Stéphane Dion

[Yves Fortier, February 12th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the member should have listened to the answer before posing his second question. That would have saved my repeating the fact that international law permits the unilateral elimination of traces of colonial relations, but Quebeckers in Canada are not colonized, except in the heads of members of a party which denies the rule of law and democracy for all.

[Yves Fortier, February 12th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, if this is a trick question it is not very difficult.

International law permits the unilateral elimination of any colonial vestige. However, Quebeckers in Canada today are not colonized, except in the heads of a few separatist leaders.

[1982 Constitution Act, February 12th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Fortier was an ardent defender of the Meech Lake accord. His remarks, if they are to be quoted fairly, should be quoted in full.

Mr. Fortier described the 1982 Constitution as “an unfinished work” and he added: “As a jurist, I view 1982 as a turning point in Canada's constitutional history. It marks the patriation of our country's Constitution, the approval of an amending formula and, above all, the entrenchment in our Constitution of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms”.

Whatever one may think of the Constitution Act, it is the law that applies in Canada.

[Jacques Chirac's Statement, February 11th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, here is what the French president said:

France is one country indivisible. It is indeed made up of regions and provinces each different from the other, each with its own population, customs, history and sometimes language. This is especially true of Corsica, whose identity and uniqueness are recognized by all. France is diverse and this constitutes our wealth. But it is a single France, a single national territory, with the same laws and rights throughout.

[Supply, February 10th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I believe I answered the hon. member by quoting the words of his leader, the Premier of Quebec, who recognized the quality, in fact the great quality, of the Canadian justice system, including the supreme court.

Yes, we have a court renowned throughout the world and one of the most often quoted. The opinion it will give will be considered by judicial experts and courts all over the world, because it will carry weight in some other countries, something which will be considered as very important.

I am confident that the justices really want to be honest and competent.

The other thing that should be said is that we are not asking the court whether it is right or wrong to secede. We are not asking the court to declare that Quebeckers should stay in Canada against their will. We are asking the court to tell us whether or not the PQ government, the present Quebec government, has any legitimacy when it argues that it has the right to proclaim itself the government of an independent state based on the results of a consultation of the people it alone established and interpreted.

We should not confuse the issues for political reasons. They are too important for that.

If the court renders a decision favourable to the position of the Government of Canada, everybody will benefit from this information. We are not going to make important decisions without that information.

If you are a union leader and you tell your members that you can launch an illegal strike, you are not acting in a democratic way.

What the Government of Quebec is presently asking its citizens to do is precisely that—

[Supply, February 10th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, we must comply with the provisions of the Quebec referendum act. That is the bottom line. It provides that a referendum is consultation and that, after the consultation, the results are assessed.

The issue is whether the government of all Canadians can fully assess the results. That is the issue. It seems that that is self evident in any democracy in the world. It is a very basic principle of democracy that Quebeckers are also Canadians and that their possible loss of Canada can arise only from a decision that is clearly expressed and recognized as one. It cannot be a decision the provincial government takes because at that point in time it has the option of withdrawing Quebec from Canada according to a procedure it alone has established and interpreted.

I ask the member, who claims he believes in democracy, whether there is one democracy in the world that supported this procedure —I can hardly wait to hear—and whether there are many political parties in democracies that oppose the constitutional state and democracy for all.

[Supply, February 10th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I would ask for unanimous consent to have the amendment ruled admissible anyway.

[Supply, February 10th, 1998]

I therefore ask the unanimous consent of the House to move the following amendment to the amendment:

That the motion be amended by adding the following after the word “future”: “while respecting the rule of law and the principle of democracy for all”.

[Supply, February 10th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, first let me thank the leader of the Bloc for giving me the opportunity to explain once again for the benefit of the Bloc the reasons why the Canadian government asked the supreme court for legal clarifications on a unilateral declaration of independence.

However, let me deplore the totally uncalled for charges both spokespersons of the Bloc made against one of the most respected courts in the world, whose decisions have been quoted by the major judicial authorities in the whole world.

I could give various quotations supporting the competence of the highest court in the land. I will give you only one, and I quote “I have been practising law for 20 years. I can testify that justice in Canada is in good hands and that we have judges who are responsible and aware of their obligations”.

That was said on September 1, 1988, by a former federal minister who is now the Premier of Quebec, that is, the Hon. Lucien Bouchard.

I could add this, and again I am quoting him “As for me, I am for the rule of law in all cases. Rights must be respected. In a society where the rule of law applies, it is totally unthinkable, in particular for a first minister, to consider threatening brutal action against the rule of law”.

That was said on September 21, 1996, by the current Premier of Quebec. I want to do him a favour and prevent him from continuing to claim that he can, in fact, take dramatic action outside the rule of law, for this is indeed the purpose of our reference to the supreme court.

We have never said the issue was to keep Quebeckers in Canada against their will, but the opposite. Our country would not be the same if it were not resting on the voluntary participation of all its constituent parts.

What is at issue is the claim by the current Quebec government that, under the international law—and they must stop telling us that this is not a legal issue, as they are the ones who claim they have a right—they have the right to proclaim themselves the government of an independent state as a result of a referendum process they alone would have defined and interpreted.

We believe there is no such right. When there is disagreement on a legal issue, the thing to do is to go to the highest court or to some court in order to get clarification, which everybody should welcome as a needed clarification in democracy. I say it is undemocratic to refuse to hear a legal clarification and ask people to make a decision without knowing the legal consequences of their decision and the legal context surrounding it.

If we say in Canada that we cannot keep part of our population against its clearly expressed will, it is not because we are bound by some international or Canadian legal requirement—at least that is what we believe and we will see eventually what the court's opinion is on this score—but because that is part of our political culture in Canada, part of our values. We feel that our country would not be the same, as I said earlier, if it did not resting on the voluntary participation of all its constituent parts.

The issue in this debate does not concern peoples' will, but the way peoples' will should be expressed. We think that this procedure should be crystal clear and transparent, and express this will in such a way that it will be obvious to all.

If a community in Canada does not want to be part of Canada any more, which clears the way for separation, a most unfortunate occurrence, this community would not proclaim itself to be a people and bring along other peoples against their will. Because if that were the case, I would ask Bloc members whether this is a purely political issue which has nothing to do with the law. In that case, they would surely agree with this motion: That this House recognize the Cree consensus that it is for the Cree to decide freely their own future. Are the Cree less of a people than Quebeckers?

You can see that they would be the first say: “Oh, no; the Cree do not have this right. We have it, and, on top of that, the right to take the Cree along with us. But no, they do not have this right”. This is a double standard that has no moral basis and, in our opinion, no legal basis. We will see what the court has to say about the legal basis.

The political culture Quebeckers and all Canadians share has been summed up very ably by Ernest Renan, a French philosopher who said that a country is based on the clearly expressed will of a community to live together. We believe that Quebeckers, if the issue is clearly defined, will always say that want to go on sharing this common life inside a great federation they have contributed to, along with all the other Canadians.

What I have just said should have been obvious and readily acknowledged for a long time. On September 26, 1996, in explaining why we were referring this matter to the supreme court, the attorney general of the day, who is now the health minister, said in the House, and I quote:

The leading political figures of all the provinces and indeed the Canadian public have long agreed that this country will not be held together against the will of Quebeckers clearly expressed. And this government agrees with that statement. This position arises partly out of our traditions of tolerance and mutual respect but also because we know instinctively that the quality and the functioning of our democracy requires the broad consent of all Canadians.

He went on to say:

The issue is not whether a democracy such as Canada can keep a population against its will. Of course, it cannot. The issue arises from the false claim by the Government of Quebec that it alone, in a unilateral fashion that changes according to its short term political interests, can decide the process that may lead to secession. Quebeckers as well as their fellow citizens across Canada would be dramatically affected by the break-up of our country. Everyone has the right to be certain that the process is lawful, mutually acceptable and fair to all.

This position, which I just stated, as did my colleague in September 1996, is not new. It was stated by the Prime Minister of Canada a few days before the 1980 referendum, that is on May 14. The Right Honourable Pierre Elliott Trudeau said: “This is what we have to tell the yes side. If you want independence, if you want to vote yes, you will not achieve independence, because you have made it conditional on an association. If you want association, voting yes is meaningless, because it does not bind the other provinces, which may refuse to associate with you. This is the impasse in which this vague and confusing question put us”. These comments were made just before the first referendum, on May 14, 1980.

What did the Prime Minister, who is still our Prime Minister, say during the first referendum? This is what he said in this House on September 19, 1995:

And perhaps I could explain this to the Leader of the Opposition. I would like to quote to him from a document produced by the government of Mr. Lévesque, and of course he knows Mr. Lévesque. In 1977, in a document which appeared under the title: La consultation populaire au Québec , they said: “Referendums would be consultative in nature”. I agree. The document says: “The first imperative of politics in a democracy is a clear majority”. I agree. The document goes on to say: “The consultative nature of referendums”, they should have said referenda, in any case, “means that it would be unnecessary to include in the legislation special provisions on the majority required or the minimum participation rate”.

We could ask the Bloc Quebecois to comply with the Quebec Referendum Act. Again, on September 19, the Prime Minister added:

Mr. Speaker, as everyone knows, I want to make sure that the Canadian constitution is complied with.

On September 20, the Prime Minister said:

Mr. Speaker, I answered all those questions yesterday and the day before. I even quoted from René Lévesque's program, in which he mentioned the concept of a referendum as consultation, the need to respect the laws and constitution of a country and the need for a clear majority.

If we accept that Canada can be broken up, it is not because we are forced into it by law, it is because of a political culture peculiar to us, one which other highly respectable democracies do not share. The Australian constitution states that it is an indissoluble federal Commonwealth. Is Australia a bad democracy? Surely not, but according to the Bloc definition, it would be a pariah among nations.

Article 167 of the Belgian constitution states that “No devolution, no exchange, no adjunction of territory can take place except by virtue of legislation”.

Denmark blocked the separation of the Faeroe Islands after a 50.7% yes referendum. Is Denmark a pariah among democratic nations? No.

In the Czech Republic, “The territory of the Czech Republic forms an indivisible entity, the borders of which may be modified only by constitutional legislation”.

In Finland, another multicultural nation, “The territory of the State of Finland is indivisible”.

I have a long list of democracies which have decided they were indivisible.

In conclusion, let me say that it is absurd to state that the decision can be made by one side alone. The amendment is therefore absurd, because secession must be negotiable. Quebeckers cannot decide the division of the debt on their own.

[Reference To Supreme Court, February 6th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, those who listened to Oral Question Period yesterday would have heard me say twice that the Government of Canada feels it has acted within the principles of international law in the so-called turbot war.

Now, if the Bloc Quebecois wants to go on identifying its plans for secession with the only event in which the Canadian army was forced to fire on another vessel in peace time, that is its own decision, but it does not bode well for its plans.