|
"RECOGNIZING QUEBEC:
AN EXPRESSION OF CANADIAN VALUES"
NOTES FOR AN ADDRESS
BEFORE THE COLLEGE
OF LAW OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN
SASKATOON, SASKATCHEWAN
SEPTEMBER 10, 1997
It is here at the University of Saskatchewan that I gave one of my last lectures
as a political science professor at the Université de Montréal, in late
January 1996. I remember very well a question from my host, the head of your
university's political science department, Professor John Courtney. He asked me
to explain why Quebec produced so many intellectuals who entered active
politics. Since I knew -- although he did not -- that I would be entering the
Cabinet of the Right Honourable Jean Chrétien in a few days' time, I found the
question rather embarrassing.
I replied that Quebec was the only democratic
society in the world to have experienced a 30 year-long existential debate on
its future, and that that type of debate was the perfect breeding ground for
intellectuals in politics.
It is Canadian unity that has projected me into
public life. It is Canadian unity that I will be talking about today.
The Canada we have built together is a wonderful
human achievement. I do not need to convince you of that, you know it. But the
question we must ask ourselves is how we have achieved this. And there again, we
can feel the answer. We know that:
- if the UN human development index ranks us
number one in the world year after year;
- if we come in second out of 18 countries for
our openness to racial diversity and immigration (World Values Survey,
1991); if a quality of life index ranks Vancouver 2nd, Toronto 4th, Montreal
7th and Calgary 12th out of 118 world cities (Corporate Resources Group,
1994);
- if Canada is number five out of 54 countries
-- and number one in the G7 -- for honesty in commercial and governmental
practices (Transparency International, 1996);
- if Canada is in fourth place for public health
and second place for the quality of its medical practices (British Economist
Intelligence Unit, 1997);
- if our labour force appears to be the second
most competitive in the world (International Institute for Management
Development, 1997);
- if the OECD and the World Bank see us as one
of the countries best positioned to enter the next century in good economic
health;
If we have achieved all this -- and many other
things as well -- it is quite simply because we are together. It would not be
possible for ten inward-looking republics north of the United States to offer
their citizens the same quality of life and the same future as the great,
generous federation that brings us together. Canada is a success because we have
worked to draw the best from each culture, each population, each of our
provinces and territories. Because we have learned, perhaps better than any
other people, that equality and unity are not synonymous with uniformity.
Because we know that respect for diversity is what enables human beings to join
forces to achieve what is the most true and the most universal.
I do not know whether Canada is the most
beautiful country in the world. But I do know that it would be difficult indeed
to find a more human, a more welcoming country. Yes, we have our problems, but I
know there are millions of human beings who dream of coming to share our
problems.
And that if we want to continue to make this
country better, to reduce unemployment, poverty and all forms of intolerance
even further, we must stay together.
That if we want to take on the tremendous
challenges of the new century, in this global world where competition will be
fiercer than ever, we must stay together. That in the turbulent global economy,
we need more than ever to have the reduced risks for our businesses and the
greater stability for our currency and greater fluidity of savings that our
union gives us. That the synergy that was created among businesspeople from
throughout the country when Team Canada went to open up new markets in Asia is a
strength that we must extend to all spheres of our social life.
That, again in this new economy, where we need to
combine the strength of larger entities with the flexibility of smaller units,
to unite both national solidarity and regional autonomy, our federal union is
essential to us; we must work together to perfect it even further.
To be sure, I do not always have the same
cultural references as you, who come from Saskatchewan or Western Canada. But I
know that sharing this great federation helps and enriches us all, whether we
are from Saskatchewan, Quebec, Newfoundland or any other part of Canada. Our
mutual assistance and solidarity ultimately make us all better citizens, more
open, more tolerant, and better equipped in life.
There are many reasons for Canada's success. Some
will mention the incredible resources of our vast territory, which we have been
able to benefit from. But I will mention one reason that I feel is fundamental:
the successful cohabitation of people of such different origins, speaking two
different languages. Of course, it has not been easy. Our history contains many
dark pages, whether the padlock laws in my own province, the treatment of
Japanese Canadians during the last world war, or the past resistance to minority
language rights, as Franco-Saskatchewanians can testify.
But while modernization led to assimilation in
Europe and America in the 19th century, this was much less true in Canada. Our
circumstances required us to develop a greater respect for the different origins
of our fellow citizens. Even more remarkable, the French fact in Canada,
especially in Quebec, resisted the almost overwhelming pressure of the English
language in North America and survived and prospered. At Confederation, there
were only one million French-speakers in Canada, whereas there are close to
seven million today. At the time of Confederation, 80 per cent of Quebecers had
French as their first language, whereas 83 per cent do today.
We had to learn to respect ourselves and accept
ourselves. The learning of tolerance prepared us better to welcome those from
every corner of the globe who have become Canadians. It doubtless led us as well
to listen more attentively to our Aboriginal population, the first inhabitants
of this country. Over time, we transcended our differences of language and
origin to develop many values and beliefs that unite us.
That spirit has also led us to create social
programs which are envied worldwide and which show our compassion for the most
disadvantaged. Indeed, your province, Saskatchewan, has been a pioneer in this
area, inventing from scratch a medicare program which went on to inspire the
whole country. And to ensure that this solidarity could be expressed from coast
to coast to coast, we made another innovation in introducing the concept of
equalization payments. This typically Canadian invention, which is now
entrenched in our Constitution, has permitted us to stick together in difficult
times.
All this is part of Canada's international
identity. We have projected our values beyond our borders by behaving as a
generous and tolerant country, as good citizens of the world. We can be proud
that our country invented insulin rather than the atomic bomb. That each time we
have sent our army outside our borders in this century, it was to defend
democracy or to join other countries in peacekeeping missions. In the next
century, when the main challenge of many states will be to have different
populations live together, Canada will more than ever be seen as a model of
tolerance and openness. If we fail to preserve our unity, we will be sending the
wrong signal that even a country as blessed by the gods as ours cannot unite
populations of different languages and backgrounds. The Canadian ideal is a
universal ideal, of which we are the guardians for all the inhabitants of this
planet.
Our official languages give us two large windows
on the world and are more than ever strengths for the future. French and English
are recognized languages of the United Nations. French is the official language
of no fewer than 33 countries, and English of 56. Some 800 million people in the
world speak English and 180 million speak French. In this era of market
globalization, Canada's bilingual character facilitates trade ties with all
those countries, just as our multiculturalism gives us fellow citizens who
understand the culture of countries with which we are trading more and more.
Of course, in everyday life, the cohabitation of
populations of different languages is not always easy. But we are all the
greater for it. Take the word of a Montrealer. French-speaking and
English-speaking Quebecers are perfectly capable of establishing harmonious
relations and they prove it all the time. They effectively resist the calls of
radicals on both sides and will successfully flourish with greater assurance
once the threat of secession is removed.
In short, we owe our success to the fact of being
together. We are not sufficiently aware of that. We Canadians tend too often to
forget what is the basis of our unity and to underestimate the consequences of a
break-up. I regularly meet with people from other countries who know us and who
tell me, in essence, the following:
‘You Canadians have no sense of the tragic. You
have no idea how easy your history has been compared with that of other
countries. And because you have never experienced national tragedy, you think it
cannot happen to you. But you must realize that you are no different from us,
that the security you enjoy is not encoded in your genes, it is based in your
institutions, in your rule of law. If you let your country break up, especially
in confusion and without a specific legal framework, you will feel shock waves
whose magnitude you have no inkling of.'
Indeed, the very purpose of my letters to Mr.
Bouchard and his government was to show how complicated it is to reconcile
secession and democracy, how difficult the break-up of Canada would be. But even
more, we also need to show how sad the break-up of Canada would be. What I have
said since the beginning of this speech on Canada, and what each of us could add
to if we had the time, must be repeated and repeated again. We must defend our
country at the level of ideas and values, by debating the substance of what is
at stake calmly and clearly, with both reason and passion.
When we line up all these reasons for keeping our
country united, we can manage without difficulty to celebrate and recognize
Quebec, the only majority French-speaking society in North America, as a
fundamental characteristic of Canada. And we can manage to say, as the Manitoba
Constitutional Task Force did in 1991:
"It is time to reach out formally to the
people of Quebec and recognize in the Constitution their special identity which
has contributed so significantly to the building of Canada".
Talk Constitution: why not? All democracies make
constitutional changes from time to time. Usually, they do so by proceeding one
step at a time, one issue at a time.
It is obvious that Canada deserves to survive and
can be improved even without constitutional change. It is just as obvious that
Quebec has everything to gain by staying in a united Canada, whether the
Constitution is amended or not. I have reiterated that truth unceasingly in
Quebec.
But at the same time, I believe that a better
affirmed recognition of Quebec in our Constitution would be a good thing in and
of itself, a remarkable expression of Canadian values.
Let's do a little "what if" experiment
together. What if, as the people of Saskatchewan, you were in the situation that
Quebecers are in. What if you lived in the only Anglophone province surrounded
by nine Francophone provinces in Canada, and French were the language of the
United States, the international language of economics, finance, science, the
Internet, movies, the latest pop music, the language immigrants from Asia or
elsewhere lean towards. Would you not then ask your fellow citizens in the other
provinces to recognize the special situation you find yourselves in? You might
not call it "distinct society", but then again you just might.
You know this because you can see what is
happening around the world. You see that, at the end of the century, as
populations mix together, as identities become uncertain, as the number of
languages is decreasing rather than increasing for the first time in the history
of humanity, people are affirming their language, their culture and their
identity.
The vast majority of Quebecers feel Canadian and
want to stay Canadian. But they are also proud to be Quebecers. And I know that
you understand their pride, both because of your respect and affection for
Quebecers and because the Quebec reality is a fundamental characteristic of the
Canada you love.
So say so. Say so with your Premier, Roy Romanow,
who is a strong advocate for Canadian unity. Say so loudly so that your voices
will be heard across the country.
We need to find a way to express the obvious link
between constitutional recognition of Quebec and the great Canadian value of
respect for diversity. We can easily harmonize that recognition with our ideal
of the equality of citizens, which the Canadian Charter legally entrenches. We
can harmonize it with the equality of status of our provinces. Equality of
status must not be confused with uniform treatment. Parents love their children
equally, and give them the same attention, but treat each child according to his
or her individual needs.
In fact, it is this ability to combine equality
and diversity that has so contributed to our country's reputation in the world.
And it is precisely in that perspective that we should recognize the place of
our only majority Francophone province within Canada.
In so doing, we would, for all practical
purposes, merely be formalizing a principle already admitted by our courts, a
principle that leads them to take account of the context of each province in
order to make just decisions, including the specific context of Quebec. It is an
eminent Saskatchewanian, former Supreme Court Chief Justice Brian Dickson, who
said:
"As a practical matter, entrenching formal
recognition of Quebec's distinctive character in the Constitution would not
involve a significant departure from the existing practice in our courts."
Of course, we cannot actually amend our
Constitution to express the character of Canada and the unique place of Quebec
so long as a secessionist government is in office in Quebec. But we can seek the
way to express what we all believe. I hope that when the premiers of the nine
provinces and the territorial leaders meet in Calgary next week, they will start
down that road.
Yes, we are ready to engage in a positive way to
secure the future of Canada. Yes, our Canada will include Quebec, for ourselves
and for future generations. An authentic Quebec that is part of Canada, that is
part of us all.
Check against delivery.
|
