Stephen Harper

[Business Of The House, March 1st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the member would have liked to finish her remarks but at this moment she cannot be in the House. She will be returning a bit later.

[National Unity, February 29th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, apparently when the Prime Minister meant that Canadians would be able to express their views, he meant only the 11 first ministers of the country. Nothing has changed.

Yesterday when the hon. member for Beaver River was asking about this, the Deputy Prime Minister responded: "We believe that Canadians do not want more constitutional wrangling". If that is the case, I would like to ask the Prime Minister why did the government propose in the throne speech to constitutionalize the distinct society notion, to change the amending formula of the Constitution? Why is it proposing to reopen the wounds of Meech Lake, Charlottetown and the patriation of 1982?

[National Unity, February 29th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask about another promise which had a shorter shelf life than the one just addressed. That is the promise of a national referendum which seems to have gone out the window already.

The government said in its throne speech: "Canadians, no matter where they live, will have their say in the future of the country".

I ask the Prime Minister: What precisely did he have in mind when the government made that commitment?

[Social Programs, December 13th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Quebec Minister of Finance made an excellent suggestion regarding social programs. She asked that the federal government transfer tax points to the provinces, instead of money, and give them greater autonomy regarding the management of these programs.

The minister would like to change a system whereby Ottawa can withdraw its financial assistance, while continuing to impose federal standards. That proposal is already included in the 20 point decentralization plan of the Reform Party, and several provinces support such changes.

The federal government should contemplate such a reform, instead of wasting its time on symbolic measures such as recognition of the distinct society. The irresponsible refusal of the federal Minister of Finance does not mean that federalism cannot be reformed and that Quebecers must separate. On the contrary, Quebecers have allies all over the country, as regards this issue. It is the Liberals that cannot be reformed.

[Constitutional Amendments Act, December 11th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, at report stage of Bill C-110, I will discuss briefly some of the amendments which have been put forth, including the one in my name. As well I have some general comments about the committee and report stage.

The amendment I have moved today seeks to replace the words "by a majority of the provinces" on line 13 with the words "by two-thirds of the provinces". I suggest this to the government really as a matter of drafting. On looking at the the bill one will see that the bill as it is drafted, particularly with the amendment the government is proposing, is a bit odd.

The bill says that the government will consult and get the consent of a majority of the provinces. Then it lists a formula with the amendment to include British Columbia that would include no fewer than two-thirds of the provinces in any case. The government's own formula would require at least seven provinces to get consent. In any case, the sections of the Constitution Act which the bill refers to require at least two-thirds of the provinces. They require either two-thirds or in some cases unanimity.

It seems to me the term "by a majority of the provinces" is absolutely meaningless and actually is a bit misleading. It illustrates one of the problems with the bill. If I have the time I will get to that later. There are several instances where it is clear that the drafting of the bill leaves a number of considerations fairly undefined or wide open.

The second amendment I will also speak to is the one moved by the government itself. This is the amendment to constitute British Columbia as a fifth region. I have said myself in committee and before that five regions are better than four but as I said at second reading, that does not render this bill acceptable. The bill remains fundamentally flawed. It does not give the power of consent to the Canadian people in a national referendum. That is what we have been seeking.

As I said at second reading and in committee, no matter what the regional formula is, as long as it is the provinces in the sense of provincial governments or premiers or legislatures that are being consulted, the fundamental flaw remains that there already exists a formula to do precisely that. The formula in most cases is seven provincial legislatures representing 50 per cent of the population. In that sense we have made the case, which I believe the Alberta government will pursue in court, that there are some fairly serious legal problems with delegating this power to the provinces for a second time.

One that I raised in committee to give an example of what I mean is that the provinces now required under the government's own formula would be provinces representing at least 90 per cent of the Canadian population. Clearly in the Constitution Act 1982 that is not the formula the provinces agreed to. They agreed to a formula that would require provinces representing 50 per cent of the Canadian population.

The government obviously has tried to argue this differently but it is fairly transparent that this does change the intention of the Constitution Act where provincial governments are involved. That is why we oppose it. Although the Motion No. 2 by the government is in and of itself an improvement to the bill, it is an improvement that is not adequate.

I also note that in committee the Reform Party did table its fundamental amendment which is that this consultation would have to occur in all the provinces through a national referendum. I would point out that amendment was rejected by the Liberal government and also by the Bloc Quebecois. I am somewhat perplexed by why the Bloc Quebecois would oppose it. It is the position of the Bloc Quebecois that the people of Quebec should be consulted on their constitutional future. I do not know why they would object to the Parliament of Canada consulting Canadians on a constitutional amendment.

I should also say that we submitted a second amendment in committee regarding protection for the amending formula where it concerns aboriginal peoples. We had taken some advice from a number of the aboriginal leaders who came before the committee. That amendment was also rejected by the committee. My colleague from Crowfoot may discuss some of the implications of that a little later today.

It is fairly apparent that this bill is being rushed through the House. We have the bizarre coincidence of a government which is trying to rush passage of a piece of legislation at almost lightning speed, while at the same time it is proposing major amendments to it. This is the first time I can recall this kind of situation occurring.

I do want to comment on the rush which occurred in committee. The committee insisted on hearing all witnesses within a 48-hour period with no more than 24 hours notice to those witnesses. The names of witnesses who had been submitted included constitutional experts, whom we heard two or three of, aboriginal leaders, members of provincial governments, representatives of intergovernmental affairs departments and in some cases premiers.

We received replies. I am not aware of how, but I know the committee contacted all governments. I am not aware of how specifically they replied, but I will mention that the Government of British Columbia did wish to appear. Mr. Petter wished to address the committee on behalf of the Government of British Columbia. When it became technically not possible for him to do that on the given day because of problems we had with the satellite communication, he was promptly dropped from the list. I would suggest that if we had heard Mr. Petter's testimony, the government could well have known that its concession of a fifth region would not

have been enough to satisfy the Government of British Columbia, but we missed that opportunity.

Also, without quoting the letter, I should add that Mr. Shillington of the Government of Saskatchewan wrote to me to indicate that he had wanted to appear before the committee but simply was unable to in the time constraints that were placed on him. I know that is also true for Mr. Mel Smith who contacted me earlier this week. He is a constitutional expert and former provincial secretary of British Columbia. He had indicated he would like to testify but there was no opportunity.

This is not an extended witness list I am talking about. These are people who either are experts in the field or in the case of governments are affected parties of the legislation itself. They wanted to testify and were refused simply because of the artificial deadline created by the government and by the committee for hearing witnesses. It was a very short deadline with very little time to hear witnesses and very little time to actually notify potential witnesses of the possibility of appearing before the committee.

In the time that remains I want to point out some of the lack of clarity that was in the bill and which was revealed to us in committee. These are things I notice the government has not submitted clarifying amendments on.

First of all, the bill says that no minister of the crown shall propose a motion for a resolution to authorize an amendment to the Constitution of Canada, et cetera, other than through the process of first submitting it to the provinces where there is a five region veto formula.

The term "no minister" is significantly important. This does not exclude the government from sponsoring, backing or putting its weight behind legislation tabled by a government backbencher or even by a parliamentary secretary. In that sense, it is unclear exactly whether the government itself does intend to follow this legislation.

The government assures us it is extremely unlikely that something like that would happen, but my experience has been that when a scenario is allowed and then we are told it is unlikely, it probably means it is likely. That seems to be the way things operate around here.

This second point was the subject of some debate in committee. The bill makes reference to an amendment first having been consented to by the provinces. It was unclear and the government itself was unclear in its intention of whether provinces meant strictly speaking provincial governments, which is what we would have anticipated and what the answers of the Prime Minister in question period seem to have implied, or whether it could actually mean in a sense the people of a province, which is a very different notion.

Neither the minister nor his deputy appeared to rule out legally the meaning of consulting the people, although they did say that it was not a likely occurrence in their view. In fact the Minister of Justice said that it was highly unlikely they would use that interpretation. Furthermore, his deputy minister said that particular interpretation could also be challenged in court. She was not clear how the courts would rule if that meaning of provinces, provinces meaning provincial population, was used by the government. She was not sure whether the courts would allow that interpretation or not. This is very contentious.

It is very unclear in a number of ways what the government is trying to achieve and why we all know it is trying in effect to give a veto to the Government of Quebec over constitutional change and in particular to the future premier. It believes it has a way to trap him in some future scheme.

Unfortunately, as I say, even with the amendments the bill is ill considered. Ultimately the government will end up trapping itself and the people of Canada in what is, if not unconstitutional, a very unwise piece of legislation.

[Constitutional Amendments Act, December 11th, 1995]

moved:

Motion No. 1

That Bill C-110, in Clause 1, be amended by replacing line 13, on page 1, with the following:

"to by at least two-thirds of the provinces that include".

[Quebec, December 11th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the minister should know that nobody thinks the Government of Canada is going to hold a referendum on this topic. It may be the Government of Quebec that will decide to hold a referendum on this topic.

Would the government also consider a less draconian alternative which, if the government is not prepared to live with the question or with the result, would be for the federal government to simply not formally participate in a future referendum held on an unfair question?

[Quebec, December 11th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister said today that he would consider disallowing a future Quebec referendum if the question was not honest. I quote: "I say that we have powers and we have to use the powers to make sure that the question would be fair to Quebecers and would be fair to the rest of the country". He also said: "The Constitution has a lot of powers to act under peace, order and good government".

I will put my question to the Minister of Justice. Is it the government's position that it could legally forbid the next referendum if it viewed the question as being dishonest? Is the government actively considering that as a policy option?

[Quebec's Right To Self-Determination, December 11th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the Reform Party to speak against this motion on Quebec's right to self-determination. I want to thank the hon. member for Hochelaga-Maisonneuve for presenting this motion and thus recognizing the right of this federal Parliament to debate and judge this question.

In speaking against this, it is the position of the Reform Party that Quebec has no inherent right under international law to self-determination because it is neither a colony nor an occupied country, and that the Quebecois are probably not a people within the meaning of international law. For this I cite almost exclusively the work of the Bélanger-Campeau commission on the sovereignty of Quebec. The strongest argument in support of the view that Quebec is neither a colony nor an occupied country is found at pages 382 to 383 of its report:

"According to those who support Quebec's accession to sovereignty, the right to self-determination constitutes the basis of the alleged right of the Quebec people to form a distinct state, but pursuing the same reasoning, many of their opponents and the spokespersons for most aboriginal peoples take the position that:

If Quebec can opt out of Canada then obviously sections of Quebec that preferred to remain part of Canada could opt out of Quebec.

This analysis is based on a postulate we believe to be erroneous, according to which the right to self-determination implies the right to independence".

The report then suggests on pages 419 to 422 that the principle of self-determination implies the right of people to participate in shaping their political, economic, social and cultural future, and that due to the principles of respecting the territorial integrity of states, self-determination could result in independence only in the rarest circumstances.

The report suggests the principle really only applies to non-autonomous or colonized people who have been recognized as such by the United Nations. This is clearly not the case in Quebec.

And this quote again from page 422: "On the evidence, that is not the situation of Quebecers nor that of the various minorities within Quebec's territory".

For non-colonial peoples, self-determination has "at least for now stopped being a principle of exclusion and became one of inclusion; the right to participate. The right now entitles peoples in all states to free, fair and and open participation in the democratic process of governance freely chosen by each state". The report goes on at page 425 to endorse this position.

Another quote: "One cannot reasonably maintain that Quebecers are colonial people nor that they are deprived of the right to their own existence within the Canadian federation or exercise their democratic rights. Consequently, the Quebec people have no legal basis for invoking the right to self-determination to justify a future accession to independence".

The conclusion of the report is clearly stated:

"From the legal point of view, a possible accession to sovereignty by Quebec cannot be based on the principle of the equal rights of peoples and their right to self-determination, which implies the right to independence only in the case of colonial peoples or of those whose territory is occupied by a foreign power".

The second point is that the Quebecois are not a people within the meaning of international law. Even the Bélanger-Campeau commission is not sure whether the Quebecois constitute a people.

At page 418 the commission recognizes that the Quebecois can either be French speaking or English speaking. At page 425 the commission states:

"Some authors have tried, with some success, to establish the existence of a Quebec or, alternatively, French Canadian people".

Although the commission is not explicit, undoubtedly its members were aware that for the purposes of international law, a nation is defined in Black's Law Dictionary as follows:

A people, or aggregation of men, existing the form of an organized jural society, usually inhabiting a distinct portion of the earth, speaking the same language, using the same customs, possessing historic continuity, and distinguished from

other like groups by their racial origin and characteristics, and generally, but not necessarily, living under the same government and sovereignty.

Obviously given the ethnic and sociocultural make-up of modern Quebec society, only the pûre laine Quebecois could arguably be considered a people. While they constitute a majority of the Quebec population, they do not constitute a majority in each region of Quebec. This produces a curious result, that if the Quebecois pûre laine are a people and if they have a right to secede, they could not claim the right to territorial integrity. Therefore Quebec separatists cannot have this both ways.

If the strict definition of the word people is applied, only the aboriginal people in the north would likely qualify. This is clearly not in the interest of sovereignists and quite probably the reason why the Bélanger-Campeau commission did not explore the point further.

While Quebec does not have the right to self-determination, this does not mean that whatever Quebecers decide in a referendum is unimportant from a democratic standpoint. We in the Reform Party have said it is very important. However, the Government of Quebec would also have to admit to the importance of a large number of Quebecers opting for federalism. So far it continues to be a majority. Even if a minority opted for Canada this would also constitute an important democratic fact which the Government of Quebec would have to take into account.

From the standpoint of the Reform Party and I believe from the standpoint of the majority of Parliament, the motion is not based on international law or fact. Quebec does not have the right of self-determination other than by negotiating its future in Canada and with the rest of Canada.

[The Constitution, December 8th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, this is an incredible exercise in the power of listening. I will say once again that what the Reform Party and the leader of the Reform Party said was that the government should consult the people of all the regions of Canada, not the legislatures and the premiers.

The government has come up with a new definition of unity: We are going to unite Canadians by getting them all against something at the same time. The bill has been rejected by the Government of Quebec and in polls of the people. It has been rejected by the Government of British Columbia, even with the change, and by the Government of Alberta. It has created a firestorm across the west. Aboriginal representatives say they were not consulted. The Government of Saskatchewan said it was not consulted.

Who exactly is it that the government believes it is pleasing with this legislation?