Don’t wave this on by
Amending Canada’s constitution isn’t supposed to be easy. It is, after all, the fundamental law of the land and it shouldn’t be changed without a good deal of thought.
So why the unseemly rush by the major federal political parties to support the Quebec government’s plan to insert two amendments into the constitution — amendments that are anything but routine?
On one level it’s easy to explain: The amendments pushed by Premier François Legault have the ring of self-evident truth to Quebec nationalists and indeed to most French-speaking Quebecers.
One would declare that “Quebecers form a nation.” The second affirms that French will be the only official language of Quebec, and is also the “common language of the Quebec nation.”
Legault claims Quebec can make those changes on its own hook because provinces have the power to change parts of the constitution that apply only to themselves.
He’s challenging the federal parties to support the move in the kind of “heads I win, tails you lose” manoeuvre developed by Quebec nationalists over decades. Either they support the demand and entrench those statements as part of fundamental Canadian law, or they oppose it and give Legault a stick to beat them with among nationalist voters.
So far at least, the federal leaders are tripping over themselves to go along. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his government’s “initial analysis” indicates that it’s “perfectly legitimate for a province to modify the section of the Constitution that applies specifically to them.” Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh of the NDP are making supportive noises as well.
That may get them votes in Quebec — or at least let them dodge accusations of opposing what’s claimed to be the political “consensus” in the province on these matters.
But Canada deserves better leadership than that from its prime minister and those who aspire to his job. The changes Legault is pushing aren’t just routine matters, and it’s far from clear they would affect Quebec alone.
Entrenching the statement that “Quebecers form a nation” into the national constitution, for example, smacks of revisiting the old debate about defining Quebec as a “distinct society.” It may have all kinds of implications in the way that laws and programs are interpreted as they apply to that province. That, in turn, would affect other provinces.
Likewise, the proposed statements about French being the only official language, and the common language, of Quebec aren’t just recognition of the obvious. Section 43 of the constitution says that changes affecting the status of English and French in a province must be agreed on by both that province’s legislature and by the House of Commons and Senate.
They are not, in other words, something that any province (Quebec included) can decide on unilaterally.
Naturally, the experts will disagree. And all this will no doubt be hashed out all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, if it comes to that.
But as much as they’d like to avoid confronting the Quebec government and majority (francophone) public opinion in that province, the federal parties cannot simply wave this on by. They have a responsibility to consider the implications for the whole country, and if that means standing up to the Legault government and insisting on more rigorous legal analysis of the amendments it wants, then so be it.
Those amendments are just one part of Bill 96, Legault’s proposed legislation to strengthen Quebec’s Charter of the French Language.
The bill would tighten language laws, expand French-only rules in business, and limit the time immigrants can communicate with the government in English. It would even cap the number of students who can attend junior colleges (known as CEGEPs) in English. And it would inoculate itself against any challenges under the charter of rights by invoking the noxious “notwithstanding” clause of the constitution.
All that would be unnecessary and offensive. But it’s a matter for Quebecers to decide when they elect their government.
The proposed constitutional amendments are something else. They potentially affect the whole country, and our federal leaders should give them the closest scrutiny, regardless of votes to be won or lost in Quebec.
Premier François Legault is leading the Quebec government’s plan to insert two amendments into the constitution