“Now is not the time to talk about the constitution.” “Does a constitution give better health care? Better education?
Since the aftermath of the 1995 referendum, always the same damn refrains. Jean Charest and Philippe Couillard made careers on this. “Real business” had to be taken care of. The political regime, the political status of Quebec, that of the French language? “False deals”, people suggested daily.
Did the so-called “real business” improve because of those who promised to devote themselves entirely to it? Ask the question… My hypothesis: if we had not made debates about foundations taboo, our public services crisis would be less acute.
(Go tell Americans to stop talking about the constitution, see!)
And all this time, Canada has changed imperceptibly, centralized, Americanized. Its Supreme Court, through judgments, formats the dominion in the image of the 1982 principles imposed on Quebec.
The current situation has been called “status quo”. Illusion, because there is movement. And this erodes the powers of the Quebec state.
Third way
The victory of the CAQ in 2018 fortunately unblocked a deleterious situation in which the PQ-PLQ couple kept us.
Important actions have been taken: law on secularism, new Charter of the French language, modification of the Quebec charter. Resurrection of parliamentary sovereignty (derogations).
The Legault government, however, felt that it was necessary to go further. Faced with the rise of the PQ in the polls and, above all, the absolute contempt of the Trudeau government for the sharing of skills. Let us hope that he wishes to go beyond the mainly symbolic interventions of laws 21 and 96.
Hence, in June, the creation of this Advisory Committee on constitutional issues in Quebec within the Canadian federation, co-chaired by the former ADQ (then Liberal) Sébastien Proulx and the law professor Guillaume Rousseau. With them, the constitutional experts Amélie Binette, Catherine Mathieu, the tax expert Luc Godbout, and the former chief of staff of René Lévesque, Martine Tremblay.
Bushy and stimulating
Their report, submitted Tuesday, is detailed and stimulating. In the public arena, it was reduced to its flagship recommendation: the adoption of a “constitution of Quebec”. This tree should not hide the forest of multiple ingenious proposals (42 in total).
It is an invitation to break with “wait-and-see” and to introduce fundamental changes to protect and develop Quebec’s interests. Modify the constitution unilaterally, by adjusting the “Google Doc” of the constitution (as Quebec did with “96” and the law on the abolition of the monarchist oath). Certain bilateral modifications (Quebec-Ottawa) could be feasible. Multilateral constitutional high masses? As little as possible. In Quebec, a framework law on the defense and increase of constitutional freedom would help keep things in check.
We will end the reading of this document by singing, to a tune by Daniel Bélanger: “There is so much to do.” This is certainly preferable to the old “the fruit is not ripe” or, at the other end of the spectrum, “let’s wait for the next referendum”.
