Madam Speaker, first, I would like to say a few words about the Clarity Act.
The question of the clear majority was mentioned by the hon. parliamentary secretary. That provision of the law, it deserves to be said here, is very unclear. It is important to point that out because the law is often presented as a model of clarity. However that part of the law does not specify what a clear majority would be. It only says that we would hold hearings after a referendum has occurred and after 50% has been achieved in deciding whether a majority has been clear.
When I was a private citizen about this time last year, I came as an expert witness before the committee looking at Bill C-20. I made this observation and suggested that provision of the law be changed. I regret that my advice was not taken.
I suggest, however, that what the government has done is given more credibility to the 50% plus one model while taking away from that sense of validity. The government has, therefore, in passing this law, perhaps achieved the opposite of its objective.
I will also read the motion we are debating today, because I want to make a point with regard to it:
The motion reads as follows:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should recognize the conclusion of the Bélanger-Campeau Commission, which proposed, in 1991, that the National Assembly of Quebec adopt legislation on holding a referendum and the offer of a new partnership, and that no federal legislation or regulations should be incompatible with achieving this conclusion.
That is not quite historically accurate. The last part of the motion which follows the last comma does not accurately reflect what was said by the Bélanger-Campeau commission in its report.
The Bélanger-Campeau commission made four pages of recommendations. The four pages were primarily in the form of a proposed law to be put before the National Assembly of Quebec. Part of the proposed law, which was adopted by the national assembly, called for the establishment of a parliamentary commission of the national assembly for the review of an offer.
I can find nothing in the recommendations that suggests no federal law or regulation ought to be adopted contrary to those recommendations or contrary to the offer to be made. We ought to be clear that we are not debating an historically accurate motion today.
The hon. parliamentary secretary had a good point when he said that the real function of the motion was to suggest that the clarity act was illegitimate. It is an awkward way of approaching it. If I were to regard it as illegitimate, I would attack some of the contents of the act, such as the part to which I just made reference. I find other parts of the act to be quite valuable, particularly the requirement that a clear question be asked.
The subtext of the motion makes reference to or hints at a proposal put forward by Jean-François Lisée in his book Sortie de Secours . He proposed to put forward one part of the supreme court's decision in its reference, Renvoi relatif à la sécession du Québec, and I will read the section:
A clear majority vote in Quebec on a clear question in favour of secession would confer democratic legitimacy on the secession initiative which all of the other participants in Confederation would have to recognize.
This has been read by Mr. Lisée as meaning that not only could a proposal on secession put forward and voted upon by the people of Quebec be taken to the Government of Canada as grounds for mandatory good faith negotiations, but so too could a proposal for some form of new partnership.
It is an interesting reading of the court's reference and not one the court intended. The court is always happy to make readings of the constitution that bear no resemblance to the meaning put there by the original writers of the constitution, so perhaps fair is fair.
It seems Mr. Lisée's intention is to have a referendum question on a new partnership put before the people of Quebec, one that would seem reasonable to the people of Quebec but would be worded in such a way that it would not appear reasonable to people in the rest of the country. It would create some form of negotiations that would be impossible to resolve, much like the negotiations that took place during the Meech-Charlottetown period in our history. This would cause the kind of crisis that the Parti Quebecois government is having so much trouble generating on its own, no matter how many comments about red rags are made by the premier of Quebec.
We must be aware that the subtext is in the motion. If it were a votable motion, we would have good grounds to vote against it and to reject its proposals. I also want to make reference to the fact that there is something legitimate in what is being said.
I will turn to another group that is proposing changes to the Canadian constitution. I am referring to the group led by Stephen Harper, Ken Boessenkool, Tom Flanagan and others known as the Alberta 6. In its open letter to Ralph Klein about two months ago, it proposed that Alberta:
Use Section 88 of the Supreme Court's decision on the Quebec Secession Reference to force Senate reform back on the national agenda. Our reading of that decision is that the federal government and other provinces must seriously consider our proposal for constitutional reform endorsed by “a clear majority on a clear question” in a provincial referendum.
Referring directly to the premier, the group said:
You acted decisively once before to hold a senatorial election. Now is time to drive the issue further.
It is saying that provinces need to have some sort of means to force on to the national agenda issues which are currently only on the provincial agenda but which are legitimate. That is a legitimate point they are making.
That point would be equally legitimate in the case of the concerns of Quebecers. Their concerns are unable to make it on to the national agenda, largely because they get tangled up in the whole question of separation versus remaining in Canada, and the partisan divide that exists in Quebec, as it does everywhere, because of our highly partisan political structure.
Referendums do break through that. We saw that demonstrated brilliantly when we in fact had a crisis in the country. It looked as if the crisis would drive the country apart. A referendum was held nationwide in October 1992, largely because of the Bélanger-Campeau commission recommendations.
Canadians realized that it was a great deal more complex than they had thought it was. The issue was not simply a matter of those rotten separatists, those rotten people in Ottawa or in the rest of the country who would not listen to us and give legitimacy to our positions.
We realized that the constitutional proposals offered were in a vast unworkable package deal. A majority of Quebecers voted against those proposals, as did a majority of people in a number of the other provinces. The issue itself faded away and the unity crisis that could have broken up the country also passed.
It is my own reading of that time. I was an active participant on the no side in that referendum. We were in greater danger as a country in 1992 than we were three years later in 1995 when the provincial referendum in Quebec was held.
While I am a supporter of direct democracy, I am probably the strongest supporter of direct democracy in the House, with the possible exception of my hon. colleague from Vancouver Island North. Nevertheless, I have some reservations about this sort of back door method of introducing the concept of direct democracy, and of putting regional concerns through a referendum on to the national stage.
I would suggest reasons for this kind of reservation by way of reference to one of the great constitutional thinkers in the British parliamentary tradition. I am referring to Albert Venn Dicey who wrote the brilliant work Law of the Constitution in the 1880s. It was then updated until his death in 1915.
He talked about the role of referendum and plebiscite in the British parliamentary system and whether it was compatible with the system. He suggested that the plebiscite, as practised in France, was incompatible with it. This is the kind of referendum we are talking about here. What he meant by plebiscite was: initiated by government usually on some vague proposal as opposed to specific legislation such as an order to negotiate.
By contrast, he suggested the Swiss model of citizen initiated referendum on a specific legislative means. That would be the most productive way of achieving the kind of goals that might unite us all, including my hon. colleague who suggested the motion.