Mr. Speaker, it is my turn to speak about this important bill that will foster a very healthy debate in this House and in society as a whole.
Bill C-505, introduced as a private member's bill by the Bloc Québécois, is called An Act to amend the Canadian Multiculturalism Act (non-application in Quebec). It is interesting that it has come before us on a day when the media are paying rather close attention to this issue. It was refreshing to see on the front page of the La Presse newspaper in Montreal today a reference to all of the private members' bills that have made it before Parliament.
It is even more interesting because we currently have a minority government. So, when the three opposition parties agree on a bill, as was very recently the case with the important climate change bill introduced by the leader of the NDP, we are able to come together and move forward with ideas that would otherwise by blocked by the government. This process is in the best interests of the institution.
I will divide my remarks into two parts, because the bill before us addresses two completely different aspects. There is the issue of proposing a review of multiculturalism, an important topic that has been part of Canada's vision since the 1960s. It is generally associated with former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and rightly so, because in the 1960s, it was a way to distinguish between Canada's vision for integrating immigrants, and the vision prevailing among our neighbours to the south, in the United States. The second part will have to do with the more technical aspects of the bill, and that is where we distance ourselves from the approach proposed by the Bloc Québécois.
Let us come back to the basic principle of multiculturalism. As my colleague just said, it is in the charter. But in his view, the fact that it is in the charter is the answer to the debate. In the view of my party and myself, that sends us back to the starting gate. It is not sufficient to say that section 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms talks about multiculturalism and the debate ends there. In fact, I am not persuaded that my Bloc Québécois colleague knew what a hot topic this would be at the time when it came to be debated. Nonetheless, there could not be a better time to discuss it openly and let the audience listening to us know what the differences between the parties are.
I would say, after hearing the Liberal Party on this question, it appears that the New Democratic Party falls midway between the very closed position of the Liberal Party and the position taken by the Bloc Québécois, and I will try to describe that later, which wants to make this a political issue.
We must recall what section 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms says, because it gives us an indication of why we must oppose this bill, “This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.”
Because Bill C-505 is not constitutional legislation, as a result of the straitjacket imposed on Quebec by the 1982 Constitution, it cannot be amended without following the relatively tortuous process that we all observed in relation to the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords, the outcome of which we are all familiar with.
What the Bloc is trying to do with this bill is to alter the Canadian Multiculturalism Act to do something separate for Quebec. It would be easy to follow them down that road, if the goal were to stay in Canada. But let us not delude ourselves. The Bloc Québécois, as is its absolute right in this democracy, has as its ultimate priority the removal of Quebec from Canada. We must therefore realize that the only purpose of the bill must be to position the Bloc in a debate that has been raging in Quebec for the last year and a half. So the goal is not to improve how things work in Canada, and the result of the votes on this subject is entirely predictable. This way of going about it is therefore rather clumsy and heavy-handed.
With all the respect I have for the individuals in the Bloc Québécois, that party’s political manoeuvring is pretty transparent when it comes to what they are trying to do. On top of that, the arguments the Bloc is advancing are wrong.
Important as it is to allow Quebec to work within its jurisdictions, we must also realize what accommodations, dare I say, have been made over the years. Quebec is the only province—thanks to the Couture-Cullen agreement—that has significant authority over immigration. It has its own system for attracting and selecting immigrants and providing for their integration into our society.
These differences between Quebec and the rest of Canada had already been examined long before the constitutional amendments of 1982 that I mentioned earlier. At the time the multiculturalism policy was introduced, it was often said that the United States, Canada's southern neighbour, was a melting pot, a sort of soup or stew where everything blends together and individual elements become indistinguishable.
On the weekend, a Canadian actor talking about a new film described our system as a salad. We have often heard our system be compared to a tapestry or a mosaic in which every piece can be distinguished. Nonetheless, I must say that I like the image of a salad: it is something pleasant and well composed; we can still distinctly see each component and know what it is made of. It was Mike Myers, the famous Canadian actor from Ontario, who created the best image by describing our lovely Canadian salad on the weekend. I am going to adopt his very evocative expression.
The NDP could accept the Bloc's suggestion to debate a bill to protect the language of work for the employees of banks, which are under federal jurisdiction, or Société de transport de l'Outaouais employees who cross the border and work under the Canada Labour Code instead of the Quebec Labour Code. It was easy for the NDP, which has a long history of protecting workers' rights, to understand that it was not right for a bank employee in Montreal to have fewer linguistic rights than someone who works in a caisse populaire. It was easy for the NDP to understand that it was not right for a Société de transport de l'Outaouais employee to have fewer linguistic rights than a bus driver in Sherbrooke or Quebec City.
The NDP is very proud of its history of defending workers' rights. The language rights of workers are a subset of this important principle.
The NDP therefore voted with the Bloc Québécois to bring the bill forward for debate. Changes are likely needed. Like Graham Fraser, we believe that nearly all these changes can be made through the Canada Labour Code, instead of fiddling with the Official Languages Act, which we felt might cause problems, especially for linguistic minorities in the other provinces, and even in Quebec. We preferred to look at this option.
Unlike the Liberals, we believe that the language rights of Quebeckers can be improved to ensure that they can live in French in the only French-majority province in Canada, without that having a negative impact on the rights of linguistic minorities in Quebec or anywhere else in Canada. In that respect, we challenge the position taken by the Liberal Party of Canada, which would not even agree to discuss this important language rights issue.
We have to look at it all the way from Trudeau's pan-Canadian vision to today's reality, where French in Quebec is seen as increasingly fragile. We all have an obligation to enhance the French language anytime we can and make sure we do so in an inclusive way, with all Canadians in mind. This is in everyone's national interest.
We must not strip this out of the legislation, when the problem continues to reside in the constitutional straitjacket that was imposed on Quebec in 1982. As far as we are concerned, that is a complete waste of time and nothing will be resolved that way. Moreover, it does not reflect Quebec's uniqueness, as set out in the Couture-Cullen agreement which was signed more than a generation ago and which gives Quebec very specific rights in that important area.