On its first opposition day of the year, the Bloc Québécois will force every federal MP to vote on the provinces’ use of the notwithstanding clause, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau raised an outcry in Quebec by announcing its desire to provide better supervision.
“That the House remind the government that it is up to Quebec and the provinces to decide alone on the use of the notwithstanding clause”, can we read in the motion debated Thursday in the House of Commons and on which a roll-call vote on Monday.
In interview with The Canadian Press, the Bloc leader, Yves-François Blanchet, pleaded that “there is no time in the recent history of Canada when it has no longer been necessary for Quebec to have the derogatory clause”. It is, according to him, “the last bastion we have”.
“If Ottawa succeeded in blowing up or framing the use of the notwithstanding clause to its advantage, it would be extremely bad for Quebec,” said Mr. Blanchet. And Justin Trudeau’s reasoning seems to be to replace the Constitution or change the Constitution through its interpretation through the judges. »
His party is particularly worried that Ottawa will intervene before the Supreme Court “to counter” Bill 96, which modernizes the Charter of the French language and Bill 21 on secularism.
The Trudeau government, for its part, considers it “unacceptable” for the provinces to have recourse in a preventive manner to this provision of the Constitution which allows the suspension of certain individual rights, as do the two laws of Quebec.
Trudeau’s comments last month led Quebec Premier François Legault to accuse his federal counterpart of “attacking democracy and the people of Quebec as a whole” by wanting to weaken the capacity of the National Assembly. of Quebec.
Federal Justice Minister David Lametti argued last week in the House of Commons that the clause should allow provincial legislatures to have “the last word”, adding in the same breath that “when it is used in a preventive way, it is the first word and it cuts short the debate”.
Mr. Blanchet insisted that the Constitution already provides a framework for the use of the clause and that “nothing” justifies creating a limit that does not currently exist. “What tells us that when Justin Trudeau will send his lawyers to the Supreme Court they will limit themselves to the notion of preventive, he launched. And that they will not be part of a reflection that goes further on the very legitimacy of the derogatory clause? »
Ottawa says the review it wants of the clause goes beyond Quebec, which uses it primarily on the basis of identity issues. Mr. Trudeau frowned in November when Ontario Premier Doug Ford invoked it to force an expedited exit from the labor dispute between him and 55,000 workers in the education sector.
“Ultimately, in a democracy, two things apply,” said the Bloc leader. One, the legislator must take precedence, and two, every four years in the worst case, we go back to the voters. […] I don’t see why we would agree to subject the political will of parliaments which are sovereign to the will of judges in the reference documents and the choices come from Ottawa. »
The vote on the Bloc motion should take place on Monday afternoon, immediately after question period.
During its previous opposition day, in October, the Bloc Québécois had proposed to federal MPs to cut the cord between Canada and the British monarchy, an offer that was rejected by a vast majority of elected officials.