Debates of Sept. 23rd, 2025

Opposition Motion—Constitutional Powers of Quebec and the Provinces

[Tim Watchorn, Liberal, Les Pays-d'en-Haut, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask my hon. colleague opposite if he can think of a specific situation where the Conservative Party would use the notwithstanding clause pre-emptively, as the provinces are currently doing.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L’Érable—Lotbinière, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to know if my colleague supports his Prime Minister's cover-ups, because for the last 10 years, we have seen a government—

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

The member knows that he can answer a question or make a comment, but he cannot ask another question.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L’Érable—Lotbinière, QC]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

I was not asking a question, I was making a comment. Had you let me finish, you would have realized that I was actually about to make a comment.

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

The member may resume his comment.

The hon. member from Mégantic—L'Érable—Lotbinière.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L’Érable—Lotbinière, QC]

Madam Speaker, I wonder if the member knows that the Liberal government has been engaging in cover-ups for years. What I would like to know is whether the member and all other members of the Liberal Party agree that the government is leading us in a totally unacceptable direction due to the out-of-control debt, the inflation crisis and the crime crisis.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, I agree with my colleague that the cost-of-living crisis is a very important and worthy issue that we can talk about.

However, there is another very important issue, which is the survival of a minority nation and Quebec's ability to enact its own laws to regulate religion in its society. My colleague did not comment on that, so I will ask him a very simple question.

As an elected member from Quebec, does he believe, as I do, that Quebec is fully competent to respond, to make its own laws and to regulate religion? Does he believe that, yes or no?

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L’Érable—Lotbinière, QC]

Madam Speaker, yes.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for sharing his time with me today.

This is another engineered distraction on the part of the Prime Minister. He is trying to distract from his terrible record. Even though he has been in the role of Prime Minister for only a short time, he has an abysmal record and is desperately trying to change the channel for that. Let me just explain how I know this. It is an engineered distraction, because the Prime Minister has never expressed opposition to Bill 21 in Quebec.

We can look at the official submission. I have here a copy of the factum of the intervenor, the Attorney General of Canada. For anyone in the gallery or at home watching the debate, or any of the press, and trying to decide how to frame the conversation, let me read the opening line. This is the Attorney General of Canada's officially putting before the courts the position of the Government of Canada, the Liberal government, on Bill 21.

It is part I, section A, paragraph 1, line 1. I just want to stress that, because it is the opening statement, the thing that the government leads with in its court submission: “In accordance with his role as intervener, the Attorney General of Canada takes no position, on any basis whatsoever, on the constitutional validity of the provisions of the Act respecting the laicity of the State.” It takes no position on any basis whatsoever. That is the government's position.

One might be left wondering what the purpose of the engineered distraction is. It is to distract from the terrible cost of living crisis that the Liberal government started creating 10 years ago, with tax hikes on hard-working Canadians and small business owners, the massive layering of regulations on the productive parts of the Canadian economy, the barriers to investment, the barriers to getting things built and the ban on shipping Canadian energy to other countries, while foreign oil and foreign resources come into our country.

Let me just go through a few of these crises so members can properly understand why the government is so desperate to have this debate instead of a conversation about the hardships that Canadians are facing. The Prime Minister famously said that he would be judged on the prices at the grocery store. That is what he said during the election campaign. What has happened to prices at the grocery store? Food inflation continues to rise; it is now 70% above target. Food prices are 40% higher since the Liberal government took office.

The Prime Minister is making the Trudeau debt crisis even worse. Remember, Justin Trudeau racked up more debt in the short time he was in office than all the other prime ministers combined. Consider World War I, World War II and the Great Depression; Canada faced all those crises, but it took Justin Trudeau to massively rack up the debt.

Since the Prime Minister took office, federal spending is up 8.4%. Do people remember what he promised during the election campaign? He put in writing, in black and white, when he was going to voters for their vote, a written guarantee to them that he would cap the deficit at $63 billion. Spending has gone up by 8.4%.

The Prime Minister had the King of the United Kingdom come all the way from London. The King graciously accommodated that request and came to the Senate and read the throne speech. In that throne speech, there was a commitment to cap spending at 2%. Just 48 hours later, the government tabled its spending estimates and blew past that. What was the point of inviting His Majesty all the way across the ocean to come read the speech if it was not even worth the paper it was printed on? Let that go down in history as the shortest-lived Liberal promise ever: 48 hours, a new world record.

I am embarrassed on behalf of the government. I know the Liberals are not embarrassed, because one has to have shame to be embarrassed, but I am embarrassed for them that they had His Majesty come over and participate in that kind of bait and switch for Canadians.

Let us talk about the take-home pay crisis. The first people who suffer when inflation rears its ugly head are people who live paycheque to paycheque, people who have shift work, people who have to have second jobs to make ends meet. This is because when the government creates an inflation crisis, there are some winners and there are a whole lot of losers.

The winners are the people who get the new money first: the asset managers, the hedge fund operators and the big banks. They get the new money before anybody else does, so they can buy up assets before prices go up. However, the hard-working person in a hotel, the plumber, the mechanic and the people whose wages do not keep up with inflation have to start paying all the increased prices before they are able to secure any kind of pay increase. Their paycheques have to go further. They work harder and are able to buy less.

Since the Prime Minister took office, there are now 86,000 fewer Canadians who even earn a paycheque. That is because 86,000 people have lost their jobs just since the Prime Minister took office. He promised the fastest-growing economy in the G7; Canada has the fastest-shrinking economy in the G7. Unemployment in the GTA is now 9%, with 365,000 people out of work. The youth employment rate is 53.6%. This is the lowest it has been in almost three decades. This means that just about half of young people in the workforce who are looking for work do not have jobs. The youth employment rate is the lowest in almost three decades. Canadian household debt is the highest in the G7. Bankruptcies are rising at the fastest pace since 2008.

It is not just the cost of living crisis that is causing so much hardship in Canada and that the government is trying to distract from; we have a crime crisis as well. We have a Liberal government that decided to instruct judges to give bail to some of the country's worst, most violent and repeat offenders. What does that mean? It means that now, when someone is being arrested for the 14th, 15th or 20th time, when they get booked by the police, they get back out on the street, often the very same day.

I have heard from police associations that say they will arrest somebody at about 5 o'clock or 6 o'clock in the evening whom they had already arrested that morning. Those dangerous and repeat offenders have been let out by the federal government, and Canadians are sick and tired of it. However, rather than take real action like adopting the Conservative “three strikes and you're out” policy, and rather than apologize to Canadians for all the lives that have been shattered by the criminals the government set free, the Liberals are blocking and obstructing legitimate attempts to fix the bail system and to bring in tougher penalties for dangerous and repeat offenders.

This is what the Liberals are doing. They have engineered a distraction from their terrible record: their terrible record on cost of living, their terrible broken promises on fiscal responsibility and their terrible record on public safety, letting crime and chaos reign in our streets by putting the rights of dangerous offenders ahead of the rights of law-abiding Canadians.

It is shameful, but the Prime Minister is employing the same tactic as his predecessor, Justin Trudeau: dividing to distract, distracting from his terrible record, and he is proving to be just another Liberal.

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

Madam Speaker, it is a bit of a stretch, I must admit, in terms of the speech and what we are supposed to be talking about today, but let me continue with that stretch. The member opposite is exceptionally biased, and I am sure he will acknowledge that.

The reality is actually quite the opposite. We would love to be able to talk more about the things we are actually doing. We could talk about the 22 million Canadians who benefited from the tax break. We could talk about the build Canada legislation, not to mention the different projects, whether it is copper mines in B.C. and Saskatchewan, LNG in B.C., nuclear energy in Ontario, the Port of Montreal in the province of Quebec or the attention being given to Atlantic Canada and all regions. Attention to all areas of economic development while protecting the environment is something that is important to the government.

With respect to the motion the Bloc has brought forward, I am wondering whether the member could give his thoughts on, whether it is by the federal government, Parliaments or legislatures, using pre-emptive statements related to using the notwithstanding clause.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Madam Speaker, the member makes an unfounded allegation that I could be biased when all I did was read statistics. Math has no bias. Numbers have no prejudice. They come into the world because of calculations.

Let me look at some of those calculations. Spending on consultants has gone up 37%, from $19 billion to $26 billion. Spending on bureaucrats by the Liberal government is up 6%, from $59 billion to $63 billion. There is no bias in that. Those are just numbers that we take from departmental websites and estimates and things like the Parliamentary Budget Officer's dispassionate, independent analysis of government spending.

The government members talk about how many Canadians are being affected by their policy. How about every single Canadian being affected by the inflation crisis that the current government caused?

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will bring my colleague back to today's debate. Since this morning, it has been difficult for the Conservatives to speak to this issue.

As my colleague, the member for Saint-Jean, said this morning, I think that we are perfectly able to walk and chew gum at the same time. We agree that we need to address the cost of living. However, I think that it is entirely legitimate to defend the right of Saskatchewan or Quebec to enact their own laws without being challenged.

Does my colleague think that we here in Parliament are capable of considering the cost of living while also defending the right of a province, in our case Quebec, to enact its own laws without being challenged by the federal government?

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Madam Speaker, we have already shared our opinion on the Liberal strategy of creating a diversion so that Canadians do not think about their terrible track record.

I apologize to my colleague for not having the French version of the text. However, in the English version, the government's position is clear.

It states, “In accordance with his role as intervener, the Attorney General of Canada takes no position, on any basis whatsoever, on the constitutional validity of the provisions of the Act respecting the laicity of the State.”

That is clear. We need to talk about the motivation behind this Liberal strategy: The Prime Minister does not want Canadians to be talking about the cost of living crisis, the inflation crisis and the crime crisis as they sit around the dinner table.

The Conservatives are pointing out this Liberal government's motivations.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L’Érable—Lotbinière, QC]

Madam Speaker, I think that one of the major crises that the Liberals are currently trying to cover up and sweep under the rug by sowing division and trying to further divide Canadians is the debt crisis.

I heard the finance minister say that this budget will be a generational investment. Just imagine a budget with the kind of spending that even Justin Trudeau would not have thought possible.

I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on this new Liberal cover-up.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Madam Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right, and the government is right too: This will have generational impacts. That means generations of Canadians into the future will be paying back the debt that the current government is racking up, including the interest on the debt, which goes to bankers and bondholders. That is not what Conservatives want to see happen.

[Yves-François Blanchet, Bloc, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by asking “what is up with them?”, or, to put it more informally, “have they lost the plot?”

The factums submitted by the government's lawyers include statements that would shock even the most radical people across the border. I will elaborate on that later.

In more polite terms, the government has made a fool of itself, but in doing so, it has highlighted the profound cultural, traditional and historical differences between Canada and Quebec. It has highlighted a difference in perspectives, or a difference in models, between Canada's model of multiculturalism and Quebec's model of “interculturalism”. The first is a conqueror's model that seeks to erase not all differences, since there are some that are useful in many other provinces, relative to Quebec, but only those differences that point to ways in which the conquered people did not want to assimilate and be absorbed by the conqueror. However, the action taken aligns with the reading of a constitution that reflects the intent of the legislator, the government at the time, which was the government of Trudeau senior.

There is something a bit insulting about saying that they did not understand their own Constitution, or that they were dishonest or incompetent. In many ways, that statement would apply more to the current government when it comes to these matters.

The Constitution reflects the intent of those who signed it. We cannot rehash, assume, concoct, fabricate, or otherwise make wild assumptions about the legislative intent. Nor can we ask a judge to do so. The intention was written; it was signed; and it was imposed on Quebec, which has never, under any government, endorsed that Constitution.

Let us review a little history, beginning in 1760.

For some 200 years, the French in New France were essentially cut off from the French in France. During the 20th century, the intellectual elites and the artists, when they came on the scene, shared a dream that would persist until very recently, the dream of reconnecting with France. However, in the 1950s, French Canadians were people who worked for English bosses and were controlled by them because they had very little control over their own economy. They were also controlled by a long-standing tacit agreement between the Church and the English authorities who had told the Church it could retain its authority if it kept the people in line.

Then came the Quiet Revolution. During the Quiet Revolution, French Canadians, who would later become Quebeckers, took charge of their own destiny using the means at their disposal. Obviously, we must mention the first major step toward taking ownership of our economic tools, namely the nationalization of hydroelectricity by René Lévesque during Jean Lesage's government.

Numerous institutions followed, including Bill 101—which I would classify as an institution—the Charter of the French Language, as well as some exemplary, extraordinary institutions that are absolutely fundamental to the history of Quebec, such as the education system, with the comprehensive high schools and CEGEPs that were founded and the network of universities that was built from the ground up. Today, that network not only makes Quebeckers proud, but also gives them access to an education system whose quality and graduation rates are on par with the rest of the western hemisphere, whereas Quebec used to be at the very back of the pack.

These are revolutions in terms of the role of the state, both economically and in all respects.

The late Guy Rocher played an instrumental role in many of these developments. It is important to point that out. He played a huge role in drafting the Charter of the French Language, in creating our network of schools and universities and in establishing the basic concepts that gave rise to a Quebec-specific vision of state secularism. With that, we became Quebeckers.

Try as they might to make us into federalists, we are proud Quebeckers through and through.

The Canadian government has used the same strategy for a long time, and it will not change. Its strategy involves exploiting Quebec society's incomparably generous and welcoming attitude toward newcomers, both in number and in deeds, in order to turn Quebec society into an increasingly weakened minority within the Canadian majority. Its strategy also involves using the fiscal imbalance to place Quebec and all the provinces under economic subjugation in order to centralize power, and the despicable Bill C‑5 is just one example of that. If there were no fiscal imbalance, there would be no Bill C‑5. Ottawa's centralizing vision is as simple as that.

However, secularism is an essential legacy of our emancipation. Canada brings its multiculturalism to bear through the charter and the courts, and it has given itself tools to do so, the main one being a reference to the Supreme Court. The government is funding those who wish to challenge Quebec values all the way to the Supreme Court.

This is a toxic subject in Quebec. It is dangerous for multiculturalists. There is an enormous amount of support for the separation of church and state, which is what we are talking about here. Most parties agree on that. Things get more complicated when we add unsuccessful immigration to the mix of Canadian multiculturalism. This is a recent connotation that did not exist when this value first emerged. Today, it has become ideological for the Liberals and a way to get votes.

Basically, for the Liberals and for neo-liberalism in general, immigration is about welcoming people who are both producers and consumers. These people are simply seen as economic variables. The Liberals are not worried about how they contribute to what could be a collective identity. They are not looking for people to participate in a common culture, which is obviously always changing, as was the case for the culture in Quebec, which welcomed Irish people, Scottish people and all the other waves of immigrants. There is no common language base in Canadian multiculturalism because it goes without saying that English has a rather strong draw.

There is no value associated with or required for the claim of equality, because, of course, Canada claims to defend equality for everyone. In defending equality for everyone, it tolerates and perhaps even promotes behaviours and values that literally deny gender equality. Furthermore, the strategy involves persuading newcomers that Quebeckers are xenophobic enemies who engage in hostile identity-based racism. That is rather offensive.

Clearly, nothing could be further from the truth. However, no one wants to attack Quebeckers directly over their values and their language, because support for sovereignty is growing and the next Quebec government will likely be a sovereignist government.

Now I am getting to the challenge. There is talk about putting limits on the use of the notwithstanding clause. There is talk about the “before”, meaning pre-emptive use. In reality, pre-emptive use does not exist in the Constitution. No doubt some legal expert on the other side came up with a brilliant idea one day. His friends patted him on the back and said that surely he did not have the guts to say it. Well, he did have the guts to say it, and pre-emptive use is now part of the narrative. Section 33 is clear. It says what it needs to say and is consistent with the intent.

What about the “after”? Again, it is written very clearly. The clause is in effect for a five-year period, which is renewable, with no limit on the number of times it can be renewed. There is no moral judgment or motive imputed to this. It preserves the sovereignty of Quebec's National Assembly and the provincial legislatures. I would remind members that a parliament is always sovereign in its decisions and prerogatives.

There is more. If the government wins at the Supreme Court and succeeds in limiting the use of the notwithstanding clause and blocking the Quebec value of state secularism, it will also win the challenge to Bill 96 on the language issue and once again limit the use of the notwithstanding clause for that and for everything else. It could be used against attempts to regulate trade unions in other provinces and anything else that might arise. The notwithstanding clause has been invoked or renewed well over 100 times in Quebec. It is the most powerful tool for centralization since 1982. Combined with the law resulting from Bill C‑5, it is truly frightening.

However, it could have the opposite effect of what the government wants, particularly because, as I said, the Liberals seem to have lost the plot. They believe that the notwithstanding clause could theoretically let a Quebec government allow full-blown summary executions, use forced labour, or abolish freedom of the press and freedom of assembly. What kind of madness is this, particularly when we are talking about the most progressive society on the continent?

There is something idiotic about that. If I understand correctly, let us imagine that I am the Quebec government and that I pass a law that allows someone to be summarily executed, that allows forced labour and slavery or that abolishes freedom of the press. Their argument is that there is nothing to say that I am not allowed to do that. It says that I can do that for five years until someone challenges it. The federal government's reasoning is that a province could authorize summary executions for five years. I do not know who came up with that, but people seriously need to rush back to school. They would have to go back to school, because when it comes to nonsense, this takes the cake. Who is the genius who thinks that Quebec would swallow that? By the way, I would point out that Robert Bourassa and Jean Charest used the notwithstanding clause. I searched, but I could not find a Parti Québécois membership card on them. Every Quebec government since then has, in most cases, renewed the notwithstanding clause.

This federal government is using tactics very similar to those it criticizes the American right for: populism, the lowest common denominator, withholding information from the public, and social media-style spin that contains anything but information in most cases. In contrast to that, I would refer people to the report by Richard Rousseau, a brilliant synthesis that not nearly enough people know about or have read, unfortunately. Rousseau's report tracks the development of secularism as a value as Quebec evolved throughout the Quiet Revolution. Guy Rocher's influence shines through clearly. It is a thoughtful, smart analysis that respects the reader's intelligence.

As I said, Pierre Trudeau's intention is reflected in the Constitution. Any other interpretation, including that of his son or that of the government, is adding insult to injury. Only two prime ministers have ever suspended basic freedoms: Pierre Elliott Trudeau in 1970 and Justin Trudeau in 2021.

The law resulting from Bill C‑5 also allows for the suspension of any federal law that the minister decides to suspend, yet ridiculous accusations are made against us. The government of judges and of populism will not be the government of Quebec. We are the ones who are the most hostile to populism, demagoguery and extremism of all kinds.

Quebeckers are so tolerant that sometimes we step back and wonder whether we are too tolerant, before realizing that it is a good thing. That is what makes the incredible nation of Quebec so strong, so vibrant and so admirable.

Therefore, I am telling the government to have the courage to debate the issues of models, secularism, language and immigration. So far, this government has no more courage than the previous one. Last week, the Prime Minister told me that one of the government's responsibilities is to defend the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is not the court's responsibility; it is the government's. The other side needs to grow a backbone, strengthen it a bit, sit down at a table and say that they want to have a conversation about the Constitution. I would like to be invited. I will clear my calendar. The government should do that rather than hiding behind judges.

I want to thank the government for showing us how it works and thinks. I would remind everyone that everything will work better once we are good neighbours who share certain affinities and challenges, but who are distinctly defined by differences that each of us chooses. At the end of the day, it comes down to the issue of individual rights versus collective rights. Imposing the supremacy of individual rights to an unreasonable degree is a divide-and-conquer approach. It fragments society. It turns society into a collection of individuals with total disregard for what they have in common, what they want to build in common and what dreams they have in common.

It is all the more surprising that the people taking the divide-and-conquer approach are wealthy and make up 80% of the population. It is unquestionably the philosophy of the weak.

I therefore call for a nation-to-nation dialogue between equals who will one day be bound together by treaties. Long live a free Quebec.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as a Quebecker, I found it very interesting to listen to my colleague. I am a very proud Quebecker, and I listened carefully to his speech.

I would like to ask him a question that relates to the debate we are having, but it is a little more theoretical.

Is it important to ensure that rights remain rights, not only in Quebec but across Canada?

[Yves-François Blanchet, Bloc, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I know that is not the intention of my colleague, the perfect gentleman I know him to be. However, there is such a thing as collective rights. If, through a combination of initiatives, solidarity and co-operation, up to and including burning to death in a church, Quebeckers, or French Canadians, had not joined forces to assert the collective rights that unite us, without infringing on individual rights, there would be no such thing as a francophone Quebec nation and society today.

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

Mr. Speaker, when I hear the leader of the Bloc speak, I often like to refer to my ancestral roots in the province of Quebec. I am very proud of the fact that Quebec is such a distinct society in the way it has contributed to making Canada the best country in the world, from my perspective.

Having said that, as a parliamentarian who served in the Manitoba legislature for just under 20 years, I was able to observe what provincial jurisdictions have done. If, for example, the current leader of the Conservative Party was to use the notwithstanding clause on a crime bill, I suspect provincial legislatures would have something to say about it. As a parliamentarian—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, John Nater]

I must interrupt the hon. member to allow enough time for a response.

The hon. member for Beloeil—Chambly.

[Yves-François Blanchet, Bloc, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Liberal governments tend to have the attitude where they presume and claim to be irrevocably morally superior from the outset: “I am a Liberal Canadian, you are worth less, and I control the federal Parliament, obviously, because the provinces are ethically and morally inferior to a federal Liberal”. We have been living with that for such a long time and we are sick of it. We apply the Constitution, we are entitled to do so, end of story.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring things back down to earth. That is often necessary with the Liberals.

As the leader of the Bloc Québécois said, in the past 43 years, the notwithstanding clause has been used more than a hundred times. Even if we accept the crazy and illogical idea that it cannot be used pre-emptively, which was the reason it was created in the first place, why has this new legal idea has not been raised once before the courts in 43 years, until Bill 21, Quebec's Act respecting the laicity of the State, came along?

[Yves-François Blanchet, Bloc, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is because they had not thought of it yet.

Basically, for some years now, the government has been trying to pit two visions against each other on the assumption that its own would win. It is not as silly as it sounds, because political games can pay off in Canada if they involve attacking Quebec's unique values. However, that will not work. The next government of Quebec is very likely to be a sovereignist government. The current Premier of Quebec was once a sovereignist, and only God knows what the wisdom of old age will show him one day.

Then, the government saw an opportunity to tackle this issue head on and kill multiple birds with one stone. It could crush secularism and, in doing so, crush protection for the French language and lots of other things by centralizing power right off the bat, in a permanent and systematic way, in the hands of the morally superior federal government, of course.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Emergency Management and Community Resilience]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the leader of the Bloc Québécois for his speech.

I must point out that the matter of whether the clause may be used pre-emptively does not even appear in the government's factum. It was not even raised.

The Bloc is calling on us to withdraw the factum filed with the Supreme Court, but there is a very important question that needs to be addressed. The Quebec Superior Court and the courts of Saskatchewan have rendered decisions that illustrate a different position from that of the Quebec Court of Appeal with respect to the declaratory power.

Will the Bloc leader acknowledge that the Attorney General of Canada must clarify the law for all Canadians?

[Yves-François Blanchet, Bloc, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I feel like telling them, with all due respect, to get a clue.

It is the job of judges, or the government, which will pay to hire lawyers to draft a document, which they should be very ashamed of, given the statements it contains about summary execution, freedom of the press and so on. There are some crazy things in it. However, if various bodies in Quebec and Canadian society want to go to the Supreme Court, I have said this consistently and I will say it again: I have nothing against that. That is what it is there for. However, the federal government is not supposed to adopt an ideological position and fund opponents of one or more laws duly passed by Quebec or the provinces.