Mr. Speaker, I really wish the member who has just spoken would explain to us why he absolutely wants to make this a debate on sovereignty, which is certainly not our intention.
That is a question that had been dealt with, throughout history, as has the fact that the Quebecois nation has always been a nation.
As far back as April 1946, Maurice Duplessis spoke of the Canadian confederation as a contract of union between two nations. In November 1963, Jean Lesage referred to the Quebecois as a people, as a nation. In February 1968, Daniel Johnson Sr. said that “The Constitution should not have as its sole purpose to federate territories, but also to associate in equality two linguistic and cultural communities, two founding peoples, two societies, two nations”.
It goes back to before the arrival of English-speaking people in America. In 1667, Jean Talon already recognized that the French who were here constituted a different people. That is not far from a nation. In 1756, de Bougainville, on his return from Quebec, said: “It seems that we are a different nation”.
There is more, and it is also significant. In October 2003, when the Liberals had just taken power in Quebec, the National Assembly adopted a unanimous resolution reaffirming that the people of Quebec form a nation .
Why are you so bent on adding “within a united Canada”, unless it is because you want to reopen the debate on sovereignty? Without doubt, we could have that debate, but that was certainly not our original intention. It is not the Bloc Québécois that put the nationhood issue in the news. It was the candidates for the leadership of the Liberal party. I do not understand why you insist on having this debate. I wish you would explain it to me. Why are you so determined to add something? When, without that addition, you say, “We would be saying exactly the same thing as the unanimous National Assembly with a federalist majority”.