Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak to the bill respecting Sir John A. Macdonald Day and Sir Wilfrid Laurier Day. I find it somewhat curious that a Liberal member tabled this bill in the House, yet their Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs is unable to provide his support to the Bloc Quebecois to recognize the importance of the deportation of the Acadians.
We, in the Bloc Quebecois, are not afraid of calling attention to this great historic mistake because we are not afraid of learning from the past. Indeed, there are a host of reasons why it would be inappropriate for us to support the bill tabled before us this morning. The wording alone indicates that one of the reasons to celebrate the birth of Wilfrid Laurier is because of the fact that he was an ardent supporter of national unity. To which national unity does this refer?
For us, Canadian unity, and all that has been done in its name, represents the main obstacle to Quebec's development. In Quebec, national unity, in the sense of preserving the current federal system, is not the political objective that transcends all others. Rather, it is more of a problem for Quebecers. For sovereignists like us, the answers are to be found elsewhere.
Over and above our constitutional opinion, however, there are numerous reasons the federal parliament ought not to get involved in historical commemoration. First of all, we must be forearmed against the temptation of having an official and politically oriented history, by not giving the Canadian government the opportunity to use history to political ends. Who would be in charge of the celebrations, if not Canadian Heritage, a department that ensures that everything it lays hands on sends out a message of Canadian unity?
There are two nations in Canada; there are two national histories. We should also add the aboriginal perspective of history. Each of these versions places the emphasis on different aspects of historical events and figures. For example, one side of the Ottawa River celebrates Victoria Day while the other celebrates Dollard des Ormeaux.
Let us take the example of Confederation, which the bill describes as “the major accomplishment of J.A. Macdonald”. Everyone knows that Macdonald would have preferred a legislative union that would have made Canada a unitary state, and that he made sure that Canadian federation would be highly centralized.
In fact Macdonald championed the federal idea, and not the confederal idea as people wanted to have it believed, in order to attract the maritime provinces and to overcome the strong reservations expressed by Quebec. Moreover, despite promises to the contrary, the British North America Act was never voted on in a referendum. Even if the Quebecers supported Macdonald's party in the November 1867 election, this must not lead us to conclude that they backed his vision of Canada. Bending the truth, the newspaper La Minerve , a propaganda tool—yes, propaganda is nothing new—presented the partners of Confederation as sovereign states delegating part of their rights and powers to a so-called “central” government. What an appealing notion, a partnership between sovereign states. That is what the people of Quebec thought they were embarking on.
Not everyone was taken in, however. Let us keep in mind that there was the “Parti des rouges”—yes, the party to which Wilfrid Laurier belonged—which opposed confederation. In May 1867, Laurier wrote as follows in his newspaper Le Défricheur :
We must return completely and directly to the politics of Mr. Papineau, protest with all our might against the new order that has been imposed on us and use whatever influence we have left to demand and obtain a free and separate government.
Of course, after 1867, Wilfrid Laurier ended up playing the game and became a supporter of the Canadian system. He was Prime Minister for 15 consecutive years and continued the work of Macdonald. Yet, is the legacy of these two men unsullied? Talk to those Franco-Manitobans still left. Manitoba might have become the model of a Canada where the two peoples, anglophone and francophone, could live together side by side.
There was also the hanging of Louis Riel that Prime Minister Macdonald could have prevented, and the elimination of educational rights of the francophones that another Prime Minister, Wilfrid Laurier, did not have the courage to stop. “It is unfortunate that the Prime Minister is a French Canadian”, he said to his friend and former colleague, Henri Bourassa, “because as a French Canadian I do things I would never do were I English”.
This is why in today's Canada 19 francophones out of 20 live in Quebec. This was what fate had in store for these two peoples.
Why should the Government of Canada stop at honouring just these two Prime Ministers with a special day? However, the legacy of the greatest Prime Ministers is just as controversial.
Let us take Robert Borden and Mackenzie King, who imposed conscription during the two world wars in the 20th century. There is Louis Saint-Laurent, who oversaw the construction of the St. Lawrence seaway, the first of a series of federal decisions that drained Montreal's prosperity away toward Ontario. I refer to the auto pact and the Borden line, which put Ontario at the heart of Canada's automobile and petrochemical industries.
When we think about it, it is a good idea to recall history. It reminds us more clearly why there is a sovereignist opposition in Ottawa.
In Quebec, we would have a lot of other great individuals to commemorate. They include Samuel de Champlain, Garagonthié, Marie Gérin-Lajoie, Henri Bourassa, Norman Bethune, Thérèse Casgrain, Gaston Miron and many others. There would not be enough dates on the calendar to celebrate all our great men and women. This is certainly true for the rest of Canada, and we respect that. But it is not our history.
For all these reasons and despite the respect Quebecers feel for past heroes of the Dominion of Canada, the Bloc Quebecois has decided to oppose this bill.