Mr. Speaker, let me begin by referring to Lord Durham's report. The member heard me quote Charles Tupper from the Confederation debates in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly. He did mention Lord Durham; Earl Durham he said.
I am not attempting to defend Lord Durham's position on anything. There are many things that are highly objectionable from a modern point of view in what he proposed. One thing that cannot be blamed on him, one additional wrinkle that was imposed by the British Parliament at the time, was the notion, designed by the way to oppress Quebec, of saying that Upper Canada, Ontario, which had fewer people would get equal representation. That was very unfair, very undemocratic. It also promptly backfired because the population of Upper Canada grew faster than that of Lower Canada, and by 1865, people like George Brown were complaining about the fact that his province was now underrepresented in proportion to Quebec. There is a certain delicious irony in that, I guess.
In the end, the very sensible result was that we decided to give representation by population to the lower house, to get rid of that injustice which had been intended to be an injustice against Quebec but wound up being an injustice against Ontario, to give equal representation in the upper house, and moreover to protect the rights of linguistic minorities by creating a federal system which is what we have done. That is the best explanation I can give as to what happened.
With regard to the motion in 2006, I will make the same point in English that I made in French earlier. We cannot amend the Constitution by passing a simple motion in the House of Commons. That is what the NDP effectively is suggesting has happened or could happen, but that is not the case.
In order to deviate from the principle of proportionality, in order to deviate from the idea that every redistribution must be at least as proportional, at least as close to representation by population as the previous one, if we want to deviate from that, we have to amend the Constitution by getting the support first of Parliament and then of seven provinces with more than half the population. The NDP's bill does not purport to do that, which makes it unconstitutional. It makes the 2006 resolution in the House of Commons about Quebec being a nation, une nation au sein du Canada, constitutionally irrelevant in a discussion about this piece of legislation.