Mr. Speaker, it is intriguing to hear the Prime Minister’s spokesman categorize the debate on limiting the federal spending power as theoretical given that it was his Prime Minister who promised to introduce legislation in the House to do just that.
As for his assessment that some, particularly in the Bloc, will continue to demand spending in areas where they do not want it, I think that any honest assessment of the bill and of the speeches made earlier by Bloc and NDP members—and I dare say by his own Prime Minister—shows that people are fully aware that this problem must be resolved. That is one of the challenges that needs to be addressed, instead of pouring oil on the fire as the Prime Minister’s spokesman did by oversimplifying things, which is neither in keeping with the standards of this House nor worthy of the individual who just spoke. He knows what he just said was not honest. I think that those of us who have spent their careers trying to build bridges between Quebec and the rest of Canada are extremely disappointed because it is his own Prime Minister who promised to introduce legislation.
Now, I must come back to an important point made by my colleague, the Bloc Québécois member for Saint-Lambert, in her speech. In response to my question, she said that her bill was optional for the other provinces. But the fact is that she failed to read her own bill. Clause 2 of Bill C-507 could not state more clearly that the legislation applies to all provinces. One simply has to read the summary of the bill:
This enactment amends the Financial Administration Act in order to end federal spending in an area of provincial jurisdiction in the absence of a delegation of power or responsibility in that area.
The bill applies therefore to all the provinces’ areas of jurisdiction.
Based on the response the member gave earlier, she would have had us believe that the bill applied solely to Quebec. And yet, the recent letter from the leader of the New Democratic Party to the leader of the Bloc concerning the Bloc’s motion could not have been clearer.
It is being said that the Conservatives are irresponsible because they failed to stand by their commitment to introduce legislation. And we agree. We do not agree, however, when the member for Saint-Lambert says that Quebec is the only province to be recognized as a nation. We do agree with the first part. But she wants Quebec to be treated just like the other provinces. The NDP does not agree with that. We want this recognition of the Quebec nation to be truly meaningful, and that is what the leader of the NDP sought to do in writing to his Bloc counterpart. It is why we kept all the provisions limiting the scope of our proposal, but made them specific to the provinces’ exclusive areas of jurisdiction; and yes, that includes Quebec.
We have no interest in playing games as the Bloc seems to want to do by introducing legislation it knows is doomed to failure because it will upset the provinces when they have asked for nothing of the sort. There is nothing optional about Bill C-507.
It is worthwhile to take a look at the NDP’s historical approach to this. At its founding convention 50 years ago, the NDP was the first Canada-wide political party to recognize the reality of the Quebec nation. That is a very important historical fact.
Then a broad consultation was held everywhere in Canada, called the Social Democratic Forum on the Future of Canada. This was a report by a group co-chaired by Nycole Turmel, long-time president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, and Dick Proctor, a former colleague of ours in this House from Saskatchewan. Charles Taylor and Bill Blaikie were also members of the forum. Of course, that was Charles Taylor of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission and Mr. Blaikie, who was once voted best member of the House.
The report led to a recommendation that we have asymmetrical federalism when it comes to Quebec, and co-operative federalism. Obviously, it is that last word that causes so many problems. It sticks in the craw of the Bloc members to think that something constructive could be done in Canada to improve things for Quebec.
That was implicit in her answer to my question: she wants to be able to keep saying, every time she talks about it, that Canada cannot be reformed.
That is what we are talking about. Canada is a work in constant progress. It is entirely perfectible, and one of the things we have done to make Canada better is to recognize the reality of the Quebec nation in this House. The NDP is now trying to give that a little more substance.
A series of positions that are quite clear were then adopted in the Quebec section. They are worth examining, in light of recent efforts by the NDP intended precisely to give some real meaning to that recognition of the Quebec nation. Five years ago, it was said that Quebec’s national character was based particularly, but not exclusively, on a majority French-speaking society that works in the common language in the public space. A bill was introduced in this House to extend the language guarantees in the Charter of the French Language of August 1977 to federal enterprises. That was in response to this first concern.
We raised something else, namely a specific culture that is unique in the Americas and that finds expression in a sense of identity and belonging to Quebec. I proposed a motion in the House following the Supreme Court’s decision invalidating Quebec's Bill 104, which opened an enormous hole in Bill 101 concerning access to English schools. We managed to get it adopted unanimously by the House. The House agreed unanimously that immigrants who choose Quebec must learn French first and foremost. That is important to the history of this country.
Finally, we also speak of Quebec’s specific history and institutions. The NDP courageously supported the Bloc motion to maintain Quebec’s political weight in the House of Commons. We did not see any contradiction between the need to increase the number of seats in provinces that required it, such as British Columbia, Ontario and Alberta, and the need to maintain Quebec’s percentage. We moved an amendment that the Bloc accepted, and there was a vote. Ultimately, it was defeated because the Liberals always vote against Quebec, whether in regard to the language of work, the specificity of its culture, access to French schooling, or its political weight. However, there is a progressive, federalist, Canada-wide party that can stand up in the House and say loud and clear that we should stop being half-hearted about our recognition of the Quebec nation. The time has come to really breathe some life into it.
Finally, because the fourth point deals with specific economic and political institutions, I would like to add in regard to the regulation of securities that, once again, when there were votes in the House—the Liberals are hiding now behind a reference to the Supreme Court—they voted against Quebec’s right to keep the regulation of securities within its jurisdiction.
Those are four examples. That was followed in the fall of 2006 by what is called the Sherbrooke declaration, which was approved at the first meeting I had the pleasure of attending for the NDP in September 2006. It was held in Quebec City. All of these principles favoured asymmetrical federalism and a federalism that worked through consent, consultation and negotiation. We wanted to eliminate the federal spending power from areas of exclusive Quebec jurisdiction. It is in keeping with this position, unanimously supported by the NDP, that we are trying today to repeat what the leader of the NDP recently offered the Bloc in regard to their motion.
If the Bloc is sincere, if it is serious, if the Bloc members are not just engaging in a positioning exercise, as they often do, if they want to have a chance to get this passed, they should agree to propose an amendment making it clear that they are speaking exclusively about Quebec and its exclusive areas of jurisdiction. The NDP will be there. That is totally in keeping with the positions adopted by our party pursuant to these very important consultations that found expression in the NDP’s Sherbrooke declaration.
We say in our document that we have to break the deadlock. That is what we are trying to do. Unfortunately, the Bloc prefers to keep us there.