Mr. Speaker, it is with emotion and gravity that I take part in this debate.
I will begin by quoting René Lévesque, a former member of the Liberal Party of Quebec, who said as follows:
We believe that it is possible to avoid the shared impasse of Canadian confederation by adapting to our situation the two predominant movements of our era: the movement toward freedom of peoples, and the movement toward freely negotiated political and economic groups.
The spirit and the letter of this statement, which can be said to underlie the evolution of the sovereignist movement in Quebec, is being questioned, denied and rejected in the supposed clarity bill.
By its very wording, Bill C-20 entitled “An act to give effect to the requirement for clarity as set out in the opinion of the Supreme Court of Canada in the Quebec Secession Reference” misleads those listening or watching. Never did the supreme court say or write that for a question to be clear it could not be associated with an offer of partnership.
Recently, we have had the support of the researchers at the C.D. Howe Institute, who confirmed that they did not understand why the government was saying this in its bill.
Not only does this bill lack clarity, but the only thing it does do is preclude any other negotiation than secession negotiation. It does not state clearly what kind of majority Canada would require before entering into negotiation. After playing around with all kinds of numbers, it does not dare setting a specific one because it knows full well it would not have the support of the international community.
Neither does it say what a clear question would be. The only thing the bill is very clear about is that the question could not envisage other possibilities in addition to the secession of the province from Canada, such as economic or political arrangements with Canada, that obscure a direct expression of the will of the population of that province on whether the province should cease to be part of Canada.
The Government of Canada missed the opportunity to show some openness and a modern attitude toward the Quebec issue. This government, which wants to be the most forward looking on this issue, is embracing the most conservative views imaginable.
During the 20th century, particularly during the second half, the people of Quebec became increasingly aware of who they were, of their culture and also of the fact that, as a small minority within North America, they needed protection. For that, they could only count on themselves. Progressively the people of Quebec—very progressively and more widely—awakened to the idea of sovereignty.
The bill is entitled “An Act to give effect to the requirement for clarity as set out in the opinion of the Supreme Court of Canada in the Quebec Secession Reference”. The word secession does not belong to the vocabulary of sovereignists. The word secession refers to a Quebec surrounded by walls. Nothing could be further from what sovereignists have in mind.
The Liberals who, today, support free trade with the whole world, with the exception perhaps of a sovereign Quebec, should remember that it is thanks to sovereignists and Quebecers that the free trade agreement that they now want to extend to the whole world was passed, this at a time when their leader was so bitterly opposed to the idea.
Sovereignty is an open and modern project by a people which, while being sovereign, would want to renegotiate its economic ties with Canada. To me, it is very significant that the only clear thing in this extremely confusing bill is that Canada refuses this renegotiation of the relations between the two great peoples, and also with the aboriginal people. This is shameful.
The more this government opposes a democratic debate, the more its bill—I do not wish that, but when we see how they are behaving, we cannot help but think that it is likely to happen—will become illegitimate, obsolete, reactionary and conservative. This bill, which does not propose any renewal of the relations between peoples, can only be considered a meaningless document.
It is our hope that the sovereign people of Quebec will be able to count on the sovereign people of Canada to understand that the future does not lie in conflict or confrontation, but in negotiation, that it does not lie in a refusal to negotiate, in a refusal to accept reality and in an idea that some people have in their head about Canada. We hope that Canadians will have the intelligence to see that, north of the United States, it is better to negotiate together to be stronger than to continue to get deeper and deeper in the common impasse described by René Lévesque.
Bill C-20 is a denial of the Canadian attitude that we have always known. It is a denial of democracy in Quebec and of its history. Let us not forget that Robert Bourassa is the one who passed Bill 150. People can say what they want, but the Quebec National Assembly, under the Liberal premier of the day, passed a law providing for a referendum, with rules defined by the national assembly, to get out of that impasse.
The 1992 referendum did not get us out of there, since the negotiations were grossly inadequate. In 1995 we almost got there. We think that at the time we could have negotiated.
Finally, this bill seems to be a desperate attempt to prevent something, the sovereignty of Quebec, which will happen, I am absolutely certain, even if I do not know when or how.