Madam Speaker, with regard to the NDP’s help, Quebec tried in 2011 and elected 59 NDP members. Today there is only one left, and that is enough. I would therefore thank my colleague for his suggestion.
When I began teaching at André-Laurendeau CEGEP in 1993—I am showing my age—I was an economics teacher in the social sciences department. Once, we were discussing which of the sciences was the most important, and an economist, who was far older than I was, said something that struck me. He said that he believed that demographics was more important than most people thought.
My father used to tell me that, if I wanted to understand something today, I had to know about history and the past. Today, I will try to explain things by referring to the past, and I will try to explain why Quebec is in the situation it is today and why demographics works against it. In other words, numerical strength is what most matters in history and in the history of peoples.
Let us start at the beginning. In 1759, the French were defeated on the Plains of Abraham. People wonder why Quebeckers are different from other Canadians, arguing that everyone is the same. Here is the first difference: Quebec’s history books talk about the defeat on the Plains of Abraham. The history books of the vast majority of members in the House talk about the victory on the Plains of Abraham.
When we lost the battle on the Plains of Abraham, there were 65,000 francophones on the territory, not just in Quebec, but across North America. However, there were more than one million anglophones. We were therefore doomed to disappear; we were a people under threat.
Some of the French returned to France, including prominent figures and people in important positions. Those who remained were defenceless and had no political or economic power. The French who left, even if they said they loved those they were leaving, were certain that a few years later no one would be speaking French in North America. We were therefore doomed to disappear. However, here we are, still speaking French today, and we are extremely proud of that.
Now let us take a good look at why we are still speaking French.
The first reason is the revanche des berceaux, the baby boom in Quebec. We were great at making babies, and we had lots of them. To understand why we were so productive, we have to go back to 1665 and Jean Talon, who understood the strength in numbers; since there were not enough of us, he told us to make babies.
I do hope the Quebec government will not adopt that idea and promote the same pro-birth policy, but it is worth saying that people got a cash bonus for their 10th child, a larger bonus for their 12th, and free education for their 26th. Parents did not know all their children and used name tags to keep their names straight.
The concept of a large family therefore became part of our culture, and we were by far the best in the world at it. It allowed us to change our destiny and resist assimilation.
In 1837 and 1838, during the patriots' rebellions, the anglophones who had barred us from political and economic power of course found us irritating. They asked Lord Durham what they should do with us, because they were concerned and had not seen us coming.
Lord Durham analyzed the situation and decreed that the problem was simple and that it was war between francophones and anglophones. That was not necessarily the case, since there were also patriots in Upper Canada. However, that is how he saw the situation. He very amiably said that we were a people without a culture and without a history, and that our salvation—because Lord Durham was a great humanist—was assimilation.
Not in so many words, he recognized the strength in numbers and saw that francophones had to become as small a minority as possible. Numerical strength would get the better of this odd people, because no one understood what was going on with us.
Then came 1867. The creation of Canada as we know it was the destiny predicted by Lord Durham. It institutionalized our minority status. Before that, we were the majority. However, the anglophones thought that, since francophones made up the majority, there should be equal representation of Canada East and Canada West. That way, the francophones would not have more political power than the anglophones.
When francophones became the minority, the anglophones remembered Lord Durham and decided it was time to rely on numerical strength. Consequently, when Canada was created in 1867, our political power dropped to 36%. That is the important thing to remember: Numerical strength is tied to political power. If we leave things as they are, our political power will dissipate into nothing. That is what I am getting at.
From that point on, despite fighting tooth and nail and demonstrating incredible resilience, francophones outside Quebec saw their population become anglicized and their presence and political weight diminish, and they had to fight for essential services in their language. It happened again recently. There are lessons to be learned from history. We saw what happened last week in British Columbia. Franco-Columbians wanted services in French, notably education services, and they moved heaven and earth for their cause. They even fought the federal government.
When the French left in 1759, they thought we were finished. In 1950, however, Félix Leclerc came on the scene. When the French thought we were all but gone, Félix Leclerc started singing songs about who we are and the fact that we speak French. The French were amazed and wondered how we had done it, how we had managed to survive for 200 years. To them, it seemed like a miracle. Yves Duteil even wrote a song for the people of Quebec, one of the most beautiful French-language songs, which salutes the Quebec resistance and pays tribute to Félix Leclerc by imagining him, in the song, as the swallow.
I would like to read some of the lyrics that show just how exceptional Quebec is:
It's a beautiful language on the other side of the world
A bubble of France in the north of a continent
Held in a vice but still so fruitful
Locked in the ice at the top of a volcano
It built bridges across the Atlantic
It left its home for another land
And like a swallow transported by the spring
It returns to sing of its sorrows and hopes
It tells us that in that far-off country of snow
It faced the winds blowing from all directions
To impose its words even in the schools
And that our own language is still spoken there
Quebeckers' bulwark against extinction came in 1960. Before that, Quebec and francophones were barely getting by. Francophones were thought of as hewers of wood and drawers of water, people with no political weight. They had to speak English to be allowed to work in a factory. They had no economic power.
The Quiet Revolution changed everything. That is when we created an extraordinary tool for our own protection, namely the Quebec state. In 1960, the Quebec state began opening political and economic doors for us. Our culture was already flourishing, but now there was a cultural explosion. From then on, we were able to proudly shout to the world who we were.
The Quebec state is our government. It defends and protects us. That must never be forgotten. I know that when Bloc Québécois members are in the House, our rhetoric concerning the jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces can sound harsh. There is a very simple reason for that.
Each time the federal government speaks or takes action, we in the House must make sure that it will not diminish the power of our defensive tool. That is why we are like this. Whenever the federal government proposes something, the way we protect ourselves is to say that, if we do not agree, the government should just send us our money and we will manage our affairs on our own. We do not need the federal government to tell us what we need. There is no one better placed to know what a Quebecker wants than a Quebecker.
Things happen here that could hinder or favour our development, as the case may be, because good things do also happen. We are here to keep an eye out and make sure no one diminishes the political power of our people, our nation. This means rejecting any reduction in the number of seats we get, but we need to go even further. Numerical strength must no longer apply because for us, back home, that is a threat. When I talk about “home”, I mean our home, not here. It is a threat, and that is why numerical strength must be separated from political strength. That is essential.
There were two components to our motion of March 1. First, there must be no decrease in the number of seats. Second, there must be no loss of political power in the House for the Quebec nation. I say “Quebec nation” because, last June, the House recognized that Quebec was a nation with French as its common language. We must continue in this direction, not just with words, but with actions. This is not a distinct society like in the Meech Lake accord, where we were given something to pacify us that meant nothing. We do not want to go there again. The Quebec nation, which is recognized here, is a tool that will allow us to support concrete actions that prevent Quebec from being treated like a province like any other, and instead ensure that it is treated like a unique nation on our planet. That is what we need to do here.
