Once a month, The duty challenges history buffs to decipher a topical theme based on a comparison with a historical event or character.
A centralizing wind is blowing over the Canadian federation. In the post-pandemic context, health is particularly concerned. The proposals of the federal parties relating to this exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces are multiplying, pan-Canadian standards and programs are being considered and federal transfers remain largely insufficient.
Added to this is the refusal to grant Quebec more powers in immigration as well as Ottawa’s intention to challenge Quebec laws on secularism and the French language and to regulate the use of the derogation provision. In short, the points of tension are not lacking. However, far from being resolved by the passage of time alone, the dysfunctions of Canadian federalism are deeply rooted in history.
The current context is reminiscent of another. The Great Depression and the post-war period had laid the foundations for a centralizing ambition in Ottawa. In 1940, in its report, the federal Rowell-Sirois Commission advocated fiscal and social centralization. Two years later, the provinces, including Quebec, agree to temporarily cede their field of direct taxation to the federal government. If Duplessis refused to renew this agreement once the war was over, the other provinces all ended up capitulating to the federal government’s desire to maintain its monopoly on direct taxes. What was supposed to be temporary became permanent.
From 1952 onwards, Quebec continued the fight for provincial autonomy alone against a federal government that was almost all-powerful in fiscal terms. This power imbalance puts the Quebec government in a bind. « Duplessis [paraît] powerless to stop the centralizing policy of Ottawa”, underline the historians René Durocher and Michèle Jean.
A commission
In this context, the idea of setting up a commission made its way to the office of Premier Duplessis. It is carried mainly by the Chamber of Commerce of the time, which may surprise today.
On February 12, 1953, the Royal Commission on Constitutional Problems was created. The preamble to the act that establishes what will be called the Tremblay commission is imposing and loaded. It proclaims that the Canadian Confederation is a pact between two peoples, whose survival is intimately linked to respect for the rights, prerogatives and freedoms of the provinces, in particular those of Quebec. He also denounced the federal invasion of important areas of taxation reserved for the provinces and the resulting centralization of powers, deemed “irreconcilable with the federal and democratic system”, adding that they “false[ssent] the application of the Confederation Pact.
The mandate is vast: to submit recommendations “as to the measures to be taken to safeguard the rights” of the Quebec State and the administrations in its fields of jurisdiction. In the fall, the commission begins a series of public hearings across Quebec. Civil society is mobilizing. In their report, the commissioners maintain that “perhaps never has the profound thought of the Province been expressed with so much breadth and force on such fundamental questions”.
Before the end of its work, the Tremblay commission was already exerting an influence. It allows, within the community, an awareness of the constitutional problems which result from the tensions between Ottawa and Quebec. Leaders, on the other hand, take the pulse of public opinion. In this regard, the hearings revealed the public’s appetite to see the Government of Quebec play a greater role in the determinants of the collective life of French Canadians.
Duplessis now has the popular support and the balance of power he needs to act unilaterally and hold the upper hand. Thus, in February 1954, he created the Quebec income tax. On the strength of the impetus generated by the commission, he managed to impose his tax action at the federal level. Victory which will be, a few years later, decisive for the realization of the Quiet Revolution.
A “hidden” but influential report
Income tax is practically the only thing Duplessis will get from the Tremblay commission. The commissioners embrace wider and prove bolder than the Prime Minister expected. So much so that, when he received the report in February 1956, he tried to bury it. It is thanks to the determination of the Dutywhich tirelessly denounces this blacklisting, that its content is partly survived.
The report remains imbued with a traditional nationalism and a conservatism in line with unionist politics. Some will call it the “Bible of French Canadians” or see it as the “testament of an era”. Despite everything, the commissioners, as if they had foreseen the period of major transformations that were coming, dared to make certain avant-garde proposals and laid the first milestones of a progressive nationalism.
On the constitutional level, the Tremblay report responds to that of the Rowell-Sirois commission. He argues for a real “federalization” of Canada and its institutions. In particular, an in-depth reorganization of the fields of taxation for the benefit of the federated entities, in full consistency with Canadian constitutional law and the spirit of “authentic federalism”. The report recommends a reform of the Supreme Court, in particular the method of appointing judges, but also representation of the provinces on the board of directors of the Central Bank and the creation of a provincial consultation body.
The authors believe that at the heart of the constitutional imbroglio, there is “a fundamental divergence in the interpretation of Canadian federalism”. We must be wary, they warn, of the “new federalism”, this unitary and centralizing conception of the regime, which translates concretely into the intervention of the federal administration in areas which, legally, come under the federated entities.
The commissioners conclude that the vast majority of Quebecers reject separatism and unitarism, but “declare themselves still faithfully attached to federalism”. Not just any, however: that based on the autonomy of the provinces, and in particular that of Quebec as the national home and fundamental political environment of French Canada.
State and autonomy
Beyond federal-provincial relations, the commissioners are proposing reforms in Quebec. They recommend the improvement of social services as well as the creation of various organizations, including an Office of the French language, a Council of arts and letters, a Council of natural resources. They also suggest that a new inquiry look specifically at the reorganization of the education system, a recommendation presaging, five years later, the establishment of the Parent commission, which will modernize the Quebec education system.
Ultimately, the commissioners advocate expanding the role of the Quebec state. Political framework which is, for French Canadians, the only “whose effort of several generations [leur] assured possession. It represents the product of their distinct social and cultural character as well as the instrument of their political autonomy. It must therefore be preserved at all costs, the authors tell us, and, to do this, “it [faut] use it and learn to use it”.
This idea of the increased and particular role of the Quebec state will be at the heart of the spirit of the Quiet Revolution. René Lévesque liked to describe our state as “the most powerful collective instrument”. If Duplessis wanted nothing to do with the Tremblay report, the Liberals drew from it the basis of a constitutional policy. Moreover, Georges-Émile Lapalme, leader of the PLQ in the 1950s, saw a relationship there with his ideas. “It almost seems that the Tremblay commission, in writing its report, let in whole raw parts of my speeches on the subject! he declared in 1956.
In May 1971, another Liberal leader, Robert Bourassa, stated: “The Tremblay commission formulated the main orientations which were to guide us in the search for a new Canadian constitution. All federal-provincial relations from 1960 to 1970 essentially consisted in putting into practice these principles set out by the Tremblay commission. »
A work to continue
Since the 1982 patriation, which imposed a more rigid and restrictive constitution on Quebec, after the failures of the constitutional negotiations at Meech and Charlottetown, the no votes in the 1992 referendum, the no votes in the sovereignty referendums of 1980 and 1995, the he constitutional stalemate has become more complex.
Faced with such obstacles, the Quebec government cannot really do without a deep reflection on the foundations of Canadian federalism and its evolution. To make Quebecers aware that the Constitution, despite appearances, has very concrete consequences on their daily lives and their collective aspirations, we must be able to recognize and name the constitutional problems. The autonomist path only has a future if it means the continual demand for “authentic federalism”.
This demand should result in the proactive, even creative use of the Quebec state and existing constitutional mechanisms. The most promising of these mechanisms is undoubtedly the one that allows Quebec to adopt its own constitution. Finally, having it would make it possible, as Jacques-Yvan Morin said, to “reconnect with the Quiet Revolution and its sources”, of which the Tremblay report is undeniably a part.
To propose a text or to make comments and suggestions, write to Dave Noël at [email protected].