Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the outstanding member for Timmins—James Bay.
I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak to Bill C‑14 in the House today. I take pride in it because of the negotiations that the NDP, my party, conducted with the Liberal minority government. This is one of our very tangible wins, a victory we achieved by negotiating and getting things for people. In this case, it is a net gain for Quebec and Quebeckers.
That is not all we gained from the agreements. I could go on at length about dental care, prescription drug costs and housing, but Quebec was in danger of losing seats because of a mathematical calculation and dropping from 78 to 77 seats.
There was a consensus in Quebec that, at the very least, we had to hang on to all the seats we have, so that is what the NDP got. By applying pressure and negotiating, we protected Quebec's 78 seats for good. I am very happy about that, and it is one of the good things we achieved thanks to this agreement. The NDP achieved a significant victory for Quebec.
Could we do more? Obviously, we can discuss that at some point, but for now we are not losing any seats, and that is thanks to the NDP. I am not sure if everyone is aware, but I wanted to point that out, because the agreement is quite long. It is three pages long, and that was the last item on the third page, so it meant reading the document to the end, and I am not sure everyone did that. Representation in this Parliament is very important to us and to Quebec in general.
Any discussion about democratic rules is an important debate to have. As parliamentarians, as representatives of the people, we must be fully engaged in these discussions, because this has implications for the vitality of our democratic life, the ground rules, and the justice and fairness ensuing from those rules.
In these troubled times, especially in eastern Europe, it is important to remember how vital democracy is. I would like to commend the courage of all the democrats in Russia who dare to protest the war and who oppose President Putin's autocracy.
When establishing the rules of democracy, it is important to remember that these rules must respect what used to be called, at the time, popular sovereignty, that is, the fact that it is the expression of citizens' choice to send people to represent them, with opinions, political agendas and ideologies, and that all these citizens are considered to be equal. That is the fundamental principle of democracy. Unlike an aristocracy, there is no individual who is above any other, who is appointed by God or who has greater powers than others. All citizens are equal, and that is how we start the discussion on democracy.
Are we all as equal as we think under the first past the post system? I will come back to that. There may be an opportunity to have that discussion.
In a federation, there is more than just the rule of the size and weight of the population. We have set other equally important rules. I will name a few of them because it is important to bear them in mind when having these discussions.
Another rule is the senatorial clause, which states that a province cannot have fewer MPs than senators. It could be called the “P.E.I. clause” for those four MPs.
The territorial clause is also quite easy to understand. It ensures that each of the northern territories has an MP, meaning one for Yukon, one for the Northwest Territories, and now one for Nunavut. Although their demographic weight may not justify it under Elections Canada's rules, it is important and essential to keep it that way.
Lastly, the grandfather clause guaranteed that certain provinces were protected and could not have their number of seats reduced. That is where Bill C‑14 makes a difference.
Quebec will be included in this grandfather clause, as will all the other provinces. For now, this protects Quebec, which was the only province at risk of losing a seat under the current redistribution. This measure will serve Quebec in the very short term, but also in future. We are pleased to see that, following the agreement we negotiated, a bill was quickly introduced to uphold this aspect of the agreement.
We have to ask ourselves if we can go further, and I know there have been discussions. Not so long ago, I had the opportunity to deliver a speech on Bill C‑246, which would maintain Quebec's political weight in the House of Commons at a certain percentage.
This is not a new idea; it was included in the Charlottetown accord that Mulroney's federal government negotiated with the Bourassa government in Quebec. The accord was not adopted, however, so it was not implemented, but the idea has been brought up again.
I think there should be some serious discussions on the possibility of another interpretive clause, a Quebec clause. Since Parliament has recognized Quebec as a nation, this clause could be included in order to protect Quebec's democratic weight in the House of Commons.
Furthermore, the House recognized that Quebec is a nation, and the NDP recognized it as well, in its support for the Charlottetown accord at the time, in its Sherbrooke declaration, in its internal documents and, obviously, in its votes in the House. There is this idea of formally recognizing the concept of two founding peoples, which helped create the vision and perception of a bicultural, bilingual federation. That is one of the reasons we still have the Official Languages Act. It is in keeping with that idea.
I must admit that I always feel a little uneasy talking about two founding peoples because this disregards the fact that the first nations and indigenous peoples were already here. Our French and British ancestors were not the first to set foot on this land. There had already been people, nations, communities and cultures here for millennia.
In our discussions of the quality of democratic life and the representation of peoples and nations in the House, I think that we should also take into account the place of the first nations, Inuit and Métis. Other countries do that. I think either Australia or New Zealand does it, probably New Zealand. Perhaps this should be part of our discussion.
Furthermore, in the interest of strengthening our democracy and upholding the equality of our citizens, we should really be discussing proportional representation. Unfortunately, this subject was dismissed by the Liberal government in 2016 when it buried the majority report of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform, of which I was a member. We are one of the few countries in the world without a proportional component to our voting system.
If we had proportional representation, the representation of political movements and parties would be based on a very simple rule: if a party gets 25% of the vote, it should get 25% of the seats. The winner-takes-all nature of the current system creates unacceptable distortions, because a party that wins just 40% of the vote can get 60% or 65% of the seats. That means that the majority who disagreed with the government end up in the opposition, and the government can do pretty much whatever it wants for four years.
We must therefore remember to consider the possibility of proportional voting, as well as the other elements of the agreement that the NDP negotiated to facilitate access to the vote, such as on-campus polling stations, the ability to vote at one of several polling stations on election day, and multi-day voting periods for general elections. These are other measures we should discuss in the future.