when the quiet revolution was still in its early phase would have enabled a containment and a utilization of Quebec's best constitutional drives in a new and renewed federal system. I think this is true.
One of the problems of comprehension is related to the constitutional principle of equality before the law. It rests, as the Greek philosophers themselves recognized centuries ago, on a notion that we treat equal things equally when there is a congruence of these societal facts underlying the positive law. Then the positive law must be applied in the same way. Where the societal facts are different they demand a differentiation of treatment and that is in itself a full recognition in the best spirit of the Greek philosophers of the principle of equality before the law.
This has been enunciated by the privy council in some of its better judgments on the Canadian Constitution. It has been reaffirmed by the United States Supreme Court, Justice Douglas in particular, in examining the meaning of the constitutional principle of equality before the law which we have replicated in our own 1982 charter of rights.
The Pepin Robarts commission to which I had the privilege of being chief adviser, along with Leon Dion, Dion Père, John Meisel, developed this rather complex phrase which I think was probably one of the reasons Prime Minister Trudeau buried it, asymmetrical federalism. If we get into phrases that are too technical people run away in fear, but all it was designed to show was where there are distinct societal facts, a good and subtle federal system will take account of those facts and make the changes accordingly.
I hope my friends in the Bloc will understand if I express a regret that the quiet revolution has not given birth to more bright, interesting ideas that transcend the issues of Quebec particularism. It is a privilege to have undergone a quiet revolution. But there is an absence of refreshing new ideas from Quebec, and this has been true for 40 years since the quiet revolution began, on the relations, for example, of executive and legislative power.
On the principles of the judiciary, the nature of the constitutional legitimacy in relation to bodies such as the Senate, bodies such as the supreme court and the constitution of judges, Quebec could have helped us here. It is our hope that it was not a quid pro quo in British Columbia in saying yes, we are not afraid of distinct society, we recognize and accept that. But we would have hoped, for example, that there might have been some movement on Quebec's side to say in return we like the five regions too, we will give you that concept.
There are things we could have done together and should have done together and can still do together. It is for this reason that I welcome the motion of the member for Calgary West and in its full spirit, the celebration of the fact that the west understands Quebec. The west wants to work with Quebec. It is a sign of the times that premiers such as the premier of Alberta, so far from being politically weakened by such a move, can gain a new and augmented national stature.
I think this is the good thing that has come out of the constitutional debate and it is in that spirit that we will all work to renewing the federal system. We can change a constitution by formal amendments. We can change it by practice. There are so many areas, particularly in this area of executive legislative relations, on which many members on this side of the House have strong views. Many of us would like to see the committees take on a new and dynamic role. Why have these expensive royal commissions when parliament can do the job and where historically it has done it?
The message would be come and work with us and we can build a new constitution. Constitutions are living treaties and they are intended to evolve.