Preliminary statement of Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard, on the day following the rendering of the Opinion of the Supreme Court of Canada on the federal government's Reference on Secession: Difference between revisions
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Therefore, the sovereignists and the Bélanger-Campeau Commission say the truth: in the event of dead end in the negotiations, "it is true" that international law can recognize the decision of Quebec. In fact, the Court sends a signal to the international community, by indicating it that after Yes vote, if Canada and the provinces were to be intransigent with Quebec, the recognition of Quebec would be facilitated by it. Thus, the Court has just given us one additional conditions of success of the negotiations. | Therefore, the sovereignists and the Bélanger-Campeau Commission say the truth: in the event of dead end in the negotiations, "it is true" that international law can recognize the decision of Quebec. In fact, the Court sends a signal to the international community, by indicating it that after Yes vote, if Canada and the provinces were to be intransigent with Quebec, the recognition of Quebec would be facilitated by it. Thus, the Court has just given us one additional conditions of success of the negotiations. | ||
The fifth and last federalist myth which was buried yesterday relate on the wording of the question and the majority. Since the last referendum, several federalists affirmed that the federal government should be implicated in the drafting and the adopting of the question or the setting of a new threshold for the majority. | |||
Yesterday, the Court has in no way called into question the right of the National Assembly to decide, alone, of the wording of the question and the threshold of the majority. The Quebec consensus on this point is as clear as it is unshakeable. The Plan B has in fact had the effect of consolidating the agreement between the Quebec political parties on these points, as they reiterated it yesterday the leaders of the two opposition parties in the National Assembly. | |||
The Court limits itself to indicating that the political authorities will make a political assessment on the clearness of the question. It is what the elected officials do everyday on all questions. | |||
Our position on this is known: the question of 1995 was clear to the point that 94 % of Quebecers, a participation record, went to vote on this capital stake; the question was clear to the point that the Prime Minister of Canada, in a speech to the nation, informed the voters who the referendum vote meant "to remain Canadian or no longer be Canadian, remain or leave, here is stake of the referendum". | |||
As for the majority, the Court judges tell us that it must be clear. But it describes this clearness by using the word "qualitative" rather than the word "quantitative". I quote the judges when they write that "we speak about clear majority in qualitative direction". They therefore do not call into question the quantity of votes necessary to declare a victory for the Yes. The judges know the precedents of Canadian history, in particular that of Newfoundland, which entered Canada with a majority of 52 %. Any declaration, legal or political, affirming that a result of 50 % + 1 would not be sufficient would put in question the validity of the vote of Newfoundland. | |||
The reality is that the federalists learned yesterday from the Supreme Court that the clear, reasonable and logical steps suggested to Quebecers by the sovereignists is legitimate and that they will have to negotiate their realization on the day following a winning referendum. | |||
The Court thus shakes the basis of the federalist strategy, saps their arguments of fear and the refusal to negotiate. | |||
All to itself, the obligation of Canada to negotiate with Quebec dissipates the uncertainty which weighted on the mind of many Quebecers because of the federalits' refusal to negotiate. These Quebecers are reassured today: their Yes will force Canada to negotiate. | |||
More and more women and men of Quebec will conclude from this that time has come to decide, once and for all, to put a term at our insoluble quarrels with Canada, to build the country of Quebec, and to negotiate, with our neighbours, a relation of equal to equal, that will be mutually beneficial. | |||
Thank you. | |||
== Notes and comments == | == Notes and comments == | ||
Revision as of 16:01, 31 May 2007
Québec, Friday August, 1998
There was yesterday an important political event of which we are not over measuring the effects.
Indeed, the federal government, in a hardly buckled will to frighten Quebecers, unilaterally asked nine judges of its own Supreme Court, nine people whose federalist faith is not in doubt, to come to a voice their opinion on the Canadian federalist argumentation.
The Quebec government, as it was its responsibility, refused to take part in this episode of the federal political strategy and reiterated firmly that only Quebecers have the right to choose their future, as all the parties represented in the National Assembly do affirm.
So yesterday, the issue was the attempt by the Canadian government have its own Court and its own judges validate the central elements of its Plan B, its anti-sovereignist offencive.
The opposite occurred: the Court demonstrated that the argumentation of Ottawa does not survive analysis and struck at the very heart of the traditional federalist discourse.
All in all, the federalists have for the past two years asserted that sovereignty is a legal problem which concerns the courts and the law. The federal judges contradicted them. After having answered, in perfectly foreseeable and foreseen a way, to the narrow questions asked by the federal government, the Court affirmed, from the beginning to the end of its opinion, the political character of the events that would legitimately follow from a [winning] Quebec referendum on sovereignty.
You will allow me to retake one by one federalist myths which yesterday were buried by the federal judges.
First myth: for decades, a certain number of federalists have affirmed that the sovereignist project is not legitimate.
The judges of the supreme Court affirmed the opposite, and I quote them: "a vote which would lead to a clear majority in Quebec in favour of the secession, in answer to a clear question, would confer on the project of secession a democratic legitimacy that all the other participants in the Confederation would have the obligation to recognize". End of the quotation.
They go even further declaring, I am still quoting them: "the other provinces and the federal government would not have any valid reason to deny with the government of Quebec the right to seek to carry out the secession". End of quotation.
The federal judges thus supported what the sovereignists have been saying for 30 years: a winning referendum will not only have a democratic legitimacy, but Canada will have the obligation to recognize this legitimacy and will not be able to deny the right of Quebec to seek to achieve sovereignty.
Second myth: In 1980 and 1995, the federalists claimed that if the Quebecers said Yes, Canada would refuse to negotiate with the government of Quebec. One remembers that Mr. Pierre Trudeau, in 1980, compared the Quebec desire to negotiate to that of a Third World country which Ottawa would not have to account for. In 1995, still, the federal tenors ridiculed the outstretched hand of the sovereignists for a negotiation after a Yes vote.
On October 12, 95, Mr. Jean Chrétien declared what follows: "there is a myth which must be killed, he said, to the effect that there is somebody in Canada who is authorized to negotiate" with Quebec. The current leader of the Liberal Party of Quebec also had some unhappy declarations on this subject.
Yesterday, the federal judges, unanimously, put a end to what has constituted the most fallacious argument of the federalist camp. The federal judges affirm and repeat that after a Yes vote, Canada will have the obligation to negotiate with Quebec. They even make it a constitutional obligation.
Allow me to quote a passage which reads as follows: "the rejection clearly expressed by the People of Quebec of the existing constitutional order would clearly confer a legitimacy on the claims secessionists, and would impose on the other provinces and the federal government the obligation to take into account and to respect this expression of the democratic will while engaging of the negotiations (...)". End of quotation.
The federal judges therefore give credit to what the sovereignists have said for the past 30 years: that after a Yes vote, there will be negotiations. During the last referendum, we repeated it in all media. It was our conviction. Today, it is a certainty, the more so since the representatives of the federal government acknowledged, yesterday, that they were going to conform to the order which they themselves received from their Court.
In 1995, we played fair and true, we worked out our position of negotiation - the offer of partnership. We created a committee of orientation and monitoring of the negotiations. If I remember correctly, we had even designated a chief negotiator.
The No side, on its part, wanted to cause fear among Quebecers. The next time, the women and the men of Quebec will be able to vote Yes with the certainty that negotiations will take place and that everything will be done in favour of an orderly transition toward sovereignty, in the respect of the rights of each one of our citizens, as we always said.
This element of common sense from now on confers, and I am deeply convinced of it, a considerable advantage to the sovereignist project and constitutes one of the winning conditions of which I have been speaking of for a few years.
Third myth: The nature of the negotiations. Certain federalists claimed that, if negotiations ended up taking place after Yes vote, they would take place, not on sovereignty, but on a renewal of federalism.
Yesterday, their Court closed this avenue with a double lock. The Court stipulated, and I quote, that "the negotiations (...) would relate on the potential act of secession and its possible conditions if it were to be carried out indeed". The federal judges mention several elements that will have to be considered during these negotiations.
They recall, as we so often did ourselves, that Quebec and its neighbours share and I quote: "a national economy and a national debt". End of quotation. They also underline that the interests of Canada and the provinces will have to be considered in these negotiations. We always said it and we think that the economic interest of Canada, the provinces, of the economy and the debt must lead us to agree on a partnership which will preserve the common economic area between the two Sovereign states.
The Court speaks about the necessary protection of the rights of the minorities and says that it is necessary to take into account the interests of the aboriginals. It is also our position and this is why we have, in the bill on the future of Quebec, taken the following engagement: "the new constitution (of a sovereign Quebec) will guarantee to the anglophone community the safeguarding of its identity and its institutions. It will also recognize the aboriginal nations the right to govern themselves on lands they own and to participate in the development of Quebec; moreover, the existing constitutional rights of the aboriginal nations will be recognized". End of the quotation.
Quebec always was at the avant-garde, in Canada, of the recognition of the rights of the aboriginals, in particular since the resolution presented by Rene Lévesque in 1984 which recognized, for the first time in Canada, the existence of the aboriginal nations of Quebec.
In short, on the nature of the negotiations which will follow a Yes vote, the Court imposes the federalists obligations which the sovereignists had given themselves a long time ago.
Fourth myth: According to federalists, after Yes vote, in the event of dead end in the negotiations, Quebecers are prisoners of Canada, they cannot leave.
I would first like to say that we do not have any doubt that after Yes vote, the political and economic situation will oblige Quebec and Canada, not only to negotiate, but also to get along quickly on sovereignty and the conditions of an economic partnership.
However, it is necessary to address the theoretical question of what would occur in the event of dead end in the negotiations. On this, the Supreme Court does not dare to give precise instructions but, where it deals this possibility, in no case does it evoke the hypothesis that Quebecers should resign to remain in Canada and to give up their democratic decision. On the contrary, the Court evokes only one possibility, one where, in order to break the dead end, Quebec unilaterally declares its sovereignty and calls upon international recognition.
Indeed, the Court writes that the behavior of Quebec and Canada during the negotiation will be, and I quote: "evaluated at the international level". And the Court is categorical when it adds that, still quoting: "a Quebec that would have negotiated in the respect of the constitutional principles faced with the unjustified intransigence of other participants at the federal or provincial level would probably have more chances to be recognized (...)".
The Court even writes plainly, as we say it ourselves since the Bélanger-Campeau Commission, and I quote: "It is true that the international law could very well, according to the circumstances, adapt to recognize a factual or political reality, independently of the legality of the steps which gave birth to it". The Court still insists, and I always quote, "it may be that an act of unilateral secession by Quebec be possibly seen granting a legal statute by Canada and other States (...)".
Therefore, the sovereignists and the Bélanger-Campeau Commission say the truth: in the event of dead end in the negotiations, "it is true" that international law can recognize the decision of Quebec. In fact, the Court sends a signal to the international community, by indicating it that after Yes vote, if Canada and the provinces were to be intransigent with Quebec, the recognition of Quebec would be facilitated by it. Thus, the Court has just given us one additional conditions of success of the negotiations.
The fifth and last federalist myth which was buried yesterday relate on the wording of the question and the majority. Since the last referendum, several federalists affirmed that the federal government should be implicated in the drafting and the adopting of the question or the setting of a new threshold for the majority.
Yesterday, the Court has in no way called into question the right of the National Assembly to decide, alone, of the wording of the question and the threshold of the majority. The Quebec consensus on this point is as clear as it is unshakeable. The Plan B has in fact had the effect of consolidating the agreement between the Quebec political parties on these points, as they reiterated it yesterday the leaders of the two opposition parties in the National Assembly.
The Court limits itself to indicating that the political authorities will make a political assessment on the clearness of the question. It is what the elected officials do everyday on all questions.
Our position on this is known: the question of 1995 was clear to the point that 94 % of Quebecers, a participation record, went to vote on this capital stake; the question was clear to the point that the Prime Minister of Canada, in a speech to the nation, informed the voters who the referendum vote meant "to remain Canadian or no longer be Canadian, remain or leave, here is stake of the referendum".
As for the majority, the Court judges tell us that it must be clear. But it describes this clearness by using the word "qualitative" rather than the word "quantitative". I quote the judges when they write that "we speak about clear majority in qualitative direction". They therefore do not call into question the quantity of votes necessary to declare a victory for the Yes. The judges know the precedents of Canadian history, in particular that of Newfoundland, which entered Canada with a majority of 52 %. Any declaration, legal or political, affirming that a result of 50 % + 1 would not be sufficient would put in question the validity of the vote of Newfoundland.
The reality is that the federalists learned yesterday from the Supreme Court that the clear, reasonable and logical steps suggested to Quebecers by the sovereignists is legitimate and that they will have to negotiate their realization on the day following a winning referendum.
The Court thus shakes the basis of the federalist strategy, saps their arguments of fear and the refusal to negotiate.
All to itself, the obligation of Canada to negotiate with Quebec dissipates the uncertainty which weighted on the mind of many Quebecers because of the federalits' refusal to negotiate. These Quebecers are reassured today: their Yes will force Canada to negotiate.
More and more women and men of Quebec will conclude from this that time has come to decide, once and for all, to put a term at our insoluble quarrels with Canada, to build the country of Quebec, and to negotiate, with our neighbours, a relation of equal to equal, that will be mutually beneficial.
Thank you.