Mr. Speaker, despite your optimistic introduction, I do not have a French text prepared today. In future I will, but I will be speaking in my first language tonight.
I always appreciate the opportunity to speak to the private members' bills that come forward from members of the Bloc. Even though I am not supporting this one, they provide a good opportunity to reflect on these questions of centralization versus decentralization, and the appropriate competence and balance of different orders of government. That appropriate balance has been a defining question in our national life since Confederation, and is as much alive today as it has ever been.
I think we see some parties in the House with reflexive tendencies one way or the other. We see the Conservative Party trying to strike a thoughtful and principled balance that integrates a recognition of the value of an engaged national government and the engagement of other orders of government as well.
What we see clearly from the government, and the Liberals in general, is the tendency toward hyper-centralization: a general lack of respect for the competence of the provinces and the sense that they want to assume for themselves control over areas that are properly in the sphere of the province or even the municipality, the community, the individual or so forth. A strong centralizing tendency is part of the approach of the Liberal Party of Canada.
With the Bloc, we see a kind of centralization in provincial capitals as its objective. It is not advocating for complete decentralization. In fact, we see various cases where its members advocate for provincial governments to be able to significantly interfere in people's personal lives in a way I would personally see as crossing the appropriate bounds of individual autonomy, but theirs is certainly a decentralization away from Ottawa.
Where do we stand as Conservatives? Our approach is to emphasize a balance characterized best by the principle of subsidiarity. I looked up various definitions online before speaking to try to capture what others have said about it. One definition I found said, “Subsidiarity is a principle of social organization that holds that social and political issues should be dealt with at the most immediate or local level that is consistent with their resolution.” There is an implied tendency toward decentralization, but it is not a limitless call for decentralization. It calls for social and political issues to be resolved at a level most immediate or local that is consistent with the effective resolution of those problems. Calling for municipal militaries as opposed to a national military, for example, would not be consistent with the principle of subsidiarity, but on issues where it is practical and effective to find those solutions there is a tendency, in embodying that principle of subsidiarity, to call for a more localized solution.
Another definition I found is, “The principle of subsidiarity is a teaching according to which a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need.” That definition of subsidiarity implies an important link with the principle of solidarity. A belief in subsidiarity, localized solutions to problems, should not lead us to lose sight of the importance of a universal kind of solidarity. Solidarity is the universal principle that we are concerned about the well-being of all people everywhere. Subsidiarity is a recognition that as much as we might be concerned with solving problems and seeing problems solved in other places, most practically the best solutions that are responsive to local needs are developed locally.
We should think about these principles as we define the balance that should be struck within our country. We want a national government that operates effectively within its areas of jurisdiction, and within areas where it is uniquely placed to solve problems. That should be informed by the sense of solidarity that we share as Canadians: a common concern for each other in every part of the country and a desire for Canadians to do well wherever they live.
At the same time, we need to appreciate the fact that people in the national government, people in another region, may not be in the best position to think through the particular solutions that are required in response to a local situation.
We are not trying to find the Goldilocks-inspired middle path. We are trying to find a principled balance between the tendencies of the Liberals and the tendencies of the Bloc to one that emphasizes principles of national and beyond that universal solidarity, but also operationalizing the principle of subsidiarity, recognizing that smaller organizations, local communities are often better placed to understand and respond to problems that are particular to their own areas.
We have in front of us a private member's bill that effectively seeks to give provincial governments vetos over national infrastructure that would otherwise fall within federal jurisdiction. As colleagues of mine have said, the need for the federal government to respect provincial jurisdiction exists in tandem with the need for provincial governments to respect federal jurisdiction.
When we look at big national questions around building infrastructure projects, around how we develop our country, how we build ourselves up collectively, those are questions on which our nation as a whole has to consider and come to conclusions. We cannot create a situation in which individual provinces or communities can veto the collective decisions that we make together.
The impact on all people has to be considered, but it seems proper to me, in line with the principle of subsidiarity, that some issues do require a national government to think in the national interest and to aggregate the feedback that different people provide from different perspectives and different regions. That is why some things fall within federal jurisdiction.
We are talking about natural resource projects. Members can imagine a range of other examples where that national leadership is important. We cannot have provincial governments controlling their own international borders. We do have some engagement of provincial governments in immigration and that has generally been worthwhile, such as the provincial nominee programs. However, there still obviously has to be a federal role in immigration, because we are one country. Once people are in Canada, they are in Canada and they can move around between regions.
Some members of the House, especially in the Bloc, would like us to move in this direction, but we are not and should not become divided into separate nations. We are one nation and we have one common national interest, and that has to be realized through a federal government that can think about that in certain cases in areas of federal jurisdiction. That is why, fundamentally, I do not support this bill.
On so many other individual questions of practical policy, of responses to social and community challenges, the federal government should be willing to work more with provinces, with local communities, with individuals and organizations outside of government. We, generally speaking, deliver better services and develop better policy if we are respecting this principle of subsidiarity and respecting local communities.
While we see a loss of balance on these questions from both the Liberals and the Bloc, a tendency to move to one extreme in the one case and to move to the other extreme in the other case, the Conservatives are committed to articulating this principled balance that tries to operationalize both subsidiarity and solidarity as guiding principles for our policy. This bill does not strike that balance.
There have been other cases, such as a Bloc private member's bill allowing Quebeckers to file a single tax return, where we have supported what they are putting forward, but in this case we will be voting against it.