(Montreal) PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon welcomes the decision of the Supreme Court which ruled last Friday in favor of Ottawa and granted full self-government to the First Nations, Inuit and Métis in matters of protection of the ‘childhood.
“We, in the Parti Québécois, are in favor, first and foremost, of the principle of self-determination of indigenous peoples. So, on the merits of things, that each indigenous nation takes care of its children, it is perfectly logical and obvious to me,” he declared Monday in Montreal, during a press conference on assistance with access to property.
This reaction could be surprising at first glance, since the highest court rejected the claims of the Quebec government which contested two articles of federal law C-92, one which gives all indigenous legislation in matters of child protection the same power as a federal law, the other which even affirmed that indigenous legislative texts in this area “take precedence” over provincial laws.
The Legault government had challenged the federal law, arguing that it encroached on an exclusive jurisdiction of Quebec – child protection – while modifying the constitutional architecture of separation of powers.
The PQ leader, who is himself a lawyer, argues that the Quebec challenge was “less about a principle that seems obvious to me, which is that of the Parti Québécois from nation to nation, than about the way in which the federal government intervened without consultation of the provinces”, another demonstration, according to him, of the merits of wanting to “leave Canada”.
PHOTO CHRISTINNE MUSCHI, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Paul St-Pierre Plamondon
“In all matters, we are always caught up in these battles with one government too many and there, we should have consulted between each of the three levels, but we did not do so. »
Cautious, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon did not want to comment on “the legal battle and the way in which the federal government went about it”, but he wanted to reiterate “that a Parti Québécois government always starts from the premise that indigenous peoples have a right to self-determination and this is what led us to successes like the Paix des Braves”, a reminder of the agreement concluded in 2001 between the then PQ prime minister , Bernard Landry, and the Grand Council of the Crees of Quebec.
This agreement, the first of its kind in history, allowed the Cree Nation to participate in the development of the natural resources of its territory and to obtain a large share of the economic benefits from the James Bay hydroelectric projects.