Translated Transcript of a Speech by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien
Biennial Meeting of the Liberal Party of Canada (Québec)

Madame President, ladies and gentlemen, ministers, Members of Parliament, senators, members of the executive, dear Liberal friends. First of all, I would like to sincerely congratulate Ms. Françoise Patry for being reelected to the presidency of the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party of Canada. (Applause) She has done a fantastic job and I'm sure she will continue to do so, throughout her second mandate, and I have to say that I hope she'll even have a third mandate.

But what is most important is the success she has had with this convention. We have had 1100 registered delegates, 40% of them were youth. When I see the kind of progress we've made since 1990, I must say that I am moved to see that our party is doing so well and I want to thank all the party activists for their work.

I also want to thank the ministers, Members of Parliament and volunteers who, under the direction of Alfonso Gagliano, toured all across Quebec and have had considerable success. The presence of the Liberal Party has been very well looked upon throughout Quebec. And how many times party members, ministers and MPs have told me how well we're received there and the people want us to come back. And I think that is extremely encouraging. And I know that Ms. Patry earlier was saying that we're very, very proud, very proud of what we are. We are Quebecois.

Some of us are not francophone but we are all Quebecers, we're all very proud to be from that province. That is my view, we're all the people from the same province but we are all Canadian too as you said madame Patry. (Applause)

I know that you've worked hard. You passed a number of resolutions that will certainly serve the party well. We will be giving them very serious consideration, and those resolutions will also be debated at the March convention when Liberals all across Canada will come together to prepare the next election platform. Because one day, we will be facing an election.

We have been in government for more than six years, and we have already gone through more than of our second mandate. We were elected two and a half years ago for the second time. So there will be an election soon and we need a good platform.

And, as you know, we have had a great deal of success with our election platforms. We worked hard on Red Book one and Red Book two. They were extremely useful to the government, and we have to continue that effort. And, as leader of the party, it is my duty to ensure that we are prepared, because one never knows what can happen so I've asked my good friend John Rae to direct the election readiness committee. And we will be finding people to write the platform.

Mr. Martin was there with Chaviva Hosek the first time. Then it was Ms. Robillard that got involved and worked on (Red Book 2) with the support of everyone. So this is something that has to be built by the entire party. So, I say to you, members of the Liberal party and members of the Quebec wing, that you have done your work very, very well, and I am very, very pleased and proud of you. (Applause)

But, before I talk about a topic that is certainly attracting a lot of attention, the Supreme Court decision and the referendum, perhaps I should take a few minutes to talk about the role of the Prime Minister, and the cabinet in a responsible government.

We have been in government for more than six years. We were extremely pleased when we received the mandate from the Canadian people in 1993 to form a government. But, with government comes a certain number of responsibilities, and I'd like to talk about a couple of the experiences we've had together.

For instance, December 1993, when our good friend Paul Martin came to see me and the deficit was set at $31 billion and suddenly had gone up to between $42 and $44 billion dollars, where we were being told by foreign financiers that Canada was on the brink of bankruptcy. Some even said we were going to become a Third World country.

Now, I don't know whether Paul was really happy to accept my offer to become Minister of Finance at the time and, when he said to me, ‘We have a governor of the Bank [of Canada] who has a great deal of prestige, his mandate is coming to an end. He and I talked about replacing him because at that time we had an interest rate in Canada that was higher than 11%, unemployment was at 11.4%, business people and the market loved Mr. Crow and we decided to replace him. Neither Paul nor myself slept that night. And then we got down to work.

We had $121 billion dollars in expenditures every year in 1993-94. So we started to tackle that problem and we reduced the spending to 101 billion dollars. We had to let go 65,000 public servants, and as I said yesterday, Marcel Massé really helped us to do that work, and we did it. And that's why the Minister of Finance for Canada has an international reputation. He's been asked to Chair the Group of Twenty to build a new world global system, with respect to capital flows. We had begun that work, Paul and I, back at the G-7 Summit in Halifax. And I think publicly I have to thank him. But I think all Canadians have to thank him for the extraordinary work he has accomplished. (Applause)

Then came 1995. Another crisis. We had asked the fishermen in Newfoundland to stop fishing cod off the shores of Newfoundland, and to stop fishing other species as well, because we felt the fish was disappearing. But the Spaniards and the Portuguese would come to our coast, they would come to the continental shelf because it is beyond the 200-mile limit. And, as you recall, we had to stop a boat, we stopped a Spanish boat.

Our friend Mr. Tobin, and our friend Mr. Ouellet worked on that file. And, I remember that on Good Friday, I came back from travelling with Aline, and Aline said to me in the evening, ‘Well, we're going to rest for the weekend,' and I said ‘Well, you know, I have to declare war on the Spaniards tomorrow,' so she didn't get any sleep that night. (Laughter) In fact, the following morning, on that Saturday morning in ‘95, we gave an order to the Canadian army to send the boats out to remove the Spanish fishermen who refused to comply with conservation rules and now international law has been changed as a result of that initiative. (Applause)

Ten years ago, at École Polytechnique in Montreal, there was a terrible massacre, and after that senseless act, we decided to bring forward gun control legislation. Mr. Rock went all across Canada. It was very difficult, extremely difficult, but today perhaps those people who lost their lives at Polytechnique did not lose them in vain.

In Canada now, we have five times fewer murders per capita than in the United States. And it wasn't easy to tackle that problem, because firearms for many people are extremely important. But we succeeded. We could have decided to do nothing, that's always easier. But we didn't. (Applause)

And, another file that we opened in ‘94, at the time of the Naples Summit, was the antipersonnel mine file. When I talked about it the first time, it certainly wasn't very popular. Today, we have the Ottawa Treaty in place, which was signed by 140 different countries, and today, because of our actions, in many countries of the world, antipersonnel mines are being removed. There are 140 countries who have decided never again to use land mines, which means that there will be young people, young boys, young girls, young women and men who will not lose a leg or an arm or their life because in the course of a conflict these were put in the ground and are still there twenty or thirty years later. And for that, we must congratulate our Minister of Foreign Affairs, and he was congratulated by people around the world.

That is responsible government. And then there was the referendum in 1995, which was something we all lived through. And I think it was on the Sunday before the referendum - I see Ms. Robillard looking at me, she represented us - I had come back from New York. I was there on business because I was told not to be too, too present during the referendum. So I came, and we said, well, we did some things, we did speeches, we spoke to the nation, we organized the big rally in Montreal on the Friday, the rally in Hull on the Sunday, and we said that we would vote on a resolution with respect to the distinct society, and we did so.

And the Bloc Québécois voted against that resolution. (Applause)

We said that we were going to give a legislative veto to Quebec because a constitutional veto means you have to change the Constitution, which seems to be impossible. There was a veto for Quebec, Ontario, and eventually British Columbia. So we would not have been able to change the Constitution without changing the legislation and taking the veto away from everyone. And once again, the Parti Québécois voted against it.

Then the third promise was that they said that the best thing that could happen to Quebecers would be if we transferred control for manpower, for labour, that if we gave them that responsibility, Quebec was suddenly going to become something extraordinary. I prefer not to talk about that because it's so sad what actually occurred in that regard. (Applause)

But we have assumed our responsibilities, and, throughout all those years and all those different files and many others, we worked as a team. And it's with great pleasure that I worked with my ministers, that I supported them, that I defended them, that the members and the ministers supported defended each other at difficult times. And we got through it. And I'm very, very proud of my team. I think that we have an extraordinary team.

And now, let's talk about the Supreme Court and the referendum. Why talk about it now? Well, I don't talk about it very often. But I do know that every week if not every day in the newspapers, they talk about winning conditions. The PQ is working towards its winning conditions. How many times have you read that in a newspaper in the last 12 months?

Every month Monsieur Bouchard repeats that he will hold a referendum. I just want to remind you of the Mont Tremblant incident: when the former premier of Ontario, Bob Rae, and Mr. Henning Voscherau, former mayor of Hamburg in Germany, organized, with the help of Mr. Dion and many others, a conference on federalism where President Clinton - the president of the largest federation in the world - perhaps for the first time in the 7 years that he's held that office, agreed to go and make an academic speech. And the president of another large federation, President Zedillo from Mexico came and honoured us with his presence and made a speech on the federal system.

We had some 500 delegates from India, a country that's having great problems with dozens, dozens of languages and religions and dialects and that's trying to work with the federal system and wanted to learn from others to improve its situation. There were delegates from Bosnia who are trying to put in place a government with Muslims, with Croatians and Serbians, and who are wondering how to go about this, to deal with minority problems effectively. There were delegates from Sri Lanka, where people are dying every day because they cannot find a form of government that allows them to deal effectively with minority problems. We could talk about Brazil, we could talk about Belgium, that's having problems, and Switzerland, that has helped us in that area. And what did they do? They tried to hijack that conference.

Do you think that's acceptable? Am I supposed to just shut up? Am I supposed to not say anything? The following week, Mr. Facal called the National Post - that wasn't improvised. He called a reporter from the National Post to say he wasn't going to respect the decision of the Supreme Court. He could have spoken to Le Devoir to please his friends. No, he says I am being provocative, but he called the National Post, so that everyone in English Canada would be aware of it, everyone would know that he did not intend to abide by the Supreme Court ruling.

Then, there was Ms. Beaudoin. Ms. Beaudoin (Laughter) who goes all around the world denigrating Canada. I can't wait to here her try to tell the Americans that we're not democratic here in Canada. There are some people who tried secession in the United States, and you know what happened. She will try to tell the French that we are not democratic in Canada. She would have to explain that to the Basques, to the people of Corsica, that France is wrong to prohibit partition in its constitution.

There are many other priorities in Canada. And ten days ago, Mr. Bouchard was promising another referendum, you heard it yourself, and once again, am I just supposed to ignore this. Two weeks ago, that is what happened, and I must say I really don't have much of a choice. This week, Mr. Bouchard declared that he would make a unilateral declaration of independence if he didn't get what he wanted, if things didn't go as he wanted, and when he was told, well yes, but if you go ahead with a unilateral declaration of independence, how are you going to achieve a partnership with the rest of Canada? And of course, there he had to say that it would be a unilateral declaration of partnership. (Laughter and Applause)

We're going to talk about democracy. We had two referendums with "clear" questions. And they never accepted results of the popular vote, and we're supposed to sit back and wait and do nothing? And then two weeks before the referendum, say what we think? Well my friends, that would be irresponsible.

I just talked about the responsibility that governments have. (Applause) The Supreme Court in its ruling said the political actors have to assume their responsibilities. Twenty-five times in the Supreme Court ruling, the word clarity is used. Twenty-five times. And I saw a professors saying that clarity just meant that everyone voted in an orderly process, that's what they were trying to say. And we talk about clarity, and I hear Mr. Bernard who is a big government advisor, and he was saying to in La Presse two days ago, that in Newfoundland there had been two referenda and the first one was 48% and the second one was 42%. This is one of the most able advisor to any premier and he didn't even know that, yes, there were two referendums. The first one had three questions: ‘Do you want to remain a colony of Great Britain, do you want to have an independent country or do you want to become a province of Canada?' And 86% decided to separate from Great Britain.

And then, on the two other questions to become an independent country or a province of Canada, it was divided, 44-42. It was split. And there they had to have another referendum to decide what they were going to do. There they were, out in the middle of the ocean, (Laughter) so they decided to become a province of Canada.

That is not what you're being told, when they refer to clarity. So, if we're talking about clarity, let's talk about clarity. Let me give you an example. This is how the PQ works. In February ‘95, Mr. Bouchard said, and I quote: "We need to be clear and direct. Yes, we want to separate from the rest of Canada." Listen to this: "Yes, we want to separate from the rest of Canada, we want to have our own independent country." That's clear, that was in February of ‘95.

Now I want to read the question on which you voted in October or November ‘95. Listen carefully, to how clear the question is: "Do you agree that Quebec should become sovereign, after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new Economic and Political Partnership, within the scope of the Bill respecting the future of Quebec and of the agreement signed on June 12, 1995?." Can you repeat that now? (Applause)

Now, let's talk about a clear majority. We are going to break up a country with a majority vote after a judicial recount. Yvon Deschamps said: ‘He's no better than dead the guy who votes to break up the country, and in that case he or she is no better than dead.' Just look at the examples around us. Even in the National Assembly itself, for the ombudsman, the auditor general, and the director of elections, you need a two thirds majority. Two thirds of the members of the National Assembly have to vote in favour, not 50%+1, two thirds. What about the CSN? A large democratic institution, that gave us this wonderful Mr. Duceppe. (Applause and Laughter) Well, to expel a union, as I said in the House this week, you need a two thirds majority.

Let's take the case of our good friend Joe Clark, who is in favour of 50%+1. Except that he got 66% of the votes at the party convention, and he didn't have a clear enough mandate to remain leader. (Applause.) And, a little later, in November ‘96, Mr. Bouchard himself got 76% of the votes, and he asked to have a few hours to reflect to see if he had a clear enough mandate to remain leader of the Parti Québécois. (Applause.)

And in Mont Tremblant, Ms. Harel said 92% wasn't clear enough. I must confess that I had two reviews of my leadership, and I think I went down from 93% to 91%, and it seemed pretty clear. (Laughter and Applause)

And more seriously now, the 60% of the NO vote in 1980, that wasn't clear enough to stop talking about separation.

I'm telling you I have a duty and I want to know where Canadians stand when it's the time to fight for the country. Where is Mr. Manning, the leader of the disunited alternative (Laughter) who was giving me hell because I was not tough enough. Now he thinks that I'm too tough because I want a clear question.

For Joe Clark after what I said of him, where does he stand on that? He hasn't said one word since Tuesday when I indicated that we were to act, not one word, very courageous. The same thing for Madame McDonough. You know, it's where we stand. And we have to face our responsibilities. What is so extraordinary that as the Prime Minister of the country I will say that I will demand that the Supreme Court decision will be respected entirely. (Applause)

The National Assembly will put the question. We will not put the question for the National Assembly. It is the National Assembly that will put the question. I don't intend to dictate it to them. But we have a responsibility. We are the ones who will decide if there are going to be negotiations. And in order for there to be negotiations with Canada, we have to make that decision. And we won't say after the referendum what the conditions are, we are going to tell them that a long time in advance, a long time before that referendum. (Applause.)

I am the leader of this party, and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you, the delegates to this party convention, have done for the party. With all the pressure you are under, from all sides, and the kind of fears that people have tried to create among Quebecers. You stood up to it, and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart.

It's true that as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, perhaps that the best thing I could do would be to do nothing. Perhaps that is true, perhaps. I am a politician, I like to win elections, and as leader of the party, perhaps it would have been better for me not to get involved, or to say nothing. But as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, I am also the Prime Minister of Canada, and as the Prime Minister, I have no choice, I have to do my duty, I have to assume my responsibilities.

Yes as the leader of the Liberal Party the best thing perhaps I could do is to do nothing, it's easy to do nothing, it's very easy. You are not spending months and nights thinking about it, you just relax, enjoy yourself. But when you're faced with a problem like that it's not easy. But I'm telling you that I am the Prime Minister of Canada, I am responsible to make sure that the Canadian Constitution will be respected, I am responsible and my government is responsible for peace, order and good government in this land of ours. (Applause)

But, my dear friends, this has been going on for 35 years now. Are you not fed up with hearing about this? (Yes!) Aren't you sick and tired of hearing about the constitution and referendums and separation? (Yes!) Aren't you absolutely fed up to the teeth with this whole debate? (Yes!)

Well, let me tell you something. You've been hearing about this for 35 years, and I've been talking about it for 35 years. (Laughter) Not only have I heard other people talking about it, I've had to talk about it myself. You don't think I'd like to stop after 35 years?

So, Mr. Bouchard, maybe you're listening to me (Laughter and Applause) Why you and I could we not make a good gesture, why don't we give the best possible gift to Quebecers for the millennium, the best possible gift to all Canadians. When 72% of Quebecers don't want a referendum, why not say you won't hold a referendum throughout your mandate. And I am promising that I will make the same gesture. I won't talk about the constitution, I won't talk about referendums, I won't talk about the clarity of questions or the Supreme Court, and we'll stop talking about all this. (Laughter and Applause.)

We could all move into the new millennium together, on the right foot, and we could continue to talk about the real problems.

We could continue to talk about what we put in our Throne Speech, our struggle against child poverty, in which we have invested $1.7 billion so far and on which we are working with the provinces. Because, for me, it is as important a programme for the youth of today, giving them a good start in life, as were programs like health insurance or old age pensions during the time of Trudeau, Pearson and St. Laurent. We can work together to prepare the future for our young people, by allowing them to study, to pursue their education, and to continue to be among the best prepared students in the world. (Applause)

We could continue to work to keep our best minds and talent here in Canada by putting money into research and development. We could continue to work with the Innovation Foundation to help people to make progress so that we are in the vanguard. And continue with the C hairs of Excellence that we are proposing in the universities here in Canada, to be able to keep the best talent here and attract the best new talents to Canada. We could continue to be the best connected country in the world, and again be in the vanguard in terms of technology compared to other countries.

Those are the real problems of today. We could continue to work because of the actions taken by this government, thanks to those actions we have a surplus now and, between now and February, our friend Paul will have a budget in which we will be continuing to lower taxes, those are the real problems, those things. (Applause)

I could go on and on and on but I won't. I have to tell you ladies and gentlemen that when you spend 36 years of your life believing in one thing, that Canada is the best country in the world, you don't let go of that country. (Applause) And as I said, yes, Canada is my business and it will be my business.

Because I go all over the world with my colleagues, and as you well know, there are young Americans who go around the world and put on their backpacks the Canadian flag because they're better received. If you go anywhere in the world, if you say you are Canadian, people welcome you with open arms.

When I was in Nigeria a few weeks ago, and the president of Nigeria who had been put in prison during the regime of terror, and had been whipped in the prison, and said to the reporters, after telling me privately, ‘You Canadians saved my life, and you saved our country.' And I was proud, I was proud to be a Canadian. (Applause.)

When I know that the problems across the world today, are problems with tolerance, generosity and sharing, that the challenge for the world is to determine how we can live together in this global village and maintain our own identities. If you go anywhere in the world, there is always a minority living with a majority, and as President Clinton said, if we had one country per language, how many countries would there be in India alone, in Indonesia, in New Guinea? And if we did the same thing for religions and for colours.

But here in Canada, we've succeeded in doing that. The first citizens, the aboriginal people, we respect them. And that has been one of our most difficult tasks, but I have some of my best memories from the time that I was Minister of Indian Affairs. (Applause)

And then the French came, then the English came, then people came from every country in the world to settle here. And, you remember the convention we had a few years ago, how proud I was to say that 40 of my MPs were from outside of Canada. They were of different colours, they spoke different languages, of different genders, but they are part of our society.

How proud Canadians were, only two months ago, when a political refugee of Chinese origin became the Governor General of Canada. (Applause.) Well dear friends, that is Canada . And that is what Canada will remain in the 21st century.

Long live Canada. Thank you very much!