Mr. Speaker, I thank my Bloc Québécois colleagues who moved this opposition day motion.
I am pleased to speak in the House of Commons as a Quebecker because it is very important to show that Quebeckers have a wide range of opinions on Bill 21 and the pre-emptive use of the notwithstanding clause. The Bloc Québécois does not have a monopoly on speaking in the House of Commons on behalf of all Quebeckers. The vast majority of Quebec members in this place are federalist members and sit on this side of the House. I wanted to mention that at the outset.
Also, the issue we are debating concerns the federal government's factum before the Supreme Court. This is not a debate on Bill 21. What we are talking about is a provision of Bill 21. This is the first time in 35 years that the notwithstanding clause and the means to use it are being challenged before the Supreme Court of Canada. The Attorney General of Canada must therefore be present in Canada's highest court, the Supreme Court of Canada, to protect the Constitution and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
We adopted a charter of rights and freedoms because, as a country, we believed it was important to protect the rights of minorities, even if the majority in the country or in a province does not agree with protecting the rights of minorities. It is important to point out that the notwithstanding clause can be used by the Parliament of Canada or by the provinces, so this is an important debate for us as federal legislators. We chose to have a charter because we felt that certain rights were so important that they needed to be protected, even if the majority did not agree with protecting these minority rights. I also want to highlight section 1 of the Charter. It is not like the Bill of Rights in the United States. We have a limit. It says that legislators can pass laws that infringe on a right if they do so in a reasonable manner in a free and democratic society.
When section 33 is invoked, one inherently acknowledges that it is unreasonable in a free and democratic society to limit rights in this manner. The federal document presents three very important arguments.
The first is necessary because the Quebec Court of Appeal took a position contrary to that taken by the Saskatchewan courts and the Superior Court of Quebec on the issue of a declaration. The main role of the Attorney General of Canada is to ensure that there is no conflict of laws across Canada, that decisions by Canadian courts are not in conflict. That is why this provision is before the Supreme Court of Canada.
The Supreme Court of Canada has to tell us what the law is. Does it correspond to what the courts in Saskatchewan and the Superior Court of Quebec have said, that even if section 33 is invoked, there can be a declaratory judgment, or does it correspond with what was handed down by the Quebec Court of Appeal, which said that a court cannot examine the question of whether a right is being violated in a manner that is unreasonable under section 1 because the notwithstanding clause has been invoked?
The Attorney General of Canada comes into it because, in his role, he has to make arguments about whether we take the position of the Saskatchewan courts or the position of the Quebec Court of Appeal. That is as it should be.
I find it astonishing that the Bloc Québécois is telling us that the Government of Canada should not appear before the Supreme Court of Canada, but that it is not saying anything about the other provinces that have intervened in the case. Is the Bloc of the opinion that it is okay for all of the provinces to intervene on this issue, but not the Government of Canada?
The Government of Canada's role is to protect the rights of everyone, including Quebeckers and all minorities in the country. We cannot say that the Government of Canada should be there when we like its position and that it should not be there when we do not like its position.
I would like to talk about the three arguments that the Government of Canada submitted before the Supreme Court.
The first argument the government is making is that even if we use the notwithstanding clause, a court has the ability to declare that the law violates the charter, section 2 or sections 7 to 15, in a way that is unreasonable in a free and democratic society. Those are the only charter sections that we can use the notwithstanding clause on. It is important for the residents of that province to know what their government has done.
When a government uses the notwithstanding clause pre-emptively claiming that no rights are really being violated, it is not giving the public all of the information. If officials run for re-election, it is important that the public have the opportunity to say whether a government has unreasonably violated the charter. That is one argument before the court.
Another argument that the federal government is making is that we do not have the right to use the notwithstanding clause to violate a right other than those in section 2 or sections 7 to 15. For example, if we violate freedom of expression under section 2, but we also violate democratic rights under section 3 of the charter democratic rights, we do not have the right to use the notwithstanding clause to violate a right that is other than section 2 or section 7 to 15.
From time to time, a law is challenged under several sections of the charter rather than just one. Obviously, if one wants to invoke the notwithstanding clause, one cannot refer to a section that is not subject to the notwithstanding clause. This is an important argument to ensure that other rights are not affected because someone made a declaration that an act would operate notwithstanding a provision included in section 2 or sections 7 to 15 of the charter.
The third argument is the most important argument the federal government is making in this case. It is that a right cannot be turned off in a way that we cannot turn it back on just as brightly. Just as how, if we turn off a light bulb, it comes back on and shines just as brightly, we cannot take a right under the charter and utterly obliterate it so that when we say we are no longer using the notwithstanding clause, the people affected no longer have the ability to do what they were doing before. That could happen either because of constant successive uses of the notwithstanding clause or because the right is obliterated in a way that is so unreasonable, it will ultimately deprive people of the permanent ability to exercise that right.
When arguments are used before the court to illustrate what those might be, nobody is talking about the Quebec government doing them. They are talking about any government, including the federal government, that could do those things. We are simply saying that there are grounds more than procedural ones for nullifying an exercise of section 33.
Lastly, with respect to the argument that we should not talk about this and that the Government of Canada should not file a factum with the Supreme Court because there are other issues in the country, I would simply like to say that there are obviously other issues in the country.
The people from the Department of Justice who worked on this factum were not doing things that they should not have been doing with this factum. Nobody is talking about the people in housing or economics doing this factum, so the arguments the Conservatives are using today are beyond belief.