Mr. Speaker, I am having trouble following my colleague’s train of thought because I have been explaining to her quite simply since a while ago that the Bloc Québécois motion says that Quebeckers form a nation. If she says she is a nationalist, all she has to do is vote in favour of this motion. It is as simple as that.
It is the Conservative Party that decided to turn this into a partisan debate, by writing “within a united Canada”, meaning by that that Quebec could never determine its own future outside Canada. But as far as I know we still belong to a democracy, and Quebec will always have the right to choose its own destiny.
We did not wish to turn this into a partisan debate. This is why we did not say, “Quebec forms a nation”; we said: “Quebeckers form a nation”. And I repeat it.
I do not have a monopoly on Le Petit Larousse; there are copies in all good bookstores. As I said earlier, the term “nation” is used to talk about people. We are not talking about countries.
This is the open-mindedness with which the Bloc Québécois expressed itself. The Conservatives opted to make this into a partisan debate. Quebeckers will not be taken in.