Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for that very pertinent question. Our feeling is that neither the government nor the official opposition is open to trying to find solutions. We did not sense any openness during the debate on Bill C-56, and we still do not sense any openness in what we have heard this morning.
We therefore cannot run the risk of rushing the debate at second reading to send the bill to committee. As I said, our goal is very clear: we want this debate to take place in the political arena in the next election. We are going to do what we can to make that happen.
That said, I want to thank the NDP for their openness. If the other parties were as open as the NDP, the situation would obviously be quite different. Barring any evidence to the contrary, the majority of the House is completely unwilling to compromise. We may see some openness during the debate, but I doubt it very much.
The hon. member mentioned something that I think is very important. If, historically, in the Canadian political landscape, there had been some tangible recognition of the Quebec nation within the nation of Canada in a common space, we might not be in this situation today. But that never happened.
The unilateral repatriation of the Constitution in 1982, which imposed on us a charter we did not want and had not discussed, was intended to marginalize Quebec. Bill C-12 follows on Pierre Elliott Trudeau's 1982 repatriation of the Constitution, which treats Quebec as just another province. We do not accept that, and for the same reasons, we will not accept Bill C-12.