Michel Gauthier

[Referendum Campaign, October 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the president of the Canadian Labour Congress, Mr. Bob White, said that Canadian workers should continue to maintain close ties with workers in Quebec the day after a yes vote and that negotiations with Quebec should start without delay.

Politicians in the rest of Canada should do likewise to ensure the stability of Canada and Quebec the day after a yes vote. Yesterday, the Prime Minister said that 50 per cent plus one was enough if it was a no but not if it was a yes.

My question is directed to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. How can the Prime Minister of Canada question the validity and outcome of this democratic exercise and go so far as to say that 50 per cent plus one is all right for a no but not for a yes?

[Business Of The House, October 26th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I would appreciate it if the Leader of the Government would let us know what he has in mind for the next few days.

[Referendum Campaign, October 26th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the man who is responsible for closing the Collège de Saint-Jean without justification has a tendency to talk about issues for which he is not responsible. Since he mentioned the Prime Minister's career and said the Prime Minister served Quebec well, allow me to quote the Prime Minister who said in April 1992, and I will quote him verbatim: "It is pretty obvious what happened. We did not try to shaft Quebec, but we did outsmart them".

Considering these comments about Quebec, does the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs think Quebecers should trust the man whom the minister is defending and who represents the status quo for tomorrow, if Quebecers were to say no in the referendum?

[Referendum Campaign, October 26th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs can go ahead and repeat his set speech which is meaningless to Quebecers. That is his privilege. He decides how to answer the question.

I would like to ask him this: Even assuming that Quebecers forget the Prime Minister's past, as he asked them to do, and consider only the last two years of his mandate, do the minister and his colleagues realize that every time the Prime Minister referred to the Quebec referendum question, he said it was not in the cards, he did not want any of it and even that we would get a drubbing?

Does the minister think this is the sort of thing that would make Quebecers trust him?

[Referendum Campaign, October 26th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday in his speech to the nation, the Prime Minister wanted to reach out to Quebecers by telling them, and I quote: "I have also heard, and I understand, that the disappointments of the past are still very much alive".

Could the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, on the basis of what we heard last night, tell us whether the Prime Minister, like the Minister of Labour yesterday afternoon in this House, hopes that before they vote in the referendum, Quebecers will forget what he did in the course of his career and consider only what he has done in the past two years which, in our opinion, is not any more reassuring?

[Point Of Order, October 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the purpose of my point of order is to correct Hansard to bring it in line with reality.

During question period, the Minister of Labour no doubt misunderstood what the hon. member for Saint-Hubert said and attributed words to her that she never spoke. She never described the Prime Minister as the "prime minister of English Canada". She did say, and I have her text in front of me: "Are we to understand that the premiers of English Canada-" This was therefore not a reference to the Prime Minister of Canada, which led to a correction and to applause from our friends across the way. Sorry, but this was not the case.

[Referendum Campaign, October 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, to conform to your instructions, I will change the word I used. So is this not strangely similar to what happened at a time Quebecers remember with sadness in their hearts, when they had problems with the same man, in the same way, with the same players and for the same reasons?

[Referendum Campaign, October 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the editorial writer for the Daily Gleaner in Fredericton wrote the following on Monday, and this is a translation: ``At the beginning of the referendum, the rest of Canada was asked to remain silent''. In return for that silence, assurances were given that there would be no promise of constitutional change for Quebec.

Does the Minister of Labour agree that this revelation of an agreement between the Prime Minister of Canada and people in the other provinces outside Quebec is strangely similar to what happened that night in 1980, when Quebec was betrayed by the same man, the same-

[Referendum Campaign, October 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, we are discussing the complete about-face made by the Prime Minister.

I therefore want to ask the Minister of Labour why Quebecers should trust someone who made promises to them last night, when only last Sunday in New York, he bluntly rejected the demands of Daniel Johnson, the chair of the No committee? Why should we trust the man who betrayed Quebec in 1982?

[Referendum Campaign, October 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday in a speech to his supporters in the referendum campaign, the

Prime Minister made an about-face and promised Quebecers change as an incentive to vote No in the upcoming referendum.

My question is directed to the Minister of Labour. Would she agree that these last minute promises, made in a panic by the Prime Minister a week from the referendum, sound very familiar to Quebecers who remember the referendum in 1980?