Debates of Feb. 9th, 2023

Opposition Motion—Use of the Notwithstanding Clause

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, that question is a classic.

It is a classic Conservative move to say now is not the time to be debating this. When we talk about Quebec, it is never the right time. The speech given by her colleague this morning mentioned that. It is never the right time to talk about Quebec, it is never the time to use an opposition day to express Quebec's views.

I would like to say to the member that we have had some futile debates. The most futile debate we have ever had in the House took place during the pandemic. We spent a day deciding if we should designate a day to celebrate oil in Canada.

We have had some debates that were far more futile than a debate on ensuring the survival of a nation.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Madam Speaker, certainly nobody on our side is questioning the importance of this particular debate, but it is important to understand the number of crises happening in this country. I think the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona hit the nail on the head. There are economic crises and constitutional crises that the Prime Minister is creating in order to distract from his many failures.

These crises are happening right across the country as a result of the Prime Minister, and I am wondering if the hon. member would like to comment on the distraction tactics and the division created by the Prime Minister every time he gets in trouble.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles said this morning that he thought this debate was futile.

This is what I would say to my colleague. If he wants to do something useful, he could tell us clearly whether the Conservative Party is for or against Bill 21 and Bill 96. I would like the Conservatives to tell us if they would challenge these laws in court if they were in power. By answering this question, the member would be doing something useful in connection with today's debate.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Order.

It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Spadina—Fort York, Infrastructure; and the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona, Foreign Affairs.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased that you did not confuse me with the member for Jonquière, which would nonetheless have been a huge compliment.

Furthermore, Madam Speaker, please accept my regards because today is an important day for me, a very special day that I never thought I would see.

For years, the federal government, particularly the current Prime Minister, has told us that no one is interested in the Constitution, be they Quebeckers or Canadians, that constitutional debates are futile, that they are unimportant to our collective lives and, above all, that such things should not be discussed. Today we got his parliamentary secretary, but it got to the point where the Minister of Canadian Heritage, who is also, I presume, the minister for strife, came to tell us that we were looking for trouble by wanting to talk about the Constitution, a document we never signed and which is essentially the framework for this cohabitation within a federation to which I would obviously rather not belong.

By trying to make this a matter for the courts and possibly requiring a Supreme Court ruling, what the Prime Minister is doing is unilaterally changing the Constitution. The Constitution is clear. As most legal experts have said, or at least most legal experts who are not Liberals in the House, the notwithstanding clause is, by definition, pre-emptive. That is why the Prime Minister keeps repeating the word “pre-emptive”, to try to make us believe that it was once otherwise. However, the case law is clear: The notwithstanding clause is pre-emptive.

It exists precisely because of the current Prime Minister's behaviour. It is because of his paternalistic attitude and his tendency to tell Quebec what to do when he does not approve of the governments elected by Quebeckers. That is exactly why the notwithstanding clause exists, as a safety valve for the Quebec government and provincial governments.

Obviously, the Prime Minister is not a courageous man. He is a fraud. He has no courage. It took him 28 months to meet with the health ministers. The Prime Minister will never have the courage to say that he wants to reopen the Constitution. He will let the Supreme Court do his dirty work because it is win-win for him. The Supreme Court will likely say that he is wrong, but there is a small chance that the Supreme Court will create a loophole like it has done in the past because of the judges that the Prime Minister himself appointed.

Today's debate is not on the notwithstanding clause. It is a debate about the Prime Minister's ego and his desire to dictate conditions to Quebec. It is a debate on this individual's ego. We are seeing it again in his desire to unilaterally rewrite the Constitution. He thinks he is above the law. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and he sees no difference between himself, the Constitution, the law and institutions. This is the Prime Minister who caused the WE Charity scandal because he did not know the difference between the government, business, family and friends or between his bank account, the government's bank account and the public purse.

This is the Prime Minister who does not know, when he visits the Aga Khan, whether he is on vacation or on official business, and who does not know which bank account the expenses come out of. This is the Prime Minister who pays thousands and thousands of dollars for hotel rooms with gold faucets when he goes to see the monarchy. This is the Prime Minister who fired the minister over the SNC-Lavalin affair because he does not even like to see his own ministers obeying the law.

It is surprising that the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner's office does not have a chair with the Prime Minister's name on it. It is one scandal after another with him. That is why today's debate is about the Prime Minister's ego.

It is also a debate on the collective rights of Quebeckers that we want to initiate. Let us not forget that Quebeckers never signed a single Constitution. They never signed on the dotted line of any Constitution and they were subjugated.

In 1763, the first Constitution of this monarchy, which we celebrate and commemorate with the mace that lies before us, was imposed on us by force to assimilate us. Later, during the American Revolution, there was the Constitution of 1744, which granted us some rights because our love for the British was so great that they were afraid we would fight alongside the Americans.

They used us, essentially, and turned our rights against us. They gave us some, but only so they could come back more forcefully with the Constitutional Act, 1791, in which they never gave us responsible government, and in which they banned English from the public service because they took us for granted.

That is not even close to what happened with the Constitution of 1840. After the Patriotes rebellion, the monarchy and English Canada committed crimes against humanity in my own riding. They committed murder and rape and caused destruction with no apology or tears of any kind from the Prime Minister, even though we know he rarely misses an opportunity to turn on the waterworks.

The Constitution of 1840 was based on the Durham report, which said that French Canadians were a people with no history, no culture and no literature. That is what they thought of us and that is what they still think of us. I do not know if Lord Durham is looking down on us today, but I wonder what he would think about Canadian culture if he could see Don Cherry on Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday nights making francophobic comments that cause a backlash, but only in Quebec. What a rich culture Canada has.

That being said, the Constitution of 1867 is even worse. We did not sign the Constitution of 1867. Canada was the reject of the western world because England did not want it and neither did the United States. Some people got together, held two short conferences and created a confederation. There was never any democratic process. They went to England to impose this on us. The group was led by John A. Macdonald, a francophobic racist and Orangeman. He was an anti-French racist who spent his career working against francophones. That is how Canada was born. That is what the country is built on.

In 1982, the Constitution was patriated. The notion of parliamentary sovereignty came up again at that time. It was then that it became important to protect the sovereignty of Parliament in the jurisdictions of the provinces and Quebec.

Do members know who asked for this clause? It was British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan. We would have likely asked for it too, but we were not there on the night of the long knives, the night the Constitution was forced on us. The Constitution was signed without us. I understand that members find it strange to see us defending the Constitution.

To hear the Liberals talk, they made one mistake, and that was giving Quebec rights, because this preserved the sovereignty of the Quebec Parliament. When they do something good for Quebec, they consider it a mistake. I can guarantee that I am not going to develop Stockholm syndrome anytime soon.

The great Canadian constitutional scholar Henri Brun said: “In English Canada, the refrain is 'Charter, Charter, Charter.' It has become the symbol of the Canadian nation. The Charter attempts to put individual rights ahead of collective rights and transfers decision-making power from politicians to judges. This concept is stronger in English Canada than in Quebec.” That is what we are seeing today.

Peter Russell, a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, says the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is still interpreted by judges, who are fallible and can make mistakes. Professor Russell says it is right that elected representatives have the final say on major decisions, but that does not mean the clause should be used willy-nilly.

This demonstrates the fact that Parliament must be sovereign.

What does all of today's debate remind us of? What can we conclude? It is that the constitutional history of Canada, from its beginnings to the present day, is the history of English Canada asking itself the following fundamental question: How do we manage this francophone people whom we colonized, crushed and attempted to assimilate by taking away its cultural symbols, including its very name, les Canadiens, so as to prevent it ever becoming fully independent?

What the Liberals are doing with the notwithstanding clause is the same as usual. It is despicable. They are trying to rewrite the rules in a cowardly, roundabout way. We Quebeckers have fought to be able to emancipate ourselves. We have been fixated on freedom for hundreds of years. We will never give up the fight.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, this should not be a debate about the province of Quebec. This should be a debate about the notwithstanding clause, the pre-emptive use of the notwithstanding clause, and the arguments for or against it.

The example I use continually is that of the Province of Ontario and the teachers' union. I would be interested in the member's thoughts regarding the Bloc's position concerning the notwithstanding clause being used in a pre-emptive manner against the teachers' union.

Could the member also explain why René Lévesque himself did not incorporate a notwithstanding clause in the Quebec charter when he was the premier?

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, what Ontario does is its own business and the same goes for Alberta.

We do not like the government's habit of wanting to stick its nose where it does not belong, so I am not going to start doing the same thing.

As I said before, today's debate was actually initiated by the Prime Minister. It is the Prime Minister himself who wants to go before the courts when we are dealing with inflation and people are struggling. It is the Prime Minister himself who started all this.

Today's debate is about the lack of courage of the Prime Minister, who is unable to look Canadians and Quebeckers in the eye, unable to talk openly about the Constitution and unable to do things properly.

The Prime Minister's father had his faults, but at least he had courage. Clearly, the Prime Minister did not inherit all of his father's qualities.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, while I disagree with it, the member can be of the opinion that he does not have a comment on what just happened in Ontario, and he can say that it should not be for others to have an opinion on what happens in Quebec. However, the notwithstanding clause is something that could be used not only by any provincial government, and this is not mentioned in the motion, but also by the federal government. How governments choose to use it in one jurisdiction will affect what is permissible politically, legally or otherwise in other jurisdictions.

It is not quite right to say that it does not matter how various governments are using the notwithstanding clause because it will matter, with social licence and political licence and ultimately in legal precedent of how various jurisdictions have used it. It would perhaps create the opportunity for certain uses of the notwithstanding clause that the member cannot currently imagine.

There are those of us who think it matters, and not just in how a particular province uses it. I imagine Bloc members could have some serious concerns with the possible uses of the notwithstanding clause by the federal government, so we need to appreciate that it does matter how it is used in various jurisdictions and that there are real impacts in other jurisdictions.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, this is an attempt to hijack the debate. I, for one, have problems with all kinds of laws, from a moral standpoint. There are laws that are passed in other Canadian provinces, in Quebec, in other countries and just about everywhere that I disagree with, whether they use the notwithstanding clause or not.

The precedents my colleague refers to come from trying to revoke the unconditional nature of the notwithstanding clause and add additional layers of interpretation, even though the Supreme Court has already been very clear.

The sovereignty of parliaments comes with the possibility that those parliaments will make mistakes. It also comes with the possibility that voters will sack governments that make mistakes.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Madam Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on his speech. I believe, and I think he said something similar, that the notwithstanding clause is a kind of defence against the tyranny of the Canadian majority. As long as Quebec is not independent, we are a minority.

We had a Constitution imposed on us against our will, and we often have an Official Languages Act imposed on us against our will.

I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on this.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, Canadians are interested in democracy in constitutional matters when they outnumber the minority nine to one.

We saw this in 1982. We saw it in 1867, when it was pretty much everyone against Quebec, and we saw it in the previous constitutions, when it was the monarchy against us.

Yes, Quebeckers are a minority. I think that Quebec should be sovereign, and that would be much better for everyone.

Nonetheless, the notwithstanding clause can be used in a very healthy way, and its use, by definition, is preventive. What we are doing today is making sure that everyone can read a definition. Evidently, that is not always the case.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is always an honour and a pleasure to join debates in the House of Commons. Here we are today. It is a Bloc opposition day, which is a day when the Bloc can choose anything it would like to put into a motion, and it is a bit of an unusual one today. The Bloc has chosen to spend our day and have a recorded vote on this motion, which purports to simply remind the federal government about the use of the notwithstanding clause.

Before I get too deep into this, I want to point out that it is my plan to share my time, so I want to make sure that we are clear about that.

The only way that one could really explain this debate to their constituents, or that I could explain it to my constituents, is that the Prime Minister thrives on dividing Canadians. The Prime Minister is always looking for different ways to divide Canadians. One of the tactics that the Prime Minister uses is to invent phony issues or phony responses to issues in order to divide political opposition. In this case, he has created a phony constitutional crisis over the use of the notwithstanding clause, and the Bloc has taken the bait; it has taken it hook, line and sinker.

The Prime Minister has divided Canadians throughout his tenure, east against west, Quebec against Alberta, Quebeckers against themselves, and all manner of Canadians over many different issues. The Liberals try to slice up and dice Canadians in enough different ways to squeak through and try to win elections with minimal support. That is something the Prime Minister has succeeded in doing.

However, now, instead of using a fairly precious opposition day to hold the government to account for its incredible, in fact spectacular, failures, the Bloc is burning an opposition day by falling right into one of the Prime Minister's traps. The person happiest to be having this debate today is the Prime Minister. While the House is rehashing decades-old long discussion points about the Constitution and reliving the now 40-year history of the charter and the notwithstanding clause, the Prime Minister is avoiding a debate about how his government has made life unaffordable for millions of Canadians.

We are in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. Inflation is at a 40-year high. People cannot afford groceries. People cannot afford to heat their homes. There are people in remote communities across Canada, including Quebec, who rely on heating oil to keep from freezing in the winter. Some of these remote residents are among the poorest people in Canada and they cannot afford to pay $1,000 or more per month for home heating fuel, but they cannot live in homes without heat in winter.

While we are debating this motion, the Prime Minister is avoiding accountability for how he has deliberately made life unaffordable for Canadians with his punitive taxes, in particular the carbon tax. Therefore, although it is always a pleasure to engage in debate in the House, I wish that on an opposition day we could spend the day talking about the failures of the current government, instead of giving the government a day off.

It is not quite that bad. I guess it must be conceded that, while we are talking about this motion, the government is not moving its own motions. We are at least going a day when the government does not get any closer to passing terrible bills, like, say, Bill C-11, wherein the government seeks to give itself unprecedented control over what Canadians, including Quebeckers, see, post or find on the Internet. In fact, it is a bit of a bizarre one, in that the Bloc has signalled that it will ultimately help the government pass Bill C-11 and give a federal agency the power to regulate what Quebeckers see and find and post on the Internet. It is a strange one, but at least while we are talking about this motion today, that bill is not advancing.

Under the current government, life is increasingly unaffordable for Canadians. Rents have doubled across Canada's 10 largest cities, interest rates are at a 23-year high and consumer debt is at record highs. Nearly half the people who have variable rate mortgages in Canada say they are going to need to sell or walk away from their homes this year because they cannot afford the payments on the homes they already own. There is nothing happening in this debate today that is going to help any of these Canadians struggling with affordability.

We are playing the Liberals' game today. We are avoiding these issues through the motion before us and engaging in this manufactured constitutional crisis while the Prime Minister dodges these questions about affordability. He is also dodging questions about the ethics of the government and himself, and about the steady stream of ministers who have broken the law, including himself.

Today, while we relive old debates about this issue, the Prime Minister is avoiding accountability for the repeated violations by himself and government members throughout their tenure, their eight years in office, and also the way they hand out billions of dollars in lucrative consulting contracts to their well-connected friends.

While this debate rages, no further progress is made in dealing with any of these issues or in the crisis of public safety that has emerged under the government. Violent crime is up 32%, gang homicide is up over 90%, property crime is up and fraud is up.

Intellectual property theft is an issue too. We see this in the failures of Bill C-34, which we debated yesterday and which is failing to protect Canadians from the effects of foreign investment by state-owned enterprises. Canada also remains a prime destination for international money laundering. These are real issues that impact Canadians in their neighbourhoods, and this is exactly the kind of debate we should be having.

The debate today, where this is avoided, is the kind of debate the Prime Minister wants. The Prime Minister wants a debate where he can avoid talking about how life has become unaffordable under the government and where he avoids accountability for his failure to deliver public services like the ability for the government to issue a passport and the ability of the government to process immigration applications, or any immigration services. Under the government, there is an immigration-file backlog of 2.5 million people.

The government is delighted to be talking about anything other than the colossal failures that have taken place under its watch. Its members are avoiding talking about the crisis of public finance that is brewing under the government, the spike in interest rates that is going to increasingly impair the government's ability to deliver basic services without cutting services or raising taxes as debt service costs continue to eat more and more of the federal budget.

This motion today is a lost opportunity to compel the government to be better. Oppositions should be about demanding better from the government through the process of debate to ensure the best ideas go forward, and challenging the government and identifying mistakes the government has made so it can correct them. That is how we serve our constituents. That is how we help ensure we have accountability from our governments and how we improve the services to Canadians.

I will end it there and let members ask questions, if they have any.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, it is actually an opposition day, so it is the opposition that gets to determine what is going to be debated today. However, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that the Conservatives get an opposition day next week. That will be an opportunity for the Conservative Party to give all sorts of false information on the record.

The bad news is that, on this opposition day, we are still waiting for one Conservative to have the political courage to stand up and say that what Doug Ford did in regard to the pre-emptive usage of the notwithstanding clause to go against the rights of unionized workers, against thousands of teachers, was wrong. I will say that.

Will the member be the first Conservative to be bold enough to say that Doug Ford was wrong?

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Madam Speaker, this Manitoba MP is quite something. He gets up and demands that I, as an Alberta MP, weigh in on Ontario provincial politics while the government avoids accountability for the issues it is responsible for.

It is the perfect example of the type of deflection that the government engages in. Do members know how many times I have been asked by constituents to weigh in on the Ford government? Zero.

My constituents do not send me to Ottawa to talk about what goes on in Queen's Park. They do not send him here to talk about that either.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Madam Speaker, I heard my colleague say that we had better things to do than to talk about the notwithstanding clause.

However, I would point out to him that the notwithstanding clause ensures two things for the Quebec nation and the Quebec National Assembly: the separation of church and state, in the case of Bill 101, and the continued existence of the French language, thanks to Bill 96.

On behalf of a nation that intends on passing the test of time, I want give my colleague the chance to reconsider his words because if he still maintains that it is a lost cause for Quebeckers, I want to make sure that he and his party face the political consequences of their position in Quebec.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Madam Speaker, I think this debate is a wasted opportunity to demand better service from the government for Canadians. It is up to the member's party and his caucus colleagues as to what they want to debate in the chamber, but no, I will stand by my comment that I think we could have done better in making the case and, through the debate process, arguing the shortcomings of the government and the numerous ways that this government specifically has made life less affordable for Canadians, our streets less safe and our public finances in far worse shape.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, earlier, my colleague mentioned that he did not want to talk about Ontario politics, certainly not with the member from Manitoba. Perhaps he would like to talk with an Alberta politician about politics in Alberta.

He thought this particular debate was painful because we were not talking about things that were so important to his constituents, my constituents and Canadians across the country.

Would he agree that, if this debate is not what Canadians want to hear, Albertans are probably not terribly interested in debating Danielle Smith's sovereignty act, which, again, is an overreach of the provincial government?

Could he comment on the sovereignty act and whether or not he supports that?

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Madam Speaker, there will be a provincial election soon in Alberta and I invite this member to contest that provincial election, because all she does is come here and raise issues about provincial politics.

This is the federal Parliament. Let us focus on federal issues and let this member run in the provincial election if she wants to debate Danielle Smith on the sovereignty act.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will try to remain calm even though I heard arguments throughout the day that really betray ignorance.

When a human community established within the same territory has language, culture and heritage, when it is animated by a collective conscience and a desire to go down in history, and when all members of the community are on board with a common enterprise, that is called a nation.

The House of Commons claims to recognize the Quebec nation. The Quebec nation, via the people's elected representatives who make up its parliament, the National Assembly, democratically passed Bill 21 and Bill 96. The Canadian Constitution says that a parliament must be above governments. However, the Liberals currently in the House seem inclined toward the judicialization of politics. They lack courage and would rather refer the debate to the courts to decide in the people's stead. In the last election, the people of Quebec re-elected the 90 members of the government that introduced and passed these laws. Where, then, is the democratic deficit?

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

It being 5:15 p.m., it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the business of supply.

The question is on the motion.

If a member of a recognized party present in the House wishes that the motion be carried or carried on division or wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Madam Speaker, I request a recorded division.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Pursuant to order made on Thursday, June 23, 2022, the recorded division stands deferred until Monday, February 13, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I suspect if you were to canvass the House, you would find unanimous consent to see the clock as 5:30 p.m.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Is it agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.