Madam Speaker, I think it is important to read the motion so that we understand what we are talking about:
That, in the opinion of the House: (a) any scenario for redrawing the federal electoral map that would result in Quebec losing one or more electoral districts or that would reduce Quebec's political weight in the House of Commons must be rejected;
In the motion, there is an “or”, but based on what we are currently seeing, there is an “and”. Quebec is losing its political representation in the House of Commons but—and this is an historic—Quebec will also lose a seat. That has not happened since 1966.
People think that it is understandable that Quebec's demographic representation would cause such a drop. Basically, Quebec is treated as a province, except that we are not a province. We are a nation, and we must be treated as one.
Our culture is different, our language is different, our way of living and doing things are different, and our economy is structured differently. We are more in favour of fighting climate change. At least, that seems obvious to some in the House of Commons.
When I was young, and I was young once, Félix Leclerc passed away. In 1988, Quebec mourned the passing of its poet. The rest of Canada wondered who Félix Leclerc was.
This goes to show just how far apart we are. We are not better—just different. This difference needs to be felt in the House of Commons while we are still here. The dream of every sovereignist and every Bloc Québécois member is to put ourselves out of a job and go to Quebec City, so that half of the taxes we pay are not defended by 22.5% of the people here, but instead by 100% of the people in Quebec City. That is what we want.
I mentioned Félix Leclerc. People may say that that was to be expected in 1988, but since then there has been a referendum, and Canadians have become a little closer, especially after the love-in with Jean Charest.
Last year we lost Michel Louvain. We made a member’s statement about Michel Louvain. In the House, we could sense that people were wondering, “who's that guy?”, “who is Michael Luvine?” Ask any Quebecker who is la belle inconnue, the beautiful stranger. They will say it is la dame en bleu seule à sa table, the lady in blue alone at her table. This is what Quebec is.
Our colleague, the hon. member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, gave an exceptional 10-minute speech last week precisely to explain what Quebec is. I invite everyone to listen to it again. It was simply magnificent.
Let us come back to the fact that Quebec is a nation. Last year, we adopted a motion recognizing that Quebec forms a nation. We passed it here in the House. What is more, we really pushed the envelope. When I left home, my wife said to me, "they will never do that”. I told her that I was confident that it would work, because we have a good leader. In the end, not only was Quebec recognized as a nation, but French was also recognized as the common language of the Quebec nation.
When people voted in favour of this motion, they probably thought that they were throwing us a bone to placate us. It could be that they are tired of hearing us say that we are different. They may have told us that we were a nation just to humour us, while thinking that it would serve no purpose anyway.
That, however is not true; it does serve a purpose. We have to follow up on words, on a label. It has to be useful. We must be consistent when we solemnly vote in the House on opinions, on ideas.
The time has come for these people to speak out. I am talking, among others, about the 35 Liberal members from Quebec in the House. I cannot conceive that these people could vote against the idea that Quebec deserves, at worst, to maintain its political weight in the House and, at best, to improve its situation. We will watch them carefully. It is time for them to follow through on what they voted on.
Yesterday in the House, we were talking about Ukraine, much to the delight of the member for Winnipeg. I asked the Deputy Prime Minister a question, and she stood up in the House and affirmed that Quebec is a nation. She said that right here in the House as we were discussing international policy. Now is the time to walk the talk.
The calculations indicate that Quebec would lose a member, whereas the House as a whole would gain four. That means multiple setbacks for us, and it is not acceptable. People might say it makes sense because our demographic weight is declining, but Quebec cannot be punished by a statistic like that because, as I said, Quebec is a nation. That is what matters.
People might also say it makes sense because we do not bring in enough immigrants. The Liberal government wants to welcome 430,000 immigrants. It does not take a Ph.D. in math to figure out that, if Canada brings in 430,000 immigrants, Quebec has to get 100,000 of them to maintain its political weight. We like immigrants, or course, but to protect the French fact in Quebec, we have to welcome them and enable them to integrate so they can live their lives fully in Quebec. That means making sure those 100,000 people can truly be part of Quebec society.
Our National Assembly has stated that bringing in more than 50,000 would be a herculean task. All the parties agreed on that. Bringing in 100,000 is just not realistic, and it puts us in an impossible position. If we play the statistics game, open up and bring people in, we will have problems with Quebec's French character, which will suffer. It would enable us to maintain our power in the House, but it would chip away at the French language, which must be protected. Everyone knows that.
We are being forced to choose between the two. We can respect the concerns of the National Assembly and admit that, in order for immigration to be successful, we must welcome people and ensure that they are well integrated. That means that Quebec's political weight would inevitably shrink, as it has been since 1867. Fewer and fewer Quebeckers are rising in the House to speak. Quebec's political weight in Canada as we know it is already quite weak and is diminishing all the time.
We absolutely must stop this erosion. The only way to do so is to eliminate the responsibility of statistics in assessing the political weight of a nation. That is what we must do now. First we must determine how the problem affects Quebeckers, and then we must come up with a remedy like the one being proposed by the member for Drummond. He introduced a bill in the House that would ensure that Quebec's political weight would be maintained over time because Quebec is a nation. In a way, 77% of the Quebec nation is dominated by a nation that is not ours. When we look at the numbers, it becomes clear that the best way to protect the Quebec nation is to make it a sovereign state.
