Mr. Speaker, Quebeckers care deeply about state secularism. The first demands came from the Patriotes of 1837 and 1838. In their declaration of independence, they called for freedom of conscience and a strict separation of church and state.
Secularism is one of the driving forces behind the birth and development of modern Quebec. The Quebec nation has a special history where the Catholic faith had a very strong presence. At one point, the church controlled a lot of institutions. Modern Quebec was born out of questioning that model, which made it practically a religious state.
After the Parent commission report was tabled, Catholic teachers were asked not to wear their religious symbols. There was no legislation, but people co-operated and they complied. Then, the system of Catholic and Protestant school boards was abolished. Today, secularism is not discriminatory; it applies the same way to all religions.
Laws similar to the Quebec legislation have been deemed perfectly compatible with human rights by several courts around the world, including Europe's highest court, which has historically developed human rights. It recently ruled that prohibiting the wearing of religious symbols in schools does not constitute a violation of religious freedom. Belgium, France, Bulgaria, Austria and Denmark have even banned the full veil from public spaces.
The Quebec people have a unique identity with distinct norms and values, namely Quebec values. However, Quebec is a minority within Canada. Quebec is a national minority that, in reality, is not recognized as such by the English Canadian majority.
That much is obvious when we look at the Official Languages Act. Starting in 1969, with Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the Official Languages Act defended the principle that English Canadians are a minority in Quebec, even though the people of Quebec have endured 200 years of British colonialist domination and English Canadian economic domination. Until the 1960s, its institutions were largely underfunded.
The Canadian majority imposed the Official Languages Act on us. Rather than trying to repair the damage caused to Quebec by 200 years of underfunding French schools in Quebec, the government decided to support English schools and the anglophone education system exclusively. It decided to promote English in public services in areas under Quebec's jurisdiction.
That is the problem. This was done despite the fact that Quebeckers make up 90% of Canada's francophone minority. That is more or less what is happening right now. We are told that the Constitution, with its Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, seeks to protect minorities from the dictatorship of the majority, but it does exactly the opposite for Quebec's national minority.
Whether we like it or not, Canada is a multinational country. There are the first nations, Inuit, the Acadian nation, francophone communities descended from the French Canadian nation, such as the Quebec nation, and the English Canadian nation.
The best demonstration of how anglophones are not just a minority in a province, but part of the Canadian majority, is the fact that the Constitution and the charter were imposed on us in 1982 to weaken our language planning. This Constitution remains the Constitution of English Canada to this day, since no Quebec government has signed it. Under that Constitution, federally appointed judges dismantled Quebec's Charter of the French Language. As some have said, the Supreme Court is a bit like the tower of Pisa; it always leans the same way.
That is essentially what we are going through. If we do not learn from our history, it repeats itself. We keep hearing that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms defends minorities, but that is clearly not the case. Professor Henri Brun said that the highest court is federal because of judicial appointments. Consider the recent appointment of McGill's Robert Leckey, an enemy of the Charter of the French Language. He was appointed by Justin Trudeau and confirmed by the current Prime Minister. According to Mr. Brun, judges appointed by Ottawa are naturally guided by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As such, religious freedom in Quebec's charter cannot be interpreted differently from the courts' interpretation of religious freedom in the Canadian charter. This is a blatant example of how Canada tends toward charter uniformity. It is one of the greatest perils facing Quebec and all other minority nations around the world. The courts and the government of judges have a homogenizing effect.
We also must not forget that, as we said earlier, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms of 1982 was adopted one evening next door, at the Château Laurier, by the federal government and the nine provinces of English Canada during negotiations that were described as the “night of the long knives” because Quebec was excluded from those negotiations on the night of November 4 to 5, 1981. The notwithstanding clause was not Quebec's idea. It came from the other provinces, which agreed to Ottawa's introduction of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms on the condition that a notwithstanding clause be added, thus allowing Quebec to make its own choices. The notwithstanding clause is an essential element of democratic life and the democratic process. The precursor to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Canadian Bill of Rights, included a notwithstanding clause, as did the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, the Saskatchewan bill of rights and the Alberta Bill of Rights, all of which predate the Canadian charter.
Even Trudeau senior said that the notwithstanding clause is “a way that the [provincial] legislatures...have of ensuring that the last word is held by the elected representatives of the people rather than by the courts”. After the 1982 constitutional power grab, René Lévesque used the notwithstanding clause for all laws in Quebec. Today, it is used for 41 laws, not just for the Act respecting the laicity of the State or Bill 101. It is also used for very progressive legislation, such as the small claims division legislation.
The federal government never challenged the notwithstanding clause in connection with any of these laws. Now, all of a sudden, it is challenging the notwithstanding clause. It is not against secularism, but it is challenging the notwithstanding clause. The current Prime Minister, like Justin Trudeau, sees this clause as unnecessary. He wants to curtail Quebec's right to self-determination. The Prime Minister says that the notwithstanding clause should never be used pre-emptively. Apparently he thinks we should pass laws, wait for them to be struck down by courts all the way up to the Supreme Court, then rewrite them with the notwithstanding clause. The notwithstanding clause was used to keep lawyers out of small claims court. Imagine all the cases that would have to be retried.
We condemn the use of the courts for political purposes. Why intervene in this matter? The federal government is intervening with our money to challenge our laws. This proves that, as long as Quebec remains in Canada, it must battle for its very existence in an unfair fight with the Canadian majority. The only way forward for Quebec is quite simple: independence.