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"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.

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