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After the Quebec Referendum: Consequences of the NO
majority
by Dr. Ted McWhinney, MP (Vancouver-Quadra)
The Quebec referendum has ended in a victory for the NO side, but by a hairline
majority only. Prime Minister Chrétien's personal intervention in the last days of the
campaign probably provided the margin of victory.
The only clear conclusion from the overall Referendum vote is the desire of Quebec
voters for change. Professional analysis of the YES vote indicates that up to a third of
the YES supporters were not voters for Quebec's separation from Canada but simply wanted
to send a strong message to Ottawa for increased constitutional powers for Quebec. If that
means a special constitution al status for Quebec - special legal powers and privileges
not available to the other provinces - then the lesson of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown
Accord political failures is that it could not gain the support of those other provinces
necessary under the Constitution in order to take effect legally as a Constitutional
Amendment.
The approach to constitutional change after the Quebec Referendum must be comprehensive
and inclusive and pan-Canadian, with proposals for change that are reasonable in relation
to all of the other provinces and regions and that are open to all of them and not just to
any one. The Prime Minister, in the last days of the Referendum Campaign, and in response
to arguments from the YES side, undertook that no future constitutional changes affecting
the powers of the Quebec legislature would be made without the Quebec government's
consent. But that is already part of our federal Constitution as a result of the 1982
(Constitutional Patriation) Constitutional Amendments, and it applies equally on behalf of
all of the Provinces and not merely Quebec.
The Prime Minister, also, in the last days of the Referendum campaign, accepted that
Quebec is a distinct society. That could be enacted by ordinary federal legislation
without any need for Provincial consent, but it would have no Constitutional effect , as
such. To entrench it in the Constitution would require the assent of the Provincial
Legislatures - at least seven out of ten Provinces, and all ten Provinces if it were to
touch fundamental sections of the Constitution. That sort of Constitutional change would
be politically very, very difficult to achieve.
There remain areas in which the federal government can take its own bold initiatives,
wholly within the range of federal Constitutional powers. Matters involving the reform and
modernizing of Parliament, and the relations between Cabinet and Parliament, and
Parliamentary control over the bureaucracy, fall within this. In federal-Provincial
relations, the process of delegation and devolution, begun under the Trudeau government
with the Cullen-Couture Agreement between Ottawa and Quebec over immigration (an
administrative power-sharing arrangement open, by the way, to all Provinces) ,can and will
be extended to many other fields. But a central problem of our federal system, is the
static federal-Provincial divide of power, without constitutional regard for the new rôle
of the cities and local government authorities as the prime location of most of the great
social problems of our times. A new approach in terms of co-operative decision-making and
power-sharing between the three levels of government - federal, provincial, and municipal
- with appropriate constitutional changes conferring law-making powers directly on the
local, municipal governments and guaranteeing their full participation in the division of
tax revenues, would breath new life into our federal system. Only so much can be done by
federal initiatives alone, however, and a Constitutional Amendment would be advisable to
correct the current constitutional situation.
All this directs attention to the rôle of People's Power, so manifest in the last days
of the Referendum campaign when so many Canadians outside Quebec took part in mass
meetings or in prayer services and candle-light vigils, to show their faith in a renewed
federal system. The convergence on Montreal, - by bus, car-pool, train, and charter air
flights - of so many thousands from English-speaking Canada, highlighted this concern. The
first lesson of constitutional law-making is that you must act quickly, while a popular
consensus in support of change is there. For all those people in British Columbia and
other provinces who showed their love for Canada, the message is to stay in there and let
the Prime Minister and the Provincial Premiers and the federal and Provincial elected
representatives know you really want to change the federal system in preparation for the
new century.
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