Editorial Board / Comité de rédaction

Editor-in-Chief Rédacteur en chef Kenneth McRoberts, York University, Canada

Associate Editors Rédacteurs adjoints Alan Cairns, University of British Columbia, Canada Mary Jean Green, Dartmouth College, U.S.A. Lynette Hunter, University of Leeds, United Kingdom Danielle Juteau, Université de Montréal, Canada

Managing Editor Secrétaire de rédaction Guy Leclair, ICCS/CIEC, Ottawa, Canada

Advisory Board / Comité consultatif

Alessandro Anastasi, Universita di Messina, Italy Michael Burgess, University of Keele, United Kingdom Paul Claval, Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV), France Dona Davis, University of South Dakota, U.S.A. Peter H. Easingwood, University of Dundee, United Kingdom Ziran He, Guangzhou Institute of Foreign Languages, China Helena G. Komkova, Institute of the USA and Canada, USSR Shirin L. Kudchedkar, SNDT Women’s University, India Karl Lenz, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany Gregory Mahler, University of Mississippi, U.S.A. James P. McCormick, California State University, U.S.A. William Metcalfe, University of Vermont, U.S.A. Chandra Mohan, University of Delhi, India Elaine F. Nardocchio, McMaster University, Canada Satoru Osanai, Chuo University, Japan Manuel Parés I Maicas, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Espagne Réjean Pelletier, Université Laval, Canada Gemma Persico, Universita di Catania, Italy Richard E. Sherwin, Bar Ilan University, Israel William J. Smyth, St. Patrick’s College, Ireland Sverker Sörlin, Umea University, Sweden Oleg Soroko-Tsupa, Moscow State University, USSR Michèle Therrien, Institut des langues et civilisations orientales, France Gaëtan Tremblay, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada Hillig J.T. van’t Land, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Pays-Bas Mel Watkins, University of Toronto, Canada Gillian Whitlock, Griffith University, Australia Donez Xiques, Brooklyn College, U.S.A. ii International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes

7-8 Spring-Fall/7-8 printemps-automne 1993

The Charter, Federalism, and the Constitution La Charte, le fédéralisme et la Constitution

Table of Contents/Table des matières

Alan C. Cairns Introduction/Présentation ...... 5

José Woehrling La crise constitutionnelle et le réaménagement des rapports entre le Québec et le Canada anglais ...... 9

Peter H. Russell Attempting Macro Constitutional Change in Australia and Canada: The Politics of Frustration ...... 41

David M. Thomas Turning a Blind Eye: Constitutional Abeyances and the Canadian Experience ...... 63

Richard LaRue et Jocelyn Létourneau De l’unité et de l’identité au Canada. Essai sur l’éclatement d’un État ...... 81

Richard Sigurdson Left- and Right-Wing Charterphobia in Canada: A Critique of the Critics ...... 95

Janet Hiebert Rights and Public Debate: The Limitations of a ‘Rights must be Paramount’ Perspective ...... 117

Linda Cardinal Les mouvements sociaux et la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés ...... 137

Andrew D. Heard Quebec Courts and the Canadian Charter of Rights ...... 153 François Rocher et Daniel Salée Démocratie et réforme constitutionnelle : discours et pratique...... 167

Stephen McBride Renewed Federalism as an Instrument of Competitiveness: Liberal Political Economy and the Canadian Constitution...... 187

Lilianne E. Krosenbrink-Gelissen The Canadian Constitution, the Charter, and Aboriginal Women’s Rights: Conflicts and Dilemmas ...... 207

Radha Jhappan Inherency, Three Nations and Collective Rights: the Evolution of Aboriginal Constitutional Discourse from 1982 to the Charlottetown Accord ...... 225

Jill Vickers The Canadian Women’s Movement and a Changing Constitutional Order ...... 261

Max Nemni La Commission Bélanger-Campeau et la construction de l’idée de sécession au Québec...... 285

Review Essays/Essais critiques Michael Oliver The Impact of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism on Constitutional Thought and Practice in Canada ...... 315

David R. Cameron Not Spicer and Not the B & B: Reflections of an Insider on the Workings of the Pepin-Robarts Task Force on Canadian Unity ...... 333

Allan Tupper English-Canadian Scholars and the Meech Lake Accord ...... 347 Introduction Présentation

To an anthropologist from distant À les voir tant obsédés par leur lands, the Canadian obsession with Constitution, un anthropologue de the constitution might be seen as a l’autre bout du monde doit bien cargo cult—the millenarian belief penser que les Canadiens pratiquent that the perfect constitution will be un culte millénariste et attendent delivered up by some magical d’un processus magique la parfaite process, after which Canadian lions constitution qui permettra aux lions and lambs will cavort peaceably et aux agneaux canadiens de together. Undoubtedly, Canadians gambader côte-à-côte. C’est vrai have devoted inordinate time to qu’ils ont consacré au cours des constitutional introspection in the trente dernières années un temps last three decades. Canadian fou à l’introspection scholars have accompanied, and constitutionnelle. Les universitaires sometimes tried to lead, the public et les spécialistes canadiens ont and the political elites in the search souvent accompagné et tenté de for a new constitutional guider le public et les élites equilibrium. politiques dans leur quête d’un nouvel équilibre constitutionnel. Both the authors and the subjects of the articles that follow confirm the Autant les auteurs que les sujets des contrast between yesterday’s and articles ici publiés font voir le today’s constitutional world. contraste entre l’univers Constitutional analysis is no longer constitutionnel d’hier et celui dominated by lawyers; federalism d’aujourd’hui. La recherche does not enjoy an unchallenged constitutionnelle n’est plus pride of place as the subject matter l’apanage des juristes; le par excellence of the written fédéralisme n’occupe plus la place constitution; and French- English (or d’honneur en tant qu’objet par Quebec-Rest of Canada) cleavages do excellence de la constitution écrite; not exhaust the contemporary et les divisions franco-anglaises national question in Canada. (Québec-Reste du Canada) n’épuisent pas la question nationale As this volume reveals, the opening dans le Canada contemporain. up of the constitution means, among other things, diversifying the Comme ce numéro le montre bien, disciplinary backgrounds of those le réexamen de la Constitution who study it to include political suppose désormais que les scientists, philosophers and intervenants oeuvrent dans sociologists. This is the academic plusieurs disciplines différentes, version of the recent democratizing dont la science politique, la of Canadian constitutional philosophie et la sociologie. C’est discourse. The catalyst for this la variante universitaire de la democratization, which induced récente démocratisation du débat resort to a referendum judgement constitutionnel canadien. Le on the 1992 Charlottetown Accord, catalyste de cette démocratisation, is the Charter. The Charter’s qui a entraîné la tenue d’un powerful symbolism, and the référendum sur l’Accord de concomitant relative displacement Charlottetown de 1992, c’est la of federalism as a constitutional Charte canadienne des droits et organizing principle, are illustrated libertés. Le symbolisme puissant de by the Charter’s central place in at la Charte et le déclin relatif et IJCS / RIÉC least a third of the following concomitant du fédéralisme en tant articles. que principe organisateur de la Constitution sont clairement The emergence of Aboriginal illustrés par la place centrale peoples to constitutional qu’occupe la Charte dans au moins prominence, aspects of which are le tiers des articles du présent lucidly explored in two of the numéro. essays, is no less revealing of the kind of constitutional people(s) L’importance nouvelle des peuples Canadians have become. Their autochtones dans les discussions evolution from constitutional constitutionnelles — deux essais objects to constitutional participants sont consacrés à certains aspects de transforms what used to be the two cette question — n’est pas moins nations debate (French-English) révélatrice de l’évolution des into a more complex debate about Canadiens, tous « peuples » the appropriate institutional and confondus, en matière constitutional response to a constitutionnelle. De sujets de multinational rather than binational discussion constitutionnelle qu’ils Canada. étaient, ils sont devenus des participants essentiels, transformant Canada’s recent constitutional ainsi un débat qui se déroulait entre pilgrimage has also undermined the deux nations (Français — Anglais) former virtual monopoly of men en une discussion complexe sur la over constitutional discourse and solution institutionnelle et the agenda of constitutional change. constitutionnelle qui conviendrait le Yesterday’s constitution, although mieux à l’heure d’un Canada this was only dimly seen by our multinational et non plus binational. predecessors, was male. The unsettled relation of women to the Le tout dernier pèlerinage canadien constitutional order, in particular to en terre constitutionnelle a aussi future Aboriginal self-governments, mis à mal le quasi-monopole des is a major constitutional issue hommes sur le discours explored in the articles that follow. constitutionnel et sur les priorités à l’ordre du jour. La Constitution The intrepid cover-to-cover reader d’hier, même si nos prédécesseurs of this volume will perhaps emerge n’en étaient guère conscients, était shaken, but he or she will also have mâle. L’importante question, gained an appreciation of the toujours pendante, du rapport des complexities of Canada’s femmes à l’ordre constitutionnel, constitutional existence, and surtout en ce qui a trait aux futurs therefore of why it is so difficult to gouvernements autochtones, est transform aspirations for change également analysée dans les articles into realized constitutional reform. qui suivent. It may be, as the Thomas article suggests, that Canadians would Le valeureux lecteur qui lira ce have been wiser to have asked less numéro de la première à la dernière of the constitution, and to have ligne en sortira peut-être ébranlé. Il understood that it is wisdom, not ou elle en aura néanmoins mieux lack of courage, to leave some saisi la complexité de la réalité constitutional stones unturned. constitutionnelle et compris Unfortunately, however, the pourquoi il est si difficile de momentum behind the pressure for traduire les aspirations au constitutional reform is unlikely to changement en solutions disappear when where we are is an constitutionnelles concrètes. Peut- unacceptable resting place to many être, comme l’article de Thomas le

6 The Charter, Federalism, and the Constitution La Charte, le fédéralisme et la Constitution of the key actors, especially conseille, les Canadiens auraient-ils Quebecois and Aboriginal été plus sages en exigeant moins de nationalists, and Alberta Senate leur Constitution, car en pareille reformers. matière, la prudence — et non pas la pusillanimité — veut qu’on évite We offer this volume to our readers de remuer ciel et terre. on the premise that no matter how Malheureusement, les pressions en difficult a constitutional faveur d’une révision rapprochement will be, an constitutionnelle ne se relâcheront understanding of the dialectic vraisemblablement pas, compte between social forces and tenu de la situation inacceptable de constitutional arrangements is a nombre d’acteurs clés, necessary if not sufficient particulièrement les Québécois, les prerequisite for successful nationalistes autochtones et les constitutional change. Albertains qui préconisent une réforme du Sénat. Alan C. Cairns Bien que fort conscients des University of British Columbia difficultés d’un rapprochement constitutionnel, nous avons préparé ce numéro dans le dessein d’aider nos lectrices et lecteurs à saisir la dialectique qui régit les rapports entre les forces sociales et les aménagements constitutionnels. Nous n’ambitionnions pas de résoudre le problème; seulement de l’éclairer.

Alan C. Cairns University of British Columbia

7 José Woehrling

La crise constitutionnelle et le réaménagement des rapports entre le Québec et le Canada anglais*

Résumé Si, en 1867, le Canada a été créé sous la forme d’une fédération plutôt que d’un état unitaire, c’était essentiellement pour faciliter la coexistence de ses deux « peuples fondateurs » : les francophones — qui ne sont majoritaires qu’au Québec — et les anglophones — qui forment la majorité dans les neuf autres provinces. Or, en 1982, malgré l’opposition du Québec et contrairement à ses intérêts, le Canada anglais a apporté d’importantes modifications à la Constitution du pays. Par la suite, le Québec a vainement tenté d’obtenir des garanties qui protégeraient son caractère distinct en tant que seule collectivité francophone sur un continent anglophone. L’échec de cette tentative de réconciliation a entraîné la plus grave crise constitutionnelle que le Canada ait connu depuis sa création. L’auteur examine l’évolution des rapports entre le Québec et le Canada anglais, de 1867 à aujourd’hui, et analyse les perspectives d’avenir.

Abstract If Canada was created in 1867 as a federation rather than a unitary state, it was largely to facilitate the coexistence of the two “founding peoples”: Francophones, a majority only in the province of Quebec, and Anglophones, the majority in the rest of Canada. However, in 1982, some important changes in the Canadian Constitution were imposed by English Canada against the wishes of Quebec and contrary to Quebec interests. Subsequently, Quebec has tried in vain to obtain certain guarantees to protect its distinct character as the sole Francophone society on an English-speaking continent. The failure of this attempt at reconciliation has brought about the most serious constitutional crisis that Canada has known since its creation. The author examines the evolution of relations between Quebec and English-speaking Canada from 1867 to our day, and concludes by analyzing possible future scenarios.

Le Canada et le Québec traversent actuellement l’une des pires crises constitutionnelles de leur histoire. Le réaménagement des accords politiques qui servent de cadre à leurs rapports est devenu inévitable. Dans l’introduction, nous ferons un rapide survol de l’évolution des relations entre le Québec et le Canada anglais depuis 1867, année de la Confédération, jusqu’au « rapatriement » de la Constitution en 1982, contre la volonté du Québec. Nous examinerons ensuite les circonstances et les raisons de l’échec des deux tentatives majeures qui ont été faites au cours de la dernière décennie pour réformer la Constitution canadienne. Ce double échec a mis en lumière l’ampleur des divergences qui existent entre les aspirations du Québec et celles

International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 7-8, Spring-Fall/Printemps-automne 1993 IJCS / RIÉC du Canada anglais. Nous concluerons par une analyse des différentes options qui s’offrent pour l’avenir des relations entre le Québec et le Canada anglais. Au moment de la création du Canada, en 1867, les francophones étaient déjà minoritaires partout en Amérique du Nord, sauf au Québec. Aussi favorisaient-ils l’adoption d’un système fédéral afin de s’assurer, au moins, le contrôle démocratique d’un des États membres de la fédération et de disposer d’instruments politiques susceptibles de protéger leur triple particularisme, tenant à la langue française, à la religion catholique et au droit civil. Par la suite, pendant près d’un siècle, le Québec réussit à préserver son autonomie et sa spécificité sur un mode principalement défensif dans la mesure où la société québécoise restait repliée sur elle-même et fondée sur des valeurs traditionnelles. Les Canadiens français de cette époque cultivaient une idéologie de la survivance et se cantonnaient dans un univers fermé aux influences extérieures. Sur le plan constitutionnel, l’objectif des gouvernements québécois était moins d’étendre leurs pouvoirs que de les protéger contre tout empiètement. Cette attitude changera radicalement durant la période qui va de 1955 à 1965 pendant laquelle se déroule la « Révolution tranquille ». La société québécoise connaît alors une série de transformations qui lui font rattraper en quelques années le retard qu’elle avait accumulé par rapport aux autres sociétés occidentales. À cette époque, le Québec se dote d’un appareil étatique moderne par la création de nouveaux ministères et le développement de sa fonction publique. Dans le domaine économique, les nouvelles élites québécoises cherchent à conquérir une partie du pouvoir de décision traditionnellement détenu par les anglophones. Pour y parvenir, elles utilisent les ressources et les instruments de l’État québécois pour favoriser l’émergence d’une nouvelle classe d’entrepreneurs et de capitalistes francophones. La fin des années soixante marque également la mise en oeuvre d’une véritable politique linguistique québécoise. On pouvait alors constater deux phénomènes sociaux fort inquiétants : d’une part, la désaffection des immigrants à l’égard de l’école française et, d’autre part, l’infériorité du français par rapport à l’anglais dans la vie économique, et cela, même au Québec. À partir de là, les objectifs de la politique linguistique québécoise vont s’imposer en quelque sorte d’eux- mêmes : le premier sera d’amener les immigrants à fréquenter l’école française et le deuxième visera à rehausser le prestige de la langue française et son utilité dans la vie économique. Ces deux objectifs n’ont jamais été remis en cause; au contraire, ils ont été poursuivis de façon systématique par tous les gouvernements qui se sont succédés au Québec depuis 1970 : le gouvernement libéral de M. Robert Bourassa, qui a fait adopter en 1974 la Loi sur la langue officielle (ou « loi 22 »); puis le gouvernement du Parti québécois, dirigé par René Lévesque, qui a fait voter en 1977 la Charte de la langue française (ou « loi 101 »). De la loi 22 à la loi 101, les buts sont restés les mêmes, seuls les moyens et les modalités ont changé : la loi 101 est plus sévère, plus coercitive et plus « englobante » que la loi 22. En 1985, lorsqu’il est revenu au pouvoir, le gouvernement libéral de M. Bourassa a conservé la loi 101 sans y apporter de modifications très importantes. La loi régit le statut des langues dans trois secteurs principaux : les institutions publiques, la vie économique et l’éducation. Dans ces trois domaines, elle a pour objectif de rehausser le statut du français. Pour y parvenir, elle limite en partie les droits ou privilèges traditionnels des anglophones. En matière constitutionnelle, la « Révolution tranquille » a fait passer le Québec de la simple défense des pouvoirs acquis à la revendication de

10 La crise constitutionnelle et le réaménagement des rapports entre le Québec et le Canada anglais

pouvoirs nouveaux et nombreux. Après 1960, les gouvernements québécois successifs vont tous réclamer une modification de la Constitution pour obtenir les compétences supplémentaires estimées nécessaires à l’épanouissement de la société québécoise. Ils demanderont donc soit une décentralisation générale des pouvoirs valable pour toutes les provinces, soit la création d’un « statut particulier » pour le Québec par lequel celui-ci se verrait reconnaître davantage de compétences que les autres provinces. Au fur et à mesure que le temps passe, les revendications constitutionnelles du Québec vont d’ailleurs se durcir. Le gouvernement libéral de Jean Lesage, au pouvoir entre 1960 et 1966, était resté foncièrement fédéraliste et avait adopté le slogan « Maîtres chez nous ». Par contre, avec le gouvernement de l’Union nationale de Daniel Johnson, qui s’était fait élire en 1966, le mot d’ordre était devenu « Égalité ou indépendance ». En 1967, René Lévesque quittait le Parti libéral pour créer le Parti québécois, dont le programme consiste à réaliser l’indépendance du Québec. Neuf ans plus tard, en 1976, le Parti québécois prenait le pouvoir et s’engageait à tenir un référendum sur un projet de souveraineté politique du Québec, combiné avec une association économique et monétaire avec le Canada. Le référendum eut lieu en mai 1980, le « non » obtenant 59,56 p. 100 des voix et le « oui », 40,44 p. 100. Cependant, après avoir rejeté le projet souverainiste du Parti québécois, la population devait le maintenir au pouvoir lors des élections qui suivirent, en 1981. Très rapidement, le gouvernement fédéral de M. Trudeau allait mettre à profit la situation de faiblesse dans laquelle le référendum avait placé le Québec. En 1982, avec l’appui des neuf provinces anglaises, il faisait adopter une nouvelle loi constitutionnelle, sans l’accord du gouvernement québécois et contre sa volonté clairement exprimée. Ainsi, pour la première fois depuis 1867, la Constitution était modifiée sans l’accord du Québec. En outre, la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982 contient un processus d’amendement permettant d’eventuelles modifications sans le consentement du Québec. Par ailleurs, les demandes formulées par le Québec depuis 1960 pour obtenir de nouveaux pouvoirs restaient insatisfaites et, pis encore, certaines dispositions de la nouvelle Constitution avaient pour effet de diminuer les pouvoirs traditionnels du Québec dans le domaine crucial de la protection de la langue française.

L’échec de l’Accord du lac Meech en 1987-1990 Dans un jugement du 6 décembre 1982, la Cour suprême du Canada avait déclaré à l’unanimité qu’il n’existait aucune règle de droit ou convention constitutionnelle permettant au Québec de s’objecter aux modifications de la Constitution. Par conséquent, l’opposition du gouvernement du Parti québécois à l’adoption de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982 n’a pas empêché celle-ci de s’appliquer pleinement au Québec dès son entrée en vigueur le 17 avril 1982. Cependant, le fait que la deuxième plus grande province du Canada — et la seule qui soit majoritairement francophone — n’adhère pas à la Constitution pose évidemment un problème politique grave et fait planer une menace sur l’unité du Canada. En 1985, le Parti québécois cédait le pouvoir au Parti libéral de M. Robert Bourassa, qui s’est toujours présenté comme résolument fédéraliste. Le nouveau gouvernement allait formuler cinq conditions pour donner l’accord du Québec à la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982 : 1) la reconnaissance du Québec comme société distincte;

11 IJCS / RIÉC

2) la garantie d’un rôle accru des autorités provinciales en matière d’immigration; 3) la participation du gouvernement québécois à la nomination de trois des neuf juges de la Cour suprême du Canada; 4) la limitation du « pouvoir de dépenser » du gouvernement fédéral (c’est-à-dire le pouvoir de ce gouvernement d’intervenir financièrement dans les domaines relevant de la compétence exclusive des provinces); 5) la reconnaissance d’un droit de veto au Québec sur la réforme des institutions fédérales et la création de nouvelles provinces. Il faut souligner que ces cinq demandes représentaient une réduction considérable des exigences traditionnelles du Québec. En effet, le gouvernement Bourassa ne revendiquait de nouveaux pouvoir que dans le seul secteur de l’immigration alors que tous ses prédécesseurs, depuis la « Révolution tranquille », exigeaient d’obtenir l’exclusivité des compétences dans de très nombreux domaines, notamment la politique familiale et celle de la main-d’oeuvre, les télécommunications, l’aménagement régional et ainsi de suite. En fait, mis à part l’immigration, les quatre autres demandes du Québec correspondaient à des mécanismes de protection des pouvoirs provinciaux existants bien plus qu’à un quelconque élargissement de ceux-ci. En juin 1987, après deux ans de négociation, les dix provinces et le gouvernement fédéral concluaient un accord (appelé l’« Accord du lac Meech ») en vertu duquel on convenait de modifier la Constitution pour donner satisfaction au Québec. Il faut cependant souligner que sur les cinq modifications réclamées par le Québec, quatre avaient été étendues à toutes les provinces. Par conséquent, la seule modification propre au Québec était la reconnaissance du caractère distinct de la société québécoise. Par ailleurs, une modification non réclamée par le Québec avait été ajoutée à l’Accord du lac Meech, à la demande des provinces de l’Ouest, concernant le processus de nomination des sénateurs. Pour entrer en vigueur conformément à la procédure de modification adoptée en 1982, l’Accord du lac Meech devait être ratifié dans un délai maximal de trois ans par les deux Chambres du Parlement fédéral et chacune des dix assemblées législatives provinciales. Ce délai devait être fatal, car les critiques contre l’Accord n’ont cessé de se multiplier au Canada anglais et l’appui dont il y bénéficiait au départ a constamment diminué. Certaines de ces critiques étaient parfaitement fondées alors que d’autres, au contraire, semblent avoir découlé d’une mauvaise compréhension de l’Accord, ou même d’une intention délibérée de le faire échouer. Rappelons rapidement les griefs qui ont été faits au Canada anglais à chacun des six éléments de l’Accord pour tenter d’en évaluer le bien-fondé et mesurer l’importance des divergences qui existent entre le Québec et le reste du pays. La réforme du Sénat La Constitution du Canada prévoit que les sénateurs sont nommés par le gouvernement fédéral. En pratique, depuis 1867, tous les gouvernements ont procédé à des nominations partisanes, presque toujours destinées à servir de récompense politique. Cette pratique a fait en sorte que les sénateurs, qui ne sont pas élus par la population des provinces, ne peuvent pas davantage prétendre parler au nom des gouvernements provinciaux. Par conséquent, les sénateurs ne sont investis d’aucune légitimité politique et, pour cette raison, le Sénat devrait normalement s’abstenir d’exercer les pouvoirs que la

12 La crise constitutionnelle et le réaménagement des rapports entre le Québec et le Canada anglais

Constitution lui reconnaît en matière législative et qui sont, à peu de choses près, les mêmes que ceux de la Chambre des communes1. L’Accord du lac Meech prévoyait que les sénateurs représentant une province devraient être choisis par le gouvernement fédéral d’après une liste de candidats établie par le gouvernement de la province en question. La réforme consistait donc à substituer au pouvoir discrétionnaire et incontrôlé du gouvernement fédéral un pouvoir de nomination conjoint qui obligerait les deux gouvernements à s’entendre sur le choix des candidats. En fait, ce n’est pas tellement ce changement qui a provoqué la critique, car les adversaires de l’Accord du lac Meech se sont surtout attaqués aux dispositions concernant la procédure de modification constitutionnelle nécessaire pour réformer les autres caractéristiques du Sénat. En effet, avec l’Accord du lac Meech, une telle réforme deviendrait pratiquement impossible parce qu’on exigeait pour sa réalisation l’accord unanime des dix provinces. Or, depuis une dizaine d’années, les provinces de l’Ouest avaient fait de la réforme du Sénat leur cheval de bataille dans le dessein d’acquérir une plus grande influence sur le processus décisionnel fédéral. Faiblement peuplées, ces provinces n’envoient à la Chambre des communes qu’un trop petit nombre de députés pour pouvoir y exercer une influence comparable à celle des deux grandes provinces du « Canada central », le Québec et l’Ontario. Les provinces de l’Ouest privilégient par conséquent la formule dite « Triple E », soit un Sénat « élu, égal et efficace » où chaque province serait représentée par le même nombre de sénateurs élus au suffrage universel direct2. En outre, ce nouveau Sénat exercerait les mêmes pouvoirs que la Chambre des communes. Ce modèle s’inspire du Sénat australien. Cependant, l’égalité de représentation de toutes les provinces au Sénat entraînerait des conséquences difficiles à accepter sur le plan démocratique. En effet, les six plus petites provinces (les quatre provinces de l’Atlantique, le Manitoba et la Saskatchewan) détiendraient ensemble 60 p. 100 des voix alors qu’elles ne représentent que 17 p. 100 de la population canadienne. Une telle formule serait au surplus inacceptable pour les Québecois à qui elle ne laisserait que le dixième des sièges. Pour tenter de convaincre le Québec d’accepter une diminution de sa proportion des sièges, certains suggèrent d’exiger, dans le cadre d’un Sénat réformé, une double majorité (celle de l’ensemble des sénateurs et des sénateurs francophones) pour l’adoption des projets de loi relatifs à la langue et à la culture françaises. Un tel système ne protégerait cependant pas le Québec pour ce qui est des questions autres que linguistiques ou culturelles. Au surplus, les sénateurs francophones ne seraient pas tous québécois, puisque certains d’entre eux devraient être désignés pour représenter les minorités francophones hors du Québec. Or, les intérêts des Québécois et des minorités francophones du Canada anglais sont loin d’être identiques par rapport aux interventions fédérales en matières culturelle et linguistique. De façon plus générale, l’élection des sénateurs au suffrage direct ne paraît pas être une bonne solution dans le cadre canadien, car pareille modalité entraînerait de graves inconvénients dans le contexte d’un système parlementaire de type britannique, caractérisé par le principe de la responsabilité ministérielle, le bipartisme et la discipline de parti. Du point de vue de la composition partisane, un Sénat élu au suffrage universel risque en effet d’être trop semblable à la Chambre des communes, ce qui lui enlèverait sa raison d’être ou, au contraire, trop différent, ce qui pourrait amener les deux Chambres à s’affronter et à se neutraliser mutuellement. En effet, dans la

13 IJCS / RIÉC mesure où elles seraient pareillement élues au suffrage direct et posséderaient par voie de conséquence une même légitimité démocratique, aucune des deux Chambres ne se sentirait tenue de céder à l’autre. En outre, conformément aux règles de la discipline de parti, la loyauté des sénateurs irait aux partis auxquels ils doivent leur élection et dont dépend leur réélection plutôt qu’à la province ou à la région qu’ils représentent. Comme le montre l’exemple du Sénat australien, dont le fonctionnement est généralement dominé par la politique partisane, l’élection des sénateurs a pour conséquence d’affaiblir considérablement leur capacité d’agir en tant que représentants des États membres de la fédération. Par ailleurs, il serait illogique de donner au Sénat une forte légitimité démocratique sans lui reconnaître également des pouvoirs importants. Plus précisément, dans la mesure où le Sénat et la Chambre des communes sont l’un et l’autre élus, il est difficile de ne pas reconnaître à celui- ci les mêmes pouvoirs qu’à celle-là. Or, un système parlementaire exige que la Chambre basse ait des pouvoirs supérieurs à ceux de la Chambre haute, car c’est de la première qu’émane le gouvernement et, par conséquent, c’est devant elle seule qu’il est responsable. Il existe donc une incompatibilité certaine entre l’élection des sénateurs au suffrage direct, qui suppose que le Sénat ait les mêmes pouvoirs que la Chambre des communes, et la logique interne du système parlementaire, qui veut, au contraire, que la Chambre basse ait des pouvoirs supérieurs à la Chambre haute. Si, comme le réclament les tenants de la formule « Triple E », la Constitution était modifiée pour faire élire le Sénat canadien, on se trouverait placé devant des choix difficiles. Pour maintenir l’intégrité du système parlementaire, il faudrait refuser au Sénat le pouvoir de rejeter la plupart des lois adoptées par les Communes et ne lui attribuer qu’un simple droit de veto suspensif, ce qui reviendrait à dire que les sénateurs ne représentent pas la population au même titre que les députés bien qu’ils soient élus. Mais si l’on donnait au Sénat un droit de veto absolu sur les lois présentées par le gouvernement, cela serait contraire aux principes fondamentaux du système parlementaire. Il faut également souligner qu’un Sénat doté de pouvoirs significatifs peut paradoxalement constituer un facteur de centralisation du système fédéral. En effet, l’expérience de l’Allemagne et des États-Unis tend à démontrer que les États constituants acceptent d’autant plus facilement de voir leurs compétences propres diminuer qu’ils obtiennent en contrepartie une plus grande participation au processus décisionnel central par le biais de la Chambre fédérale. À cet égard, il est révélateur que les provinces canadiennes qui réclament le Sénat « Triple E » soient également opposées à un affaiblissement du rôle d’Ottawa. C’est que dans la mesure où ces provinces espèrent que la réforme du Sénat leur permettra d’exercer une influence accrue au sein des institutions du pouvoir central, elles veulent que ce dernier reste fort, ou même qu’il soit renforcé. Par ailleurs, il faut voir que l’élection des sénateurs au suffrage universel risque de renforcer encore le caractère centralisateur d’une réforme du Sénat. En effet, la légitimité des autorités fédérales s’en trouverait accrue et des sénateurs fédéraux élus pourraient prétendre représenter les intérêts de la population provinciale au même titre que les politiciens provinciaux3. La procédure de nomination des juges de la Cour suprême Actuellement, les juges de la Cour suprême sont nommés de façon pratiquement discrétionnaire par le gouvernement fédéral. L’Accord du lac

14 La crise constitutionnelle et le réaménagement des rapports entre le Québec et le Canada anglais

Meech prévoyait que celui-ci serait tenu de les nommer sur proposition des gouvernements provinciaux4. Ne craignant pas le ridicule, certains adversaires de l’Accord du lac Meech ont prétendu que cette modification enlèverait à la Cour suprême sa neutralité en tant qu’arbitre du fédéralisme. C’est plutôt le fait que les juges soient actuellement nommés par le seul gouvernement fédéral qui enlève à la Cour toute crédibilité en tant qu’instance véritablement impartiale. On peut même penser qu’un système de nomination conjointe des juges de la Cour suprême par le gouvernement fédéral et les provinces donnerait à la Cour une légitimité fédérative, qui lui fait actuellement défaut et pourrait donc avoir pour effet paradoxal de la mettre davantage à l’abri des critiques sans véritablement modifier la portée centralisatrice de son intervention, celle-ci tenant à des facteurs économiques, sociaux et politiques bien plus profonds que les simples modalités de désignation des juges. Pour terminer, il faut souligner qu’en vertu de l’article 96 de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1867, le gouvernement fédéral nomme de façon discrétionnaire les juges des cours supérieures et des cours d’appel provinciales. Or, les membres de la Cour suprême du Canada sont désignés dans neuf cas sur dix parmi les juges de la Cour supérieure ou de la Cour d’appel. On constate donc que le fait de dresser les listes de candidats n’aurait pas conféré aux gouvernements provinciaux une très grande latitude. Les ententes relatives à l’immigration Actuellement, la Constitution du Canada attribue des pouvoirs concurrents en matière d’immigration au Parlement canadien et aux législatures des provinces tout en prévoyant la prépondérance de la législation fédérale en cas d’incompatibilité5. Cette disposition permet donc au Parlement fédéral d’exercer une véritable hégémonie dans le domaine de l’immigration, puisqu’il lui suffirait de légiférer de façon incompatible avec les lois provinciales en vigueur pour rendre celles-ci inopérantes. L’Accord du lac Meech prévoyait la constitutionnalisation d’une entente sur l’immigration intervenue en 1978 entre le Québec et le gouvernement fédéral par laquelle ce dernier acceptait de laisser le Québec établir les critères de sélection de certaines catégories d’immigrants. L’entente en question n’était cependant valable que pour une période déterminée et pouvait être dénoncée moyennant un préavis. Aux termes de l’Accord du lac Meech, cependant, il était prévu qu’après approbation par le Parlement fédéral et celui du Québec, elle serait constitutionnalisée et ne pourrait plus être modifiée qu’avec l’assentiment de ces deux mêmes corps législatifs. En outre, le gouvernement fédéral s’engageait à négocier avec les autres provinces qui en feraient la demande des accords similaires et à les constitutionnaliser également. Les adversaires de l’Accord du lac Meech ont prétendu que les autorités fédérales avaient ainsi abandonné aux mains des provinces leurs pouvoirs en matière d’immigration. Cette critique est largement exagérée si l’on tient compte du fait que l’Accord prévoyait également que pareille entente « n’a d’effet que dans la mesure de sa compatibilité avec les dispositions des lois du Parlement du Canada qui fixent des normes et objectifs nationaux relatifs à l’immigration et aux aubains, notamment en ce qui concerne l’établissement des catégories générales d’immigrants, les niveaux d’immigration au Canada et la détermination des catégories de personnes admissibles au Canada ». Par conséquent, les autorités fédérales se réservaient le pouvoir discrétionnaire de rendre inopérantes les dispositions les plus importantes des ententes

15 IJCS / RIÉC susceptibles d’être conclues avec les provinces, même après que leur enchâssement dans la Constitution. La limitation du pouvoir fédéral de dépenser Le « pouvoir de dépenser » désigne la capacité d’un ordre de gouvernement d’affecter des ressources financières à certains objectifs. Lorsque les buts poursuivis relèvent de la compétence de l’autorité qui engage les dépenses, il n’existe aucune difficulté particulière. Par contre, le problème se pose quand les dépenses ainsi faites permettent une intervention dans les compétences de l’autre ordre de gouvernement. Comme les ressources financières fédérales sont plus importantes que celles des provinces, ce sont ces dernières qui ont à craindre l’exercice du pouvoir de dépenser du gouvernement central, plutôt que l’inverse. Dans l’exercice de son pouvoir de dépenser, le fédéral verse aux provinces des subventions qui doivent servir à des programmes précis (par opposition aux paiements de péréquation que les provinces peuvent affecter librement aux fins qu’elles déterminent). En outre, ces subventions sont souvent conditionnelles au respect de certains objectifs ou normes fixés par les autorités fédérales. Enfin, les provinces sont parfois tenues de participer financièrement au programme, qui devient alors un programme « conjoint » (ou « cofinancé »). Des vérificateurs fédéraux contrôlent la bonne marche des opérations et l’utilisation des sommes versées par Ottawa. Le fédéral a commencé à proposer de tels programmes aux provinces dès l’époque de la Première Guerre mondiale dans des domaines relevant de la compétence provinciale. Depuis lors, plus de cent programmes de ce genre ont été établis, toujours à l’initiative des autorités fédérales, certains de nature temporaire, mais la plupart avec vocation à la permanence. Il est évidemment très difficile pour les provinces de refuser d’y participer, puisque cela désavantagerait leurs ressortissants qui paient à Ottawa des impôts dont une partie sert à financer les programmes en question. Pourtant, en se pliant aux objectifs et aux normes imposés par les autorités fédérales, les provinces consentent à modifier leurs propres priorités budgétaires et à se laisser dicter la manière d’exercer les compétences que la Constitution leur attribue de façon exclusive, sans compter qu’elles risquent, au bout d’un certain temps, de voir le fédéral se retirer unilatéralement du programme ou diminuer sa participation à un moment où il n’est plus politiquement possible de le supprimer à cause des attentes et des habitudes qu’il a créées dans la population6. L’Accord du lac Meech prévoyait qu’une province qui refuserait de participer aux futurs programmes à frais partagés, créés par le gouvernement fédéral dans un domaine de compétence provinciale exclusive, recevrait une « juste » compensation, qui correspondrait, si l’on comprend bien, au montant que le fédéral aurait dépensé chez elle si elle avait accepté le programme. Les adversaires de l’Accord considéraient que cette limitation du pouvoir fédéral de dépenser menaçait la capacité d’Ottawa de créer de nouveaux programmes sociaux (par exemple, un programme national de garderies) et d’en imposer l’implantation dans toutes les provinces. Encore une fois, la crainte semble exagérée. En effet, l’Accord du lac Meech prévoyait également qu’une province qui se retirerait d’un programme à frais partagés ne recevrait une compensation financière qu’à la condition d’affecter celle-cià«un programme ou une mesure compatible avec les objectifs nationaux ». Il est vrai que la notion d’« objectifs nationaux » était imprécise et pouvait être diversement interprétée. Il aurait donc fallu attendre que les tribunaux lui

16 La crise constitutionnelle et le réaménagement des rapports entre le Québec et le Canada anglais donnent une signification plus précise avant de savoir quelles contraintes le respect des « objectifs nationaux » imposait réellement aux provinces. La procédure de modification de la Constitution L’Accord du lac Meech apportait certains changements à la procédure de modification de la Constitution. Il prévoyait notamment que les modifications actuellement visées par l’article 42 de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982 et relevant par conséquent de la procédure générale des deux tiers seraient soumises à la règle de l’unanimité énoncée à l’article 41. Ce faisant, il assujétissait notamment la réforme des institutions fédérales et la création de nouvelles provinces à l’exigence d’un accord unanime des dix provinces, alors que ces modifications ne nécessitent actuellement que l’accord du Parlement fédéral et des deux tiers des provinces (c’est-à-dire sept provinces sur dix) représentant la moitié de la population totale. Il semble que les critiques adressées à ce dernier élément de l’Accord du lac Meech étaient justifiées. L’exigence de l’unanimité aurait conféré à la Constitution une rigidité excessive et rendu pratiquement impossible la réforme du Sénat et l’accession des Territoires du Nord-Ouest et du Yukon au statut de province. C’est pourquoi l’opposition à ces dispositions de l’Accord fut particulièrement vive, notamment dans les territoires et dans les provinces de l’Ouest, ces dernières tenant beaucoup à une réforme du Sénat. Le sort de l’Accord du lac Meech, qui a succombé à la règle de l’unanimité, démontre en quelque sorte par l’absurde les inconvénients qu’aurait entraînés l’extension de cette règle. Les difficultés de fonctionnement de la procédure de modification qu’a mises en évidence l’échec de l’Accord du lac Meech amènent actuellement le gouvernement fédéral à rechercher les moyens de simplifier cette procédure et, en particulier, de diminuer les cas où l’unanimité serait exigée. Cependant, en vertu de l’article 41(e) de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982, tout changement de la procédure de modification exige l’accord unanime des autorités fédérales et des dix provinces7. La reconnaissance de la dualité linguistique du Canada et du caractère distinct du Québec L’Accord du lac Meech contenait également des dispositions reconnaissant la dualité linguistique du Canada et le caractère distinct de la société québécoise. Ce sont ces dispositions, surtout celles relatives au caractère distinct du Québec, qui ont suscité les critiques les plus virulentes. Les adversaires de l’Accord ont prétendu tout à la fois qu’elles avaient pour effet de conférer au Québec plus de pouvoirs qu’aux autres provinces et qu’elles lui permettraient de limiter, voire de supprimer les droits et libertés garantis dans la Constitution canadienne. Ces craintes étaient très nettement exagérées. D’abord, en ce qui concerne le partage des compétences, l’Accord du lac Meech contenait une disposition qui empêchait de façon très claire qu’on puisse faire découler de la reconnaissance du caractère distinct du Québec quelque modification que ce soit à l’actuelle répartition des pouvoirs entre le Parlement canadien et l’Assemblée législative du Québec. Par conséquent, l’Accord n’augmentait pas les pouvoirs de la province, pas plus qu’il ne les diminuait.

17 IJCS / RIÉC

Ensuite, il faut relativiser les dangers que l’Accord constitutionnel faisait prétendûment courir aux droits et libertés. À cet égard, il y a lieu de distinguer entre les droits individuels et les droits collectifs des minorités. Les droits individuels, universels par nature, ne semblaient guère menacés : il eût été en effet fort difficile de prouver que le caractère distinct du Québec exigeait leur limitation, puisque par définition, ils sont les mêmes partout. Par contre, les droits à portée culturelle et linguistique, de nature collective, étaient à première vue plus vulnérables, puisqu’ils portent sur les mêmes réalités que celles qui constituent le caractère distinct du Québec (la langue et la culture) et qu’ils ne sont pas eux-mêmes universels et fondamentaux, mais propres à une situation sociale et culturelle contingente. Cependant, toutes les précautions avaient été prises pour que la reconnaissance du caractère distinct du Québec ne vienne pas diminuer les droits reconnus dans la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés ou dans d’autres dispositions constitutionnelles aux minorités qui vivent sur le territoire québécois. Pour ce qui est des droits de la minorité anglophone du Québec, ils étaient réaffirmés par la disposition faisant de la dualité linguistique une « caractéristique fondamentale de la fédération canadienne ». Manifestement, la protection de la minorité anglophone aurait toujours priorité sur la promotion du caractère francophone distinct du Québec. Quant aux autres minorités ethniques et culturelles du Québec, elles sont protégées par l’article 27 de la Charte qui garantit « le maintien et la valorisation du patrimoine multiculturel ». Or, cet article 27 a été purement et simplement soustrait à la portée de l’Accord du lac Meech, tout comme d’ailleurs les dispositions constitutionnelles qui protègent les droits des peuples autochtones (articles 25 de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés et 35 de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982). Ce bilan rapide tend donc à démontrer que l’incidence des dispositions relatives au caractère distinct du Québec sur les droits garantis par la Constitution, qu’ils soient individuels ou collectifs, ne pouvait être que négligeable8.

Les causes de l’échec de l’Accord du lac Meech Pour entrer en vigueur, l’Accord du lac Meech devait être ratifié par le Parlement fédéral et l’assemblée législative de chacune des dix provmces. Dans les deux ans qui ont suivi la conclusion de l’Accord, des élections provinciales au Nouveau-Brunswick, au Manitoba et à Terre-Neuve amenèrent au pouvoir des chefs de gouvernement qui n’avaient pas participé à la négociation et à la signature de l’Accord et qui refusèrent de le faire ratifier par leur assemblée législative ou même — dans le cas de Terre-Neuve — firent révoquer par cette dernière la résolution d’agrément qu’elle avait déjà adoptée9. L’échec de l’Accord du lac Meech s’explique en bonne partie par la « globalisation » du processus de modification de la Constitution qui, à l’origine, était exclusivement destiné à permettre l’adhésion du Québec à la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982. Mais la raison la plus importante de cet échec tient à l’incompatibilité profonde qui s’est manifestée entre les aspirations constitutionnelles du Québec et celles d’une grande partie du Canada anglais.

18 La crise constitutionnelle et le réaménagement des rapports entre le Québec et le Canada anglais

La « globalisation » du processus de modification constitutionnelle Le processus de modification de la Constitution, qui était d’abord destiné à satisfaire les conditions du Québec, s’est rapidement « globalisé ». Les trois provinces récalcitrantes liaient leur acceptation de l’Accord à une réforme du Sénat. Il faut reconnaître que cette attitude se justifiait par le fait que la réforme du Sénat serait devenue beaucoup plus difficile si l’Accord du lac Meech était entré en vigueur, puisqu’elle aurait été soumise à la règle de l’unanimité (alors qu’à l’heure actuelle, une telle réforme n’exige que l’accord des autorités fédérales et de sept provinces, représentant 50 p. 100 de la population). En outre, de nombreux groupes d’intérêt ont voulu profiter de l’occasion pour obtenir la satisfaction de leurs propres revendications constitutionnelles. Ainsi, les peuples autochtones du Canada ont vivement combattu l’Accord du lac Meech. Leur opposition était en partie motivée par les dispositions portant sur la procédure d’amendement de la Constitution qui faisaient en sorte, une fois l’Accord entré en vigueur, que la création de nouvelles provinces au Yukon et dans les Territoires du Nord-Ouest exigerait l’assentiment de toutes les provinces et non plus l’accord de sept d’entre elles comme c’est le cas à l’heure actuelle. Mais le principal grief des autochtones à l’égard de l’Accord se situait sur le plan de la symbolique constitutionnelle. En effet, de tous les groupes opposés à l’Accord du lac Meech, les autochtones étaient le seul à revendiquer d’être reconnu comme une « société distincte » parce qu’il est le seul, avec le Québec, à avoir des ambitions « nationales » ou, du moins, des revendications en matière d’autonomie gouvernementale. Les autochtones considéraient que leur reconnaissance comme « société distincte » aurait favorisé ces revendications sur un plan politique. Il faut également souligner que celles-ci avaient été présentées une nouvelle fois, quelques semaines seulement avant l’Accord du lac Meech, lors d’une conférence constitutionnelle qui avait échoué. Enfin, alors que les peuples autochtones peuvent invoquer une légitimité historique antérieure à celle des deux « peuples fondateurs » — les anglophones et les francophones — leur existence n’a pas été reconnue comme une « caractéristique fondamentale » dans l’Accord du lac Meech ni ailleurs dans la Constitution. L’Accord du lac Meech a également entraîné l’intervention des associations féministes du Canada anglais qui prétendaient que la limitation du pouvoir de dépenser du gouvernement fédéral empêcherait celui-ci de mettre sur pied un programme national de garderies. Ces associations craignaient également que la reconnaissance du caractère distinct du Québec ne menace le droit des femmes à l’égalité. De même, les Anglo-Québécois sont intervenus pour dénoncer l’Accord dans la mesure où ils considéraient que les dispositions reconnaissant le caractère distinct du Québec menaçaient leurs droits linguistiques. De leur côté, les francophones du Nouveau-Brunswick ont cautionné l’opposition de leur gouvernement à l’Accord du lac Meech parce qu’ils voulaient profiter du processus pour faire inscrire dans la Constitution le principe de l’égalité de statut des communautés francophone et anglophone de la province, ce qui aurait cependant pu être réalisé par simple entente entre les autorités fédérales et celles du Nouveau-Brunswick10. Enfin, de nombreuses minorités culturelles et ethniques ont eu le sentiment que l’Accord du lac Meech rabaissait le statut que leur octroyait l’article 27 de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés qui prévoit le maintien et la promotion du multiculturalisme. C’est pourquoi ces groupes voulaient faire modifier l’Accord de façon à ce que le multiculturalisme soit également reconnu comme une « caractéristique fondamentale du Canada ».

19 IJCS / RIÉC

On peut donc constater que toute tentative de réforme constitutionnelle provoque désormais l’intervention quasi automatique de nombreux groupes d’intérêts. Toute légitime que soit cette tendance sur le plan démocratique, il n’en reste pas moins qu’elle augmente considérablement les difficultés de fonctionnement de la procédure de modification. Le choc des aspirations et des identités nationales du Québec et du Canada anglais Il est vrai que deux provinces seulement (le Manitoba et le Nouveau- Brunswick), représentant moins de 8 p. 100 de la population canadienne, ont finalement refusé l’Accord, les sept autres provinces anglophones l’ayant entériné. Cependant, les sondages démontrent qu’à l’intérieur de celles-ci, une large majorité — entre 60 p. 100 et 70 p. 100 de la population — était fortement opposée à l’Accord du lac Meech. En fait, la controverse autour de l’Accord a révélé les divergences profondes qui existent entre les visions et les aspirations constitutionnelles du Québec et celles du Canada anglais, qu’il s’agisse de la répartition des pouvoirs entre l’État central et les provinces, du rôle reconnu à la Charte constitutionnelle, de la politique linguistique et des droits des minorités ou encore — et surtout — de la place du Québec au sein de la fédération canadienne. La répartition des pouvoirs En ce qui concerne le partage des pouvoirs entre les deux ordres de gouvernement, il paraît clair que les Canadiens anglais, en majorité, sont désireux de voir s’établir une plus grande centralisation, notamment dans les domaines de l’éducation, de la culture, des télecommunications et de la politique sociale, domaines pour lesquels le Québec réclame, au contraire, une plus grande décentralisation. Aux yeux de nombreux Canadiens anglais, cela est nécessaire pour assurer une plus grande égalité entre les citoyens et consolider l’identité nationale canadienne face à l’influence des États-Unis. Cette opinion est particulièrement répandue chez les élites canadiennes- anglaises de gauche et de centre-gauche: bien que traditionnellement sympathiques aux revendications du Québec, celles-ci se sont opposées à l’Accord du lac Meech parce qu’elles y voyaient une diminution des pouvoirs du gouvernement fédéral. Il faut également souligner que six des neuf provinces anglophones ont des revenus fiscaux inférieurs à la moyenne nationale et, par conséquent, bénéficient des paiements de péréquation et autres transferts fédéraux par le biais desquels le gouvernement central procède à une certaine redistribution de la richesse nationale. Pour la plupart de ces provinces, les versements fédéraux constituent une part fort importante de leur budget et, pour cette raison, elles sont évidemment opposées à toute réforme constitutionnelle qui affaiblirait l’État centrall1. En outre, comme on l’a mentionné précédemment, les provinces de l’Atlantique et de l’Ouest, moins peuplées que le Québec et l’Ontario, espèrent qu’une réforme du Sénat leur accordera plus de pouvoir au sein des institutions centrales; dans cette mesure, elles veulent évidemment qu’elles le deviennent davantage. Elles recherchent donc plus d’influence sur le processus politique fédéral par le biais d’une Chambre haute renforcée où elles seront mieux représentées qu’à la Chambre des communes. Enfin, il faut constater que le sentiment d’identité nationale des Canadiens anglais est davantage associé à l’État central et à ses institutions qu’aux

20 La crise constitutionnelle et le réaménagement des rapports entre le Québec et le Canada anglais

pouvoirs publics provinciaux. Par conséquent, toute dimininution du rôle et des pouvoirs d’Ottawa est perçue comme une menace ou une attaque contre cette identité. Les Québécois, au contraire, surtout depuis la « Révolution tranquille », accordent principalement leur confiance et leur loyauté à l’État provincial, ce qui est fort compréhensible, puisque c’est le seul État qu’ils contrôlent de façon démocratique. Par conséquent, à l’inverse de ce qui se passe pour les Canadiens anglais, ce sont les visées centralisatrices qui menacent le sentiment d’identité nationale des Québécois francophones. Les attitudes à l’égard de la Charte canadiennes des droits et libertés La même divergence existe en ce qui concerne les attitudes respectives des Canadiens anglais et des Québécois francophones à l’égard de la Charte constitutionnelle. Au Canada anglais, celle-ci sert désormais de symbole national. L’universalité des principes qui y sont enchâssés permet de transcender les nombreuses différences de culture et d’origine qui existent dans une population composée en grande partie d’immigrants venus de toutes les parties du monde. Cependant, dans la mesure précisément où les droits de la personne sont généralement considérés comme devant être appliqués et interprétés partout de la même façon, l’application d’une charte constitutionnelle commune au Canada anglais et au Québec pourrait, à la longue, avoir des effets socialement uniformisateurs et par conséquent, menacer le caractère distinct de la société québécoisel2. La mise en œuvre des droits et libertés touche des problèmes de culture et de civilisation et amène les tribunaux à se substituer au législateur pour effectuer certains « choix de société ». Or, dans le cadre de la Charte canadienne, cette mise en oeuvre se fait à l’echelle nationale par le truchement d’une hiérarchie judiciaire centralisée qui utilise inévitablement une approche uniforme pour interpréter les standards constitutionnels (on a souligné précédemment que les juges des cours supérieures et des cours d’appel provinciales sont nommés de façon discrétionnaire par le gouvernement fédéral). Dans la mesure où l’application de la Charte canadienne est susceptible de limiter les pouvoirs et la liberté de choix des organes démocratiques de l’État québécois, on comprendra qu’elle ne suscite pas au Québec les mêmes sentiments de ferveur que dans les autres provincesl3. En cherchant à faire reconnaître le caractère distinct de la société québécoise, l’on voulait précisement se protéger contre les effets uniformisateurs de la Charte espérant que cette disposition inciterait les tribunaux à tenir compte des besoins particuliers du Québec14. En 1975, l’Assemblée nationale du Québec a adopté une Charte des droits et libertés de la personne15 qui possède une valeur « quasi constitutionnelle », puisqu’elle a primauté sur les lois québécoises ordinaires. Les Québécois francophones considèrent généralement que cet instrument les protège adéquatement et que, s’il y a lieu de le constitutionnaliser, il devrait figurer dans une nouvelle constitution du Québec, laquelle pourrait être adoptée soit dans l’actuel cadre fédéral canadien, soit à l’occasion de l’accession du Québec à la souverainetél6. Les droits des minorités et les politiques linguistiques En ce qui concerne la politique linguistique et les droits des minorités, le Canada anglais reproche au Québec de limiter les droits de sa minorité anglophone au moment même où le statut juridique des francophones hors du Québec benéficie d’une certaine amélioration. Cette vision « symétrique » méconnaît cependant le fait que les francophones, même s’ils sont en situation de majorité au Québec, constituent une minorité en perte d’influence à

21 IJCS / RIÉC l’echelle du pays. En effet, tous les efforts consentis par les autorités fédérales et certaines provinces pour améliorer le sort des minorités francophones n’ont pas réussi à freiner le taux d’assimilation de ces groupes. Même au Québec, où 90 p. 100 des francophones du Canada sont désormais concentrés, le fait français n’est pas à l’abri du danger, puisque les immigrants continuent de s’assimiler de préférence à la communauté anglophonel7. Pour protéger la langue française, les autorités québécoises considèrent donc qu’il faut parfois limiter les droits traditionnels des anglophones, dans la mesure où les deux langues sont en situation de concurrence. La plupart des Canadiens anglais rejettent cependant ces arguments et considèrent que la politique québécoise de la langue française viole le « pacte linguistique » tacite auquel ils ont consenti en acceptant la politique de bilinguisme officiel du gouvernement fédéral et celle de deux provinces anglophones (le Nouveau-Brunswick et, dans une moindre mesure, l’Ontario). La place du Ouébec au sein de la fédération Enfin, l’opposition la plus radicale qui se manifeste entre le Canada anglais et le Québec concerne la reconnaissance de celui-ci comme communauté nationale distincte. Depuis 1867, mais plus encore à partir de la « Révolution tranquille », le Québec aspire à un « statut particulier », qui se traduirait par l’obtention de pouvoirs supplémentaires, considérés comme nécessaires à l’épanouissement de la société québécoise. Cependant, à cette revendication de l’égalité entre les deux « peuples fondateurs », le Canada anglais a toujours opposé le double principe de l’égalité des provinces et des individus. L’insistance mise sur l’égalité juridique de toutes les provinces empêche évidemment de reconnaître à l’une d’entre elles un statut ou des pouvoirs particuliers. Mais il s’agit là d’un principe plutôt artificiel, qui ne correspond d’ailleurs pas au droit positif, puisque la Constitution canadienne contient déjà plusieurs dispositions qui traitent certaines provinces différemment des autres, notamment sur le plan des droits linguistiques. Quant à l’égalité des individus, garantie par la Charte constitutionnelle, l’interprétation radicale et quelque peu simpliste qu’on lui donne parfois rend également plus difficiles les arrangements institutionnels qui reconnaîtraient au Québec un statut particulier. En effet, comme le montrent certains arguments des opposants à l’Accord du lac Meech, de tels arrangements sont considérés au Canada anglais comme accordant aux Québécois plus de droits qu’aux Canadiens des autres provinces18. On peut donc conclure en affirmant que l’opposition entre le Canada anglais et le Québec a pris les allures d’un choc entre deux « sociétés globales », deux communautés nationales distinctes, dont la coexistence ne semble plus guère possible dans le cadre des structures constitutionnelles actuelles19. Il faut alors se demander si une association — ou communauté — entre ces deux nations est encore possible, et sous quelle forme.

Le rejet de l’Accord de Charlottetown en 1992 et l’avenir des rapports entre le Québec et le Canada anglais Un peu plus de deux ans après l’échec de l’Accord du lac Meech, un nouvel accord constitutionnel, appelé « l’Accord de Charlottetown », était conclu par les onze premiers ministres auxquels s’étaient joints cette fois les représentants des Peuples autochtones du Canada. Soumis à référendum le 26 octobre 1992, l’Accord de Charlottetown a été rejeté par la population de façon décisive, tant au Québec que dans le reste du Canada. Après avoir examiné sa

22 La crise constitutionnelle et le réaménagement des rapports entre le Québec et le Canada anglais

genèse et son contenu, puis les causes de son échec, on terminera en tentant d’analyser les options encore disponibles pour l’avenir. La genèse et le contenu de l ’Accord de Charlottetown En septembre 1990, le gouvernement Bourassa et l’opposition péquiste se sont entendus pour créer une commission parlementaire élargie (la Commission Bélanger-Campeau, du nom de ses deux coprésidents) qui a reçu le mandat d’étudier les options possibles et de proposer des solutions pour l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec. La Commission a remis son rapport en mars 1991 dans lequel elle conclut que les deux seules voies de solution qui s’ouvrent pour l’avenir sont la modification en profondeur du cadre constitutionnel actuel ou, sinon, l’accession du Québec à la souveraineté avec ou sans l’accord du Canada anglais20. Les principales recommandations de la Commission B.-C. ont été entérinées par le gouvernement quelques mois plus tard lorsque celui-ci a fait adopter par l’Assemblée nationale la Loi sur le processus de détermination de l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec21. Celle-ci prévoyait la tenue d’un référendum sur la souveraineté du Québec au plus tard le 26 octobre 1992. Entre-temps, il restait loisible au gouvernement fédéral et aux autres provinces d’offrir au Québec de nouveaux arrangements constitutionnels. Le 24 septembre 1991, le gouvernement fédéral de M. Brian Mulroney présentait ses propositions de renouvellement constitutionnel22. Un comité mixte spécial du Sénat et de la Chambre des communes était créé pour parcourir le Canada afin de recueillir les réactions à ces propositions et de suggérer, le cas échéant, des modifications. Le rapport du comité a été déposé le 28 février 199223. En outre, à partir de la fin du mois de janvier, une série de conférences fut organisée pour permettre à certains groupes d’intérêts et à des personnes choisies dans le grand public de discuter les propositions constitutionnelles du gouvernement fédéral. Entre le 12 mars et le 7 juillet 1992, les recommandations du comité mixte allaient servir de base de discussion lors d’une série de rencontres entre les représentants des autorités fédérales, des provinces (le Québec excepté), des territoires et des peuples autochtones. À partir du 4 août 1992, se tinrent ensuite un certain nombre de réunions des premiers ministres, fédéral et provinciaux, auxquelles accepta de participer le chef du gouvernement du Québec, M. Robert Bourassa. Elles devaient aboutir, le 28 août, à un accord constitutionnel appelé « l’Accord de Charlottetown ». Cependant, ce n’est que le 9 octobre suivant que furent rendus publics les textes juridiques définitifs de l’entente, lesquels comportaient de nombreuses questions en suspens, qui devaient par conséquent faire l’objet de négociations futures. C’est sous cette forme quelque peu inachevée et programmatique que le projet de réforme constitutionnelle fut soumis à la populatlon, qui le repoussa — tant au Québec que dans cinq autres provinces — lors d’un référendum qui eut lieu le 26 octobre 199224. Étant donné le rejet de l’Accord de Charlottetown, il n’est pas nécessaire d’en analyser le contenu en détail. Nous en ferons cependant une brève description pour tenter de comprendre pourquoi il a été rejeté et quelles conséquences sont susceptibles de découler de ce nouvel échec. Dans le nouveau projet de modification constitutionnelle, les dispositions relatives au caractère distinct du Québec étaient désormais inscrites dans une « clause Canada », destinée à étre placée au début de la Constitution, qui énonçait huit « caractéristiques fondamentales » avec lesquelles devrait concorder l’interprétation de la Constitution, notamment la Charte

23 IJCS / RIÉC canadienne des droits et libertés. Parmi les sept autres « caractéristiques fondamentales » ainsi consacrées, deux au moins risquaient d’entrer en conflit avec le caractère distinct du Québec : d’une part, le principe de l’égalité de toutes les provinces et, d’autre part, « l’attachement [commitment en anglais] des Canadiens et de leurs gouvernements à l’épanouissement et au développement des communautés minoritaires de langue officielle dans tout le pays » (c’est-à-dire, au Québec, de la minorité anglophone). Par ailleurs, le paragraphe 2 de la clause Canada affirmait que « [l]a législature et le gouvernement du Québec ont le rôle de protéger et de promouvoir la société distincte. » Toutes ces règles d’interprétation auraient eu sensiblement le même poids juridique. Par conséquent, il n’aurait pas été possible pour les tribunaux d’interpréter la Constitution de façon distincte pour le Québec, puisque cela aurait été contraire à l’égalité interprovinciale. De même, interpréter la Constitution comme permettant une mesure qui affecterait négativement le développement et l’épanouissement de la minorité anglo-québécoise serait allé à l’encontre de la disposition protégeant les minorités de langue officielle. Avec cette disposition, la minorité anglophone aurait même disposé d’une nouvelle arme pour contester les réglementations linguistiques québécoises considérées comme incompatibles avec la protection et l’épanouissement de la langue anglaise. Il est vrai que le Québec aurait alors pu arguer que les mesures contestées étaient necessaires pour protéger et promouvolr son caractère distinct. Les tribunaux auraient dès lors été obligés de constater qu’il y avait contradiction entre la promotion des droits de la majorité, fondée sur le caractère distinct du Québec, et l’épanouissement des droits de la minorité et auraient donc dû déterminer laquelle de ces deux « caractéristiques fondamentales » devait se voir reconnaître la primauté. Pour terminer, il faut souligner que dans l’Accord de Charlottetown, contrairement à l’Accord du lac Meech, la « société distincte » était définie comme « comprenant notamment une majorité d’expression française, une culture qui est unique et une tradition de droit civil ». Bien que n’étant pas exhaustive, cette énumération était de nature à limiter le contenu de la société distincte dans la mesure où les tribunaux auraient pu appliquer la règle voulant que seuls des éléments analogues à ceux qui sont énumérés peuvent être ajoutés par interprétation à une liste non exhaustive (règle ejusdem generis). Or, le « genre » des trois éléments mentionnés, leur trait commun, était leur caractère traditionnel : il s’agissait de caractères particuliers du Québec qui existaient déjà au moment où celui-ci était entré dans la fédération en 1867. Par conséquent, on pouvait prétendre que le caractère distinct du Québec, tel qu’il était reconnu dans la clause Canada, était lié au passé et à l’histoire. Rien ne permettait évidemment de prétendre avec certitude que les tribunaux auraient retenu ce genre d’interprétation, mais cette possibilité ne pouvait pas davantage être exclue. En tenant compte des différences qui viennent d’être mentionnées, il faut donc constater que la reconnaissance du caractère distinct du Québec dans l’Accord de Charlottetown avait perdu de sa portée par rapport à l’Accord du Lac Meech. L’Accord constitutionnel de Charlottetown comprenait également des dispositions relatives à la réforme du Sénat, de la Chambre des communes et de la Cour suprême.

24 La crise constitutionnelle et le réaménagement des rapports entre le Québec et le Canada anglais

Concernant la réforme du Sénat, l’accord constitutionnel prévoyait que celui- ci serait « égal », chaque province étant représentée par six sénateurs et chaque territoire par un. Dans un premier temps, la proportion des sièges du Québec au Sénat serait donc passée de 23,1 p. 100 à 9,7 p. 100. Mais elle aurait ensuite continué à diminuer. En effet, l’accord constitutionnel prévoyait également de nouvelles négociations pour ajouter des sièges au Sénat afin d’y représenter les peuples autochtones. En outre, au fur et à mesure de la créaton de nouvelles provinces, il aurait fallu à nouveau augmenter le nombre des sièges de la Chambre haute. À cet égard, il faut souligner que le Québec n’avait pas obtenu, comme il le demandait, un droit de veto sur la création de nouvelles provinces. Au contraire, l’Accord de Charlottetown entraînait un recul de la position provinciale sur ce plan. Alors qu’à l’heure actuelle, en vertu de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982, il faut le consentement de sept provinces représentant 50 p. 100 de la population pour créer une nouvelle province à partir d’un des deux territoires, l’Accord de 1992 prévoyait qu’il suffirait d’un accord entre les autorités fédérales et le territoire intéressé. Il est vrai, par contre, qu’il était également prévu que les provinces existantes devraient consentir, à l’unanimité, aux modalités de participation de la nouvelle province à la procédure de modification de la Constitution ainsi qu’à l’augmentation de sa représentation au Sénat. Il aurait donc pu arriver, par exemple, que deux nouvelles provinces soient créées pour les Territoires du Nord-Ouest, mais qu’une ou plusieurs provinces s’opposent à l’augmentation du nombre des sénateurs, avec le résultat que le principe de l’égalité de représentation des provinces au Sénat n’aurait pas pu être respecté. Les pressions pour l’augmentation des membres de la Chambre haute seraient alors devenues très fortes et, sur un plan pratique et politique, les provinces récalcitrantes auraient eu beaucoup de difficultés à maintenir leur obstruction. Selon l’Accord de Charlottetown, les sénateurs devaient être élus soit par la population, soit par l’assemblée législative provinciale, selon ce que chaque province déciderait. En ce qui concerne les attributions législatives du nouveau Sénat, l’Accord de Charlottetown distinguait quatre catégories de projets de lois. Le Sénat disposerait d’un droit de veto absolu sur les projets de loi supposant « des changements fondamentaux du régime fiscal directement lié aux ressources naturelles ». Par contre, pour les projets de loi traitant des recettes et des dépenses (les projets de loi de crédits), le nouveau Sénat n’aurait qu’un droit de veto suspensif de trente jours, la Chambres des communes pouvant réadopter le projet au bout de cette période par une majorité ordinaire. Quant aux projets de loi « touchant de façon importante à la langue ou à la culture française », ils devraient être adoptés par une majorité de tous les sénateurs et par une majorité des sénateurs francophones (les sénateurs francophones étant ceux qui se déclarent comme tels au moment de leur accession au Sénat). Enfin, pour ce qui est des projets de loi « ordinaires », c’est-à-dire n’entrant dans aucune des trois catégories précédentes, le rejet ou la modification d’un projet de loi par le Sénat déclencherait un processus de séance conjointe des deux Chambres; un vote à la majorité simple en séance conjointe déciderait alors du sort du projet de loi. Par ailleurs, le nombre des députés serait augmenté substantiellement. Par conséquent, lorsque le gouvernement aurait disposé d’une solide majorité à la Chambre des Communes, comme c’est normalement le cas, il n’aurait pas eu de difficulté à faire renverser par celle-ci le veto que le Sénat pouvait opposer à ses projets (autres que ceux portant sur la fiscalité des ressources naturelles et la langue ou la culture française). En revanche, dans les cas où le

25 IJCS / RIÉC gouvernement fédéral aurait été minoritaire ou n’aurait disposé que d’une faible majorité (comme cela est quelques fois arrivé au cours des quarante dernières années), l’alliance entre les partis d’opposition aux Communes et un certain nombre de sénateurs aurait pu être fatale à de nombreux projets de loi s’ils avaient fait l’objet d’un vote en séance conjointe. Dans un tel cas, le Cabinet pouvait même être contraint de dissoudre le Parlement et de faire des élections, bien qu’en théorie, selon l’Accord constitutionnel, le nouveau Sénat ne se voyait pas reconnaître le pouvoir de renverser le gouvernement. On constate donc que la réforme du Sénat risquait de compliquer, voire d’entraver sérieusement le fonctionnement du système parlementaire canadien. On peut ajouter à cela que la réforme aurait mis en mouvement une dynamique dont il était fort difficile d’évaluer les effets futurs. Dans la mesure où les sénateurs auraient été titulaires d’une légitimité démocratique semblable à celles des députés fédéraux, ils auraient pu exercer un pouvoir politique et moral, sinon juridique, considérable (il est illogique de donner au Sénat une forte légitimité démocratique sans lui reconnaître d’importants pouvoirs). Cela risquait de susciter de fortes pressions en faveur de l’augmentation des prérogatives de la Chambre haute. L’Accord de Charlottetown accordait au Québec la garantie de n’avoir jamais moins de 25 p. 100 des sièges à la Chambre des communes sans égard à l’importance relative de sa population. Il s’agissait là d’une protection qui était loin d’être négligeable pour l’avenir. En effet, si la population québécoise représente actuellement un peu plus du quart de l’ensemble canadien, elle devrait, selon les estimations, bientôt tomber sous ce seuil et continuer de diminuer au cours du XXIe siècle. La Chambre des communes restant le principal lieu d’exercice du pouvoir législatif fédéral, il est important que le Québec y soit protégé contre une diminution de sa représentation. Cependant, il ne faut pas exagérer la portée de cette garantie. En effet, les députés sont généralement prisonniers de la discipline de parti et votent par conséquent bien plus en fonction des consignes de leur parti politique que des intérêts de la province qu’ils représentent. Par conséquent, la présence d’un fort contingent de députés québécois à Ottawa ne constitue pas nécessairement une garantie que le gouvernement fédéral respectera les orientations et les priorités du gouvernement du Québec. Concernant la nomination des juges de la Cour suprême, l’Accord de Charlottetown reprenait essentiellement les dispositions de l’Accord du lac Meech. En effet, il était prévu de constitutionnaliser les dispositions de la Loi sur la Cour suprême voulant que trois des neuf juges de la Cour doivent avoir été reçus au Barreau du Québec, c’est-à-dire être des civilistes, et l’on prévoyait que le gouvernement québécois pourrait présenter la liste à partir de laquelle le gouvernement fédéral devrait nommer les juges venant du Québec. Par contre, contrairement à ce que prévoyait l’Accord du lac Meech, les modifications futures du processus de sélection des juges de la Cour suprême n’exigeraient pas le consentement de toutes les provinces (ce qui aurait donné au Québec un droit de veto), mais seulement l’accord de sept d’entre elles, représentant la moitié de la population. Au chapitre de la répartition des pouvoirs, où le Québec réclame depuis trente ans une augmentation de ses compétences dans de nombreux domaines ainsi qu’une véritable limitation du pouvoir fédéral de dépenser, l’Accord constitutionnel consacrait essentiellement une forme de statu quo « remodelé ». En outre, rappelons que l’Accord n’énonçait dans ce domaine

26 La crise constitutionnelle et le réaménagement des rapports entre le Québec et le Canada anglais aucune règle propre au Québec, qui se trouvait donc traité exactement comme toutes les autres provinces. En premier lieu, dans un certain nombre de domaines (forêts, mines, tourisme, logement, loisirs, affaires municipales et urbaines) où les provinces possèdent déjà les pouvoirs législatifs, ceux-ci étaient formellement réaffirmés, en même temps qu’était également consacré le pouvoir de dépenser du gouvernement fédéral, lequel s’engageait à négocier son retrait par des accords valables pour cinq ans et renouvelables. Ensuite, la compétence législative exclusive des provinces était reconnue dans le domaine du développement et de la formation de la main- d’oeuvre, le fédéral conservant cependant le droit d’établir — de concert avec les provinces — des objectifs nationaux pour le premier de ces domaines. Là encore, le non- exercice du pouvoir fédéral de dépenser devait d’abord être négociée par les provinces. En outre, le fédéral conservait sa compétence exclusive à l’égard de l’assurance-chômage, y compris le soutien du revenu et les services connexes qu’il fournit dans ce cadre. En troisième lieu, en matière de culture, l’accord prévoyait une nouvelle disposition constitutionnelle reconnaissant la compétence exclusive des provinces relativement au « domaine de la culture dans la province »; en réalité, il ne s’agissait que d’une explicitation de la solution jurisprudentielle en vigueur , qui a été développée par les tribunaux sur la base de l’article 92 de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1867. Par ailleurs, la responsabilité des autorités fédérales sur les « affaires culturelles nationales » était également confirmée, le gouvernement fédéral conservant, là encore, son pouvoir de dépenser et s’engageant seulement à négocier des ententes visant à assurer aux provinces la « maîtrise d’oeuvre » de la politique culturelle sur leur territoire. Le même engagement fédéral de négocier des ententes de coordination et d’harmonisation s’appliquait aux domaines du développement régional et des télécommunications. En matière d’immigration, l’Accord de Charlottetown reprenait la substance des dispositions de l’Accord du lac Meech, c’est-à-dire que les ententes conclues dans ce domaine entre le gouvernement fédéral et les provinces étaient « protégées » constitutionnellement, de façon à ne pouvoir être modifiés, en principe, que par entente entre les deux parties. En fait, les autorités fédérales conservaient la possibilité de les modifier unilatéralement sur certains points en adoptant des normes nationales portant notamment sur les niveaux généraux d’immigration et les catégories d’immigrants admissibles. Enfin, dans tous les autres domaines de compétence provinciale exclusive — la santé ou l’éducation —, par exemple, le gouvernement fédéral conservait son pouvoir de dépenser, les provinces se voyant seulement reconnaître, comme dans l’Accord du lac Meech, le droit de refuser de participer à un nouveau programme cofinancé que le gouvernement fédéral créerait et d’obtenir une compensation financière, mais uniquement à condition de mettre elles-mêmes sur pied un programme « compatible avec les objectifs nationaux». En résumé, le principe général qui inspirait les dispositions de l’Accord relatives à la répartition des pouvoirs semble avoir été que toutes les compétences provinciales, y compris celles que la Constitution attribue aux provinces de façon « exclusive », sont en réalité perméables à l’intervention

27 IJCS / RIÉC fédérale par le biais de son pouvoir de dépenser. Lorsque le fédéral acceptait de limiter ce pouvoir, c’était toujours de façon conditionnelle par des accords temporaires qu’un nouveau gouvernement, autrement disposé, pourrait refuser de renouveller. Parmi les autres dispositions de l’Accord de Charlottetown pertinentes à notre propos, rappelons celles portant sur les droits des peuples autochtones. On y consacrait le droit « inhérent » des peuples autochtones à l’autonomie gouvernementale et la création, à cet effet, d’un troisième ordre de gouvernement. Pendant une période de cinq ans, les onze gouvernements et les intéressés auraient tenté de préciser par voie de négociation la teneur de ce droit, à défaut de quoi celui-ci deviendrait exécutoire et pourrait alors être être défini par les tribunaux. Outre le fait qu’un tel projet déléguait ainsi un pouvoir trop considérable aux tribunaux, trois autres aspects ne manquaient pas d’inquiéter. En premier lieu, il n’était pas clair dans quelle mesure les lois autochtones devaient être compatibles avec les lois fédérales et provinciales25. Ensuite, l’Accord prévoyait que les autorités autochones pourraient déroger à la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés, ce qui inquiétait vivement les femmes autochtones, qui avaient peur que l’égalité sexuelle ne soit pas toujours respectée par les futurs gouvernements autochtones. Enfin, il semble que l’Accord aurait permis aux gouvernements autochtones de refuser les droits politiques aux non-autochtones vivant sur leur territoire; il se serait donc agi de gouvernements fondés au moins en partie sur l’appartenance raciale. Les causes du rejet de l’Accord de Charlottetown Comme on vient de le constater, l’Accord de Charlottetown ne répondait aucunement aux demandes traditionnelles du Québec en matière de répartition des pouvoirs. Par ailleurs, sur de nombreux autres points, comme par exemple la réforme du Sénat, la reconnaissance du caractère distinct du Québec, le droit de veto sur les amendements à la Constitution, l’Accord représentait un recul par rapport Meech. Non seulement, le Québec ne se voyait pas reconnaître les nouveaux pouvoirs considérés comme nécessaires à son développement, mais pis encore, il n’obtenait pas même toutes les garanties nécessaires à la protection efficace de sa position minoritaire dans le cadre des institutions fédérales. Il n’est donc pas étonnant que l’Accord est été rejeté au Québec par une majorité de 56,6 p. 100 des électeurs parmi lesquels on trouvait, bien sûr, les souverainistes, mais également un grand nombre de fédéralistes insatisfaits. Par ailleurs, l’Accord de Charlottetown contenait une réforme de la Chambre haute qui devait fatalement mécontenter les tenants du Sénat « Triple E », puisque si le Sénat proposé était « égal » et élu, il était loin d’être aussi efficace que ces derniers l’auraient voulu. Il n’est donc pas étonnant que l’Accord ait aussi été rejeté dans les quatre provinces de l’Ouest de façon encore plus décisive qu’au Québec (par une majorité de 63,1 p. 100 des électeurs). La mesure garantissant à perpétuité au Québec 25 p. 100 des sièges de la Chambre des communes a été particulièrement mal reçue en Colombie-Britannique, qui aurait ainsi continué à avoir une proportion de sièges moindre que ne le justifie sa forte croissance démographique. Les trois seules provinces où l’Accord a été accepté par une nette majorité sont Terre-Neuve, l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard et le Nouveau-Brunswick. En Nouvelle-Écosse, il a été rejeté par une mince majorité alors qu’en Ontario, une majorité encore plus réduite l’acceptait (à l’échelle nationale, l’Accord a été rejeté par 54 p. 100 des électeurs).

28 La crise constitutionnelle et le réaménagement des rapports entre le Québec et le Canada anglais

En fait, on peut penser que l’Accord de Charlottetown était en quelque sorte condamné d’avance, puisqu’il heurtait de front les revendications des deux principaux « demandeurs » en matière de réforme constitutionnelle : le Québec, qui n’obtenait pas les pouvoirs qu’il réclame depuis trente ans; les provinces de l’Ouest, qui se voyaient frustrées d’un véritable Sénat « Triple E » leur principale revendication depuis le milieu des années soixante-dix. Même les peuples autochtones ont majoritairement voté contre l’Accord, ce qui est plus difficile à comprendre étant donné qu’ils avaient réalisé des gains considérables, encore impensables il y a deux ou trois ans. Avec le bénéfice du recul, on comprend que pour avoir quelque chance de succès, les rédacteurs de l’Accord de Charlottetown auraient dû accepter d’augmenter les pouvoirs du Québec de façon « asymétrique » et donner en échange satisfaction aux provinces de l’Ouest pour ce qui est du Sénat « Triple E ». Sans doute, chacun des deux camps aurait-il encore eu des raisons de s’opposer à l’entente, mais également certains motifs puissants pour l’appuyer. Bien sûr, pour en arriver là, il aurait fallu accepter d’abord le principe d’un « statut particulier » pour le Québec, ce que la majorité des Canadiens anglais ne semble pas encore disposée à faire. Pourtant, il s’agit probablement de la seule avenue de changement qui reste encore ouverte pour l’avenir, mis à part l’accession du Québec à la souveraineté. La redéfinition du statut du Québec au sein du régime fédéral canadien : le fédéralisme « asymétrique » (ou statut particulier) Au cours des discussions constitutionnelles qui ont eu lieu en 1992, certains membres de l’intelligentsia et des milieux dirigeants canadiens-anglais ont présenté l’hypothèse d’un « fédéralisme asymétrique », qui permettrait au Québec d’exercer certains pouvoirs qui ne seraient pas nécessairement étendus aux autres provinces. Ce statut particulier devait cependant être « compensé » par une diminution correspondante de l’influence du Québec au sein des institutions centrales. Ainsi, les représentants du Québec au sein du Parlement canadien — députés et sénateurs — ne voteraient plus sur les lois touchant les domaines où la compétence aurait été transférée aux autorités de la province26. De même, les ministères correspondants ne devraient plus être dirigés par des Québécois et, à toute fin pratique, ceux-ci ne pourraient plus prétendre occuper le poste de Premier ministre fédéral ou celui de chef d’un parti politique national27. Selon les modalités retenues, pareil régime pourrait constituer soit un marché de dupes pour le Québec, soit une transformation profonde du système canadien qui évoluerait ainsi vers une « quasi-confédération » à deux. Le Québec perdrait évidemment au change si le transfert de pouvoirs en sa faveur n’était que minime et, par conséquent, insuffisant pour compenser sa perte d’influence subie au sein des institutions fédérales. Pour être satisfaisant, le transfert devrait porter sur la majeure partie des pouvoirs que les gouvernements québécois successifs revendiquent avec constance depuis une trentaine d’années. La liste en est longue28. Par ailleurs, le pouvoir de dépenser des autorités fédérales devrait être aboli — ou du moins ne s’exercer qu’avec l’accord du gouvernement québécois — autant dans les nouveaux domaines transférés au Québec que dans ceux qui sont traditionnellement de sa compétence exclusive. En effet, si ce pouvoir demeurait intact, le Québec ne tirerait rien de l’acquisition de nouvelles compétences, puisque le pouvoir de dépenser permet au fédéral d’obliger les provinces à se plier aux objectifs et

29 IJCS / RIÉC aux normes qu’il fixe, même dans leurs champs de compétence exclusive. En outre, le transfert au Québec de nouvelles compétences législatives devrait s’accompagner du transfert correspondant de ressources financières, sous forme de ressources fiscales. Par conséquent, les Québécois bénéficieraient d’une réduction d’impôts fédéraux, ce qui permettrait un supplément de taxation provinciale correspondant aux services désormais fournis par la province. Étant donné que le Québec est la deuxième plus importante province (25 p. 100 de la population canadienne), un tel bouleversement fiscal et financier exigerait le réaménagement du système de la péréquation. Pour ce qui est de la réforme du Sénat, l’asymétrie pourrait être poussée jusqu’au point où celui-ci ne réunirait que les représentants du Canada anglais et, dès lors, n’interviendrait plus que pour les lois ne s’appliquant uniquement qu’à l’extérieur du Québec29. En outre, la Charte constitutionnelle pourrait être déclarée inapplicable au Québec et la Charte québécoise, en échange, se voir attribuer un véritable statut constitutionnel en étant « enchâssée » par une procédure spéciale d’amendement. La Cour suprême du Canada pourrait perdre sa compétence à l’égard des affaires de droit civil québécois, la Cour d’appel du Québec devenant la juridiction de dernière instance dans ce domaine : l’on pourrait même créer au sein de la Cour suprême une chambre spécialisée en matière constitutionnelle dont les membres seraient nommés conjointement par le gouvernement fédéral et le gouvernement du Québec. Enfin, la proportion des sièges du Québec à la Chambre des communes devrait être garantie et le Québec devrait obtenir un droit de veto sur les modifications constitutionnelles affectant sa place au sein des institutions centrales ainsi que le droit de recevoir une pleine compensation financière dans tous les cas où il exercerait son droit de « désaccord » (ou droit de retrait) contre une modification constitutionnelle transférant une compétence provinciale au Parlement fédéral30. Si le « fédéralisme asymétrique » respectait ces conditions, il aurait pour effet à moyen et à long terme d’instaurer entre le Québec et le Canada anglais des relations de nature quasi confédérale, plutôt que fédérale. Le Parlement et le gouvernement canadiens pourraient en quelque sorte jouer deux rôles différents : celui d’institutions fédérales pour le Canada anglais, et celui d’institutions confédérales pour le nouvel ensemble formé par le Québec et le Canada. Le Québec et le Canada ne maintiendraient alors que le degré d’union politique nécessaire pour permettre le fonctionnement de l’union économique et monétaire et chacun d’eux pourrait poursuivre plus librement ses aspirations et développer davantage sa propre identité nationale. Il s’agirait en somme d’une forme de « souveraineté-association » avec la différence qu’elle serait négociée à partir de l’actuelle situation fédérale plutôt qu’après la séparation du Québec. C’est précisément pour cette raison qu’il est peu probable que le Canada anglais accepte cette solution à l’heure actuelle, craignant qu’elle ne constitue l’« antichambre du séparatisme ». Cependant, si la menace d’une séparation du Québec redevenait plus réelle, la solution du fédéralisme asymétrique pourrait gagner des adeptes au Canada anglais dans la mesure où elle serait alors l’unique solution de rechange à l’éclatement du Canada. En outre, le Canada anglais pourrait y trouver son compte en voyant ainsi diminuer l’influence, souvent considérée comme disproportionnée, du Québec en matière de politique fédérale. En effet, les Québécois ont tendance à voter massivement pour le même parti aux élections fédérales et décident donc souvent du résultat. Par conséquent, ils jouent également un rôle considérable au Cabinet fédéral. Comme on le sait, depuis

30 La crise constitutionnelle et le réaménagement des rapports entre le Québec et le Canada anglais

une génération, le Premier ministre fédéral a toujours été un Québécois, sauf pendant deux brèves périodes de quelques mois. L’influence que le Québec exerce sur la politique fédérale est ainsi parfois supérieure à son poids démographique, ce qui provoque des ressentiments au Canada anglais. L’accession du Québec à la souveraineté — avec ou sans le consentement du Canada anglais Si le Québec décidait de devenir souverain, il pourrait en théorie y parvenir en utilisant la procédure de modification contenue dans la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982 à condition d’obtenir le consentement des autorités fédérales et d’un certain nombre d’autres provinces, ce qui semble peu vraisemblable31.Sice consentement lui était refusé, le Québec devrait alors s’engager dans un processus de sécession unilatérale. Une telle démarche devrait préalablement avoir été endossée par une majorité suffisante de la population québécoise, de préférence à l’occasion d’un référendum. Dans un premier temps, le Canada anglais refuserait probablement de reconnaître cette sécession illégale. Cependant, les pays ayant intérêt à la normalisation de la situation, notamment les États-Unis et la France, feraient presque certainement des pressions pour qu’Ottawa reconnaisse le nouvel État. À moyen et à long termes, si l’existence du Québec était reconnue par d’autres États et s’il était admis dans certaines organisations internationales, le Canada finirait probablement par trouver opportun de le reconnaître à son tour. À partir de ce moment, les deux gouvernements pourraient entamer les négociations relatives à la succession d’État et à toutes les autres questions restées en suspens au moment de la déclaration unilatérale d’indépendance. La sécession serait considérée comme réussie si, durant un laps de temps suffisamment long, les autorités québécoises parvenaient à exclure l’application du droit canadien sur leur territoire et, au contraire, réussissaient à y faire régner l’ordre juridique découlant de leurs propres lois et décisions. Le Québec devrait alors être considéré comme un nouvel État souverain. Si une éventuelle sécession unilatérale échouait, le Québec serait à nouveau réuni à la fédération canadienne et le problème de son intégrité territoriale se poserait dans le cadre de la Constitution du Canada. En vertu de celle-ci, le territoire d’une province ne peut être modifié sans le consentement de ses autorités législatives32. Si la sécession réussissait et que le Québec devenait un État souverain, le principe de l’intégrité territoriale des États et de la stabilité des frontières que pose le droit international (principe de l’uti possidetis juris) empêcherait les autres États, y compris le Canada, de porter atteinte au territoire québécois, si bien que les frontières du Québec seraient officiellement celles qui existaient au moment de son accession à la souveraineté. Cependant, une menace sérieuse contre l’intégrité territoriale du Québec pourrait résulter de l’attitude des peuples autochtones — Inuit et Amérindiens — qui habitent la partie septentrionale du Québec33. En effet, ces peuples, qui sont les premiers occupants de ces territoires, pourraient prétendre exercer leur propre droit à l’autodétermination afin de continuer à faire partie du Canada et de se séparer du Québec si celui-ci décidait de quitter la fédération canadienne. Sans doute, le Québec pourrait-il répondre, à juste titre, que certaines conditions requises pour l’autodétermination des peuples autochtones sur le plan international ne sont pas réunies, voire même qu’un tel droit n’existe tout simplement pas34. Il n’en reste pas moins que la cause des autochtones

31 IJCS / RIÉC leur attirerait beaucoup de sympathie, tant au Canada qu’ailleurs dans le monde. En outre, les autorités fédérales trouveraient là une bonne raison pour affirmer le maintien de leur souveraineté sur le Nord québécois, la Constitution leur attribuant une responsabilité de fiduciaire à l’égard des peuples autochtones et ceux-ci considérant traditionnellement le gouvernement fédéral comme leur interlocuteur privilégié35. Comme le Canada dispose d’une armée, ce qui n’est pas le cas du Québec, le maintien de la souveraineté canadienne et l’exclusion de la souveraineté québécoise sur les territoires septentrionaux s’avéreraient aisés sur le plan militaire et, sur le plan juridique, finiraient par éteindre les droits du Québec par application du principe de l’effectivité (en vertu duquel l’exercice réel de la souveraineté est nécessaire pour conserver le titre juridique sur un territoire). Par conséquent, il apparaît que l’accession pacifique du Québec à la souveraineté, sans diminution de son assiette territoriale, serait beaucoup plus facile si elle était précédée d’un accord entre les autorités québécoises, les autorités fédérales et les peuples autochtones établis au Québec. Pour favoriser la conclusion d’une pareille entente, le Québec devrait dès maintenant s’engager à enchâsser dans une future constitution québécoise les droits des autochtones qui ne pourraient plus ensuite être modifiés qu’avec le consentement de ces derniers. Ces droit devraient être formulés, à tout le moins, de la même façon que dans l’actuelle Constitution canadienne et, de préférence, plus clairement et plus généreusement en incluant notamment une certaine autonomie gouvernementale interne. Par ailleurs, les autochtones québécois craignent sans doute que l’accession du Québec à la souveraineté ne rende plus difficiles les contacts avec leurs frères et soeurs du Canada. Pour les rassurer sur ce point, l’accord tripartite entre le Québec, le Canada et les peuples autochtones pourrait prévoir la liberté de circulation des autochtones de part et d’autre de la nouvelle frontière. Un tel accord pourrait également consigner les droits des autochtones à l’égard des deux États signataires et confier à un organisme mixte canado-québécois le soin d’entendre et de trancher les litiges futurs pouvant s’élever entre le Québec ou le Canada, d’une part, et leurs peuples autochtones, d’autre part. Cela permettrait sans doute d’améliorer les rapports difficiles qui existent actuellement entre ces peuples et les deux ordres de gouvernement.

Conclusion Depuis plus de trente ans, tous les gouvernements québécois, de quelque parti qu’ils soient, ont tenté d’obtenir pour le Québec les nouveaux pouvoirs considérés comme nécessaires afin de lui permettre de se développer en tant que société nationale distincte. Non seulement ces revendications n’ont eu aucun succès, mais elles se sont heurtées à une évolution en sens inverse au Canada anglais, où l’on privilégie de plus en plus l’augmentation du rôle et des pouvoirs d’Ottawa. Cet affrontement entre les aspirations du Québec et celles du reste du Canada s’est soldé, dans la dernière décennie, par une double défaite pour le Québec. La première est survenue en 1982 lorsque la Constitution a été « rapatriée » et modifiée contre la volonté du gouvernement de René Lévesque et la seconde, en 1990, avec l’échec de l’Accord du lac Meech, qui consacrait pourtant une réduction draconienne des demandes traditionnelles du Québec, réduction à laquelle le gouvernement de M. Robert Bourassa avait consentie. Ces échecs répétés expliquent que les Québécois, malgré l’attachement réel que beaucoup d’entre eux continuent d’éprouver pour le Canada, rejettent

32 La crise constitutionnelle et le réaménagement des rapports entre le Québec et le Canada anglais

désormais de façon très majoritaire le statu quo constitutionnel et, a fortiori,la tendance du Canada anglais vers une plus grande centralisation. L’opinion publique québécoise reste cependant hésitante dans la mesure où elle se divise, dans une proportion variable selon les sondages, entre les partisans d’un renouvellement du système fédéral et ceux de la souveraineté du Québec36.En outre, la très grande majorité des « souverainistes » insistait sur le maintien de l’union économique et monétaire entre le Canada et un futur Québec indépendant. Il est cependant loin d’être clair quel degré d’union politique doit être considéré comme nécessaire pour permettre le maintien de l’intégration économique à son niveau actuel. Ceux qui prônent le statu quo ou le « fédéralisme renouvelé » estiment que seules des institutions véritablement fédérales permettraient d’arriver à ce résultat alors que les tenants de la souveraineté politique du Québec — combinée avec le maintien de l’association économique avec le Canada — pensent, au contraire, qu’il suffirait pour y parvenir d’institutions de nature mixte, partiellement fédérales et partiellement confédérales, comme celles qui caractérisent actuellement la Communauté économique européenne37. Cette dernière thèse serait évidemment confirmée si l’on pouvait démontrer que le degré d’intégration économique qui unit les États de la C.E.E. est comparable à celui qui existe au Canada. De façon plutôt ironique, c’est précisément ce que prétendent de nombreux tenants du maintien du système fédéral en voulant ainsi prouver que la souveraineté du Québec irait contre le « sens de l’histoire ». Comble du paradoxe, certains promoteurs d’un système fédéral plus centralisé vont jusqu’à prétendre que l’union économique constituée par la C.E.E. est d’ores et déjà plus parfaite que celle qui existe entre les provinces canadiennes, cherchant ainsi à démontrer qu’il est nécessaire d’éliminer les barrières économiques entre celles-ci en conférant davantage de pouvoirs dans ce domaine au gouvernement central. En fait, une comparaison moins polémique entre la situation canado- québécoise et celle de l’Europe permet de souligner que les Européens semblent actuellement tout aussi hésitants à renforcer l’union politique qui existe déjà entre leurs pays que les Québécois le sont à diminuer les liens qui les unissent au reste du Canada. C’est que ni les uns ni les autres n’échappent aux deux grands courants qui caractérisent l’évolution du monde en cette fin du XXe siècle, à savoir l’élargissement des espaces économiques, d’une part, et l’affirmation, ou la réaffirmation, des identités nationales d’autre part38. Ces deux tendances sont évidemment liées dans la mesure où les menaces d’homogénéisation qui accompagnent l’unification économique provoquent en réaction la défense des spécificités nationales menacées. Mais les deux mouvements sont probablement moins contradictoires qu’il n’y paraît à première vue. En effet, l’appartenance à un espace économique qui dépasse les frontières nationales n’est pas incompatible avec le maintien — ou, dans le cas du Québec, l’élargissement — de la souveraineté politique dans les domaines où existent des spécificités importantes qui distinguent les communautés nationales les unes des autres. On peut donc espérer qu’à plus long terme, la raison prévaudra et que le Québec et le reste du Canada réussiront à réaménager leurs relations de façon mutuellement bénéfique et satisfaisante. Le sens démocratique du Canada anglais devrait faire en sorte que cette transformation se produise de façon pacifique, le Québec se voyant reconnaître le droit de décider de son avenir sans être soumis à des menaces de représailles économiques, voire de diminution de son territoire. Ainsi, c’est aux Québécois eux-mêmes que

33 IJCS / RIÉC reviendra le dernier mot à condition qu’ils réussissent à faire preuve d’une volonté inébranlable et clairement exprimée. Après l’échec de l’Accord de Charlottetown, la lassitude de l’opinion à l’égard des questions constitutionnelles poussera vraisemblablement le Canada anglais à refuser pendant un temps plus ou moins long toutes nouvelles négociations, ce qui pourrait avoir pour effet de faire augmenter les appuis à la souveraineté au Québec. Cependant, comme on l’a mentionné, dans la mesure où de nombreux Québécois sont encore attachés au système fédéral et où la plupart d’entre eux insistent sur le maintien de l’espace économique avec le reste du Canada, il est douteux que l’accession à la souveraineté par le biais d’une séparation pure et simple, sans union économique et monétaire négociée d’avance, puisse l’emporter dans un avenir prévisible. La véritable échéance sera, semble-t-il, de nouveau reportée.

Notes * Une version plus détaillée du présent article a été publiée dans l’ouvrage suivant:«La Constitution canadienne et l’évolution des rapports entre le Québec et le Canada anglais, de 1867 à nos jours », Edmonton, Centre for Constitutional Studies (University of Alberta), 1993. En outre, le présent article reproduit les pages 543 à 553 du texte de l’auteur intitulé « L’évolution constitutionnelle du Canada et du Québec de 1867 à nos jours » qui a paru dans Les Constitutions du Canada et du Québec, du Régime français à nos jours, Éditions Thémis, Montréal, 1992. L’auteur remercie les deux éditeurs pour la permission de reproduire les extraits que reprend le présent article. 1. La seule différence tient à ce que les projets de lois de nature financière doivent être d’abord déposés aux Communes, conformément à l’article 53 de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1867, L.R.C. (1985), app. II, no 5, alors que les autres projets peuvent émaner indifféremment de l’une ou l’autre des deux Chambres. Cependant, avant d’être présenté pour la sanction royale, un projet de loi sur la finance, comme tout autre projet de loi, doit nécessairement avoir été adopté dans les mêmes termes par les deux Chambres. 2. La répartition actuelle des cent quatre sièges du Sénat est la suivante : Ontario et Québec, vingt-quatre chacun; Nouveau-Brunswick et Nouvelle-Écosse, dix chacun; Île-du-Prince- Édouard, quatre; Colombie-Britannique, Alberta, Saskatchewan et Manitoba, six chacun; Terre-Neuve, six; Yukon et Territoires du Nord-Ouest, un chacun. 3. Pour une étude plus systématique des problèmes soulevés par la réforme du Sénat, voir José Woehrling, « Les enjeux de la réforme du Sénat canadien », (1992) 23, Revue générale de droit, 81. 4. Conformément à l’article 6 de la Loi sur la Cour suprême, L.R.C. (1985), c. S-26, au moins trois des neuf juges sont choisis parmi les juges de la Cour d’appel ou de la Cour supérieure de la province du Québec ou parmi les avocats de celle-ci; l’Accord du lac Meech prévoyait également la constitutionnalisation de cette règle. 5. Loi constitutionnelle de 1867, art. 95. 6. Sur le pouvoir de dépenser du gouvernement fédéral, voir Jacques-Yvan Morin et José Woehrling, Les Constitutions du Canada et du Québec. Du Régime français à nos jours, Montréal, Éditions Thémis, 1992, pp. 360 et suiv. 7. Loi constitutionnelle de 1982, L.R.C. (1985), app. II, no 44, art. 41(e). La procédure de modification de la Constitution canadienne est prévue aux articles 38 à 49 de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982. Dans certains cas, l’accord des dix provinces et du Parlement fédéral est nécessaire; dans d’autres, celui du Parlement fédéral et de toutes les provinces intéressées par la modification suffit; enfin, la procédure la plus courante exige l’accord du Parlement fédéral et d’au moins deux tiers des provinces (c’est-à-dire sept sur dix) dont la population confondue représente au moins la moitié de la population de toutes les provinces. Par ailleurs, certaines modifications qui visent la constitution interne d’une province peuvent être faites par la législature de la province intéressée et d’autres, relatives au fonctionnement des organes fédéraux, par les deux Chambres du Parlement fédéral. Pour une analyse systématique du mécanisme de la procédure de modification constitutionnelle, voir J.-Y. Morin et J. Woehrling, op. cit., note 6, pp. 487 et suiv.

34 La crise constitutionnelle et le réaménagement des rapports entre le Québec et le Canada anglais

8. Pour une analyse plus développée de l’incidence de l’Accord du lac Meech sur les droits et libertés garantis par la Constitution du Canada, voir José Woehrling, « La modification constitutionnelle de 1987, la reconnaissance du Québec comme société distincte et la dualité linguistique du Canada », (1988) 29, Cahiers de droit, 3; José Woehrling, « La reconnaissance du Québec comme société distincte et la dualité linguistique du Canada : conséquences juridiques et constitutionnelles » dans The Meech Lake Accord—L’Accord du lac Meech, numéro spécial de Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de politiques, septembre 1988, p. 43; José Woehrling, « L’Accord du lac Meech et l’application de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés », dans Gérald-A. Beaudoin (dir.), Vues canadiennes et européennes des droits et libertés (Actes des journées strasbourgeoises de l’Institut canadien d’études juridiques supérieures — 1988), Cowansville, Éditions Y. Blais, 1989, p. 377; José Woehrling, « A Critique of the Distinct Society Clause’s Critics » dans Michael D. Behiels (dir.), The Meech Lake Primer : Conflicting Views of the 1987 Constitutional Accord, Ottawa, University of Ottawa Press, 1989, p. 171; José Woehrling, « Les droits linguistiques des minorités et le projet de modification de la Constitution du Canada (l’Accord du lac Meech) » dans Paul Pupier et José Woehrling, Langue et droit (Actes du premier congrès de l’Institut international de droit linguistique comparé), Montréal, Wilson et Lafleur, 1989, p. 291. 9. En fait, la législature du Nouveau-Brunswick finit par adopter, quelques jours avant la date limite du 23 juin 1990, la résolution d’agrément nécessaire pour ratifier l’Accord du lac Meech. Si celui-ci échoua en fin de compte, ce fut donc à cause de l’absence de ratification par les législatures du Manitoba et de Terre-Neuve. Pour plus de détails sur les péripéties de l’échec de l’Accord du lac Meech, voir J.-Y. Morin et J. Woehrling, op. cit., note 6, pp. 553 et suiv.; José Woehrling, « L’échec de l’Accord du lac Meech et l’avenir constitutionnel du Canada » dans Le Canada au seuil du 21ème siècle : réflexions européennes sur l’avenir du Canada/Canada on the Treshold of the 21st Century : European Reflexions upon the Future of Canada (Communications présentées à la première conférence paneuropéenne d’études canadiennes, La Haye, Pays-Bas, 24-27 octobre 1991), Amsterdam/Philadelphie, John Benjamins Publishing Co., 1991, p. 383; José Woehrling, « La tentative de modification constitutionnelle de 1987: la reconnaissance du Québec comme société distincte et la dualité linguistique du Canada », (1990) 39, Jahrbuch des Öffentliches Rechts, 537. 10. L’article 43 de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982 permet de modifier les dispositions de la Constitution qui n’intéressent qu’une seule province par accord entre les autorités fédérales et celles de la province intéressée. 11. Ces six provinces sont le Manitoba, la Saskatchewan, le Nouveau-Brunswick, la Nouvelle- Écosse, l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard et Terre-Neuve. Le Québec bénéficie également des paiements de péréquation, mais il en est moins dépendant que les six autres provinces. L’Ontario, l’Alberta et la Colombie-Britannique ont des revenus supérieurs à la moyenne nationale et ne bénéficient donc pas de la péréquation. 12. Sur les effets potentiellement uniformisateurs de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés, en particulier les dispositions relatives à l’égalité et à la non-discrimination, voir José Woehrling, « Le principe d’égalité, le système fédéral canadien et le caractère distinct du Québec », dans Pierre Patenaude (dir.), Québec—Communauté française de Belgique : autonomie et spécificité dans le cadre d’un système fédéral (Actes du colloque tenu le 22 mars 1991, Faculté de droit, Université de Sherbrooke), Montréal, Wilson et Lafleur, 1991, p. 119. Un certain nombre de constitutionnalistes ont prédit que l’application de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés entraînera des effets uniformisateurs, principalement sur le droit d’origine provinciale; voir par exemple, R.R. Knopff et F.L. Morton, « Le développement national et la Charte » dans A. Cairns et C. Williams (dir.), Le constitutionnalisme, la citoyenneté et la société au Canada (vol. 33 des études commandées dans le cadre du progamme de recherche de la Commission royale sur l’union économique et les perspectives de développement du Canada, Ottawa, Centre d’édition du gouvernement du Canada, 1986; P.H. Russell, « The Political Purposes of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms », (1983) 61, Revue du Barreau canadien 31; A. Cairns, « The Politics of Constitutional Conservatism », dans K. Banting et R. Simeon (dir.), And No One Cheered: Federalism, Democracy and the Constitution Act, Toronto, Methuen, 1983, p. 28. Les professeurs Knopff et Morton et le professeur Russell considèrent même que l’objectif caché du gouvernement fédéral de M. Trudeau en faisant adopter la Charte, était précisément de

35 IJCS / RIÉC

provoquer une centralisation indirecte des pouvoirs qui résulterait de l’interprétation judiciaire : P.H. Russell, loc. cit., 32 et 33; R.R. Knopff et F.L. Morton, op. cit., pp. 153 et 154. 13. Sur les différences d’attitude à l’égard de la Charte au Québec et dans le reste du Canada, voir notamment F.L. Morton, Peter H. Russell et Michael J. Withey, « The Supreme Court’s First One Hundred Charter of Rights Decisions: A Statistical Analysis », (1992) 30, Osgoode Hall Law Journal, 1, 31-33 et 48. 14. On peut également faire remarquer que la « rhétorique » des droits et libertés confère un caractère absolu et non débattable à des questions qui sont pourtant traditionnellement considérées comme pouvant faire l’objet de divergences légitimes entre personnes raisonnables. Ainsi, par exemple, si l’on présente la question de l’ouverture des commerces le dimanche comme un problème de politique économique et sociale ordinaire, il est évident qu’aucune solution uniforme ne s’impose d’une province à l’autre étant donné que les conditions objectives et les mentalités peuvent varier grandement à propos d’un tel problème. Si l’on présente la même question comme une affaire de liberté de religion, il semble nécessaire d’adopter une solution universelle et impérative, car il est difficile d’admettre que la liberté de religion soit moindre dans certaines provinces que dans d’autres. Sur la tendance à interpréter les droits de la personne de façon universaliste et, par conséquent, uniformisatrice, voir, par exemple, J. Donnely, « Cultural Relativism and Universal Human Rights », (1984) 6, Human Rights Quarterly 400; A.D. Renteln, « The Unanswered Challenge of Relativism and the Consequences for Human Rights », (1985), Human Rights Quarterly, 514; R.R. Knopff et F.L. Morton, op. cit., note 12, pp. 164 et 165; K.E. Swinton, The Supreme Court and Canadian Federalism: The Laskin-Dickson Years, Toronto, Carswell, 1990, pp. 338 et suiv. 15. Charte des droits et libertés de la personne, L.R.Q. c. C-12. 16. Avant d’être constitutionnalisée, la Charte québécoise devrait cependant subir certaines modifications, notamment pour limiter le pouvoir de l’Assemblée nationale du Québec de déroger aux droits et libertés. Pour certaines propositions en ce sens, voir José Woehrling, « La protection des droits et libertés et le sort des minorités », dans Alain-G. Gagnon et François Rocher (dir.), Répliques aux détracteurs de la souveraineté du Québec, Montréal, VLB éditeur, 1992, p. 131, pp. 156-161. 17. Sur l’évolution des groupes linguistiques, voir Kenneth McRoberts, English Canada and Quebec—Avoiding the Issue, York University Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, 1991, pp. 13-14 et 20-21; Réjean Lachapelle, « Évolution des groupes linguistiques et situation des langues officielles au Canada », dans Tendances démolinguistiques et évolution des institutions canadiennes, (Communications présentées lors d’un colloque tenu à Hull le 10 février 1989), numéro spécial de la collection « Thèmes canadiens » de l’Association d’études canadiennes, Montréal, 1989, p. 7. 18. On pourrait ajouter que le principe du multiculturalisme qui présuppose une certaine égalité de toutes les cultures s’oppose également aux notions de « dualité linguistique » et de « deux peuples fondateurs ». 19. Sur ce point, voir notamment Simon Langlois, « Le choc de deux sociétés globales », dans Louis Balthazar, Guy Laforest et Vincent Lemieux, Le Québec et la restructuration du Canada, 1980-1992, Sillery (Québec), Éditions du Septentrion, 1991, p. 95. 20. Rapport de la Commission sur l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec, Québec, mars 1991, 180 pages. 21. L.Q. 1991, c. 34. 22. Bâtir ensemble le Canada—Propositions, Ottawa, Approvisionnements et Services Canada, 1991, 60 p. Pour une analyse de ces propositions, voir J.-Y. Morin et J. Woehrling, op. cit, note 6, pp. 564-571. 23. Un Canada renouvelé, Rapport du Comité mixte spécial du Sénat et de la Chambre des communes sur le renouvellement du Canada (Coprésidents : Gérald Beaudoin et Dorothy Dobie), Ottawa, Approvisionnements et Services Canada, 1992. Pour une analyse des recommandations du comité, voir Peter H. Russell, Constitutional Odyssey. Can Canadians Become a Sovereign People?, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1992, pp. 181-189. 24. En septembre 1992, la Loi sur le processus de détermination de l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec, précitée, note 21, avait été modifiée pour permettre la tenue d’un

36 La crise constitutionnelle et le réaménagement des rapports entre le Québec et le Canada anglais

référendum sur l’entente constitutionnelle du 28 août 1992 plutôt que sur l’accession du Québec à la souveraineté. 25. Il était prévu que les lois autochtones ne pourraient pas être incompatibles « avec les lois fédérales ou provinciales essentielles au maintien de la paix, de l’ordre et du bon gouvernement du Canada ». Cette expression n’ayant aucune signification connue dans un tel contexte, il était impossible de savoir d’avance avec quelles lois fédérales ou provinciales au juste les lois autochtones devaient être compatibles. 26. Cela impliquerait évidemment de modifier les règles de mise en jeu de la responsabilité ministérielle. 27. Voir, par exemple Alan C. Cairns, « Constitutional Change and the Three Equalities », dans Ronald L. Watts et Douglas M. Brown, Options for a New Canada, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1991, p. 77; Tom Kent, « Une asymétrie viable et équitable », Le Réseau (Bulletin du Réseau sur la Constitution), vol. 2, no 3, mars 1992, p. 4; K. McRoberts, op. cit., note 17, pp. 44-46. 28. En 1985, le gouvernement du Québec, alors dirigé par le Parti québécois, avait indiqué ses conditions pour adhérer à la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982. Dans le domaine du réaménagement des pouvoirs, il voulait avoir la main haute sur tout le secteur de la main- d’oeuvre; exigeait d’être responsable au premier chef de l’orientation générale de son développement économique, y compris celui de ses régions; réclamait une compétence prépondérante en matière de sélection et d’établissement des immigrants ainsi qu’un accroissement important de ses pouvoirs en matière de télécommunications; ne revendiquait une compétence exclusive en matière de mariage et de divorce et, enfin, que soit reconnue, en matière internationale, la situation spécifique du Québec en tout ce qui touche à ses compétences et à son identité, notamment dans le cadre de la Francophonie. Voir Projet d’accord constitutionnel : propositions du Gouvernement du Québec, mai 1985, pp. 26-30. 29. En fait, on peut se demander si la réforme du Sénat ne deviendrait pas inutile. En effet, le retrait des votes des 75 députés québécois à la Chambre des communes sur certaines questions importantes augmenterait considérablement le poids relatif des députés de l’Ouest, des provinces de l’Atlantique, du Yukon et des Territoires du Nord-Ouest qui compteraient alors un total de 121 voix par opposition à l’Ontario qui en aurait 99. Les régions « périphériques » obtiendraient donc, dans les cas où les députés québécois ne votent pas, la majorité des voix, ce qui satisferait leur désir d’exercer une plus grande influence au sein des institutions fédérales. Elles pourraient par conséquent abandonner leurs exigences en ce qui concerne la réforme du Sénat sur le modèle « Triple E ». Sur cette question, voir Gordon Laxer, « Un statut radicalement distinct pour le Québec », Le Devoir, Montréal, 28 décembre 1991, p. B-12. 30. À l’heure actuelle, l’article 40 de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982 ne prévoit de compensation financière que dans le seul cas où une province exerce son droit de retrait contre un amendement constitutionnel transférant au Parlement fédéral la compétence législative provinciale « en matière d’éducation ou dans d’autres domaines culturels ». 31. Aucune disposition de la Partie V de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982 ne prévoit expressément la sécession d’une province. Le pouvoir de modification constitutionnelle de la législature provinciale ne permet manifestement pas à celle-ci de réaliser la sécession de la province par simple loi provinciale. L’article 43, qui vise les modifications qui ne concernent que certaines provinces, ne permettrait pas davantage de réaliser la sécession d’une province par accord entre les autorités fédérales et celles de la province en cause. En effet, la sécession d’une province affecterait un grand nombre de dispositions constitutionnelles qui concernent également d’autres provinces. Enfin, de toute évidence, le pouvoir de modification constitutionnelle du Parlement fédéral, prévu à l’article 44, n’autorise pas celui-ci à opérer la sécession d’une province. Par conséquent, seules la procédure de l’unanimité de l’article 41 et celle de la majorité des deux tiers de l’article 38 restent à envisager. L’une de ces deux modalités doit forcément permettre la sécession d’une province étant donné que toute la Constitution du Canada peut être modifiée conformément aux pouvoirs conférés par elle. Pour plus de détails sur cette question, voir José Woehrling, « Les aspects juridiques de la redéfinition du statut politique et constitutionnel du Québec » dans Éléments d’analyse institutionnelle, juridique et démolinguistique pertinents à la révision du statut politique et constitutionnel du Québec, Commission sur l’avenir politique

37 IJCS / RIÉC

et constitutionnel du Québec, Document de travail no 2, 1991, p. 1, aux pp. 57-58 [texte également reproduit dans (1991-1992) 7, Revue québécoise de droit international, 12]. 32. Loi constitutionnelle de 1871, L.R.C. (1985), app. II, no 11, art. 3; Loi constitutionnelle de 1982, art. 43. 33. Quelque 60 000 Amérindiens et Inuit, répartis en onze nations, vivent au Québec, dont 18 000 appartenant aux communautés crie et inuit dans la partie septentrionale du territoire québécois. 34. Les peuples autochtones, qu’ils soient établis dans le Nord québécois ou dans la partie méridionale du territoire, ne sont pas en nombre suffisant pour remplir les conditions exigées par le droit international pour l’exercice du droit à l’autodétermination externe. Quant à la communauté anglophone, concentrée principalement à Montréal, son autodétermination externe serait impraticable dans la mesure où elle nécessiterait la création d’enclaves au sein du territoire québécois. Certains vont même plus loin et affirment qu’en vertu du droit international, les peuples autochtones et les minorités ne disposent jamais, peu important les circonstances, du droit à l’autodétermination externe; cette thèse est défendue dans un avis juridique émis par cinq spécialistes de réputation internationale appartenant respectivement aux universités de New York (New York University), Londres (London School of Economics), Paris (Institut d’études politiques), Leicester (Grande-Bretagne) et Bonn (Allemagne); voir Thomas Franck, Rosalyn Higgins, Alain Pellet, Malcolm N. Shaw et Christian Tomuschat, « L’intégrité territoriale du Québec dans l’hypothèse de l’accession à la souveraineté », Assemblée nationale du Québec, Commission d’étude des questions afférentes à l’accession du Québec à la souveraineté, Exposés et études, volume 1 (« Les attributs d’un Québec souverain »), 1992, p. 377 aux pp. 430-443. 35. En vertu de l’article 91(24) de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1867, le Parlement fédéral est exclusivement compétent pour légiférer sur « les Indiens et les terres réservées aux Indiens ». 36. Selon un sondage CROP publié par le journal La Presse, le 30 mars 1992, à la question « Voulez-vous que le Québec devienne un État souverain ? », 42 p. 100 répondaient oui et 39 p. 100 disaient non, 20 p. 100 restant indécis; la marge d’erreur était de 3 p. 100. Par ailleurs, de nombreux répondants semblent avoir baigné dans la confusion, puisque 55 p. 100 d’entre eux croyaient qu’un Québec souverain continuerait à faire partie du Canada, 40 p. 100 pensaient qu’advenant la souveraineté du Québec, ils pourraient néanmoins conserver la nationalité canadienne et 20 p. 100 s’imaginaient qu’ils continueraient d’élire des députés à la Chambre des communes d’Ottawa; voir Denis Lessard, « Un Québec souverain ferait toujours partie du Canada », La Presse, p. A-12. 37. Une confédération est un groupement d’États habituellement établi par un traité international où les membres possèdent le droit de sécession et conservent leur souveraineté, c’est-à-dire participent chacun directement aux relations internationales. Les organes confédéraux sont composés de représentants des États membres nommés par les gouvernements de ceux-ci, en nombre généralement égal pour chaque État; ils prennent normalement les décisions à l’unanimité, chacun des États membres disposant donc d’un veto. Les décisions confédérales doivent parfois être approuvées par les États membres et leur exécution relève habituellement de ces derniers étant donné qu’il n’existe ni administration ni force publique confédérale. Il peut exister des modèles mixtes présentant à des degrés divers des caractéristiques fédérales et confédérales. La Communauté économique européenne (l’Europe des douze) constitue actuellement un tel système complexe qui présente certaines caractéristiques fédérales (par exemple, la primauté et l’applicabilité directe du droit communautaire dans les ordres juridiques des États membres) et d’autres qui sont plutôt confédérales (par exemple, la règle de l’unanimité pour certaines décisions du Conseil des ministres). 38. Sur le dilemne de l’affirmation et de l’unification, de la diversité et de l’homogénéisation auquel font actuellement face les pays membres de la Communauté économique européenne, voir notamment Dominique Schnapper et Henri Mendras (dir.), Six manières d’être européen, Paris, Éditions Gallimard, 1990.

38 Peter H. Russell

Attempting Macro Constitutional Change in Australia and Canada: The Politics of Frustration

Abstract Australia and Canada stand out among the more settled constitutional democracies in the largely fruitless efforts of their political elites at grand constitutional restructuring. Both countries may now experience a prolonged respite from these macro constitutional frustrations—in Australia, through Labour’s abandoning its ideological drive for centralization and in Canada, by the realization that cleavages in the nature of the political community are too deep to provide the basis for a popular consensus on its constitutional restructuring. Neither country has found an effective way of combining constitutional negotiations, which are inescapably elitist, with a democratic ratifying process. While the two countries have influenced each other, their constitutional reform efforts have been much more profoundly shaped, in terms of both ideas and economics, by global factors.

Résumé Parmi les démocraties constitutionnelles les mieux établies, l’Australie et le Canada remportent la palme pour ce qui est des efforts infructueux de leurs élites politiques pour réviser de fond en comble leur Constitution. Dans l’immédiat, l’un et l’autre pays vont vraisemblablement s’accorder un sérieux répit pour oublier leurs frustrations respectives — le Parti travailliste australien mettra sûrement en veilleuse sa volonté de centralisation, alors que le Canada devra accepter l’évidence que les clivages politiques sont trop profonds pour qu’un consensus suffisamment large puisse se faire autour de sa réforme constitutionnelle. Aucun de ces deux pays n’a trouvé une façon efficace d’associer les négociations constitutionnelles — élitistes par définition — à un processus de ratification par le peuple. S’il est vrai que ces pays se sont mutuellement influencés, ce sont des facteurs globaux de caractère idéologique et économique qui ont le plus profondément marqué leurs tentatives de réforme.

Among the western constitutional democracies, Australia and Canada stand out in their prolonged efforts at macro constitutional change. In both countries, a good deal of constitutional change has taken place through the normal processes of constitutional development: judicial decisions, informal changes in the exercise of constitutional powers (such as fiscal federalism) and piecemeal reform through discrete constitutional amendments. But in both countries, influential components of the political system have been dissatisfied with these regular forms of constitutional adaptation and have pressed for major constitutional re-structuring. These efforts at what I call “macro

International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 7-8, Spring-Fall/Printemps-automne 1993 IJCS / RIÉC constitutional change” have produced very little by way of concrete results. Hence, I have dubbed them “the politics of frustration.”1 This article is a comparative examination of the experience of these two kindred federations in the frustrating politics of macro constitutional change. The first part will provide accounts of the main developments in the two countries’ involvement in constitutional politics, concentrating on the most recent episodes. The second part will offer some reflections on what might be learned from a comparative analysis of the two countries’ experience with the politics of frustration.

Efforts at Macro Constitutional Change Earlier Efforts Agitation for large constitutional restructuring by leading politicians in both federations began fairly soon after their founding. The first major Australian effort was the Peden Royal Commission in 1927 consisting of federal and state parliamentarians along with some prominent citizens and constitutional experts (Russell, 1988). The Commission’s report, issued in 1929, found its members divided four to three on the fundamental question of whether Australia should continue as a federation. That was followed by intergovernmental conferences during the depression and war years that endeavoured to negotiate overall changes in the structure of the federation (Sawer, 1963). In 1956, the Commonwealth Parliament struck a Joint Committee on Constitutional Revision whose final report in 1959 endorsed a wide-ranging package of constitutional proposals (Australia, Joint Committee, 1959). From 1973 to 1985, the Australian Constitutional Convention laboured away on a total review of all aspects of Australia’s Constitution. The Convention was, in effect, a peripatetic constituent assembly made up of Commonwealth, State and municipal politicians. Over its twelve year lifespan, it met six times — once in each of the State capitals. It had its own secretariat, was assisted by expert committees and issued voluminous reports (Ryan and Hewitt, 1977; Russell, 1988). In Canada, while there were tentative moves in the direction of macro constitutional change in the inter-provincial meeting of 1887 and again in the work of the Rowell Sirois Commission at the end of the 1930s, the effort was not engaged in earnest until the 1960s when Quebec’s “quiet revolution” generated a demand for a fundamental constitutional restructuring (Russell, 1992). The first response to Quebec’s demands was a series of intergovernmental conferences culminating in 1971 in a package of constitutional proposals called the Victoria Charter. The 1970s witnessed a number of efforts at macro constitutional change beginning with a Joint Committee of the federal Parliament (the Molgat/ MacGuigan Committee) that made over one hundred recommendations for constitutional change (Canada. Joint Committee, 1972). Following the election of a separatist government in Quebec in 1976, there was another flurry of attempts at wholesale constitutional revision, including a Trudeau government proposal for an entirely new Constitution, a Task Force on national unity and a series of First Ministers meetings (Cairns, 1984). The attempt to negotiate an intergovernmental agreement on a large package of constitutional proposals was resumed after the defeat of the separatist option in the Quebec referendum of 1980. When that failed, Prime Minister Trudeau launched his own unilateral initiative to patriate the Canadian Constitution with a Charter of Rights, an

42 Attempting Macro Constitutional Change in Australia and Canada effort which, after a negotiated agreement with all of the provinces except Quebec, produced the Constitution Act, 1982 (Milne, 1982). The one striking feature which these earlier efforts at macro constitutional change in Australia and Canada have in common is the paucity of concrete results. On the Australian side, only a few scattered constitutional amendments can be associated with the various efforts. One of the Joint Parliamentary Committee’s recommendations—to empower the Commonwealth to legislate in relation to aborigines—was approved in a 1967 referendum. Only three of the Constitutional Convention’s numerous resolutions led to actual constitutional amendments and these were all on relatively minor matters: the proposals approved in the 1977 referendums on the retirement age of federal judges, territorial voting on referendums and filling Senate vacancies. Five other constitutional proposals were approved in referendums (and thirty rejected) but these changes were not the offspring of grand efforts at constitutional revision (Campbell, 1989). The Australian amending process is indeed quite inhospitable to projects of macro constitutional change. It is not just that proposals must win the approval of a majority of voters nationally and of majorities in a majority (four of six) States. But constitutional proposals are put to the voters one-by-one, so that a brokered set of proposals built around cross-cutting compromises cannot be put to the people as a package deal. In Canada, too, the efforts at wholesale constitutional revision bore little tangible fruit. The 1940 constitutional amendment transferring jurisdiction over unemployment insurance did come out of the Rowell Sirois Royal Commission. The only other formal constitutional changes stemming from macro constitutional politics were those incorporated in the Constitution Act, 1982. While there can be no doubt about the importance of the constitutional changes effected by this measure— especially the adoption of an all-Canadian amending process, a constitutional charter of rights and freedoms and the recognition of aboriginal rights—they nonetheless fell well short of the total overhaul of the Constitution aimed at by the political elites participating in the macro projects. Most significantly, the 1982 constitutional changes did not accommodate the constitutional aspirations of Quebec that had originally launched the effort at constitutional revision in the 1960s (Dufour, 1990). While the impetus for these efforts at macro constitutional change in Australia and Canada came from opposite directions, the results were much the same: failure to resolve the underlying source of conflict. In Australia the major impetus came from the Labor Party’s ideological drive against federalism and towards centralization, whereas the impetus for Canada’s prolonged indulgence in macro level constitutional politics has been Quebec’s drive for national status within a looser federation. In both countries, the gadflies of macro constitutional politics, far from realizing their objectives, aroused counter movements which deepened the constitutional conflict. In Australia’s Constitutional Convention, Labour’s centralism was held in check by political forces supporting State powers and a strong Senate—but produced no consensus on constitutional change. In Canada, patriation with a Charter of Rights, though a victory for the Canadian nationalist forces resisting Quebec nationalism, did not slake Quebec’s thirst for more autonomy.

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Recent Efforts Nor did the limited results of the macro efforts slake the thirst of political elites in either country for the macro constitutional game. The effort continued through one more big round in Australia and two mega rounds in Canada. These rather gargantuan efforts in both countries failed to bring about any constitutional changes. But, in their different ways, they succeeded in producing a constitutional truce in their respective polities and at least a temporary respite from the macro constitutional wars. If this period of truce proves to be more than just a pause for breath, the recent rounds of macro constitutional politics in Australia and Canada will have been more decisive than either their participants or critics appreciated. Since 1987, Canada has been through two very heavy rounds of constitutional politics, the Meech Lake round and the so-called “Canada round” ending with the referendum on 26 October, 1992. Both, concluding as they did with the rejection of large packages of constitutional proposals, were case studies in the politics of frustration. The package of proposals constituting the Meech Lake Accord, while large by any normal standard, was relatively small in the context of Canadian constitutional politics. Its limited size, and single-purpose shape were indeed major points of contention. Meech Lake’s singular purpose was to secure the support of the Province of Quebec for the changes contained in the Constitution Act, 1982. Hence, it was built around a federalist Quebec government’s five conditions for accepting the 1982 outcome (Monahan, 1991). For Canadians who shared Pierre Trudeau’s constitutional vision, this agenda was entirely unnecessary, or worse, subversive of what had been achieved in 1982. For those who were willing to engage in another round of constitutional change, the Meech Lake agenda was far too small as it left out constitutional issues, such as Senate reform and aboriginal self-government, of vital concern to other parts of the Canadian community. If Canada’s constitutional process had remained thoroughly elitist, it is possible that the restricted nature of the Meech agenda would not have mattered. After all, the federal government and all ten provincial governments did agree to the Accord. But by the 1980s, Canada’s constitutional process could no longer be controlled by its First Ministers. Not only was there now the formal requirement of legislative ratification in the federal and provincial legislatures but, more fundamentally, the Meech round demonstrated that a democratic mutation had taken place in the country’s constitutional culture. This transformation, of which the Charter of Rights was both a cause and effect, had the tendency, in Alan Cairns words, to convert a “governments’ constitution” into a “citizens’ constitution” (Cairns, 1991). In negotiating the Meech Lake Accord through closed-door meetings, then unveiling it to a surprised and ungrateful public with the admonition that their elected legislatures could discuss it all they wished so long as they did not change a word of it, the federal and provincial premiers showed that they had failed to grasp the full importance of the change taking place in Canada’s constitutional culture. Nor did they anticipate how difficult it would be to combine the traditional process of executive federalism with the new requirement of legislative ratification. It was the Meech process as much as its substance that accounts for its failure (Simeon, 1990). In the end, even though there was no referendum, public opinion was crucial in the defeat of the Meech Lake Accord. When time ran out on the Accord in the

44 Attempting Macro Constitutional Change in Australia and Canada spring of 1990, although it had been ratified in all but two legislatures (Manitoba and Newfoundland), legislators in those two provinces were fortified in their resistance by polling data showing that the Accord was opposed by a substantial majority of Canadians outside Quebec (Cohen, 1990). And while the Meech Lake Accord may still have been supported by a majority in Quebec, it was by then a clear second choice to Quebec sovereignty. The Meech Lake round ended with the Canadian people more insistent than ever that they must be the ultimate constitutional sovereign but more divided than ever about how their constitution should be changed (Russell, 1992, pp. 152-3). Even if the process of ratifying the Meech Lake Accord had been completed in June 1990, another round of macro constitutional politics would have immediately followed. That is because the conditions on which the hold-out provinces nearly agreed to ratify Meech—the so-called “son-of-Meech” agreement reached by the First Ministers on June 9, 1990—entailed a commitment to proceed with an extensive list of additional constitutional reforms including an elected Senate, aboriginal self-government and a comprehensive “Canada clause” expressing the defining features of the Canadian community (Russell, 1992, pp. 150-1). The post-Meech round did not begin with this agenda but with Quebec’s federalist and separatist leaders collaborating in the organization of a Quebec “estates general” (the Bélanger- Campeau Commission) to explore Quebec’s constitutional future in the wake of the rest of Canada’s rejection of Quebec’s “minimal demands” (Fidler, 1991). Nonetheless, it was clear that if Quebec and the rest of Canada ever came together in this constitutional round it would be through an agenda from which no serious constitutional aspiration or discontent in the land could be excluded. That was not the only legacy of Meech Lake. The other was that the constitutional process in this the so-called “Canada round” would have to be far more participatory than it had ever been in the past. And this it surely was, although not in any measured, disciplined or well-planned manner. Not only was there the two-month referendum campaign on the Charlottetown Accord at the end, but also in the two years leading up to that Accord, through all kinds of committees and commissions, the public was “consulted” on constitutional questions perhaps more thoroughly and exhaustingly than the public in any constitutional democracy has ever been consulted (Russell, 1992). The Canada round process can be likened to a rather peculiar hour-glass. The top part of the glass, representing the public consultation stage of the process when most of the proposals contained in the Charlottetown Accord were discussed and debated is, fairly wide. When these proposals were handed over to political leaders and government officials for negotiation and refinement, the glass narrows. (Though the inclusion of territorial and aboriginal leaders made the multilateral negotiations more inclusive than they had been in the past.) It comes to its narrowest point in the summer of 1992 when the final terms of the Charlottetown Accord were hammered out in a process dominated by First Ministers. From that narrow neck, the process widened out again in the referendum campaign. Indeed, this bottom part of the glass, though much shorter, is considerably wider than the upper part. The short, wide bottom and tiny neck are not the only unusual features of this hour-glass. A more serious flaw in the process is the structure of the upper-part of the glass: the public consultation, negotiation and refinement stages. The

45 IJCS / RIÉC process represented by this part of the glass was, for most of its length, divided into very nearly water-tight compartments: Quebec and the Rest of Canada. Following Meech, public discussions of constitutional options in the two parts of Canada were disconnected. Not only were they different in time and in forum, but, most significantly, they addressed different questions. In Quebec, through Bélanger-Campeau and the Liberal Party’s Allaire Committee, consultations that had run their course by the spring of 1991, discussion focused almost exclusively on the question of what Quebec needs to fulfil its constitutional aspirations. In the rest of Canada, through the Spicer Commission (Canada, Citizens’ Forum, 1991) and the various provincial, territorial and parliamentary committees culminating in the Beaudoin-Dobbie proposals at the end of February 1992 (Canada. Special Joint Parliamentary Committee, 1992), the critical question was how to reform the Constitution in a manner acceptable to all parts of the Canadian community. As the process narrowed in the negotiating and refinement stage, the Quebec section of the glass was nearly empty. Only when it reached the narrowest point of the neck did Quebec, in the person of Premier Bourassa, engage directly in the process. By then Bourassa confronted what was very nearly “a done deal”—a set of proposals striking a delicate balance among constitutional interests in the Rest of Canada. At this stage another deal was made by literally pulling a rabbit out of a house: a guarantee to Quebec of 25% of the seats in the House of Commons in return for Quebec’s acceptance of provincial equality in an elected Senate. This proposal, though potentially a very integrative way of accommodating Quebec’s special status in Canada, was an entirely novel proposal for which the public, neither inside or outside Quebec, had been prepared. Is it any wonder that this accord of governments could not, in two months, be converted into an accord of peoples? There was never much doubt that the culmination of this round would be the submission of proposals to the people in a national referendum. The swelling sentiment of popular sovereignty was fortified by legislation in British Columbia and Alberta requiring referendums before legislative ratification of any constitutional proposal (Boyer, 1992). As of May 1991, Quebec was legislatively committed to having a referendum by October 26, 1992 either on Quebec sovereignty or the “best offer” forthcoming from the rest of Canada. And yet it was not until June 1992 that the Mulroney government brought in federal legislation to authorize a federal referendum and not until the final signing of the Charlottetown agreement that it signified its intention to submit the Accord to the people. This late conversion to a referendum meant that the politicians, officials and experts who were closeted together negotiating the Accord through the spring and summer of 1992 were never consciously working towards a referendum (Johnson, 1993). As a consequence, the product of their labours—an agreement containing some sixty clauses sprinkled with asterisks marking unfinished business to be settled by more negotiations in the future—was not designed as a document for popular ratification. In the Canada round, elite negotiations and popular ratification came together too late and too fast to provide the foundation for a genuine social contract. Though the referendum was not legally binding and the federal referendum law did not specify what would constitute a definitive yes or no, the results of the October 26 referendum were not difficult to interpret. To the question “Do you agree that the Constitution of Canada should be renewed on the basis of the agreement reached at Charlottetown on August 28, 1992?” 54% of the voters

46 Attempting Macro Constitutional Change in Australia and Canada answered “no.” Only in Ontario (and there only by a hair), New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and the Yukon Territory did the “yes” side win majorities (Russell, 1993). Given that parts of the Accord required legislative ratification by all of the provinces and most of it by seven, an attempt to achieve legislative ratification was out of the question. The Charlottetown Accord was dead. In rejecting the Charlottetown Accord, Canadians demonstrated their capacity as a sovereign people to reach a negative result. But when one bears in mind that the primary reason for the Accord’s rejection in the rest of Canada—namely that the Accord appeared to give Quebec too much—was the exact reverse of the main reason for the Accord’s rejection in Quebec—namely that the Accord did not give Quebec enough—there are no grounds for believing that the basis exists for a positive consensus among the Canadian people on fundamental changes in their constitutional arrangements. That hard thought should cool the ardour of most politicians for yet another go at the macro constitutional game. While Canada was swirling through two intense rounds of constitutional politics, Australians were subjected to one more macro constitutional effort which was followed by a much more pragmatic and reflective treatment of constitutional matters as the federation prepares for the completion of its first century. Just as the Meech Lake round was generated by dissatisfaction on the part of Quebec, Canada’s principal gadfly of constitutional change, with the 1982 constitutional settlement, Australia’s last macro round was unleashed by dissatisfaction within the Australian Labour Party, Australia’s main constitutional gadfly, with the Australian Constitutional Convention. Australia’s Constitutional Commission was a major and unsuccessful effort to generate public interest in comprehensive constitutional reform. The Commission was established in 1985 by the Commonwealth Government as a direct reaction to the Labour Party’s disillusionment with the Constitutional Convention. The Convention was the one Australian effort at macro constitutional reform that was primarily State-inspired. The Commonwealth government under both Whitlam and Hawke participated but failed to persuade the Convention either to abandon proposals designed to curb Canberra’s fiscal domination of the Australian federation or to adopt Labour’s centralizing agenda. Lack of bi-partisan consensus on major issues prevented action from being taken on most of the Convention’s recommendations. Immediately following the Convention’s 1985 meeting in Brisbane, the Commonwealth Attorney General, Lionel Bowen, announced the Labour government’s intention to form a “Peoples Convention.” By going over the heads of politicians to citizens “with expertise but with no political axe to grind,” he thought it would be possible to develop a program of “progressive” constitutional reform (The Australian, 30 July, 1985). From the very beginning, the Constitutional Commission was flawed by its partisan rationale and sponsorship. By 1985, Labour’s interest in constitutional reform had cooled considerably since the 1975 crisis. But those like Lionel Bowen, who still carried the constitutional torch, continued to assume that if the people were adequately exposed to the limitations of the rickety old Constitution they would, among other things, come to appreciate the inefficiencies of federalism, the undemocratic nature of a Senate based on the principle of State equality and the Governor General’s powers, and the need for a constitutional bill of rights. This was the “progressive agenda” of

47 IJCS / RIÉC constitutional reform which not only was Labour’s motive in establishing the Commission but also—and this is the essential point—was seen by its partisan political opponents as the Commission’s primary purpose (Cooray, 1989). The Commission’s composition did little to allay these partisan suspicions. Though its six members included two law professors, a Federal Court judge and a former Liberal State premier, its other two members were prominent Labourites, former Labour Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and Sir Maurice Byers, a former Commonwealth Solicitor General, who chaired the Commission. To give some semblance of reality to the notion of a “Peoples Convention,” an effort was made to broaden the Commission’s base by establishing Advisory Committees on the Distribution of Powers, Trade and National Economic Management, Individual and Democratic Rights, Executive Government and the Judicial System (Australia. Constitutional Commission, 1988, Appendices A and B). The membership of these committees included academic experts and lawyers, persons from the arts, the media and industry. The efforts of the Commission and its Advisory Committees to engage the people in the process of constitutional renewal were olympian—even by Canadian standards. Hearings were conducted throughout the country, issue papers and interim reports widely distributed (on one occasion in comic-book form, Australia. Constitutional Commission, 1987) and several hundred thousand copies of the Constitution printed for free distribution. The Commission even sponsored essay-writing contests for school children and adults on “What the Constitution means to us.” Despite these strenuous public relations efforts, the public took very little interest in the work of the Commission. The Commission’s survey of public attitudes to the Constitution gives a good indication of why public interest in constitutional politics in Australia is not easily aroused: only 53.9% of Australians knew that Australia has a written Constitution (Australia, Constitutional Commission, 1988, p. 43). In the end, when the Hawke government rudely pulled the rug out from under its own Commission, no hue and cry could be heard from the Australian people. And jettison the Commission’s work is exactly what the Labour government did to its Constitutional Commission. A few days after the Commission released its mammoth two-volume First Report on May 6, 1988, the government introduced in the House of Representatives proposals for constitutional referendums on four proposed amendments. It has been suggested that the government’s hasty response to the Commission’s report was prompted by a desire to get the constitutional reform initiative out of the way before the next general election (Sharman, 1989). Whatever the explanation of the government’s action, it put paid to the work of the Commission. By the time the Commission’s Final Report was tabled in the House of Representatives in October 1988 (Australia. Constitutional Commission, 1988), the four proposed amendments associated had been firmly rejected by the people in the September referendum rendering the Commission’s report, in the poignant words of Enid Campbell, one of the Commission’s hardest working members, “a document of little more than academic interest” (Campbell, 1989).2 The four proposals put to the people in the September referendum bore little relationship to the comprehensive program of constitutional reform proposed by the Commission. Three of the proposals were based on the more populist

48 Attempting Macro Constitutional Change in Australia and Canada items among the Commission’s recommendations. One of these would simply have given constitutional recognition to the existence of local government. A second was designed to overcome maldistribution in federal, State and Territorial elections, while the third, rather than putting forward the full charter of rights proposed by the Commission, simply proposed that the three basic rights which are already in the Australian Constitution but apply only to the Commonwealth—namely freedom of religion, trial by jury and “just terms” in expropriating property —become limits on State and Territorial governments. The fourth proposal, to increase the maximum term of the House of Representatives from three to four years and reduce Senators’ terms from six to four years, was a vintage piece of Labour constitutionalism similar to proposals for simultaneous elections rejected in referendums in 1974, 1977 and 1988. The opposition parties attacked all four constitutional proposals just as vigorously as they had attacked the Constitutional Commission throughout its existence. Although early polls showed majority support for the proposals, they were soundly rejected in the September referendum. Indeed, the four proposed amendments “suffered the worst defeat of any slate of referendum proposals ever put to the Australian people” (Galligan, 1989, p. 119). None of the four proposals was able to win an overall majority or a majority in any of the States. Thus, in abject failure, ended Australia’s latest fling at macro constitutional change. The death of the Constitutional Commission in 1988 has not been followed by anything that could be considered another effort at macro constitutional change. It is not so much that Australians are suffering from what Canadians call constitutional fatigue, but that their political elites have learned two things about constitutional politics: first, that constitutional restructuring cannot be achieved as a partisan political project, and second, that constitutional reform is not a necessary condition for making the federation operate more efficiently. Constitutional politics are proceeding accordingly, and quietly, along two tracks. The first track is linked to the completion of Australia’s first century, and is fundamentally educational and non-partisan in character. The key event in inaugurating activity along this track was a Conference held at Sydney in April 1991 to celebrate another centenary (Australians are very keen on centennial celebrations): the constitutional convention held in Sydney in 1891 which drafted much of what was to become the Australian Constitution. The 1991 assembly was a considerably more representative body than its 1891 predecessor. The 89 persons who attended came from all parts of Australia and New Zealand, and besides academics, lawyers, judges, bureaucrats, business and labour leaders, included women, aborigines and school children (Solomon, 1991). Prime Minister Hawke, the Opposition leaders and State Premiers did not join the Conference until its fourth and final day. The Sydney conference did not attempt to draft constitutional proposals. Indeed, there was no consensus among its participants that constitutional reform was necessary. Instead, it identified a dozen issues “to be pursued over the course of this constitutional decade” (Australia, Constitutional Centenary, April 1992, p. 7). This cluster of issues marked a distinct shift from the traditional, constitutional, Australian agenda and a considerable convergence with constitutional concerns in other industrial democracies. In reforming federalism, the emphasis shifted from Labour’s interest in reducing the powers

49 IJCS / RIÉC of the Senate and the States to the broader themes of accountability and globalization. There was “broad agreement” to reduce the vertical, fiscal imbalance in Australian federalism that separates responsibility for delivering programs from raising revenues to pay for them. Globalization was evident in the commitment not only to strengthen the economic union within Australia but to explore “the constitutional implications of closer economic relations with New Zealand and other countries.” Concern was expressed about reducing executive domination of parliament, and there was a hint of growing republicanism in the desire to review the powers and selection of the Head of State. Individual and group rights were also a major concern with commitments to move towards a “guarantee of basic rights” through a process of public education and discussion and to achieve a “reconciliation between the aboriginals and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the wider Australian community” (Constitutional Centenary, April 1992, p. 8). The process for working on this agenda was decidedly low key and laid-back. Through the 1990s, Australians would consider constitutional changes that would prepare their country for its second century. To facilitate this constitutional review, there would be a series of centenaries commemorating various stage in the 1890s federating process.3 To steer this process along, a Constitutional Centenary Foundation was established. It is headed by former High Court judge and Governor General, Sir Ninian Stephen. The Foundation works in association with the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies recently established at the University of Melbourne under the leadership of the Foundation’s Deputy Chair, Professor Cheryl Saunders. To ensure the Foundation’s independence, its funding is to come from both levels of government, the private sector and individuals. The second track was opened up by Prime Minister Hawke’s “New Federalism” speech at the National Press Club in Canberra in July 1990, and represents a return to a process of constitutional adaptation which a generation of constitutional reformers in Australia and Canada have tended to spurn. The objective of Hawke’s “New Federalism” was entirely functional: “to improve our national efficiency and international competitiveness.” The first task in achieving this reform was not constitutional reform but moving “by sensible, practicable steps to get better co-operation within the framework of the Federal Constitution as it stands” (Hawke, 1990, pp. 1 and 19). Hawke emphasized the need for harmonizing state regulatory standards. Noting that by 1992 there would be fewer impediments to the free flow of commerce among the twelve sovereign nations of the European Community than among the States of Australia, he called for a strengthening of Australia’s economic union. While improvement at the micro-economic level was to be achieved through Commonwealth-State co-operation, at the macro-economic level—here his traditional Labor centralism showed through—“Australia must have one central level of effective economic management” (Hawke, 1990, p. 5). Even though much of the New Federalism could be accomplished through inter- governmental co-operation, Hawke still clung to the belief that, eventually, some formal constitutional change would be required. But constitutional reform would not be pushed by his government for he had come to the conclusion, long obvious to most observers of Australia’s constitutional politics, “that it is almost impossible to amend our Constitution in an atmosphere of partisan controversy” (Hawke, 1990, p. 11). The process for working at the new federalism employed an instrument well known to Canadians: First Ministers’ meetings. At the first two Special

50 Attempting Macro Constitutional Change in Australia and Canada

Premiers’ meetings (October 1990 in Brisbane and July 1991 in Sydney), progress was made across a broad front in moving towards a more harmonious and efficient federal partnership (Intergovernmental News, November 1990, August 1991). This progress included agreements on mutual recognition of regulatory standards, an intergovernmental agreement on the environment, and agreements to establish a national rail corporation and a national electric grid. This happy interlude of co-operative federalism was soon overtaken by the storm clouds of fiscal federalism and Labour Party politics. When Prime Minister Hawke indicated that at the next Special Premiers’ Conference scheduled for November 1991, he would be willing to discuss a proposal of the State Premiers’ that they should have a guaranteed share of the personal income tax field (6% of taxable income), Hawke’s leadership rival moved against him. Before the November conference could take place, Paul Keating, responding to Labour’s traditional centralism, took the stage at Canberra’s National Press Club to denounce Hawke’s sell-out to the States. Reducing the States’ fiscal dependence on Canberra by guaranteeing them tax-room, in Keating’s view, was pushing cooperative federalism over the line which “the Federal Labour Government will not cross” (Keating, 1991, p. 1). Although denying that he was “an evangelical centralist,” Keating said he could not accept “the dismembering of the national government which would inevitably follow from surrendering revenues and other national responsibilities to the States” (Keating, 1991, p. 19). In words which have a familiar ring to Canadian ears, Keating also attacked the process of executive federalism. The willingness to discuss major changes in the federation “behind the closed doors of Commonwealth-State committees” was a sorry contrast with the open ways of Australia’s founders (Keating, 1991, p. 6). Hawke got the message. He was unwilling to put his shaky hold on the leadership further at risk and so pulled out of the November Conference. The State Premiers and Territorial Chief Ministers met anyway—at Adelaide rather than Perth. The twenty-three page communique issued at the end of their meeting outlines an ambitious program of cooperative federalism including the establishment of a Council of the Federation, constituted by First Ministers, to foster and direct intergovernmental cooperation (Australia, Premiers’ and Chief Ministers’ Communique, November 1991, pp. 14-15). But the Premiers recognized that little progress could be made without the participation of the Commonwealth government. That participation, it soon became clear, might not be forthcoming for quite some time. On December 19, 1991, the Labour caucus in Canberra “rolled” Bob Hawke and installed Paul Keating as Prime Minister. Keating consolidated his hold on power by leading his party to victory in the general election of March, 1993. Despite Keating’s ascendency and his centralism, the “New Federalism” is not dead in Australia. Under Keating, there will be no marked diminution of the Commonwealth government’s fiscal hegemony in the Australian federation. But there is too much at stake in terms of global competition for Australia to abandon its efforts at removing unnecessary federal impediments to the efficient functioning of its internal, political economy. The Council of Australian Governments called for by the Premiers has survived its first meeting, a meeting in which Mr. Keating’s government participated (Intergovernmental News, December 1992). Introducing a special 1992 issue of the Australian Journal of Political Science, devoted to the new federalism, Brian Galligan writes that “Although there remain some pressures for, and

51 IJCS / RIÉC advocates of greater centralization, the future is more likely to be with greater diversity and complexity coupled with co-operative arrangements for harmonization” (Galligan, 1992, p. 6). Meantime, on the constitutional reform track, there has been some movement though the pace is far from feverish. The Constitutional Centenary Foundation has established its headquarters in Melbourne where its official launch took place on April 14, 1992. Its approach at this stage is largely educational. Indeed, the Foundation has responded to the Constitutional Commission’s findings on Australians’ ignorance of their Constitution by making public education on the Constitution one of its four priorities. The other priorities are parliamentary reform, the economic union and aboriginal peoples.4 If there is to be another effort at macro constitutional change in Australia to mark the country’s centenary, it will be attempted in a manner which is more organic, community-based and with much broader political support than previous efforts.

Points of Comparison The Need for Macro Constitutional Reform In my study of constitutional politics, I have drawn a distinction between ordinary, piecemeal constitutional change and efforts to accomplish much larger projects of constitutional renewal (Russell, 1992, pp. 75-6). These larger efforts at constitutional change I have termed macro or mega constitutional politics. Australia and Canada stand out among the constitutional democracies in the sustained attention their political elites have given such efforts over the last generation or so and, as the first part of this paper has shown, in the low level of positive achievement these efforts have yielded. Constitutional politics in the two countries since 1987 indicate that there is much less need for Australia, than there is for Canada, to indulge in macro constitutional politics. Indeed, an unkind observer might conclude that, in the Australian case, the politics of frustration has been basically a self- inflicted misery—inflicted, that is, by part of the country’s political leadership on itself. The very ease with which Australia moved away from macro constitutional politics just as Canada was engaging in yet another intense round supports this conclusion. One can point to periods in Canada’s recent history, too, —1971 to 1976 and 1982 to 1987—when the constitutional debate simmered down for a while. But even during these periods, forces were at work within the Canadian political community: the growth of a democratic Quebec separatist party, the decolonization of aboriginal peoples, the development of western alienation and a growing sense of Canadian nationalism in English-speaking Canada— which would force the constitutional issue to resurface at the macro level. Indeed, I have used the term “mega constitutional politics” to capture the depth of the crisis generated by the conflicting constitutional aspirations and grievances fuelling Canada’s constitutional debate (Russell, 1993). The Canadian constitutional debate is fundamentally about the nature of the political community on which the Constitution is to be based. However much Canadians may weary of this debate, they have been kept engaged in it because its terms—its contending definitions of the nation—touch their sense of personal identity and self-worth, and entail competing principles of political justice.

52 Attempting Macro Constitutional Change in Australia and Canada

In Australia, the efforts of the would-be constitutional reformers have been macro in that they have aspired to much more than piecemeal change but not mega in that they have not deeply engaged the people. If the Australian Labour Party had continued to adhere to a socialist ideology requiring Australia’s transformation from a federal to a unitary state, the debate might well have approached the mega level. But even in Gough Whitlam’s era, Labour was making its peace with federalism. The High Court’s centralism has helped in this process (Mason, 1988). Prime Minister Hawke acknowledged this in his speech inaugurating the New Federalism when he noted that “High Court decisions have done more to alter the Constitution than all the referendums” (Hawke, 1990, p. 15). By the 1980s, while Labour leaders still harboured constitutional reform sentiments, they could not and did not claim that constitutional change was needed to achieve their policy objectives (Galligan, 1989). No doubt there are constitutional changes which both State and Commonwealth leaders would welcome, but the impressive reform agenda produced by the November 1991 Premiers’ Conference demonstrates how much could be done to operate Australian federalism more efficiently (if not more accountably) without formal constitutional change. I am not suggesting either that Australia will or should forsake formal constitutional change in the foreseeable future. There are a number of reforms whose time may soon come. As in Canada, the gravest issue of constitutional injustice in Australia is the subjugation of its indigenous peoples. Though aborigines have not advanced nearly as far as Canada’s aboriginal peoples in asserting their right to be governed through constitutional arrangements to which they have consented, there are signs of progress in that direction. In the courts, at long last, Australian judges are recognizing the existence of aboriginal rights (Brennan and Crawford, 1990, Brennan, 1992), and, at the political level, the establishment of a broad-based Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in December 1991 may lead to a formal reconciliation treaty—a social contract—between aboriginal and non-aboriginal Australians (Easterbrook, 1991). There are also signs that the Australian republican movement is livelier now than even at the height of resentment over the Governor General’s sacking of Whitlam in 1975. A resolution passed at the Labour Party’s annual conference in 1991, committing the Party to a ten-year campaign to make Australia a Republic (Sidney Morning Herald, 26 June, 1991), was followed by the founding of a new Australian Republican Movement chaired by well-known author, Tom Keneally (Sidney Morning Herald, 7 July, 1991). Paul Keating seems determined to build a republican consensus by making it a rallying point for Australian nationalism. An even stronger consensus is building for a constitutional bill of rights. It would be a mistake to interpret the failure of the rights proposals in the 1988 referendum as a rejection of the idea of a full bill of rights (Galligan, Knopff and Ure, 1990). That proposal’s failure probably has more to do with its partisan sponsorship and Catholic fear of the implications of the freedom of religion guarantee for state-supported religious schools than with the unpopularity of entrenching fundamental rights. A recent, in-depth study of Australian attitudes to civil liberties indicates that the level of support for a constitutional bill of rights is at 70%.5 Any of these possible constitutional changes—and others might be accomplished each in its own time. On the other hand, Australia’s constitutional reformers might, once again, be inclined to attempt macro constitutional reform and celebrate the country’s centennial by presenting a

53 IJCS / RIÉC package of proposals to the people at the end of the decade. If that occurs and is successful, it will not be an example of the Banting and Simeon theory that “[l]ack of consensus makes constitutional change necessary. The same lack makes resolution supremely difficult” (Banting and Simeon, 1984, p. 25). On the contrary, it would be a constitutional restructuring introduced not to resolve a deep cleavage in the body politic but to mark a new, non-partisan consensus on the conditions of nationhood for Australia’s second century. Canada has the dubious honour of remaining a clear example of a nation-state driven to constitutional politics at the mega level by deep dissensus. This dissensus is as much the effect as the cause of constitutional politics. It is possible that had the federal political leaders in the 1984 election not committed themselves to constitutional changes sufficient to overcome Quebec’s repudiation of the 1982 changes, and had Robert Bourassa’s Quebec Liberal Party been able to win power without committing itself to obtaining such changes, Quebec nationalism might have lost its momentum as a serious political force, thus removing any “necessity” to continue the macro constitutional effort. We can only speculate about such historical “might have beens.” However, we do know that the Meech Lake round deepened the cleavages within the Canadian political community and made a further round inevitable. It is too early to tell whether this round has produced some finality—even a decade or two—to Canada’s constitutional travails. What is clear is that the present generation of Canadians will not try again to reach an accord on a broad package of constitutional changes designed to prevent a national unity crisis. Such was the effort and agony of the Canada round, that most of Canada’s politicians and most of its people have no stomach for resuming the constitutional struggle. If, in the near future, Canada plunges back into the constitutional maelstrom, it will be because there is an actual not just an apprehended national unity crisis. Such a crisis will occur if the next Quebec election (which is due by 1994) produces a government committed to Quebec’s sovereignty and if that government wins a subsequent referendum on Quebec’s independence. In Canada, as in Australia, abandoning efforts at macro constitutional change need not mean a constitutional deep freeze. If the Quebec majority does not push for a radical constitutional restructuring, it is just possible that Canadians might recover their capacity for incremental constitutional change and adaptation. Such a reversion to ordinary, low key constitutional politics would require nothing less than the political class adopting what Stephen Holmes calls “gag rules” on the big mega questions of national identity and political justice (Holmes, 1988). The November 1982 referendum in the Eastern Arctic, paving the way for the self-governing, largely Inuit, region of Nunavut (Financial Post, November 17, 1992) and the quiet passage in early 1993 of a constitutional amendment recognizing New Brunswick’s dualistic nature (Canada, House of Commons Debates, 1993) provide some early indication that constitutional change, retail rather than wholesale, is not impossible in Canada. The Process of Macro Constitutional Politics In both Australia and Canada, the final stage of the constitutional amendment process requires a form of democratic ratification: in Australia direct democracy through referendums; in Canada, since patriation, indirect

54 Attempting Macro Constitutional Change in Australia and Canada democracy through legislative approval. Further, in Canada, the Charlottetown Accord precedent makes it politically imperative to have a referendum before legislative ratification of major constitutional changes (Boyer, 1992, p. 236). Both countries require extraordinary majorities for ratification: in Australia, two-thirds of the States and in Canada, two-thirds or, in some cases, all of the provinces.6 Requiring extraordinary majorities for formal constitutional change is normal for democracies practising constitutionalism. For the very essence of constitutionalism, as Jon Elster has argued, is to protect principles and minorities from simple majority rule (Elster, 1988). Nonetheless, the unanimity rule in Canada, even though of limited application, is a pathological case of constitutionalism, reflecting deep distrust within the political community. The requirement of extraordinary majorities, quite properly, makes ordinary, piecemeal constitutional change a difficult task. But the difficulty is compounded mightily when macro constitutional change is attempted. Political elites in both Australia and Canada who have attempted macro constitutional change have under-estimated the difficulty. They have not appreciated how far removed macro constitutional change is from normal constitutional reform and how close it comes to constitution-making. Among people practising a democratic form of constitutionalism, constitution-making is the supreme political challenge. The packages of constitutional reform proposals under consideration in Australia and Canada have involved negotiations among political 1eaders representing different, and sometimes conflicting, constitutional ideals and aspirations. Negotiating is unavoidably an activity carried out by small numbers of people and is, in that sense, elitist. Electorates and legislatures, the democratic ratifiers in Australia and Canada, do not negotiate. Of course there are degrees of elitism. A First Ministers’ meeting is more elitist than a convention of legislative delegations and the latter is narrower than constituent assemblies containing more than party politicians. These and other devices (parliamentary committees and federal commissions) have been tried, but neither country has established a negotiating process capable of producing an elite accord possessing sufficient democratic legitimacy to change the terms of the social contract. In their attempts at macro constitutional change neither Australia nor Canada have been able to marry an elitist drafting process to a more participatory democratic ratifying process. Although neither country has anything very positive to teach the other about how to accomplish macro constitutional change, both have negative lessons to impart. The clearest lesson to be derived from Australia’s experience is that political elites with conflicting constitutional aspirations will not accommodate their differences within a broad-based assembly such as Australia’s Constitutional Convention when they are not under the pressure of a genuine national crisis. Two recent Canadian studies of constituent assemblies support that conclusion (Fafard and Reid, 1991; Monahan, Covello and Batty, 1992). These studies would go further and question the effectiveness of any form of constituent assembly except to reorganize regimes when a breakup is either imminent or actual. The principal negative lesson to be gleaned from Canada’s Meech Lake experience is the folly of achieving a constitutional agreement through a closed, secretive process of elite accommodation before there has been wide public discussion of constitutional alternatives. In the Canada round,

55 IJCS / RIÉC politicians tried to heed this lesson by staging extensive public discussions before engaging in elite bargaining. But their accommodation was fatally flawed by its dependence on a proposal which had not been publicly aired. Australia, with its much longer tradition of democratic constitutionalism, may not need this Canadian lesson. However, the populist cannon-ball Mr. Keating fired across the bow of the Special Premiers’ Conferences warned of the danger of moving too fast towards a reshaping of Australian federalism through a relatively closed and elitist process. As a result of their recent experiences, the political leadership in both countries should be older and wiser about the difficulty of putting brokered constitutional packages to the people. Australia’s Constitution requires that each “proposed law,” not packages of proposed laws, be submitted to the electors. The highest number of proposals ever submitted at one time was six. This was in 1913 and they were all defeated. Even if a great pile of proposals were submitted at one time (the Constitutional Commission recommended over 100 amendments), there is no guarantee that those which are adopted will maintain the balance struck in negotiating the package. In Canada’s recent referendum, many people resented that they had to vote “yes” or “no” on the Charlottetown Accord as a whole rather than on each of its elements. The defeat of the Charlottetown Accord in the October referendum adds an important caveat to a maxim gleaned from Australia’s constitutional politics. As even Bob Hawke came to acknowledge, a positive outcome in a national referendum, particularly one requiring an extraordinary majority, is most unlikely if the proposals are opposed by a major political party. The Canadian caveat is that multi-partisan support, though a necessary condition, is not a sufficient condition for success in a referendum on fundamental constitutional change. The three major national parties—the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP—all supported the Accord. Still, it failed. Here Canadian experience coincides with rejection of the Masstricht Treaty by the Danish people despite its support by that country’s major political parties. The deepest lesson would-be constitutional reformers might take from these events is the need to have a little more reverence for their existing constitutions and their peoples. Constitutional reverence need not mean total acquiesence in the constitutional status quo. But it should foster respect for methods of constitutional adaptation that are more incremental and less contentious than macro constitutional restructuring. In constitutional democracies worthy of the name, the people should not readily be persuaded to accept major transformations of their constitutional arrangements. The Globalization of Constitutional Politics As might be expected, Australian and Canadian constitutionalism show a good deal of reciprocal influence. Canada’s discussion of an Australian style “triple E” Senate and Australia’s discussion of a Canadian-style Charter of Rights are clear examples. But the care with which Australian constitutionalists study Canadian experience is not reciprocated by Canadians. Australia’s Constitutional Commission, for example, in considering a constitutional bill of rights, looked carefully at Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, adopted the exact wording of its Section 1 (the reasonable limits clause) but split three-to-two against recommending its notwithstanding clause (Australia. Constitutional Commission, 1988, ch. 9). The architects of the Charlottetown Accord, on the other hand, in excluding elected Senators from

56 Attempting Macro Constitutional Change in Australia and Canada

the Cabinet, appear to have given no in-depth consideration of Australia’s experience in combining an elected Senate with a parliamentary regime. But there are signs of a wider set of international forces influencing constitutional developments in both countries. One can certainly see this globalization at the level of ideas. The growing support in Australia for a constitutional bill of rights represents much more than the Canadian influence. Much of Alan Cairns analysis of the international influences on the Canadian Charter applies to Australia—especially the international human rights movement (Cairns, 1992).7 It is difficult to untangle the influence of American constitutionalism from this broader, world-wide interest in the codification and entrenchment of fundamental human rights. I have speculated that it is the relatively greater strength of the American influence on Canada that accounts for its adopting a constitutional bill of rights earlier than its sister Commonwealth countries, Australia and New Zealand (Russell, 1990). Even if American constitutionalism is on its way to becoming the modern analogue of Roman law, it is clear that each society stamps its own identity on the adopted paradigm (Henkin and Rosenthal, 1990). This is evident in Canada’s Charter with its group rights, legislative override and absence of property rights. Australia’s constitutional bill of rights, when it comes, will no doubt have its distinguishing features.8 There is also an important international dimension to the strengthening of aboriginal rights in Australia and Canada. Aboriginal peoples from Australia and Canada have linked together with indigenous peoples from other European-settler countries to form a world-wide movement. Through these interactions, aboriginal peoples have stimulated one another in asserting their rights to collective survival. Indigenous minorities have gained recognition as the “fourth world” and associated their political objectives with the whole process of decolonization (Manuel and Posluns, 1974). There are many factors which account for Canada’s aboriginal peoples progressing more quickly in the constitutional arena than their Australian counterparts, but perhaps the most important is the demonstration effect of Quebec nationalism in creating a political environment conducive to claims of ethnic or racial self- determination (Brock, 1989). Even if the macro constitutional struggle is not resumed in Canada or Australia, there are many indications that the movement of aboriginal peoples towards self-government in both countries will continue. Globalization of the international economy has had a more tangible effect on constitutional po1itics in the two countries. In recent constitutional discussions in Australia and Canada, much concern is expressed about the impediments to the flow of commerce across borders within the federations being greater than those at national borders in regional trading blocks. Much of the impetus behind Australia’s new federalism and the economic union proposals in Canada’s current constitutional round stems from a desire, particularly within the business class, to adapt the economies of the federations to the imperatives of an increasingly competitive global economy (Business Council of Australia, 1991). In both countries, this tendency is counter- balanced by a social democratic tradition concerned about protecting national standards of social and environmental policy from the competitive pressures of a commercial union (Howse, 1992). This, in turn, puts a check on tendencies within the federations to decentralize power to governments more responsive to local majorities.

57 IJCS / RIÉC

As the Australian and Canadian economies become more closely integrated with neighbouring states, these international pressures on the operation of their federal systems will surely intensify. International trade agreements which aim at removing non-tariff barriers propel the parties, inexorably, towards homogenization of a broad range of policies. When these international arrangements severely constrain the policy-making of both levels of government, only a strict formalist would deny their constitutional significance. At first, of course, the constitutional form of these international regimes is confederal—all sovereignty being retained by the member states. But as the evolution of the European Community so clearly demonstrates, the expansion of delegated authority at the centre generates a demand for a more democratic central authority and a more federal form of political union. At this point, the question of political community and the locus of sovereign constitutional authority is raised, and the realm of mega constitutional politics is entered. Canada, as it contemplates the North American Free Trade Agreement, is much closer to this international stage of constitutional politics than Australia. That may be one consolation Canadians can take from their having been more deeply inflicted than Australians with the frustrations of macro constitutional politics. That experience has better prepared them to be citizens of the multi- national states that lie in the future of human kind. On the other hand, a decade of quiet, non-partisan, constitutionalism with a strong emphasis on public education could produce a popular consensus on national renewal in Australia. If that were to occur, Australia will embark on its second century more secure in its national identity than Canada and with the confidence needed to take full advantage of regional integration.

Notes 1. In an earlier article I used this phrase to characterize constitutional politics in Australia and Canada from 1900 to the mid-1980s (Russell, 1988). 2. The report is indeed of academic interest. Altogether aside from its recommendations, its background accounts of constitutional issues in each chapter are of great value to constitutional cholars. 3. There are numerous possibilities: the 1893 Corowa Conferenœ, the 1895 Premiers’ meeting in Hobart, election of the Constitutional Convention in 1897 and its meetings that year in Adelaide and Sydney, and in 1898 in Melbourne, the ratifying referendums in 1898, the second referendum in New South Wales in 1899, the London conference in 1900, and the coming into force of the Constitution on January 1, 1901 (La Nauze, 1972). 4. Interviews with Sir Ninian Stephen, Chairman of the Foundation and Mr. Denis Tracey, Executive Director of the Foundation, Melbourne, December 1991. 5. The study is being carried out by Brian Galligan and other colleagues in Canberra using the same methodology employed in the survey conducted in Canada by Paul Sniderman, Joseph Fletcher, Philip Tetlock and the author (Galligan, 1992). 6. Of course, Canada’s amending formula is considerably more complicated than this. For a full discussion see Meekison, 1988. 7. On December 10, 1991, Australia took an important step in committing the country to complying with international human rights standards when it acceded to the First Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 8. A likely example is a religious freedom clause that does not threaten state-funded religious schools.

Bibliography Australia, Constitutional Commisssion 1987 Australia’s Constitution: Time to Update.

58 Attempting Macro Constitutional Change in Australia and Canada

Australia, Constitutional Commission 1988 Final Report. Australia, Joint Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Review 1959 Report Australia, Special Premiers’ Conference 1991 Communique, Sidney 30 July 1991. Australia, Premiers’ and Chief Ministers’ Conference 1991 Communique, Adelaide, 21-2 November, 1991. Australia, Constitutional Centenary Foundation 1992 Constitutional Centenary, No. 1, April 1992. Banting, Keith and Richard Simeon 1985 Redesigning the State: The Politics of Constitutional Change in Industrial Nations. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Boyer, Patrick 1992 Direct Democracy in Canada: The History and Future of Referendums. Toronto: Dunedin Press. Brennan, Frank and James Crawford 1990 “Aboriginality, Recognition and Australian Law: Where to from Here?” Public Law Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 53-79. Brennan, Frank 1992 “Mabo’s Case,” Constitutional Centenary, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 12-14. Brock, Kathy 1989 The Theory and Practice of Aboriginal Self-government: Canada in a Comparative Context Ph D Dissertation, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto. Business Council of Australia 1991 Government in Australia in the 1990s. Melbourne. Cairns, Alan 1984 “The Politics of Constitutional Renewal in Canada” in Keith Banting and Richard Simeon (Eds.) Redesigning the State: The Politics of Constitutional Change in Industrial Nations. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 95-145. Cairns, Alan 1991 Disruptions: Constitutional Struggles from the Charter to Meech Lake. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. Cairns, Alan 1992 Charter versus Federalism. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Campbell, Enid 1989 “Southey Memorial Lecture 1988: Changing the Constitution—Past and Future,” Melbourne University Law Review Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 1-23. Canada, 1972 Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons on the Constitution of Canada. Final Report. Canada, 1991 Citizens’ Forum on Canada’s Future. Ottawa: Canadian Government Publishing Centre. Canada, 1992 Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons 1992. A Renewed Canada. Canada, 1993 House of Commons Debates February 1, p. 15238. Cohen, Andrew 1990 A Deal Undone: The Making and Breaking of the Meech Lake Accord. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre. Cooray, Mark 1989 “The Constitution and Constitutional Change” in Brian Galligan and J. R. Nethercote (Eds) The Constitutional Commission and the 1988 Referendums. Canberra: Federalism Research Centre, Australian National University. Dufour, Christian 1990 A Canadian Challenge/ Le Défi québécois. Lanzville, B.C.: Oolichan Books. Easterbrook, Margaret “Move for Koori reconciliation.” The Age, December 16, 1991. Elston, Jon 1988 “Introduction” in Jon Elster and Rune Slagstad (Eds.) Constitutionalism and Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fafard Patrick and Darrel R. Reid 1991 Constituent Assemblies: A Comparative Survey. Kingston: Queen’s University Institute of Intergovernmental Relations. Fidler, Richard, 1991 Canada, Adieu? Quebec Debates Its Future. Lantzville B.C.: Oolichan Books. Galligan, Brian 1989 “The 1988 Referendums in Perspective” in Brian Galligan and John Nethercote (Eds.) The Constitutional Commission and the 1988 Referendums. Canberra: Federalism Research Centre, Australian National University, pp. 118-133. Galligan, Brian 1992 “Australian Federalism: Rethinking and Restructuring,” Australian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 27, pp. 1-6. Galligan Brian, Rainer Knopff and John Ure 1989 “Australian Federalism and the Debate over a Bill of Rights.” Publius, Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 53-67. Hawke, Robert 1990 “Towards a Closer Partnership.” Canberra: Office of the Prime Minister. Henkin, Louis and Albert Rosenthal (Eds.) 1990 Constitutionalism and Rights: The Influence of the United States Constitution Abroad. New York: Columbia University Press. Holmes, Stephen 1988 “Gag rules of the politics of omission” in Jon Elster and Rune Slagstad (Eds) Constitutionalism and Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 19- 58. Howse, Robert 1992 Economic Union, Social Justice and Constitutional Reform: Towards a High But Level Playing Field. North York: York University Centre for Public Law and Public Policy. Johnson, Richard 1993 “An Inverted Logroll: The Charlottetown Accord and the Referendums,” PS: Political Science & Politics, Vol. 26, pp. 43-46. Keating, Paul 1991 “The Commonwealth and the States and the November Special Premiers’ Meeting.” Canberra: National Press Club, 22 October, 1991.

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La Nauze, J.A. 1972 The Making of Australia’s Constitution. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Manuel George and Michael Posluns 1974 The Fourth World: An Indian Reality. Toronto: Collier Macmillan. Mason, Anthony 1988 “The Australian Constitution 1901-1988.” The Australian Law Journal, Vol. 62, pp. 752-60. Meekison, Peter 1988 “The Amending Formula” in R.D. Olling and M.W. Westmacott (Eds.) Perspectives on Canadian Federalism. Toronto: Prentice-Hall. Milne, David 1982 The New Canadian Constitution. Toronto: James Lorimer. Monahan, Patrick 1991 Meech Lake: The Inside Story. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Monahan, Patrick, Lynda Covello and Jonathan Batty (Eds.) 1992 Constituent Assemblies: The Canadian Debate in Comparative and Historical Context. North York: York University Centre for Public Law and Public Policy. Russell, Peter 1988 “The Politics of Frustration: The Pursuit of Formal Constitutional Change in Australia and Canada,” Australian-Canadian Studies. Vol. 6, pp. 1-32. Russell, Peter 1990 “The Diffusion of Judicial Review: The Commonwealth, the United States and the Canadian Case,” Policy Studies Journal, Vol. 19, pp. 113-21. Russell, Peter 1992 Constitutional Odyssey: Can Canadians Become A Sovereign People? Toronto: University of Toronto Press Russell, Peter 1993 Constitutional Odyssey: Can Canadians Become A Sovereign People? (2nd Edition) Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Ryan, K.W. and H. D. Hewitt 1977 The Australian Constitutional Convention. Canberra: Centre for Research on Federal Financial Relations. Sawer, Geofrrey 1963 Australian Federal Politics and The Law, 1929-1949. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Sharman, Campbell 1989 “The Referendum Results and Their Context” in Brian Galligan and John Nethercote (Eds.) The Constitutional Commission and the 1988 Referendums. Canberra: Federalism Research Centre, Australian National University, pp. 105-117. Simeon, Richard 1990 “Why Did the Meech Lake Accord Fail?” in Ronald Watts and Douglas Brown (Eds.) Canada: State of the Federation 1990. Kingston: Queen’s University Institute of Intergovernmental Relations. Solomon, David 1991 “Getting a constitution fit for the future,” The Australian, 5 April, 1991.

60 David M. Thomas

Turning a Blind Eye: Constitutional Abeyances and the Canadian Experience

Abstract Mature and workable constitutions contain areas of great ambiguity and imprecision that are not mere compromises between principles, or weak constitutional conventions. These gaps in a constitution, kept in place by deliberate non-exposure, are known as abeyances. Canada’s Constitution has contained a great many such areas: the long-standing lack of an amending formula was one example, fraught as it was with the dangers of French- English conflict, and raising as it did other abeyances. The rise of Quebec nationalism forced some of our abeyances into the open. The Unity Task Force Report of 1979 shows us struggling to deal with abeyances, especially binationalism, rooted in the federal system itself. The Report was dismissed by Trudeau; his response to Quebec nationalism helped create a new constitutional, intellectual and political dynamic, married to a changing social and demographic structure. New and symbolically powerful areas of conflict now clash with the old. The amending formulae created in 1982 did not, however, resolve former abeyances; these have been worsened in ways that were not anticipated. Elite accommodation no longer seems capable of keeping abeyances in check. The Meech and Charlottetown Accords and the referendum of October 1992 are proof that we have exposed the Constitution’s anomalies, breached its abeyances (not without reason) and put in place a process that offers us slim hope that our “gaps of unsettlement” can be resolved satisfactorily.

Résumé Les constitutions qui ont résisté à l’épreuve du temps comportent toutes des zones d’ambiguïté et d’imprécision qui ne résultent pas forcément de compromis entre des principes ni d’arrangements constitutionnels médiocres. Dans une constitution, ces lacunes, que l’on camoufle délibérément, sont dites « questions pendantes ». La Constitution canadienne renfermait un grand nombre de ces zones, par exemple la très longue absence d’une formule d’amendement, qui risquait de soulever des conflits entre francophones et anglophones et qui créaient, elle-même, d’autres questions pendantes. La montée du nationalisme québécois a mis en évidence plusieurs de nos questions pendantes. Le rapport du Groupe de travail sur l’unité canadienne, paru en 1979, s’efforçait de résoudre certaines de ces questions pendantes, notamment le binationalisme qui pousse ses racines dans le régime fédéral lui- même. Ce rapport a été écarté par Trudeau, dont la réaction au nationalisme québécois a mis en branle une nouvelle dynamique constitutionnelle, intellectuelle et politique associée à une structure sociale et démographique en évolution. Aujourd’hui, de nouveaux sujets de conflit, chargés d’un symbolisme puissant, viennent s’ajouter aux anciens. La formule

International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 7-8, Spring-Fall/Printemps-automne 1993 IJCS / RIÉC d’amendement adoptée en 1982 n’a cependant pas résolu les questions en suspens; elle les a même envenimées d’une façon tout à fait inattendue. Les compromis entre les élites ne semblent plus capables de tenir ces questions sous le boisseau et le sort qui a été réservé à l’entente du lac Meech, à celle de Charlottetown et au référendum d’octobre 1992 montre clairement que les défauts de la Constitution sont désormais à découvert, ainsi que les questions en suspens, et que nous avons mis en marche un processus qui n’aidera guère à résoudre les contradictions et les malentendus.

At the 1964 annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Charlottetown, Pierre Elliott Trudeau presented an unfinished version of a paper entitled “Federalism, Nationalism and Reason.”1 In the summer of 1992, the University of Prince Edward Island was once again hosting the Association’s annual gathering, but now scholars were wrestling with the legacy of the Trudeau era and with the results of a further twenty-eight years of constitutional change, debate and frustration. It is indeed Trudeau, above all, who has been responsible for forcing us to consider some of our deepest constitutional disjunctions and incompatibilities. And he has left us, once again, with unfinished business. Not that we should lay the opening of Pandora’s constitutional box at his feet alone. Far from it. He was as clearly aware as anyone that constitutional incrementalism was preferable to activism. In 1965, one year after his Charlottetown lecture, he wrote: I should be very surprised if real statesmen, given the facts of the problem, arrive at the conclusion that our constitution needs drastic revision. 2 Yet this is precisely what happened. And as a result of these changes, we now face, in extreme form, the clash of almost every constitutional principle and problem imaginable. The argument presented in this paper is as follows: • Mature and “living” constitutions are capable of containing unsettled areas of great importance, or “abeyances” which they leave well alone. The Canadian Constitution has contained a great many such areas; the amending question is particularly illustrative of the kind of difficulties we have faced. Over the past quarter of a century, we have seemed increasingly determined to leave no abeyance undisturbed; we have been loathe to admit that such things should exist. We have tended to assume that all our constitutional problems have constitutional answers. Indeed we may also have assumed that many of our non-constitutional problems have constitutional solutions. • The period following the triumph of the Parti Québécois in 1976 saw a flurry of proposals for major constitutional change. Those efforts were exemplified by Bill C-60 and, in particular, by the Report of the Task Force on Canadian Unity (the Pépin-Robarts Report).3 It attempted to tackle matters previously left as abeyances, and well crafted and drafted though it was, it ran headlong into the problem of what abeyances to avoid or address. • The Task Force report became a “political orphan” 4 and was upstaged and contradicted by Pierre Trudeau’s single-minded and consistent devotion to a different set of principles. His determination to undermine Quebec nationalists and to avoid confronting, head on, the deepest abeyance of all, namely the recognition of a special role and place for Quebec, led to

64 Turning a Blind Eye: Constitutional Abeyances and the Canadian Experience

changes that have had the effect of further isolating Quebec and of raising other abeyances from their slumber.5 • The Trudeau vision has taken deep root and is now protected, in ways that were not anticipated, by the provisions of the amending formulae, by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, by a newly provincialized referendum process, by the intractable and symbolic nature of the issues, and by the ways in which they have become linked. Our abeyances have become matters of public debate; competing visions struggle to emerge victorious; one principle leads on to another. It is concluded that there is but slim hope that the abeyances that have been made the subject of so much debate can be put to rest. The rejections of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords are proof that Canadians have been unable to agree on fundamental principles: our search for clarity has breached the Constitution’s abeyances, exposed its anomalies, created new problems and shown our unwillingness to retreat into the ambiguous safety of constitutional uncertainty even when given the chance to do so. Our abeyances are in public view, and the referendum process recently utilized seems inherently unsuited to the avoidance or resolution of longstanding and complex “gaps of unsettlement.”

Macro-Constitutional Politics Our Constitution is rife with well-known contradictions and incongruities. Parliamentary sovereignty and the conventions of cabinet government sit uneasily with federalism and demands for such things as Senate reform (along U.S. lines). Binationalism and dualism confront notions of provincial equality, multi-culturalism and founding peoples. Demands for the entrenchment of difference blindness clash with demands for difference valorization and recognition.6 The equality of citizens contends with collective and group rights; liberty and community, constitutionalism and communitarianism, collide.7 Recent court cases raise questions about the effectiveness and fairness of the system of representation. Perhaps, above all, as Peter Russell pointed out in his Presidential Address to the Canadian Political Science Association in 1990, we cannot decide where sovereignty resides and how it is to be exercised: Canadians have not yet constituted themselves a sovereign people. So deep are their current differences on fundamental questions of political justice and collective identity that Canadians may now be incapable of acting together as a sovereign people.8 To say all of this is merely to belabour the obvious; we have been deeply divided on almost every conceivable constitutional issue. It is not that we are short of answers and expert opinion. Our best and brightest have laboured for a whole generation on these problems. One could argue that Canadian political science as a discipline has been distorted by the pull (and lure) of constitutional analysis and debate. Political scientists have been drawn to the Constitution like moths to a flame. There have been numerous wonderfully perceptive and critical commentaries. The MacDonald Royal Commission alone saw the production of over seventy volumes of research studies. Surely we have to recognize that it is not for lack of brainpower, patriotism, money, time or effort that we have reached such an extraordinary impasse which everyone still strives to solve in his/her own way

65 IJCS / RIÉC and to such little effect? Surely no other country can have undergone such a rigorous yet unproductive national examination by its political scientists and constitutional lawyers? Other countries have spent a long time examining certain facets of their constitution. Australia established a Constitutional Convention (in 1973) and a Constitutional Commission (in 1985) whose labours have brought forth referendum proposals, some of them successful. However, the latest batch recently went down to resounding defeat. Britain has long discussed electoral and parliamentary reform. Yet these matters are as nothing compared to the efforts we have made. It has been a preoccupation for our political scientists, our political elites, and the country generally. The point is, when we put our ongoing “macro-constitutional” crises into perspective, it is not hard to understand why agreement has been so difficult to reach: Macro-constitutional politics is distinguished in two ways from ordinary or micro-constitutional politics. First, macro-constitutional politics goes beyond disputing the events of specific constitutional proposals and addresses the very nature of the political community on which the constitution is to be based ... precisely because of the fundamental nature of the dispute ... macro-constitutional politics is exceptionally emotional and intense.9 Who or what is to blame? An intransigent Quebec led by professional and bureaucratic elites would probably top the list. It would be followed by an obdurate, anti-nationalist Trudeau, along with self-aggrandizing provincial barons and their courtiers. Or we could blame the Fathers of Confederation, the BNA Act, the decentralizing actions of the imperial Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the lack of cohesion and balance in Section 91 and Section 92 of the Constitution Act of 1867, and more recently, the contradictions inherent in the Constitution Act 1982, the workings of executive federalism, a lack of leadership, and the vagaries of fortuna. There is clearly no shortage of candidates for the Governor-General’s Scapegoat of the Year awards. The problem with any or all of these explanations, or with the view that it is simply the cumulative weight of such issues that now presses down upon us, is that this is still to assume that we can (a) identify the problems and (b) find a solution to what ails us. Not all have presumed this to be so. As usual, a prescient Alan Cairns noted in 1970 that “cryptically we might say that the constitution has not failed us, so much as we, by our inadequate understanding of its living nature, have failed it.”10 To this he later added, when commenting on the spate of proposals that emerged in the late 1970s, that “the patient may stagger on in a kind of half life for a long time to come. Not only is there yet no cure. There is also no easy way to die.”11 Perhaps we have loved not wisely but too well. We have not been content to let matters lie, and we may, ironically, have done far too much.

Constitutional Abeyances A recent provocative and powerful work by the British scholar Michael Foley casts light on our situation, and may help explain why constitutional peace and quiet have been impossible to achieve. A reading of Foley’s aptly titled The Silence of Constitutions12 does not tell us what we should do, it tells us instead why what we have been doing has not succeeded, and what we should, in fact, not do. It is the thesis of this paper that Foley is correct in this key

66 Turning a Blind Eye: Constitutional Abeyances and the Canadian Experience respect—mature and workable constitutions contain abeyances which one approaches and disinters at one’s peril. We have been, and are, digging up the entire graveyard and one doubts that there is an abeyance left unturned. So what are abeyances, and why are they so important? They are, in effect, holes or gaps in a constitution. They are areas to be avoided at all costs. One blunders into an abeyance only to retreat as quickly and quietly as possible. They are constitutional quicksand. They exist, says Foley, in a sort of “twilight zone,” in an “intermediate layer of obscurity” between the micro workings of uncodified rules and customs and the macro world of recognized rules and constitutional conventions. Without this layer of obscurity a constitution may well cease to function. They remain unwritten and obscure because: It is recognized that any attempt to define them would be not merely unnecessary or impossible, but positively misguided and even potentially threatening to the constitution itself. This is because such “understandings” only remain understood as long as they remain sufficiently obscure to allow them to retain an approximate appearance of internal coherence and clarity, while at the same time accommodating several potentially conflicting and quite unresolved points of issue. The resolution of conflict in such cases is that of suspended irresolution—either consciously secured or, far more probably, unconsciously and unintentionally acquired. These packages of aggregated positions are preserved by studied inattention. They may include contradictions, tensions, anomalies, and inequities, but the fragility and, at times, total illogicality of such packages are kept intact through a convention of non-exposure, of strategic oversight, and of complicity in delusion—in short, through an instinctive reversion to not breaking ranks when confronted with the constitutional equivalents of the emperor’s clothes.13 This passage should strike a responsive chord in many a Canadian scholar’s heart. It is, therefore, not enough to think of such abeyances as merely encompassing the unwritten parts of a constitution. The standard, first year undergraduate explanation of unwritten (i.e. British) and written (i.e. American) constitutions, along with a hybrid (Canada) does not suffice. In the first place, such distinctions between written and unwritten constitutions do not in themselves make much sense anyway and have long been discarded. Secondly, conventions are not abeyances, as Foley uses the term. Conventions, as discussed by Heard in his recent book on the subject, can be divided into categories which range from the fundamental conventions “supported by general agreement on the existence and value of the principle involved” through meso-conventions and semi-conventions to infra- conventions, “whose existence may be hotly contested.” Finally there are embryonic conventions, such as the non use of the notwithstanding clause. Below all of these will lie usages.14 It may be true that some of these conventions represent the tip of the abeyance iceberg, as is the case with those surrounding parliamentary sovereignty. Yet the point is that we can argue about the strength of specific conventions without calling into question the larger issues which lurk in the shadows behind them. It should also be noted that mere ambiguity does not in itself constitute an abeyance, useful adjunct though it may be. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is, for example, ambiguous in some areas, but other areas it

67 IJCS / RIÉC avoids entirely. Abeyances are thus NOT recognizable rules or compromises, nor are they in any sense legally precise notions. They amount to “strategic gaps” kept in place by a sort of deterrence theory, namely the knowledge that to subject them to public view and open debate is to court disaster, for they are too intractable and dangerous. If they do become the subject of conflict, Foley argues that they are “not so much accompanied by an intense constitutional crisis, they are themselves the essence of that crisis.”15 To students of Canadian politics, Foley’s thesis may offer some important insights. First of all, it can give us hope. Even those constitutions that are seemingly well worked out, and agreed upon, are not. In Canada, the United States’ Constitution is often held up as the very essence of constitutionalism. It is seen as clear, binding, consistent and democratic. Not so, says Foley: In reality, the U.S. Constitution is replete with anomalies, gaps, and areas of utter unsettlement...judicial consistency is unknown, final authoritative judgements are unavailable.16 It leaves unresolved and unclear the issues surrounding popular sovereignty and judicial review, and it does not explain the mysteries (and myths) of Presidential power and how this is to be kept in check by the other parts of the Constitution. To Foley, it is a mark of maturity that in both Britain and the United States there is a desire to leave such matters in a state of “settled unsettlement,” and that there is a deep conservatism to constitutional practice. In the British case it may be due to historical traumas, such as the Civil War, and a collective acceptance of “tradition.” In the United States, the Supreme Court has played a key role in working “creatively with ambiguity.”17 One can hope that we, too, have tolerated our abeyances: it would seem in the cautious Canadian character to have done so. This is what appears to have happened until well into this century.18 We proceeded cautiously and slowly. We appear to have recognized, implicitly, that a federal system by its very nature will embody a changing conception of roles and powers, of identities and loyalties. This federal conception, especially if it embodies assumptions about unstated prerogatives which apply to some but not all the federal units, cannot be put down on paper. A central, crucial, abeyance was, and is, the constitutional definition of Quebec’s place within the Canadian federal state. Another was and is the assumed equality of the provinces. These could not and cannot be written down in such a way that they are dealt with satisfactorily. To have attempted to do so ran the risk of picking one constitutional principle over another, of freezing, at a particular moment, the received constitutional wisdom of the time, and of creating new and unperceived incompatibilities.

Amendment A quintessentially Canadian example of a problem behind which abeyances lurked was our amending formula, and lack thereof until 1982. Clearly, most federations settle this at the outset. To those gathered at Philadelphia, the need for a new amending process was clear, and the process that emerged clearly embodied principles that rendered it both national and federal, (although it was still held, as Calhoun was later to argue, to leave unanswered ultimate questions of sovereignty). Australia and Switzerland likewise paid attention to the principles behind the amending process. At a series of conventions, which took almost a decade,

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Australians devised an amending formula which, it was assumed, would prove flexible, simple, democratic and federal.19 In Switzerland the drafting committee of the 1848 formula (still the basis of the revisions of 1874 and 1891), said: The committee proposes to render the constitution very easily amendable because a truly sovereign people must be able to change its fundamental law whenever it is so inclined ... in order to come into force, the Federal Constitution must be accepted by a majority of Swiss citizenry and by the majority of the Cantons.20 The Canadian situation was completely different. The initial procedural question was whether or not the Federal Cabinet could submit its request directly to Britain, without consulting and obtaining the consent of the national Parliament. What we got was an amending process that worked quite well in spite of itself. It was viewed in terms of political expediency. Jennifer Smith comments that: ... as far as ratification and amendment were concerned the real question in both instances was the consent required domestically before the British parliament could be requested to act.21

Amendments were made but we left unresolved the debate over sovereignty which the amending problem created. As one shrewd American commentator has noted: When there is no agreement on the proper allocation of authority, or (more fundamentally) no agreement on the desired level of unity within a society, as has been the case in Canada, agreement on a wholly satisfactory amendment process becomes impossible ... until a substantial consensus is reached on the underlying question of nationhood, no satisfactory agreement can be reached on a process of amendment.22 The Canadian system changed in some dramatic ways not via amendments but by judicial interpretation and informal federal-provincial agreements. We seemed to be verifying the point made in Livingston’s classic work Federalism and Constitutional Change.23 His assumption that federalism is “a function not of constitutions but of societies” is well known. Accompanying this is his view that societies employ what he calls “instrumentalities” to serve the needs of their diversity. These instrumentalities can be procedures, institutions and conventions but he also adds to the list concepts, habits and attitudes, all of which serve to “articulate and protect the diversities that constitute the psycho- sociological basis of the federal community.”24 Our instrumentalities were protecting our abeyances and our lack of an amending formula. It was not until the aftermath of the Commonwealth Conference of 1926 that we launched the first of a series of federal-provincial conferences which discussed the amending problem. The 1950 conference actually managed to reach unanimous agreement of the division of the constitution into six different categories each with different rules for change—surely a Canadian approach if ever there was one.

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In these debates, we were trying to skirt our abeyances and the questions that came with them: did we subscribe to the compact theory; to what extent were the provinces sovereign; should Quebec be treated differently; should any single province have a constitutional veto; could regional assent be substituted for a provincial approach; was there to be any popular ratification; who initiated the amending process; could there be opting out; must there be the same rules for all; how were we to reconcile popular sovereignty and federalism? Thus rather than arguing about the substance of future amendments, the focus switched to the process itself. It became “the essence of the crisis,” and we were subjected “to a series of federal-provincial conferences which, like the woes inflicted on sinners by the God of the Old Testament, have lasted unto the third and fourth generations.”25

“A Diversity in Ignorance of Itself” A notable effort to tackle our disinterred and emergent abeyances simultaneously was made in 1979 by the Task Force on Canadian Unity report entitled A Future Together. Better known as the Pépin-Robarts Report after its two co-chairs, it represented an inter-connected and comprehensive approach. Even its critics saw it as well written, succinct and willing to tackle deep-seated problems. Ideas from it, and individuals associated with it, have continued to play a significant part in our on going constitutional saga. It attempted to deal with dualism, regionalism, the functional distribution of power and the role of the national government. We have tried in this report to answer three questions: How do we secure the fuller expression of duality in all the spheres to which it relates? How do we accommodate more satisfactorily the forces of regionalism that are altering the face of Canadian society? How do we make the principle of sharing an “operational value” in our country, and within and between our governments, so that duality and regionalism and the other features of Canadian life are given appropriate recognition?26 It thus came face to face with at least the following abeyances: • the constitutional recognition of dualism and Quebec’s distinctiveness; • the redistribution of powers; • the need for a legitimizing amending formula in which Quebec’s consent was required; • the problem of provincial equality and symmetry; • the clash between federal and parliamentary principles; • the recognition of individual as well as group rights; • the clash between judicial constitutional supremacy and democratic control. In some respects it appeared to tackle these problems head on. It said of Quebec that: We support the efforts of the Quebec provincial government and of the people of Quebec to ensure the predominance of the French language and culture in that province. Quebec is distinctive and should, within a viable Canada, have the power necessary to protect and develop its distinctive character; any political solution short if this would lead to the rupture of Canada.27

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Thus, language policy was to be a provincial matter, counterbalanced by French/English educational opportunities “where numbers warrant” and the availability of federal services in both languages. It dealt with the parliamentary/federal problem by proposing a totally restructured Senate modelled on the Bundestag, and partial proportional representation for the Commons. The membership and powers of the Council of the Federation—as the restructured Senate would be called—were set out clearly; it was to comprise a maximum of 60 delegates “acting under instruction” from the provinces. These were bold and sweeping recommendations that would have had a profound effect. The same could be said of their approach to the amending problem, popular sovereignty requirements, and the Quebec “veto.” Along with passage by the federal Parliament, a four region referendum was proposed, Quebec being one of the regions. Thus, abeyances were tackled in a way that saw the proposed solutions closely linked together. At the same time, it can be argued that even Pépin-Robarts & Co. tried to skirt or fudge some of the central issues, and this was to get them into hot water. In particular, they tried to defuse the asymmetry versus provincial equality problem, and special status for Quebec, by allotting: ... to all provinces powers in the areas needed by Quebec to maintain its distinctive culture and heritage, but to do so in a manner which would enable the other provinces, if they so wished, not to exercise these responsibilities and instead leave them to Ottawa. There are two methods for achieving this: to place these matters under concurrent jurisdiction with provincial paramountcy, thus leaving provinces with the option whether to exercise their overriding power in these fields; and to provide in the constitution a procedure for the intergovernmental delegation of legislative powers. In our view both methods should be used.28 This particular provision illustrates clearly a desire to see how things will work out (and should sound familiar to us now!). There was a similar vagueness in their recommendations for a Declaration of Rights which was to include “the usual political, legal, economic and egalitarian rights.” Such individual and collective rights would have to be those “on which the central and provincial governments are in agreement.” Yet another example of issue avoidance can be found in the discussion of native rights: there is no mention here of native sovereignty, inherent rights or any of the other demands now made. The Report’s wise disinclination to provide clarity and the corollary that much remained to be worked out was, not surprisingly, seen as a major weakness in the document. It could thus be attacked for its concerted attempt to entrench intra-state federalism, popular sovereignty, and a special place for Quebec and, at the same time, for its “smorgasbord” of principles and criteria, and its pandering to Quebec nationalism and regionalism. Alan Cairns, in a trenchant and harsh criticism of the overall Report, argued that the provision for concurrency and delegation noted above “is capable of producing two antithetical outcomes at the opposite ends of the spectrum and anything in between.”29 In other words, we could have found ourselves, in future, with an extraordinarily decentralized system due to our desire to paper over the Quebec problem. Cairns also noted, amongst other things, that the

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Report stressed “what divides us,” it “lacked the subtlety necessary to handle the complexities” of the national question, it utilized an “ahistorical approach,” and it suffered from “hesitation and embarrassment” on the question of national identity. One cannot help but feel sorry for the authors. They were trying to tackle abeyances that had haunted us for years. They were prisoners of a climate of opinion that was heavily provincialist. First Ministers’ Conferences had come into their own. Premiers strutted their hour upon the stage, and the entire Pépin-Robarts Report was premised on the notion that with respect to powers there must be “equality of status of the central and the provincial orders of government.”30 In Pépin-Robarts, a revised and subtle version of the compact theory had wrestled with the questions of inter- and intra-state federalism, pan- Canadianism, dualism, individual rights and founding nations. Whether or not Pépin-Robarts was a noble effort doomed to failure, a constitution that could have grown and matured but was strangled at birth, or a vision that was fatally flawed and rife with contradictions, became irrelevant. The Unity Task Force had tried—how it had tried—to solve these problems imaginatively and constructively, in the light of socio-political realities as well as constitutional principles. Certainly, if one considers what has happened since their report appeared, it is difficult to argue that we have done any better.

A Constitution with Crystal Clear Principles When Pierre Trudeau returned to power in 1980, Pépin-Robarts, and its search for a “third option,” lay neglected and disparaged. Trudeau’s agenda was very different. It was to be an irony, a paradox, that Trudeau the pragmatist—the cool, clear, cerebral anti-nationalist, the defender of incrementalism and of the need to establish our national identity so that it could accommodate Quebec—should end up pushing through an amending formula and a charter that forced our abeyances into the open and created new and fundamental tensions in the state. Trudeau was rather like the Charles I portrayed by Foley. Trudeau also had a strict legality on his side, had little regard for the legislature, was not prepared to let sleeping issues lie and was convinced, not without reason, that his logic and clarity of vision were superior to those of his opponents. In fairness, he had to act as a result of the promises made during the referendum of 1980. Once Quebec had pushed its way out of its own protective cocoon and had seen itself as an actor on a larger stage (to mix metaphors) notions such as abeyances or “stops in the mind” became almost impossible to handle. But now the Quebec abeyance and the amending abeyance became the focal point for what Foley has called other “deeply embedded disjunctions.” A strengthened West, led by a powerful Alberta premier, was willing to fight for provincial equality as were other premiers. Trudeau was adamantly committed to a Charter of Rights, to official bilingualism, to strengthening Federal institutions and to a recognition of multiculturalism. His desire for constitutional coherence, his inability and unwillingness to accept the co- existence of (seemingly) irreconcilable positions, and his acceptance of provincial equality, constituted the antithesis of a reliance on obfuscation and avoidance. In his criticism of this approach, Guy LaForest uses “Foleyian” terminology when he argues that:

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My point here, simply put, is that these checks, ambiguities, and blurred sovereignties between visions were necessary to the flourishing of complex federalism in Canada. When all this is discarded in favour of a constitution with crystal clear principles... the very nature of our federalism becomes threatened and so does Canada.31 Many of these issues were not new, but this time there was a difference; there was a Prime Minister willing to go it alone, a federal government able to claim its own Quebec mandate, a separatist government in Quebec emasculated by the referendum of 1980, and, gathering force on the fringes of the debate, a growing assembly of new constitutional players pushing for change if the opportunity arose. Would we have been better off opting for as limited a constitutional package as possible? Was there a chance in the autumn and winter of 1981-82 that we could have muddled through and tolerated ambiguity? It must be admitted that, then and now, there is a strong case to be made for the view that constitution making does indeed require a stand on principles, for some fundamental questions cannot be ignored. But we ended up with constitutional arrangements that have made our abeyances all too apparent. Behind the oddities of the amending formulae, such as the extent of the unanimity rule, the acknowledged provincial right of rescission, the three-year time limit and the inability to co-ordinate legislative amendment or approval, lie even larger questions.32 It could, perhaps, be argued that in 1982 certain abeyances were left alone. There was no attempt to define Quebec’s role and place in the scheme of things. The operation of First Ministers’ Conferences was left unclear. Native claims to sovereignty were ignored. Citizens were not given a constitutional role. Nevertheless, we still ended up with changes that led to Meech Lake and to Charlottetown, and which juxtaposed our former abeyances in ways that make them extremely difficult to handle.

Unsettled Settlement What can be said in conclusion? Is there hope that we can take some of our abeyances off the table? The Trudeau legacy has been extraordinary, and his view of the Constitution has taken hold. His interventions in defence of his endeavours have been decisive. Well-known scholars can now proclaim that the end of our constitutional journey is in sight: Canada is, de facto, now a republic; the people of Canada are sovereign. Sooner or later, by law or by convention, Canada’s constitution will reflect both those realities de jure. So too will its legislators and courts.33 To argue thus assumes that our deepest abeyances are now being laid to rest: like old soldiers, they will just fade away. Our political and constitutional culture will have changed; even Quebec, in this view, could become “charterized.” The new, demarcated, ascertainable, liberal-democratic rules of the constitutional and political game are seen as in place, buttressed by referendum-rooted popular sovereignty and by the Charter itself.

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This optimistic view does not accord with the recognition of the importance of abeyances. It can be argued that the failure of the Meech and Charlottetown Accords, and the referendum process itself, demonstrated clearly that we have not come to terms with the idea of the need for abeyances in a general sense, or with the specific, dormant dangers we have pushed and prodded out of the interstitial constitutional caves where they were hibernating. Let us remind ourselves that Foley’s thesis holds that gaps of significant constitutional unsettlement are marks of maturity and a source of considerable strength; that constitutional incoherence can be a positive and necessary value; that legal precision is less desirable than social consensus and the willingness to turn a blind eye to our idiosyncrasies. Constitutional cowardice is a virtue: we live to fight another day. Are we prepared and able to turn our backs on the very real and dangerous sources of conflict that have surfaced so dramatically since 1982? Do we have the social and political skills, and the leadership, to handle our constitutional unsettlement? Will our institutional mechanisms permit us to change even if there is widespread support for so doing? The attempt, in the Meech Lake Accord, to constitutionalize Quebec’s distinctiveness, illustrates all of these problems. Meech was an effort to go beyond de facto or implicit recognition34 that the two founding nations view “was the only form in which confederation would be ultimately acceptable to French Canada.”35 Meech was an attempt to set it down on paper, and people wanted to know exactly what it meant. At the same time, it was raising an abeyance that was now symbolically tied to other intractable questions. In Patrick Monahan’s view: ... (the) symbolic messages associated with the distinct society clause provide the most powerful explanation of its massive unpopularity outside of Quebec.36 Survey data on the October referendum now show that, once again, the most important issue, outside Quebec, was that Quebec was seen as getting too much. Inevitably, in Meech and Charlottetown, other abeyances came into play, particularly those surrounding the question of provincial equality, affecting both the amending formula, and the proposals for a Triple E Senate. Many seemed surprised to find out that raising what was seen as a straight- forward federal principle, namely the political equality of disparate geo- political units in a second house, trailed in its wake such a host of deep problems, old and new. Less of a surprise, perhaps, was the clash of principles surrounding who we are as citizens, and how we are to be treated, individually and collectively. The fact that these questions, too, were once abeyances is revealed by Charles Taylor’s comment that in this debate over what constitutes a liberal society “aspirations which are as such perfectly compatible come to be seen as deadly rivals.”37 The left has a great deal of difficulty coming to terms with these issues38 and, on the right, in the shape of the Reform Party, one finds certitude. Populist diagnoses seem inherently intolerant of abeyances. When Preston Manning speaks of his “New Canada” he is talking of a country that will operate according to a few seemingly straightforward principles: we will all be equal; we will all be treated equally; there will not be a need for hyphenated Canadianism; the provinces will be equal; and our institutions will be

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reformed. Manning’s populism seeks to find simple answers to complex problems, and prudence is not an adjective that comes to mind in this context. Populists dislike ambiguity and equivocation, and because of that they do not want “suspended irresolution.” Supporters see in the Reform Party the answers to what bothers them; they want politicians to listen and be accountable to the electorate, to stop pandering to Quebec, and to stop wasting the taxpayers’ money. Populism demands referendums, but because abeyances are “the product of long historical experience and accumulated practice of which the public is but dimly aware,”39 they are exceptionally difficult to deal with during a referendum campaign. The fact that a referendum was used would seem to be a vindication of the view that the Constitution is an affair, ultimately, of citizens and not governments. It would thus seem to settle a longstanding abeyance and overturn the predominance of governments and of executive federalism established by the amending formulae. Matters are not this simple. The fundamental incompatibilities of the 1982 arrangements have not given way to clarity, and the referendum was, in certain key ways, not an act of national public affirmation; it was a new version of inter-state federalism in which provincialized communities, rather than governments, spoke for themselves. It was precipitated by pre-emptive referendum legislation in three provinces: Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia. It is no coincidence that these three provinces soundly rejected the Accord. We tackled, in part, what Jennifer Smith has called the problem of constituting power: “Process—not any process, but one that embodies consent requirements—replaces sovereignty,”40 (i.e., as the key issue). But what has been added is the provincial equality abeyance in a new guise. Furthermore, if we are to use referendums in the future “how are we to avoid drawing abeyances into the public debate? How do we avoid spelling out what we know cannot be spelled out?”41 Our old mechanisms of elite accommodation were, it would appear, by their very nature inherently tolerant of abeyances. Consensus was to be produced due to a common desire to maintain the system and avoid undue fragmentation, whilst accommodating divergent interests and subcultures. Constitutional affairs were dealt with in an ordinary political way. Rather than being content with the virtues of “settled unsettlement,” we have got instead “unsettled settlement” of some things, and no settlement at all of a long list of other items, driven as they are by political crises, values, personalities and great social and demographic change. While the rest of Canada’s values have been changing, in Quebec, in yet another paradox, devotion to British traditions of representative government and parliamentarianism have, if anything, increased. We have Quebec scholars who would normally “prefer specificity in constitutional matters”42 now arguing that vagueness is desirable and that a clear vision is dangerous. Christian Dufour puts the point thus: Beyond the reality of the country, beyond the ideal, Canada is foundering in an idealism, in an ideology of the ideal, that is constraining and compulsory. This is not surprising: in politics idealism corresponds to losing touch with reality. It results from an inability to integrate some aspects of that reality.43

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In sum, events from Pépin-Robarts to Charlottetown reveal how deep our “disjunctions” are (and even so, there are still abeyances left untouched, such as those surrounding responsible government). To ask, in conclusion, whether we can get at least some of our key abeyances under control is to try to forecast the future. This is dangerous terrain. The vagaries of the moment, and our own hopes and fears, can turn scholars into journalists; trying to gain a perspective on our past is difficult enough. Even so, if we accept the idea of abeyances, their role and crucial importance, and the usefulness of the concept in putting our macro-constitutional debate into a new, comparative perspective, then the question of how we are to handle them cannot be avoided. It may be that the results of the referendum, and the process itself, have made us realize how far apart we are. We might come to take a more resolutely Tory view of our living, evolving Constitution with its areas of contradiction and imprecision, although when we were given the opportunity, in Meech, to obfuscate on “distinct society” and pass the buck to the Supreme Court, we did not take it. The metaphors of marriage and the family have often been used to describe the Quebec-“Rest of Canada” relationship. Such metaphors seem particularly applicable to abeyances. In most longstanding and successful relationships there are, (in Foleyian terms), “understandings”; there is “suspended irresolution” of some matters; there are “conventions of non-exposure”; and there is “complicity in delusion” so that we can, quite simply, continue to get along with each other. There may well be an increasing realization of this in Quebec, and in the rest of the country. The one abeyance that might be uncoupled from the others is the question of aboriginal rights. There could be sufficient public support for this, and the work of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples could set the scene. To say this is to be optimistic. Finally, we might hope for new and creative leadership, greater tolerance, more imagination and less certitude as we try to break free of “the late modern century.”44 New abeyances can flourish and assimilate diverse principles if we let them do so, but first there are grave areas of “unsettled settlement” to resolve.

Notes 1. Pierre Elliott Trudeau, “Federalism, Nationalism and Reason” in Federalism and the French Canadians (Toronto: Macmillan & Company, Ltd., 1968). 2. Pierre Elliott Trudeau, “Quebec and the Constitutional Problem” in Federalism and the French Canadians, op. cit., 36. Trudeau has repeated this point of view recently in his pamphlet “Fatal Tilt: Speaking Out About Sovereignty” (Toronto: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991), 14-15. He states: “I am on record since the mid-sixties as having pointed out the dangers of embarking on a constitutional voyage when the virus of consititutionitis had begun to infect the ship of state. But the provinces took matters into their own hands in 1967 ... surely the federal government had no choice but to accept the challenge and sail on.” 3. Canada, Task Force on Canadian Unity, A Future Together: Observations and Recommendations (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1979). 4. See Cristine Andrea Beauvais De Clercy, “Holding Hands with the Public: Trudeau and the Task Force on Canadian Unity, 1977-79.” Unpublished M.A. Thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 1992. 5. Note in particular the discussion of the ironies of the Trudeau legacy in Kenneth McRoberts, English Canada and Quebec: Avoiding the Issue (York: Robarts Centre for Constitutional Studies, 1991).

76 Turning a Blind Eye: Constitutional Abeyances and the Canadian Experience

6. Charles Taylor has presented a case for the recognition of what he calls second level or “deep” diversity. See his “Shared and Divergent Values,” a paper prepared for the Business Council on National Issues Symposium on Canada’s Constitutional Options (Toronto, January, 1991), and his brief but important remarks regarding “The Politics of Recognition” in Douglas Brown, Robert Young, and Dwight Herberger, (eds.), Constitutional Commentaries: An Assessment of the 1991 Federal Proposal. (Kingston: Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, conference paper number 10, 1991). 7. See Robert C. Vipond, Liberty and Community: Canadian Federalism and the Failure of the Constitution (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991). Note also Janet Ajzenstat (ed.) Canadian Constitutionalism 1791-1991 (Ottawa: Canadian Study of Parliament Group, 1992). This collection of essays “illustrates the origins and contours of the quarrel between Constitutionalists and Communitarians that underlies today’s debate on constitutional reform.” 8. Peter H. Russell, “Can the Canadians Be a Sovereign People,” Presidential Address to the Canadian Political Science Association (Kingston: Queen’s University, 1991), reported in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, 24 (1991), 691-709. 9. Ibid., 699-700. 10. Alan C. Cairns, “The Living Canadian Constitution” in Blair and McLeod (eds.), The Canadian Political Tradition (Toronto: Methuen, 1987), 11. 11. Alan C. Cairns, “Recent Federalist Constitutional Proposals” in Douglas E. Williams (ed.), Disruptions: Constitutional Struggles form the Charter to Meech Lake (Toronto: McClelland, Stewart, 1991), 57. 12. Michael Foley, The Silence of Constitutions (London: Routledge, 1989). 13. Ibid., 9. 14. See Andrew Heard, Canadian Constitutional Conventions: The Marriage of Law and Politics (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1991), ch. 7. 15. Foley, op. cit., XI. 16. Ibid., 126. 17. Ibid., 119. See chapters three and five for a detailed discussion of British and American experience. 18. See D.V. Smiley’s comment that “I can find only two major and important sets of suggestions for basic constitutional change prior to the 1960s: the report emanating from the interprovincial conferences of 1887, and the highly structuralist thrust of the proposals of the League for Social Reconstruction in 1935.” This is attached as a footnote to “A Dangerous Deed: The Constitution Act, 1982” in Banting and Simeon And No One Cheered: Federalism, Democracy and the Constitution Act, (Toronto, Methuen, 1983), 94. 19. In Peter Russell’s view “Australia’s founding fathers, it would seem, were more committed federalists than Canada’s. Certainly they knew more about federalism”. See “The Politics of Frustration; The pursuit of Formal Constitutional Change in Australia and Canada” in Hodgins, Eddy, Grant and Struthers (eds.), Federalism in Canada and Australia: Historical Perspectives, 1920-88 (Peterborough: Trent University, 1989), 59. In practice it should be noted that this formula hasn’t been that flexible: only eight out of 42 proposed amendments have passed. 20. For a classic and still extremely useful analysis of the amending problem in federal societies and states see W.S. Livingston, Federalism and Constitutional Change, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 178. This quote is used by Livingston in his discussion of the Swiss experience. 21. Jennifer Smith, “Canadian Confederation and the Influence of American Federalism,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 21 (1988), 459. 22. Walter Dellinger, “The Amending Process in Canada and the United States: A Comparative Perspective” in Davenport and Leach (eds.), Reshaping Confederation: The 1982 Reform of the Constitution (Durham, Duke University Centre for International Studies, 1984), 286. 23. Livingston, op. cit. 24. Ibid., 305. 25. Garth Stevenson, Unfulfilled Union. (Canada: Gage, 1989), 239. Stevenson unleashes a stinging criticism of the 1982 agreement, saying that “the ‘new’ Canadian Constitution was an untidy collection of miscellaneous provisions reflecting sordid and undignified compromises with a variety of provincial interests,” 238. 26. A Future Together, op. cit., 41.

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27. Ibid., 87. 28. Ibid. 29. Alan C. Cairns, “Recent Federalist Constitutional Proposals,” op. cit., 53. 30. A Future Together, op. cit., 125. 31. Guy Laforest, “Interpreting the Political Heritage of André Laurendeau” in Smith, Mackinnon and Courtney (eds.), After Meech Lake: Lessons for the Future (Saskatoon: Fifth House Publishers, 1991), 102. 32. See Alan C. Cairns, Charter versus Federalism: The Dilemmas of Constitutional Reform (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992), ch. 3. 33. David J. Bercuson and Barry Cooper, “From Constitutional Monarchy to Quasi Republic: The Evolution of Liberal Democracy in Canada” in Ajzenstat, op. cit., 27. 34. Christopher Dunn in fact uses the phrase “the silence of the constitution” to explain Quebec’s de facto acquisition of power. See “Do Canada and Quebec Need Each Other,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, (Kingston: Queen’s University, 1991), 13. 35. See Taylor, “Divergent Values,” op. cit., 16. 36. Patrick Monahan, Meech Lake: The Inside Story (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 258. 37. Taylor, “Divergent Values,” op. cit., 31. Taylor lists aspirations which should be compatible: duality and multiculturalism; aboriginal and Quebec claims to distinctiveness; regional equality and Quebec’s demands. 38. A useful discussion of this problem is to be found in Serge Denis, Le Long Malentendu: Le Québec vu par les intellectuels progressistes au Canada anglais 1970-1991 (Québec: Les Éditions du Boréal, 1992). 39. Roger Gibbins and David Thomas “Ten Lessons from the Referendum,” Canadian Parliamentary Review, vol. 15, No. 4. 1992-3, 6. 40. See Jennifer Smith, “Representation and Constitutional Reform in Canada” in Smith, Mackinnon, Courtney (eds.), After Meech Lake, op. cit., 78. 41. Gibbins and Thomas, op. cit. 42. Dunn, op. cit., 4. 43. Christian Dufour, “A Canadian Challenge / Le défi québécois,” (Lanzantville, B.C. and Halifax, N.S.: Oolichan Books and the Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1990), 145. 44. See Ged Martin’s optimistic conclusion in “The Canadian Question and The Late Modern Century,” British Journal of Canadian Studies, vol. 7, No. 2 (1992), 215-247.

78 Richard LaRue Jocelyn Létourneau

De l’unité et de l’identité au Canada. Essai sur l’éclatement d’un état

Résumé Comment expliquer les déchirements de tous ordres qui font craindre aujourd’hui l’éclatement du Canada ? Essentiellement soucieux des tendances lourdes qui semblent pousser à la désagrégation de l’unité politique et de l’identité collective, les auteurs estiment que certains aspects du postkeynésiannisme qui caractérisent le pays entraînent une crise virtuelle sur les plans de la représentation, de la légitimation et de la régulation. Par ailleurs, cette crise serait exacerbée et infléchie diversement par trois facteurs structurels : l’épuisement du modèle politique; l’irruption de la mondialité au coeur du projet nationalitaire; et la fin des grands récits collectifs. Bref, cet article propose une problématique générale qui permet d’examiner dans une optique macroscopique la phase actuelle du « problème canadien ».

Abstract How can we explain the divisions of every description that now threaten to rend Canada asunder? Mindful of the weighty trends that seem to be pushing toward the dissolution of political unity and collective identity, the authors believe that some of the country’s post-Keynesian characteristics are leading to a virtual crisis in representation, legitimation and regulation. As well, this crisis seems variously exacerbated and altered by three structural factors: the bankruptcy of the political model; the intrusion of globalization into the heart of the national plan; and the end of the great collective narratives. In short, this article describes a general situation that allows for a macroscopic examination of the current phase of the “Canadian problem.”

Depuis sa fondation en 1867, le Canada a été marqué par des tendances à l’éclatement profondes, permanentes et invariablement vécues sous la forme de crises d’unité et d’identité. Il serait d’ailleurs instructif de se demander pourquoi, malgré les risques de rupture dont il a été le théâtre tout au long de son histoire, le Canada a su perdurer en tant qu’état national. En fait, la production de l’unité et de l’identité au Canada est un problème fondamental qui s’inscrit au coeur même du devenir de cet état, et les tergiversations récentes sur la question constitutionnelle n’ont fait que traduire un nouveau moment du processus pénible et perpétuel de la recherche d’une forme de régulation, de légitimation et de représentation politique qui satisfasse les aspirations de tous les groupes de la société canadienne. Cela dit, en dépit du fait que le problème de l’unité et de l’identité canadiennes soit, à cet état, structurel, sa nature est historiquement changeante, et sa facture

International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 7-8, Spring-Fall/Printemps-automne 1993 IJCS/RIÉC actuelle, ainsi que ses causes, ne sont plus les mêmes. Aussi paraît-il pertinent de s’interroger sur les facteurs qui, dans la présente conjoncture, favorisent l’éclatement de l’union. À cet égard, deux options sont ouvertes : nous en tenir à une analyse synchronique du débat compliqué qui, depuis le rapatriement de la Constitution en 1982, marque l’horizon politique canadien et, par ce biais, nous livrer à une évaluation des différentes stratégies employées par les acteurs en présence pour parvenir à leurs fins; ou, à travers une perspective diachronique, identifier un certain nombre de « tendances lourdes » qui, s’inscrivant au coeur du devenir historique de l’état canadien, posent les conditions actuelles de sa rupture « par le haut » et « par le bas ». Nous préconiserons cette seconde option en essayant de faire ressortir comment le Canada vit au fond un problème que partagent à des degrés divers nombre d’états contemporains1 : la production des sujets politiques dans les sociétés postkeynésiennes, c’est-à-dire le problème de la recherche d’une concordance entre l’unité et l’identité de la société à une époque d’inflexion et d’altération significatives des principes d’organisation et des modes d’action formels, sociaux et politiques, qui étaient propres aux états marqués et définis par ce que certains ont appelé la « régulation monopoliste »2 — et dont le Canada était un exemple parmi bien d’autres. Dans le cadre de cet article, nous nous limiterons à présenter trois facteurs majeurs qui affectent la production de l’unité et de l’identité canadiennes en ces temps troubles et qui, ce faisant, provoquent une crise des modes de régulation, de légitimation et de représentation à l’oeuvre au sein de cet état. Avant d’en arriver là, nous formulerons cependant quelques éléments d’une problématique concernant la production des sujets politiques dans les sociétés postkeynésiennes. Pour nous interroger ensuite sur les changements et les altérations qui ont affecté le Canada à un point tel que l’on puisse en parler comme d’un état postkeynésien.

Des sujets politiques dans les sociétés postkeynésiennes Dans notre esprit, le keynésiannisme ne désigne pas seulement un mode d’intégration économique des travailleurs-consommateurs dans la dynamique générale d’un régime d’accumulation du capital. Il renvoie aussi à un mode de production des sujets politiques dans lequel ceux-ci, définis en tant qu’acteurs normalisés — « comme lieu d’une synthèse identitaire unique, irréductible et absolue » — cautionnent réciproquement leurs agirs par l’acceptation des termes d’un contrat sociopolitique dont le fiduciaire et le légataire unique est l’État. Vendant en quelque sorte leur « personne privée » en contrepartie d’une identité octroyée, celle de la « personne civile », qui les assure d’une couverture tout risque (filet de la sécurité sociale) accordée par un État providentiel et bienfaiteur, les sujets politiques, en honorant les termes du contrat, s’assurent également les privilèges d’une reconnaissance et d’un endossement officiels, ceux que leur procure la nation dans laquelle ils trouvent en outre, par décret, « ancienneté » (celle-ci confondant allègrement la tradition), c’est-à-dire histoire et mémoire. La notion de postkeynésiannisme, à laquelle nous n’accolons aucun statut théorique mais que nous voulons essentiellement descriptive, cherche à résumer et à décrire certaines inflexions ou dissolutions des principes et des modes d’action formels de l’état keynésien, de même que l’altération des formes d’identité politique dominante prévalant en son sein. On pourrait

82 De l’unité et de l’indentité au Canada. Essai sur l’éclatement d’un État longuement discuter pour savoir si le postkeynésiannisme marque une rupture ou une altération, une inflexion ou une accentuation, une intensification ou une hypertrophisation, une sophistication ou une stylisation, une radicalisation ou une exacerbation des formes politico-sociales propres au keynésiannisme. Disons qu’il est probablement tout cela à la fois, qu’il est vulnérable aux interfaces et qu’il n’échappe pas à la logique convulsive et paradoxale de l’évolution des choses. Les tendances centrifuges que l’on dit être caractéristiques du postkeynésiannisme étaient certainement déjà présentes, contenues à l’« état de possible », dans le keynésiannisme et les décentrements à l’oeuvre dans tous les pores du tissu de la société canadienne traduisent une crise — à moins que ce ne soit une mutation encore inachevée — des formes régulatrices qui agissaient au sein de la société keynésienne (envisagée ici comme un idéal-type) et qui contribuaient à la structurer en tant qu’entité productrice de puissants effets de recentrement, de massification et de nivellement. Cela dit, la question principale qui nous occupe dans le cadre de cet article est la suivante : si on postule que le postkeynésiannisme marque une transition par rapport au keynésiannisme au plan de la régulation, de la légitimation et de la représentation, quelle est, dans ce nouveau contexte, la forme existentielle que prend le sujet politique ? En d’autres termes, comment s’établit (ou ne s’établit pas encore) la concordance entre l’unité et l’identité dans la société postkeynésienne ? Pour répondre à cette question, nous profiterons de la réflexion de Michel Freitag qui, toutefois, parle plus volontiers de postmodernité que de postkeynésiannisme3. On dira ainsi que, dans la société postkeynésienne, le sujet politique est d’abord un individu qui, conscient de son identité subjective et l’assumant, cherche à l’accréditer, l’asseoir, la promouvoir et la réaliser dans toute l’extension que lui permet son inscription dans un corps social. Il y entretient des relations d’intérêts avec d’autres individus dans le cadre de mouvements sociaux fondant leur existence dans le partage d’un certain nombre de valeurs, de modèles culturels ou civilisationnels et de caractères particuliers. Il faut souligner ici l’importance de ces mouvements sociaux qui, certes, ne sont pas apparus récemment mais dont l’émergence comme force politique a considérablement changé les modalités d’expression de la citoyenneté dans la société civile. Dans la mesure où, nous dit Freitag, ces mouvements sociaux expriment la consolidation organisationnelle de toutes sortes d’intérêts particuliers (de nature corporative) qui acquièrent un statut officiel à travers leur reconnaissance publique, judiciaire et médiatique, on a vu s’instaurer un décalage croissant entre, d’un côté, l’universalisme transcendental (associé au concept d’État) et l’unité de l’identité communautaire (lié au concept de nation), et, de l’autre, la spécificité empirique de plus en plus marquée des formes de mobilisation portées par ces mouvements sociaux qui revendiquent désormais des droits au nom de leurs identités et de leurs intérêts particuliers (You are what you believe!, suggère un slogan). Ces intérêts sont fondés sur l’idée d’une reconnaissance de la différence et de l’autonomie. C’est ainsi, continue Freitag, que l’idée d’appartenance et de participation politique s’est trouvé modifiée : la citoyenneté s’est décomposée en une multitude de modalités et de degrés de participation organisationnels et corporatifs par rapport auxquels les groupes se trouvent hiérarchisés : a) selon la puissance qu’ils détiennent empiriquement dans les jeux de l’influence; b) selon la capacité qu’ils ont de mobiliser toutes sortes d’intérêts et d’identités spécifiques; et c) selon les

83 IJCS/RIÉC aptitudes qu’ils déploient pour faire reconnaître au « public », de manière médiatique, la légitimité de leurs objectifs ou la valeur des finalités qu’ils poursuivent. Il n’est certes pas excessif de prétendre, dès lors, que le sujet politique dans l’état keynésien, « sujet social identitaire et synthétique », s’est complètement fragmenté en un ensemble de subjectivités catégorielles de plus en plus immédiatement concrètes et particulières, lesquelles recherchent, par le biais d’une action protectrice, la constitution de sphères singularisées d’autonomie privée en se référant, pour justifier leur prétention, aux « droits de la personne » et donc à une « liberté » définie de manière entièrement privée.

Le Canada en tant qu’état postkeynésien ? Quels sont donc, pour reprendre les termes de la question plus tôt formulée, les changements et altérations qui ont à ce point affecté le Canada que l’on puisse en parler comme d’un état postkeynésien ? Sans épuiser le sujet, on exposera les idées qui suivent. Le premier changement concerne certainement le mode de représentation politique auquel aspire un grand nombre de citoyens qui, cherchant de nouveaux lieux d’intervention et d’incorporation, contredisent la tradition de s’en remettre aux autorités politiques pour administrer, par délégation complète de pouvoir, la chose publique (la revendication pour un « Sénat triple E », portée principalement par des intervenants provenant de l’Ouest du pays lors des dernières négociations constitutionnelles, incarnait en partie cette aspiration)4. Le deuxième changement majeur a trait à la critique de l’idée du « citoyen universel », fiduciaire d’un État exécutif qui se fait en retour bienfaiteur et protecteur, au profit du concept de « groupe opprimé » qui non seulement offre une alternative à la participation active de citoyens regroupés sur la base de la proximité et du partage de leurs conditions de vie, mais les assure aussi d’une représentation directe dans l’agora (à cet égard, certains groupes féministes ont dit que la Chambre des communes devrait être une « Chambre d’égalité » plutôt qu’une « Chambre des provinces »). Le troisième changement affectant la matérialité de l’état canadien tient à l’érosion de l’identité canadienne au profit d’autres identités plus restreintes ou plus larges. Ce phénomène confirme la tendance, observée par nombre de commentateurs, d’un délestage marqué de l’appartenance des personnes de leurs ancrages traditionnels (l’État-nation et la communauté politique territorialisée, notamment). Autrement dit, dorénavant l’importance des parcours personnels combinée à l’obtention de certaines garanties juridiques qui protègent leurs droits, permettent en quelque sorte aux personnes de désaccorder leur histoire, donc leur être politique, d’un parcours collectif qui n’est ni vécu, ni perçu comme le lieu de leur action. En termes concrets, cette déconnexion entre l’action personnelle et le parcours collectif se traduit souvent par le fait que, pour un citoyen, l’intégration à un groupe n’entraîne plus nécessairement le partage d’un seul lieu commun ni d’une seule culture. Du point de vue de la constitution de communautés d’appartenance de type national, ce phénomène constitue un problème majeur qui se vit sous la forme d’une « crise de la référence et de la symbolique nationales ». Cette crise de la représentation symbolique du lieu commun — il s’agit là d’un quatrième changement affectant structurellement l’état canadien — trouve ses conditions au niveau de la remise en cause des interprétations traditionnelles de l’histoire et des conceptions spatio-temporelles sur lesquelles elles sont fondées. À ce chapitre, les Autochtones, les femmes, les écologistes et les membres des communautés ethniques ont le plus activement contesté les paramètres connus

84 De l’unité et de l’indentité au Canada. Essai sur l’éclatement d’un État du grand récit historique du Canada — lequel est fondé sur une vision linéaire et progressive, libérale et patriarcale, dualiste et totalisante des choses — pour insister plutôt sur les notions de « différence », de « relativité » et d’« historicité », façon de marquer leur désir de rompre avec la trame infirme, réductive et archi-classique de cette configuration narrative du « Nous collectif ». Le cinquième changement altérant le substrat de l’état canadien découle de l’importance grandissante acquise par les immigrants de fraîche date. Contrairement à l’idée répandue, ceux-ci ne « vivent » pas naturellement l’identité qui leur est octroyée par leur statut de nouveau citoyen résidant au Canada, mais l’adoptent ou la refusent, la modifient ou la recomposent dans des formes souvent originales qui, si elles élargissent singulièrement le paysage culturel de la nation, déstabilisent en même temps la théorie depuis toujours acceptée d’une société canadienne basée sur deux peuples fondateurs (ou trois si on inclut les Autochtones). La remise en cause des équilibres régulateurs existants — tant sur le plan politique et social que culturel et symbolique — à partir d’une critique de l’universalisme indifférencié et de l’égalité substantielle; la déconstruction des grandes représentations communes; l’émergence de nouvelles identités fondées sur le particularisme culturel et sur la différenciation individuelle; et la déterritorialisation des appartenances et des visions collectives montrent que l’état canadien est entré dans une période de transition que résume bien la notion descriptive de postkeynésiannisme (suivant la définition que nous en donnons). Comment, dans ces conditions, produire un sujet politique en même temps qu’un état national (en d’autres termes, comment produire de l’unité et de l’identité dans la dissension), tel est le dilemme et telle est l’impasse du Canada. Au lieu de proposer des modalités de résolution à cette véritable équation infernale, nous tenterons plutôt de faire ressortir l’ampleur et la profondeur des germes d’implosion et d’explosion plantés au sein de l’état canadien par l’affirmation virulente des tendances que nous venons de décrire.

Facteurs d’éclatement de l’unité canadienne Au début des années 1990, la production simultanée de l’unité et de l’identité devient un défi majeur. En évitant de continuellement nous référer aux données de la conjoncture actuelle, nous nous limiterons à identifier trois tendances lourdes et rampantes qui agissent au coeur de la matérialité de l’état canadien en la modifiant et qui, de ce fait, provoquent une crise majeure des modes de régulation, de légitimation et de représentation à l’oeuvre au sein de cet état. L’épuisement d’un modèle politique La production concordante de l’unité et de l’identité se révèle un grand défi à cause de l’épuisement du modèle politique dans le cadre duquel s’est historiquement formée la nation canadienne (le fédéralisme exécutif) et a fonctionné l’état canadien depuis ses débuts. Trois causes interreliées expliquent cet épuisement. 1. la dynamique à l’origine de la représentation au sein des instances décisionnelles du système politique canadien est fortement contestée par nombre d’acteurs, réunis en groupes ou associations, qui recherchent des modes d’intervention plus directs et des formes d’incorporation plus définies et plus achevées dans les structures du pouvoir — d’où l’idée de « constitutionnaliser » leurs demandes et d’influencer les rondes de

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négociations pour que les intervenants à la table centrale tiennent compte de leurs intérêts spécifiques qu’ils définissent en terme d’une réforme de la représentativité et des institutions; 2. la dualité fondatrice (l’idée des deux peuples fondateurs et ses incidences sur l’aménagement des équilibres internes de l’union), l’un des principes fondamentaux qui régularisent l’état canadien tant sur le plan politique que sur le plan social et culurel, est également remise en cause. Bon nombre de groupes se sentent peu concernés par ses aspects réducteurs (c’est le cas des Amérindiens et de plusieurs mouvements sociaux, par exemple celui des femmes) ou estiment que les paramètres qu’il impose à la vie politique canadienne sont inefficaces ou insuffisants pour permettre leur épanouissement en tant que collectivité agissante (c’est le cas des nationalistes québécois qui préféreraient que le Québec devienne un état à part entière, mais c’est aussi le cas des membres des communautés ethniques et raciales)5; 3. la reconnaissance des personnes comme citoyens garantie par leur accès à un vaste système de protection sociale et d’égalité des droits fondé sur l’idée de l’universalité des chances et de l’effacement des différences (« citoyen universel ») constitue un deuxième principe régulateur fondamental également débattu sous prétexte que ce système, en massifiant les perspectives (donc en homogénéisant les problèmes et les solutions) ne répond plus aux conditions d’épanouissement d’acteurs qui recherchent des réponses particulières à leurs besoins existentiels distincts tout en souscrivant à l’idée générale et généreuse de l’équité6. On voit bien comment ces trois ordres de revendications : plus de pouvoir direct, un équilibre de l’union qui ne repose plus sur la dualité fondatrice — donc une ouverture vers la pluralité administrative — et le délestage de l’égalité formelle des individus au bénéfice de l’équité pratique entre les groupes, sont susceptibles de miner les fondements du système politique canadien et de provoquer une crise profonde de la régulation, de la légitimation et de la représentation. Il importe en effet de comprendre, pour prendre cet exemple, que l’abandon du principe de l’égalité formelle des citoyens remet en cause, dans sa dynamique même, le mode de régulation sur la base duquel l’État central avait assis sa légitimité et bâti sa « figure providentielle » depuis le milieu des années 1930 : celui d’une gestion centralisée et homogénéisante d’individus pratiquement interchangeables et perçus comme facteurs de production qui circulent et consomment de manière optimale à l’intérieur d’une économie intégrée et pannationale7. Il en va de même pour la revendication de l’accès au pouvoir. À cet égard, la tendance inéluctable du rétrécissement de l’espace démocratique consécutive à la centralisation qui découle des modalités d’opération de l’État-providence (et dont ont directement bénéficié les technocrates et la classe politique canadienne en s’instituant les mandataires d’un gigantesque système de redistribution des richesses) se voit stoppée, sinon renversée, au profit de groupes en voie de légitimisation qui ne détiennent pour l’instant aucune assise politique stable ou fondée sur un consensus national. Finalement, la remise en cause de l’idée de la dualité fondatrice comme paramètre essentiel de la régulation et de la représentation de l’État canadien provoque d’angoissants vertiges à toute la classe politique canadienne, et ce, bien qu’elle démontre les ouvertures apparentes pour endosser les desiderata de certains groupes, les Autochtones notamment. En fait, remettre en question ce principe d’équilibre de la fédération canadienne — principe auquel s’accroche résolument le gouvernement du Québec pour entériner tout nouveau projet de constitution et

86 De l’unité et de l’indentité au Canada. Essai sur l’éclatement d’un État

auquel semblent également tenir bon nombre d’hommes et de femmes politiques à travers le Canada qui y trouvent leur assise et une certaine sécurité8 — crée un vide représentatif que cherchent à combler autant de groupes inspirés par l’idéologie de la rectitude politique (political correctness). Ne se définissant ni par rapport à une territorialité bien arrêtée (cas des Autochtones) ni par rapport aux catégories jusque-là admises de « personnes de langue et de culture française ou anglaise détenant des droits individuels » (cas de la plupart des groupes opprimés : femmes, personnes âgées, personnes handicapées, pauvres, victimes de ceci ou de cela, etc.) ces groupes désirent néanmoins avoir voix au chapitre et inscrire leur historicité particulière au coeur du devenir de l’État canadien. Jusqu’ici, la crise de régulation, de légitimation et de représentation de l’État canadien a été « absorbée » par le système politique de deux manières : par la négociation continuelle (et on sait à quel point ce mode de « résolution » des conflits, peu importe qu’il retarde, englue ou fasse avancer les choses, constitue une dimension permanente de l’expérience politique canadienne); et par le recours systématique aux tribunaux de la part des intervenants, façon d’inscrire ou de faire valoir leurs droits dans les cadres du régime constitutionnel associé à l’instauration de la Charte des droits et des libertés de la personne en 1982. Cette absorption de la crise a cependant donné lieu à une digestion très difficile de ses effets pervers. D’une part, les rondes de négociation constitutionnelle, en plus d’être extrêmement onéreuses sur le plan financier et humain, ont complexifié la situation en élargissant sensiblement le débat et en faisant écho à tous les groupes qui se manifestent sur la scène publique, sans pour autant rompre avec la perspective dualiste traditionnelle — ce qui rend hasardeuse la découverte d’une « régulation » nouvelle9; d’autre part, l’utilisation fréquente des tribunaux, en plus de favoriser l’apparition d’une véritable culture institutionnalisée de la complainte, a substitué à l’incorporation des acteurs dans l’agora un mode de représentation essentiellement judiciarisée des points de vue. Cette pratique fait bien sûr la fortune des juristes mais contribue à accroître le déficit démocratique de la société canadienne. La mondialité inscrite au coeur du projet nationalitaire La production simultanée de l’unité et de l’identité au Canada s’avère un grand défi pour une deuxième raison — liée à ce que l’on pourrait appeler l’apparition de nouvelles territorialités de référence et d’appartenance — celle en particulier de la « mondialité » et de son pendant culturel « l’internationalisme »10. Contrairement à ce que l’on pourrait croire, cette tendance est majeure, concerne une proportion importante de la population et se traduit par une remise en cause assez dramatique de l’idée d’État-nation comme espace d’intervention politique, d’allégeance et de référence — d’où la crise de légitimité qui s’ensuit pour les entités nationales. Au cours des vingt dernières années se sont en effet multipliés les groupes et les réseaux d’action pour qui la planète est le terrain d’intervention privilégié, celui à partir duquel ils se définissent une identité, celui aussi par rapport auquel ils entendent reconfigurer l’espace politique. Contribuant à ce que R. Falk a appelé des « évasions de l’État »11, ces actions politiques d’acteurs non- étatiques qui font des problèmes globaux (écologie, sida, droits de la personne, pauvreté endémique du Tiers-Monde, etc.) leur affaire, ont inscrit dans l’agenda politique des gouvernements nationaux tout un ensemble d’items pour lesquels des solutions lucides ne peuvent être trouvées, le cas échéant,

87 IJCS/RIÉC qu’en autant que les états se dissolvent dans une espèce de communauté trans- nationale, cédant ainsi une grande partie de leur souveraineté traditionnelle et amenuisant par conséquent leur capacité à se représenter comme états indépendants définissant leur autonomie, c’est-à-dire leurs propres frontières d’inclusion et d’exclusion. Au cours de cette même période de vingt ans s’est également imposée, dans l’horizon politique et symbolique des états contemporains, une nouvelle figure identitaire : celle de l’être performant dont le champ d’action est le monde et qui trouve son fondement existentiel dans les stratégies d’accumulation des entreprises, si ce n’est dans les accords commerciaux12. Ce « monde » a bien sûr une extension spatiale, littéralement celle de la planète, mais il consiste surtout en une arène de réalisation du destin individuel de personnes dont le principe vital est d’assurer leur survie (Life is short. Play hard, dit un slogan), donc de démontrer leur appartenance au clan des gagnants — façon d’acquérir une identité optimale et de se farder du look impressionniste, « bon chic bon genre », y correspondant — en prouvant leur capacité à jouer ou à déjouer la concurrence internationale. Comme l’écrivait Benjamin R. Barber dans un article récent (article dont l’argumentation s’applique tout à fait au cas canadien)13 : « Commercial pilots, computer programmers, international bankers, media specialists, oil riggers, entertainment celebrities, ecology experts, demographers, accountants, professors, athletes — these compose a new breed of men and women for whom religion, culture and nationality can seem only marginal elements in a working identity. » Dans un ouvrage bien connu, Robert Reich14 estimait que cette nouvelle classe internationaliste, qui diffuse ses valeurs par l’entremise de médias prestigieux dans lesquels nombre de « non-admis » trouvent leurs mirages quotidiens, comptait pour environ 10 p. 100 de la population américaine. Cette figure identitaire est endossée par l’élite politique et économique canadienne, ce qui signifie un idéal existentiel particulièrement valorisé dans les sphères où on élabore les représentations symboliques qui visent à assurer une cohérence au couple État-nation. Préparant l’arrivée prochaine dans les cercles du pouvoir d’une méritocratie internationaliste aux savoir-faire performants, elle a pourtant contribué à démembrer la représentation traditionnelle de l’État national et a inscrit, au coeur même de l’appareil étatique et du projet de promotion nationalitaire, l’esprit et la trace de la mondialité, si ce n’est ceux du McWorld soul et de la « culture Benetton » (dont l’éthique et l’esthétique s’incarnent dans un slogan génialement équivoque : « Toutes couleurs unies »). Si bien que, l’enjeu mondial déstructure la capacité des états à se représenter comme lieu de convergence et d’agrégation, l’internationalisation des communications et la métaphore du « village global » ne faisant qu’accentuer l’érosion des liens culturels qui unissaient autrefois les Canadiens. L’arrimage des acteurs à cette double structure référentielle, en apparence contradictoire, de la mondialité et de la nationalité n’a pas été vécu sur le mode de la confusion. Au contraire — et le slogan à la mode Think globally, act locally en fait foi — ce double bind dans lequel ils sont pris favorise leur inscription au sein d’un espace public et médiatique dont les frontières ne coïncident pas avec le territoire national. Il ouvre de ce fait la voie à l’affirmation d’une citoyenneté mondiale dont les porte-étendards, toujours plus nombreux, cherchent à faire reconnaître la trace dans les chartes universelles et au sein des organismes internationaux.

88 De l’unité et de l’indentité au Canada. Essai sur l’éclatement d’un État

L’affirmation d’une véritable culture politique transnationale, dont l’impact premier est de faire ressortir le côté obsolète de l’idée de territorialité nationale, n’est pas un phénomène excentrique à la dynamique sociale canadienne. Suivant l’hypothèse émise par Breton et Jenson, il y a lieu plutôt de reconnaître, dans cette culture transnationale, l’expression d’un « processus social réel qui s’enracine dans des réseaux d’action et de pouvoir en voie de globalisation ». Dès lors, il faut saisir l’importance des enjeux posés par la mondialité à l’État-nation : celle-ci, par la façon dont elle est assumée et prise en charge par des groupes et des segments toujours plus nombreux de la population, porte une redéfinition spatiale des grands paramètres de la vie politique canadienne, si ce n’est un forum d’expression positive du citoyen qui trouve désormais ses allégeances, ses reconnaissances et ses lieux d’identification dans une arène aux dimensions supranationales. La fin des grands récits collectifs ? Nous avons vu dans les paragraphes précédents comment l’état canadien, à la suite de pressions venant de l’intérieur et de l’extérieur, tendait à l’implosion et à l’explosion. Un troisième facteur, qui dans les circonstances accentue la tendance plus qu’il ne la provoque, concourt également à amplifier les menaces de rupture de l’union. Il s’agit de l’inefficacité des grands récits d’édification de la nation à activer un sens communautaire qui, sur le plan symbolique, propose un mode de représentation de l’état satisfaisant les aspirations et les visions des groupes. En d’autres termes, l’un des défis à la production de l’unité au Canada tient au fait que l’on ne trouve plus de lieu de reconnaissance et de réciprocité (sauf celui du social conçu comme un espace de valorisation et de promotion de ses droits particuliers ou corporatisés, espace notamment créé par la Charte de 1982) et que, plus que jamais, en l’absence surtout de héros récipiendaires de la ferveur populaire (héros incarnant probablement le Sujet fictif de la société unifiée), le discours de la nation, celle qui s’étend uniformément d’un océan à l’autre sonne creux ou reste inaudible. À cet égard, il est symptomatique qu’une enquête récemment effectuée pour le compte de l’Association d’études canadiennes ait révélé que les Canadiens avaient du mal à identifier, dans l’histoire ou dans l’actualité de leur pays, plus de deux personnages ou événements qui, par leur envergure ou leur importance, pouvaient être des sources de motivation et de fierté collectives15. Cette même enquête soulignait par ailleurs le fait que, dans leur ensemble, les Canadiens croyaient impératif de mettre plus d’efforts à faire connaître l’histoire nationale, ses personnages principaux, ses événements significatifs, etc. Malheureusement, aucune question spécifique n’invitait les répondants (que l’on avait catégorisé par appartenance linguistique, par lieu de résidence et par tranche d’âge) à préciser ce qui, dans la matière du passé, devait être promu au rang d’histoire nationale. On peut raisonnablement penser que les réponses, donc que les trames historiques proposées, auraient été nombreuses et éclatées, surtout si l’on avait réalisé l’enquête auprès de « catégories sociales » moins classiques. L’inefficacité des grands récits d’édification de la nation à représenter une communauté de sens dans laquelle se reconnaîtraient les sujets politiques tient au fait que ces récits restent fondamentalement basés sur une conception dualiste de la destinée canadienne — ce qui fait que les moments forts de l’histoire collective concernent la saga ininterrompue des rapports conflictuels entre Francophones et Anglophones, entre l’Est et l’Ouest, entre le fédéral et les provinces — ; sur une espèce de conception naïve du Canada, éden dont la matérialité résiderait dans un ensemble d’images, de symboles ou

89 IJCS/RIÉC d’institutions universelles suscitant le patriotisme de ses habitants (la beauté environnementale du pays, sa grandeur et ses ressouces; les programmes sociaux; la possibilité de s’installer n’importe où sur un vaste territoire; etc.), ou encore sur la promotion de grands projets incarnant l’« esprit canadien ». Or de tels récits arrivent mal, en ces temps troubles, à aviver les consensus16.Ona vu plus tôt que la représentation dualiste de l’état canadien (et par conséquent de son histoire et de son actualité), bien qu’elle satisfasse divers intervenants sur la scène publimédiatique (pensons au gouvernement du Québec et à la classe politique canadienne), contrevenait à de nombreux autres. De même, la perspective unifiante et homogénéisante d’un Canada fondant sa matérialité dans l’idée d’une égalité formelle de ses sujets devant l’histoire et dans la primauté de ses normes nationales (ce qui implique l’existence d’un fédéralisme exécutif) s’accorde mal avec les perspectives et les visions spécifiques de bien des groupes. Enfin, comme l’affirmait Donna Dasko dans un article proposant une analyse très intéressante17, « nous n’avons pas vu, dans la dernière décennie, l’équivalent de la construction d’un chemin de fer transcontinental, de la création d’un réseau national de radio et de télévision ou de l’établissement d’un régime d’assurance-maladie, et il semble peu probable qu’un projet d’une telle envergure puisse être réalisé d’ici la fin du siècle »; en d’autres termes, c’est comme si l’on manquait de « matière » pour écrire l’histoire de l’« esprit canadien », si ce n’est pour fonder de nouveaux mythes unitaires, et force est de dire que les « grands projets de l’heure » (traités de libre échange; projet d’accord constitutionnel; désengagement de l’État et privatisation de sociétés publiques), en déconstruisant l’édifice dans lequel s’enracinait, se reflétait et se réalisait la nation, ne sont pas facteurs de création d’unité nationale. Pour étayer notre thèse d’une érosion graduelle de l’idée du Canada, on pourrait aussi faire état des résultats de deux sondages, l’un portant sur les symboles d’identité canadienne et l’autre mesurant le sentiment d’identité des citoyens18. Ainsi, les recherches sur l’opinion publique d’Environics révèlent un déclin de l’importance que les Canadiens attachent à virtuellement tous les symboles de l’identité canadienne mesurés entre 1985 et 1991 (le drapeau, l’hymne national, le multiculturalisme, le bilinguisme, la Société Radio- Canada et la monarchie) au profit d’un nouveau symbole d’identité, la Charte des droits et des libertés de la personne, qui incorpore tout un train de valeurs (parmi lesquelles l’individualisme et le pouvoir de la personne) dont les effets fédératifs, contrairement à ce que l’on anticipait au départ, sont faibles. De même, à la lumière de la série de sondages Focus Canada, il apparaît manifeste que la préférence des Canadiens pour un gouvernement central fort s’est étiolée depuis 1979 au profit de l’idée de « compétence provinciale », renforçant ainsi l’allégeance locale et contribuant au relâchement de l’unité canadienne. L’inefficacité des grands récits d’édification de la nation à construire une communauté de sens a jusqu’ici entraîné l’apparition d’un vide consensuel qui s’est rempli de ressentiments, d’antagonismes, de désirs de rectitude et de complaintes exprimés par autant d’intervenants sur la scène publimédiatique, provoquant ce que Dominique Schnapper appelle une « cohésion par le flou », sorte de dissolution du lien social prophétisé (et craint) par les penseurs de la modernité. À première vue, une telle polyphonie peut être interprétée comme un moment fort de restructuration de l’esprit communautaire où chacun exprime librement son point de vue et fait reconnaître la valeur et la justesse de ses revendications. En réalité, c’est une véritable boîte de Pandore qui a été

90 De l’unité et de l’indentité au Canada. Essai sur l’éclatement d’un État

ouverte et, dans la mesure où le jugement et l’éthique politiques ont été remplacés par l’injonction légale et le discours des juristes, on ne sait plus comment la refermer ou en canaliser les effets générateurs. Dans cette logique de la réciprocité, un droit n’appelle pas un devoir mais advenant une réplique de l’adversaire suggère le recours à un autre droit et ainsi de suite. La conséquence est évidente : au lieu de permettre le rapprochement de groupes de personnes désormais constitués en parties légales et au lieu de favoriser la recréation du sens communautaire et de l’esprit démocratique, le débat public s’enlise dans des affrontements insolubles qui atrophient davantage le politique (entendu ici comme réflexivité du vivre-ensemble et responsabilité collective des finalités de la vie sociale)19 en plus de provoquer un recentrement des doléances vers la seule dimension groupusculaire. Ce recentrement n’entraîne aucun dépassement de la perspective des anciens récits mais, plutôt, un approfondissement de leurs limites en les remplaçant par des micro-récits qui font de l’« essentialisme » (dialectique de l’inclusion et de l’exclusion centrée sur une recherche de Soi-même en évitant la réciprocité avec l’Autre — s’agit-il du retour en force d’une sorte d’intégrisme fondée sur l’idéologie ambiguë du politically correct ? ) le point de départ et le point d’arrivée de leur rhétorique. Sous le couvert d’une richesse participative et d’un élargissement de l’espace démocratique, c’est un carnaval grotesque qui se déroule à longueur d’année, c’est une méga-inertie de l’agora qui en résulte. Triomphatrice comme jamais, la parole fragmentée (surdéterminée par la pensée légale) provoque l’aplatissement du sens civique, favorise l’avènement de l’identité narcissique et nourrit le processus techno-bureaucratique de gestion et de régulation du social qui, désormais, ne traite que des demandes provenant d’interlocuteurs dotés de puissances variables d’intervention publique et s’étant emparés, à la suite d’une joute très compétitive et spécialisée, d’une position avantageuse au sein de l’espace discursif, puissant lieu de formation identitaire à l’ère de la société médiatique.

Conclusion Nous avons parlé, tout au long de cet article, d’éclatement, de dissension et de menace de rupture du Canada. Certes, un état d’équilibre, et donc une forme d’unité et d’identité politique, celle qui s’était incarnée dans l’État- providence, est en train de s’écrouler à la suite de pressions internes et externes portées par de nombreux mouvements sociaux, véritables corporations identitaires20 qui s’agitent localement, nationalement et internationalement. Cette nouvelle dynamique qui traverse l’état canadien a jusqu’ici détruit des valeurs communes et fomenté des conflits d’intérêt. Cela ne veut pas dire que toute forme d’unité soit impossible mais l’horizon semble pour l’instant bouché. Or comment sortir de l’impasse ? Sans vouloir jouer aux devins, il se pourrait bien que l’unité nouvelle du Canada se fasse dans la reconnaissance et dans l’institutionnalisation de la dissension, ce qui est une perspective assez différente de celle qui avait été préconisée sous les gouvernements de Pierre Trudeau et qui a été enchâssée dans le réaménagement constitutionnel de 1982. Cette démarche de reconnaissance et d’institutionnalisation (postnationaliste?) est rendue particulièrement difficile parce que l’on s’interdit, d’un côté comme de l’autre, de réfléchir l’avenir du Canada en dehors de catégories et de modèles politiques devenus dysfonctionnels. L’insistance des participants au débat constitutionnel à recourir, pour examiner ou solutionner le « cas canadien », à des schèmes de compréhension qui renvoient à des modèles associatifs ou à des formations politiques révolues

91 IJCS/RIÉC ou idéalisées (telle la Suisse par exemple), fait que l’on s’imagine pouvoir résoudre les impasses actuelles du Canada en réaménageant autrement, mais toujours dans un même cadre général, les instances d’exercice du pouvoir entre des intervenants qui, faisant fi de toute considération politique lucide, s’agitent sur la scène médiatique pour conquérir une opinion publique dopée par le charabia de constitutionnalistes eux-mêmes en voie de constitutionnalisation! À vrai dire, un tel réaménagement permettra au mieux d’aboutir à un repositionnement différent, mais toujours instable et précaire, des groupes en présence qui continueront, au-delà de tout « règlement » constitutionnel, à se livrer à des joutes de concurrence dans la logique culturelle du postkeynésiannisme. En somme, l’avenir quel qu’il soit entraînera, à moins qu’un nouveau régime politique ne soit instauré, un approfondissement des tendances à l’éclatement « par le haut » et « par le bas » de cet état. Or il importe de commencer à mesurer les effets désastreux de cette situation : l’accroissement du nombre des exclus au sein d’un pays pourtant fier de se présenter comme le premier au monde en terme de niveau de vie et de bien-être collectif; l’évincement de la parole raisonnable et du bon sens pratique par la rhétorique implacable des juristes, sophistes des temps actuels et animateurs d’une culture de la complainte institutionnalisée; et la transformation de la place publique en une arène de compétition où, munis d’une règle du calcul opportuniste, des figures rendues blafardes par la performance se rencontrent en vue de s’imposer sur des concurrents tous aussi soucieux de leur image, mirage dans lequel ils fondent … leur absence d’identité.

Notes 1. Nous assumons cette position. Cela dit, faute de place, nous ne procéderons pas dans cet article à une analyse comparative. 2. Cf. J. Létourneau, « L’économie politique des trente glorieuses. Apport et originalité des analyses en terme de régulation », Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques, 14, 2 (1987), p. 345-379. On trouvera dans l’ouvrage de Robert Delorme et Christine André (L’État et l’économie. Un essai d’explication de l’évolution des dépenses publiques en France, 1870-1980, Paris, Seuil, 1983) une analyse historique poussée des formes de la régulation étatique dans l’occident moderne. Enfin, pour une application au cas canadien du concept de régulation monopoliste, voir les textes de François Houle « La crise et la place du Canada dans la nouvelle division internationale du travail » dans Le Canada et la nouvelle division internationale du travail, sous la dir. de D. Cameron et F. Houle, Ottawa, Éditions de l’Université d’Ottawa, 1985, p. 79-102; de Jane Jenson « Different but not Exceptional : Canada’s Permeable Fordism », Revue canadienne de sociologie et d’anthropologie, 26, 1 1989, p. 69-94; et l’ouvrage publié sous la direction de Gérard Boismenu et Daniel Drache, Politique et régulation. Modèle de développement et trajectoire canadienne, Paris/ L’Harmattan, Montréal/Méridiens, 1990, 360 p. 3. Voir son article intitulé « L’identité, l’altérité et le politique. Essai exploratoire de reconstruction conceptuelle historique », Société [Montréal], no 9 (hiver 1992), p. 1-55. 4. Idée avancée par Jane Jenson dans un article inédit intitulé « Le refus de la dualité. Nouvelles revendications de la citoyenneté au Canada » à paraître dans La question identitaire au Canada francophone : récits, parcours, enjeux, hors-lieux, sous la dir. de R. Bernard et J. Létourneau, Québec, Presses de l’Université Laval, 1993, coll. « Culture française d’Amérique ». 5. Ibid. 6. Idée développée par Gilles Breton et Jane Jenson dans un texte intitulé « Globalisation et citoyenneté : quelques enjeux actuels » publié dans L’ethnicité à l’heure de la mondialisation, sous la dir. de Caroline Andrew et al., Ottawa, ACFAS-Outaouais, 1992, p. 35-55.

92 De l’unité et de l’indentité au Canada. Essai sur l’éclatement d’un État

7. On sait à quel point cet idéal fut porté loin par Pierre Trudeau qui, pendant tout le temps où il occupa le pouvoir, incarna l’idéal d’un nationalisme fondé sur le fédéralisme centralisateur et exécutif. 8. Sous prétexte que le Canada deviendrait un pays totalement ingouvernable. 9. L’ensemble du débat constitutionnel (à tout le moins la dernière ronde de négociations) est en effet envenimé par le paradigme nationalitaire qui, pour les uns et pour les autres, semble une donnée incontournable pour penser, poser et solutionner les problèmes d’aménagement des rapports politiques internes à l’union. Du côté canadien, ce nationalisme s’exprime à travers le principe de l’égalité des provinces, de l’homogénéité pancanadienne et de la primauté des normes exécutives du gouvernement central. Du côté québécois, il s’incarne à travers l’idée d’un provincialisme offensif, distinct, aux ambitions souveraines et recherchant la maîtrise d’oeuvre de sa destinée. À quand l’avènement du post-nationalisme? 10. Par culture de l’internationalisme, nous entendons cet ensemble de pratiques et de comportements, de codes de paraître et d’habitudes qui constituent autant de marqueurs distinctifs d’une élite en voie de structuration et dont le modèle existentiel, diffusé par une pléiade de media « in » allant des aéro-magazines (En Route) aux journaux d’affaires (Globe & Mail ) en passant par les revues-mode (Vogue, Uomo), définit l’horizon d’un nombre grandissant de personnes qui s’identifient à la culture haut-de-gamme et dont le sentiment d’appartenance évolue au gré des opportunités d’investissement du capital financier, immobilier ou idéel (les idées sont en effet un capital symbolique dont la valeur se mesure désormais en terme d’« aéro-miles ») à travers le monde. 11. R. Falk, « Evasions of Sovereignty » dans R.B.J. Walker et S.H. Mendlovitz, eds., Contending Sovereignties. Redefining Political Community, Boulder/Londres, Lyne Rienne Publishers, 1990, cité dans Breton et Jenson. 12. Idée développée dans J. Létourneau, « La nouvelle figure identitaire du Québécois. Essai sur la dimension symbolique d’un consensus social en voie d’émergence », British Journal of Canadian Studies, 6, 1 (1991), p. 17-38. 13. « Jihad Vs McWorld », The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 269, no 3 (March 1992), p. 53-63. 14. The Work of Nations, New York, Vintage Books, 1992. 15. Les résultats de cette enquête ont été publiés dans le Bulletin de l’AEC, vol. 13, no 3 (automne 1991), en même temps que les observations d’un certain nombre de commentateurs, dont les nôtres (p. 14-16). 16. Pour un plaidoyer semblable mais à partir de considérations opposées, voir Michael Bliss, « Fragmented Past, Fragmented Future », University of Toronto Magazine (Winter 1991), p. 6-11. 17. « Les liens qui nous unissent : l’évolution de la perception qu’ont les Canadiens du système fédéral » dans Le Réseau, vol. 2, no 6/7 (juin-juillet 1992), p. 5-11. 18. Pour plus de détails, voir l’article cité de Donna Dasko. 19. Définition empruntée de Michel Freitag, op. cit. 20. Aurions-nous raison d’analyser, à partir de cette idée de « corporation identitaire », le fait qu’une multitude de personnes affichent maintenant leur allégeance, leur appartenance, leur partisannerie, leurs aspirations, leurs identifications individuelles et sociales en faisant imprimer, sur les T-shirts qu’elles portent, le slogan, l’idée ou la formule-choc qui résume l’idéal, noble ou vulgaire, auquel elles croient ? Ou le fait qu’un nombre grandissant d’entreprises, désireuses de créer chez leurs clients un sentiment d’appartenance ou de distinction fondée sur la notion de privilège, se transforment en clubs (Club Price, Club Z, Aéroplan, etc.) où l’on est formellement admis et où la détention d’une carte — d’identité corporative ? — donne droit à des avantages refusés à ceux qui n’en sont pas titulaires ?

93 Richard Sigurdson

Left- and Right-Wing Charterphobia in Canada: A Critique of the Critics*

Abstract Although various leading scholars have long been concerned that some aspects of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms would have an unwelcome influence upon Canada’s political institutions and processes, a recent, more ideological, academic attack on the Charter has developed. The author’s intention in this paper is to outline and discuss this new development, which can be called “Charterphobia,” and to discuss its effects on Canadian political discourse. In particular, there are two fundamental strains of Charterphobia—left- and right-wing Charterphobia—that rely upon curiously similar arguments about the impact of the Charter and the perils of judicial review. The author argues that these critiques are unnecessarily alarmist, and that the Charterphobes are largely unable to provide attractive reasons to believe that Canada would be better off without an entrenched charter.

Résumé Ce n’est pas d’hier que des spécialistes en vue s’inquiètent des effets sur les institutions et le processus politiques canadiens de certains aspects de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés. Depuis peu, cependant, on assiste au déferlement d’une nouvelle vague d’attaques à caractère plus idéologique originant des milieux universitaires. L’auteur de cet article entend décrire et examiner ce phénomène, qu’on peut baptiser « chartophobie », et d’en apprécier l’influence sur le discours politique au Canada. On observe deux types principaux de chartophobie — celle de gauche et celle de droite — qui, curieusement, font appel aux mêmes arguments pour décrier les effets de la Charte ainsi que les dangers de la judiciarisation. Selon l’auteur, ces critiques sont largement exagérées et les chartophobes n’offrent guère de raisons valables à l’encontre de la constitutionnalisation des droits et des libertés.

One reason for the failure of the Charlottetown Accord that was often cited by its critics was the alleged damage it would do to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. There were those, of course, who insisted that such fears were unfounded, that the Accord would do no harm to the precious Charter. Seldom did we hear from anyone who might say that the Charter is not worth protecting, that it was a mistake to enter into Charterland in the first place. For these sorts of arguments, one has to turn to academics, many of whom are highly critical, not just of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms specifically but of the constitutional entrenchment and codification of rights in general.

International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 7-8, Spring-Fall/Printemps-automne 1993 IJCS / RIÉC

Various writers have long suggested that the Charter’s “importance in terms of Canada’s constitutional future is that it is centralizing, legalizing and Americanizing” (Cheffins and Johnson, 1986: 148). And many leading scholars have been critical, or at least sceptical, of these tendencies right from the start. For instance, Donald Smiley (1983) worried that the attempt to achieve national unity by means of a centralizing, entrenched charter would have precisely the opposite effect to the one desired. Peter Russell (1983) told us that the principal impact of the Charter would be to “judicialize politics and politicize the judiciary” and that the danger of this would lie not so much in the fact that non-elected judges would impose their will in an undemocratic fashion, but that social and political questions would become transformed into abstract, technical ones that the bulk of the citizenry will feel incompetent to debate and attempt to resolve. And William Christian and Colin Campbell (1983) warned that the adoption of a charter would shift Canadian political culture away from its tory and collectivist past towards a much more individualistic, Lockean liberal focus. In other words, that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms would exacerbate the trend which George Grant (1965) so eloquently lamented. In this paper I wish to take a closer look at a more recent trend in Charter scholarship—one that has produced a highly normative literature, often on the basis of the observations noted above. My intention, then, is to outline and discuss this new, more ideological, academic attack upon the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I will refer to this anti-Charter position as “Charterphobia” because I see in it not just a scepticism about our specific Charter but a more generalized fear of, and antipathy towards, any constitutionally entrenched bill or charter of human rights in a modern, liberal, democratic state. I think that this anti-Charter attitude is unnecessarily alarmist—that is, I can find little concrete evidence to support the Charterphobic account of what is going on in Charterland. I will argue, as well, that the Charterphobes are largely unable to provide appropriate alternative methods for addressing the major social and economic concerns of a modern and diverse liberal democracy. My main strategy, however, is not to counterattack with discussions of specific provisions and cases and their interpretation. Rather, I am concerned with the rhetorical significance of recent anti-Charter scholarship and will discuss its effects on our political discourse. In particular, I will identify two fundamental strains of Charterphobia— left- wing Charterphobia and right-wing Charterphobia—that rely upon curiously similar arguments about the impact of the Charter and the perils of judicial review. In fact, both left- and right-wing Charterphobes assail the Charter in the way best calculated to evoke shock and horror in a society like ours—that is, they accuse it of generating anti-democratic political consequences. As we will see, there are some interesting points of overlap between these two types of Charterphobia and it is worth pondering just what this tells us about the persistence of certain Canadian intellectual traditions. Of course, there are significant differences, too, and we will have to explore the arguments used to portray the Charter as an instrument of anti-democracy and what each side means by “democratic”. My discussion will be presented in three parts. First, I will outline and explain the major objections to the Charter put forward by leading, leftist, legal scholars. Second, I will look at the critique of Charter politics by conservatives, mainly in the discipline of political science. In the third section,

96 Left- and Right-Wing Charterphobia in Canada: A Critique of the Critics

I will review the arguments, try to show that the Charterphobes have not made a convincing case, and sketch a defence—albeit a qualified one—of the Charter, warts and all.

Left-Wing Charterphobia I shall begin with a discussion of the left-wing fear of the Charter. This was evident during the 1981 constitutional negotiations in the position taken by Saskatchewan Premier Alan Blakeney, who feared, among other things, that the Charter would have a centralizing influence on Canadian federalism. Still smarting from recent Supreme Court decisions against his province in CIGOL (1978) and Potash (1979), Blakeney did not relish the prospect of federally- appointed courts setting uniform national standards, often in policy areas of exclusive provincial jurisdiction. What is more, Blakeney was certain that the Charter would constitute a threat to the interests of organized labour. He based this opinion, in part, on his critical observations of the American experience, where the Bill of Rights has been used to strike down laws setting minimum wages, minimum hours of work, etc. (Greunding, 1990: 192). Blakeney was convinced, moreover, that his province’s progressive social programs, such as medicare, might have been struck down by a conservative court. Since he considered the state as an instrument for providing important public services while pursuing greater equity for all citizens, Blakeney could see no benefit in a charter that would restrain government in order to protect the rights of citizens to be free from state interference in their economic or social lives. Indeed, he was “aghast that any social democratic party would be in favour of transferring power from legislatures to courts” (Greunding, 1990: 196). An additional, more personal, dimension to Blakeney’s opposition to the Charter links him to a significant British-tory streak within the tradition of English-Canadian social democracy. That is, Blakeney simply preferred the tory-collectivist features of the British parliamentary tradition over the liberal individualism of the US model and its rights-based constitution. The son of a traditional Tory family in Nova Scotia, product of a Loyalist legal education at Dalhousie and a British one at Oxford, Blakeney defined himself as a “British constitutional lawyer type” who believes that rights are best protected by Parliament and not by a constitution which is interpreted by the courts. After all, he said, “the British Parliament has worked not all that badly” (Greunding, 1990: 192). Not surprisingly, then, Blakeney was an adamant champion of parliamentary sovereignty throughout the constitutional negotiations, reluctantly giving in to the pressure to accept an entrenched charter only once he was assured that there would be a clause allowing legislatures to make laws “notwithstanding” certain rights. And even on this matter he proved to be a tenacious Charterphobe, demanding for longer than anyone else that both the gender equality provision in Section 28 and the aboriginal rights clause in Section 35 should remain within the jurisdiction of the provincial override. It must be noted, of course, that Blakeney’s position was far from being the majority one within his own party, especially at the national level. Indeed, support for an entrenched charter had been party policy since the days when M.J. Coldwell was leader of the CCF. What is more, Blakeney’s opposition to the Charter put him in direct and public conflict with the national party leader, Ed Broadbent, with party elders Tommy Douglas, David Lewis and Stanley Knowles, and with several groups usually supportive of the party, including

97 IJCS / RIÉC civil libertarian and feminist organizations. In the end, the national party backed the Charter. In fact, the only NDP MP to vote against the Charter, Svend Robinson, did so not because it undermined parliamentary sovereignty but because it included a legislative override clause. Since then, leftist politicians have rarely been vocal in their opposition to the Charter and lately prefer a strategy of attempting to increase the list of constitutionally protected rights to include, for example, social and economic entitlements to be set out in some sort of social charter. Nowadays, then, pure left-wing Charterphobia is most evident in the academy, most notably in writings by Canadian legal scholars (rather than political scientists). The most thorough example of this can be found in Michael Mandel’s book, The Charter of Rights and the Legalization of Politics in Canada (1989). Excellent examples can also be found in articles by Joel Bakan (1991) and Robert Martin (1991). But perhaps the most vociferous leftist assaults on the Charter have been launched by Andrew Petter, who is now British Columbia’s Aboriginal Affairs Minister, and Osgoode Hall Law School’s Alan Hutchinson (Petter, 1986, 1987, 1989; Petter and Hutchinson, 1988, 1989, 1990; and Hutchinson, 1989, 1991). Simply put, these scholars argue that despite its marketing as part of a “people’s package” the Charter is yet another tool for the advancement of the private interests of corporations, professionals, and other privileged groups at the expense of workers, the unemployed, women, aboriginals, racial minorities, and other socially and economically disadvantaged Canadians. The principal lines of argument advanced to support this conclusion involve discussions of (1) the nature of rights; (2) the nature of the judicial process itself, including problems with access to the judicial system and concerns with the composition of the judiciary; and (3) the Americanizing influence of the Charter. First, left-wing Charter critics suggest that all those who supported the Charter because they saw it as a means of advancing the interests of disadvantaged Canadians failed to understand the true nature of rights, i.e., that “the conferral of rights under a charter is a zero-sum rather than a positive-sum game” (Petter, 1986:474). Hence, expanding rights for some groups will result in the loss of entitlements for others. Moreover, the disadvantaged will not be on the winning side of these disputes because of the ideological nature of the rights enshrined in our Charter. As Andrew Petter puts it, the Charter is “a 19th century document let loose on a 20th century welfare state. The rights in the Charter are founded on the belief that the main enemies of freedom are not disparities in wealth nor concentrations of private power, but the state” (Petter, 1987: 857). In other words, the rights conferred in the Charter are largely negative rights aimed at protecting individuals from state interference rather than positive rights or entitlements to, say, employment, shelter or health care services. And since Charter politics is a zero-sum game, private rights are given to individuals only insofar as they are taken away from governments and public institutions. This explains why the judicial activism of the courts has so far been confined to cases dealing with the Charter’s legal rights provisions (e.g., procedural rights of accused persons, prisoners and immigrants). Individuals and groups without much social power are sometimes beneficiaries of these legal rights decisions; but, from the perspective of the legal left, the real winners are criminal lawyers and the system itself—the former benefits from more money and prestige, the latter benefits from much needed legitimation services (Mandel, 1989: 128-83).

98 Left- and Right-Wing Charterphobia in Canada: A Critique of the Critics

Petter and his colleagues see it as ironic that the groups who supported the Charter as a means of aiding the socially and economically disadvantaged are those who insist most forcefully upon the need for greater positive intervention by government. This is ironic since it is these very groups who are likely to suffer the loss of hard-won entitlements as courts inhibit governmental ability to implement measures aimed at achieving greater social justice. Like Blakeney before him, then, Petter fears that the power of governments to provide social services, to attempt to redistribute economic resources, and to regulate private conduct will be successfully attacked in the courts (Petter, 1989: 152). Indeed, there is already a body of evidence to suggest that some of this is now occurring—e.g., corporations are using the Charter to protect themselves against governmental regulation and control (Mandel, 1989: 217- 38; Martin, 1991: 124-25). In their second line of attack on the Charter, leftist legal scholars argue that its supporters who see it as a distributive instrument are wrong because they fail to understand the ideological nature of the judicial framework in which Charter rights operate. “In a word,” explains Michael Mandel, “the Charter has legalized our politics. But legalized politics is the quintessential conservative politics” (1989: 4). There are two interrelated dimensions to this analysis of the adjudicative process: the first concerns the unequal access to the judicial process and the other concerns the composition of the judiciary and the biases of the courts. On the former matter, critics observe that access to the courts is extremely unequal. Although the formal equality provisions that govern the legal system entitle all to litigate, litigation is very expensive. Consequently, “oppressed and disempowered groups who are the supposed beneficiaries of progressive Charter litigation will, because of their lack of resources, be the least likely to have genuine access to the courts” (Bakan, 1991: 318). And even if these groups are able to muster enough cash to get into court in the first place, they are likely to be at a competitive disadvantage since the lawyers on the other side, representing business or government, will have greater resources to fight the case. Groups representing left-wing causes are thus in a no-win situation when it comes to the Charter: if they resist Charter litigation they may risk the eradication of legislation beneficial to their interests; but if they do succumb to the pressure to defend or promote their causes in court, that will mean that money, time and energy will be taken away from lobbying and other forms of political action (Petter, 1987: 859; Mandel, 1989: 70). As well as these worries about unequal access, leftist scholars have raised concerns about the unrepresentativeness of the judiciary and the ideological biases within the judicial system. Judges in Canada are for the most part white, male and wealthy. Moreover, the legal training and work experience of judges tends to encourage affinities between the attitudes and beliefs of those on the bench and the interests of litigants who represent the social and economic elite. Thus there exists an inevitable set of judicial biases against the economically and socially disadvantaged. By legalizing politics, then, the Charter has vastly enhanced the political power of lawyers and judges who possess neither the “background, the experience, [n]or the training to comprehend the social impact of claims made to them under the Charter, let alone to resolve those claims in ways that promote, or even protect, the interests of disadvantaged Canadians” (Petter, 1989: 157).

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Finally, left-wing Charterphobes have noted that the Charter has effected a shift from a British to an American conception of the appropriate relations between the legal profession and representative institutions. In particular, the Charter has promoted a redefinition of the judicial role along American lines. Unelected and unaccountable judges increasingly see the Supreme Court as the guardian of the Constitution rather than simply as an adjudicator of disputes between parties. For many left-wing Charterphobes this is an anti- democratic departure from our traditions of parliamentary supremacy. No one is more upset about this than Robert Martin, who complains that “Parliamentary government was the democratic heart of our political system. To subvert parliamentary government in Canada is, then, to subvert democracy” (1991: 123). Martin goes on to discuss three ways in which the Charter has been used in the process of the Americanization of Canada. First, the Charter undermines the sense of Canadian uniqueness. Now that we have a Charter similar in most respects to the US Bill of Rights, we are quickly forgetting that we once had our own values, institutions and practices. And it does not help that Canadian courts, in the absence of any significant history of home-grown civil liberties case law, have relied upon American precedents to determine solutions to Canadian legal problems. This underlines the fact that large numbers of Canadians, especially students, now believe that prior to the enactment of the Charter in 1982 Canadians enjoyed virtually no rights. Second, Martin complains that Canadian judges have taken to proclaiming the social and political primacy of the individual. Not only is this contrary to our tory past, but it undermines the potential legitimacy of collectivist public policy. We are being taught to conceptualize our needs, desires and whims as rights. This rights-thinking, by its nature, is alienating and socially divisive. Michael Mandel (1989: 239) agrees, adding that the individualism of the Charter can be damaging to subordinate groups, such as women and aboriginals, who see their interests best served by the protection of their collective rights rather than the individual rights of their members. And Petter and Hutchinson (1988: 292) point out that the individualizing thrust of Charter rights has allowed judges to support a mythical public/private distinction that limits the Charter’s applicability to legislative or governmental action while excluding from Charter scrutiny the major source of inequality within our society—the maldistribution of private property entitlements among individuals. Third, Martin argues that the Charter has encouraged the contemporary process of deligitimizing politics and worshipping economics. It does so because the negative nature of rights means that Charter cases almost inevitably involve an individual seeking protection against the strong arm of the state. So, Martin assumes, if rights are seen as “good,” then the state will be seen as “bad.” This process is especially insidious in Canada, Martin worries, since here there has traditionally been a higher acceptance rate for positive state action than in the USA. In some ways, Canadian society has been a virtual creation of state action, and state institutions have played a decisive role in the development of a unique Canadian identity. Hence, “to put the legitimacy of the state in doubt is to put the legitimacy of Canada in doubt” (Martin, 1991: 130). It is interesting to note, in conclusion, that the left-wing attack on the Charter concerns almost exclusively its promise to better protect fundamental rights

100 Left- and Right-Wing Charterphobia in Canada: A Critique of the Critics and freedoms. Leftist legal scholars are largely silent on the other primary political purpose of the Charter, as identified by Peter Russell, which “has to do with national unity and the Charter’s capacity to offset, if not reverse, the centrifugal forces which some believe threaten the survival of Canada as a unified country” (1983: 30). Nor do they raise any concerns about the process that Alan Cairns has traced. In his writings, Cairns has shown how a Charter that emphasizes the rights of citizens rather than the powers of governments tends to transform, in his words, a “Government’s Constitution” to a “Citizens’ Constitution” (1991: 108-38, 199-222). Why is it that the leftist fear of the Charter is not so great when it comes to its centralizing influence? One reason might be that socialists and social democrats in Canada have historically believed that a strong central government is necessary in order to redistribute wealth and income, to provide social security and to constrain the power of big business. To the extent that the Charter actually works as a nationalizing force, then, it is consistent with social democratic purposes. Moreover, the left is not about to lament the demise of elite accommodation (“eleven men in suits deciding the nation’s future”) if the result is an increased role in the decision-making process for representatives of various citizens’ groups—e.g., women’s groups, aboriginal groups and minority groups. To the extent that the Charter really works to make ours more of a citizens’ constitution, then, it is again consistent with social democratic principles.

Right-Wing Charterphobia Turning next to right-wing Charterphobia, we should note that it, too, was present during the 1981 negotiations in the person of Manitoba Premier Sterling Lyon—“the stubby, irascible, Praetorian guardsman of a vanishing British Canada” (Sheppard and Valpy, 1982: 10-11). Premier Lyon expressed concerns that the Charter would undermine the role of the monarchy in Canada and that it would dictate the behaviour of provincial governments in relation to their religious, ethnic and ideological minorities. Most importantly, however, he saw entrenched rights as a threat to the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy. In the end, these views held even less sway than did Blakeney’s. As we know, Lyon, who had returned to Manitoba to fight a provincial election, suffered the indignity of being shut out, along with Quebec’s representatives, of the all-night negotiations that produced a draft agreement for the patriation of the Constitution with a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Lyon himself went down to electoral defeat and, since then, conservative politicians, like their leftist brethren, have ceased to play leading roles in the anti-Charter movement. Nowadays one has to look to representatives of right-wing interest groups to find a concerted political attack on the Charter and its values. For example, REAL Women argues that the Charter is being used by feminist group elites promoting their own personal extremist views to force governments to allow abortion, extend rights to same sex couples, provide universal subsidized childcare, and implement pay equity and affirmative action schemes. Many concerns have been raised in the conservative media as well—i.e., that expensive social programs will be forced on governments by courts sympathetic to the needs of various equality-seeking groups (Simpson, 1992a). Another fear is that the “substantive equality” (equality of results) sought by these groups will have to come at public expense and at the costs of the idea that formal rights must be enjoyed equally by all members of

101 IJCS / RIÉC society—as Clifford Lincoln would say, that “rights are rights are rights” (Simpson, 1992b: 14A). Of course, many conservative politicians have raised similar concerns about the dangers of an overtly activist court. For instance, Justice Minister Kim Campbell worried that activist Supreme Court justices might force elected politicians to spend public money against their wishes. She fears, moreover, that if courts become unduly activist, and parliaments lose their ability to make key decisions, then politicians will use this as an excuse to abdicate their policy-making responsibilities and leave all difficult or controversial decisions to the courts (Campbell, 1992). Other conservative politicians, especially in the West, adopt the position most forcefully advanced by Reform Party Leader Preston Manning that Canada should have, like the USA, a concept of rights that makes no mention of race, gender or language. In addition, many right-wing politicians in Canada wish to emulate the American model of individualism and free-enterprise by including a provision for property rights in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Nevertheless, most conservative politicians today appear to accept the notion that rights and freedoms should be guaranteed and the integrity of the Charter defended. Indeed, Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney has gone on record saying that “the constitution is not worth the paper it is written on”—but not because the Charter places unnecessary limits on the power of elected parliamentarians. On the contrary, the reason for the Prime Minister’s outrage is that the Charter goes too far in accommodating the supremacy of Parliament (especially of provincial parliaments) since its infamous “notwithstanding clause” allows for the override of Charter provisions. Quite the opposite view is expressed by those academics I will call “right-wing Charterphobes.” The most powerful figures in this movement are political scientists rather than lawyers, and the most prominent among them are University of Calgary professors Rainer Knopff and F.L. Morton. These two have espoused their views on the Charter separately, collectively and with other collaborators in recent books, articles and conference papers (Knopff, 1988, 1989; Morton, 1990, 1991, 1992; Morton, et al., 1990; Morton and Knopff, 1990, 1992); but perhaps the most accessible single source is their new book, Charter Politics (1992). It must be noted, however, that in Charter Politics Knopff and Morton take considerable pains to subordinate their own views to the general task of clarifying the debates about the Charter. Thus they portray these quarrels in terms of the opposition between “Charterphiles” and “Charter sceptics” (of both the left and right), not between Charterphiles and Knopff and Morton. Nevertheless, they are themselves key participants in the debate they are attempting to clarify, and there can be no doubt that their work should be identified as a Charter critique from the political right. Knopff and Morton argue that the Charter is neither democratic nor consistent with the traditional liberal respect for the private sphere and limited government. Their principal lines of argument include (1) the idea that the Charter promotes equality at the expense of private liberty and individual rights, and that its implementation involves a massive and unwelcome exercise in “social technology”; (2) the notion that the judiciary has neither the democratic legitimacy nor the political competence to justify its transformation since the introduction of the Charter from an adjudicative body to a policy-making one; and (3) the claim that a “court party” of feminists, civil libertarians, environmentalists, and racial and ethnic minorities have, with the

102 Left- and Right-Wing Charterphobia in Canada: A Critique of the Critics aid of their left-liberal lawyers, used the Charter to advance their own narrow (“special”) interests over and against the wishes of the majority and its duly elected servants. First, the right-wing critique of the Charter is grounded on a theoretical analysis of the shifting meanings of democracy and rights from their classical liberal roots to the present. That is, the original idea of democratic government emphasized political rights and formal equality of individuals, while today’s rights advocates have in mind social rights and the equality of group results. In the earlier view, rights would secure a sphere of private liberty invaded only by the few limits on personal action that could be consented to by self-interested individuals in order for them to live as safely as possible. According to this line of thought, inequality of political or legal rights would be prohibited but other forms of inequality were expected to flourish. Indeed, as the greatest liberal theorists all seemed to agree, the very purpose of government was not to make individuals better or to force them to live in equal conditions, but rather to protect their unequal capacities of acquiring and enjoying property (Knopff, 1989: 17-31). In contemporary rights theory and practice, however, the terms of the classical liberal equation are reversed—individual liberty is restricted in the name of social equality and the private domain is whittled away in favour of increased public authority. In what Knopff calls “the new war on discrimination,” the systemic deficiencies of existing society are attacked by a set of rationalist rules designed to achieve the intellectually derived criteria of “individual treatment” and “equality of result.” For Knopff, the irony of the situation is that the language of human rights, originally a bulwark of individual liberty and democracy, has been appropriated by the foes of liberal democracy who use it to deny personal freedom and to suppress democratic decision making (Knopff, 1989: 213). The argument runs that today’s rights enthusiasts wish to subject essentially unplanned social processes to a variety of unrealistic and illiberal policy initiatives—e.g., anti-discrimination legislation enforced by human rights commissions, equality provisions entrenched in the Charter, and affirmative action programs. The shared characteristic of these policy developments is their attempt to remake human beings by changing the social environment. According to Knopff, these exercises at “constructivist social technology” are bound to fail since the anti-social tendencies they seek to eradicate are rooted in nature. Consequently, “such projects in social engineering are fundamentally misconceived and the suppression of freedom they require will be permanent, not temporary” (Knopff, 1989: 22). Moreover, the principal result of entrenching the Charter has been to transfer political power from more accountable democratic institutions to relatively unaccountable judicial and quasi-judicial agencies that are under the sway of a leftist and partisan intellectual elite. That is why Morton and Knopff argue that the Charter is both undemocratic and illiberal. It is undemocratic because it results in a legalized politics that bypasses the traditional democratic processes of collective self-government through popular elections and responsible parliamentary government. And it is illiberal to the extent that its “most ardent partisans and practitioners are imbued with an ‘unconstrained’ vision of politics that is antithetical to the respect for the private sphere and limited government that informs the tradition of constitutionalism” (Morton and Knopff, 1992: 2).

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This underpins Knopff’s and Morton’s second main line of criticism of the Charter—that the triumph of legalized politics means that the courtroom is now more than ever a political arena and that judges are, at least potentially, “politicians in robes.” Whether judges will exercise this power to its full potential depends upon how they view their role in the political process. Hence the crucial importance of the debates discussed in Charter Politics, i.e., those over the proper balance between judicial “activism” and “self-restraint,” as well as over the merits of the leading theories of constitutional interpretation— “interpretivism” and “noninterpretivism.” Although they are not always dogmatic on this point, Knopff and Morton tend to side with restrained interpretivism over noninterpretivist activism. That is, they prefer a court limited to enforcing original or traditional understandings in a restrained manner rather to one that boldly exerts its policy influence in order to keep political institutions relevant in rapidly changing times. It is generally felt that this sort of judicial self-restraint should impede radical policy initiatives or, at least, reduce the possibility that radical policies will be generated by a judiciary itself over-anxious to prescribe political remedies for legal problems. The usual defence of this view is a separation of power argument: there is a division of responsibilities between the executive and legislative branches on the one hand, and the judicial branch on the other; to the extent that judges allow themselves to engage in courtroom politics, they have overstepped their proper authority and become instruments of anti-democratic forces. Knopff and Morton suggest that violations by the courts of this separation of powers doctrine have been vastly multiplied since the introduction of an entrenched charter. With its vaguely worded provisions, generally open to a variety of interpretations, the Charter rarely involves judges in simply enforcing law-like rights against insensitive governments. Rather, the judges are now actively involved in making laws, in creating new rights. Hence the Charter has been a catalyst for an unprecedented style of activist judicial review. Courts are no longer content with simply invalidating, and hence delaying (perhaps temporarily), policy decisions by elected representatives. They now feel emboldened to tell the other branches of government what they have to do and how they have to do it. This is problematic for reasons the leftist critics might have advanced themselves: (1) it is undemocratic to have appointed judges trespassing on the policy-making jurisdiction of duly elected politicians, and (2) the judges doing the trespassing have no special competence in resolving difficult social, moral and political problems. Knopff and Morton object to both the consequences of an increasingly noninterpretivist activism among judges and to the general belief that helps sustain this practice—i.e., that judges and not politicians are the best oracles of what the law requires. In Charter Politics, therefore, Knopff and Morton ponder alternatives to the politics of the oracular courtroom. One possibility would be to restrict judicial decisions to the immediate adjudicative context. Under this scheme, judicial opinions would be persuasive but not binding on other branches of government (Knopff and Morton, 1992: 178-79). Another proposal, one which they seem to endorse more heartily, would see the policy opinions of the judiciary fully integrated into an overtly political system of checks and balances. In this way, one could reject judicial finality without rejecting judicial review (even noninterpretivist activism). One way in which judicial policy-making can be integrated into a system of checks and balances involves what Peter Russell (1982: 32) has called “the legislative review of

104 Left- and Right-Wing Charterphobia in Canada: A Critique of the Critics judicial review.” Although a version of this already exists in the override clause (at least for provisions in Sections 2 and 7-15), Knopff and Morton point out that the existing Canadian legislative and executive institutions would have to be reformed before they enjoyed the legitimacy necessary for them to act as effective counterweights for the courts (1992: 232-33). In any case, replacing oracular legalism with a healthy system of checks and balances would have the special merit of discouraging interest groups from using the courtroom as a political arena. If decisions by the courts are no longer final, then interest groups will be less likely to attempt to use the Charter and the courts to circumvent the traditional channels of policy making. Indeed, the fact that so many organized interests have succeeded in doing just this is the third major feature of the right-wing argument against the Charter. Knopff and Morton argue that “the Charter’s main beneficiaries are special interest groups, who invoke it to persuade appointed judges to reverse the decisions of democratically elected representatives” (Knopff and Morton, 1992: 28). In other words, these groups turn to an undemocratic institution to seek victories that eluded them in the normal arena of free and open democratic competition. The Charter, then, rewards losers who whine loudly enough about the importance of their specific rights and entitlements to get a sympathetic hearing in court. Activist judges, meanwhile, will open wide their courtroom doors to these interest group litigants, even those who have no more direct stake in the outcome of the case than the ordinary citizen generally. What is more, courts will hear moot cases when interest groups convince them that the issues posed are of sufficient public importance (Knopff and Morton, 1992: 193). For Knopff and Morton, the introduction of the Charter has not made ours a more democratic “Citizens’ Constitution” but a constitution of special interests. The argument runs that the transfer of power from the legislatures to the courts has promoted the growth of a “court party” in Canadian politics that consists of new citizens’ interest groups, state bureaucracies, academics and media elites (Knopff and Morton, 1992: 79-80; Morton and Knopff, 1992: 6- 21). Unlike political parties that participate in elections, the “court party” is a new social movement that prefers the policy-making power of the courts to the democratic world of polling booths and legislatures. The Charter provides the foundation for this “court party” to the extent that it officially recognizes a number of specific groups and interests. Women receive explicit recognition in Sections 15 and 28; racial and ethnic minorities are included in Sections 15 and 27; Section 15 also bestows official status on age-based groups, and on those representing the interests of the mentally or physically handicapped; the rights of minority language groups are enshrined in Sections 16 to 23; and aboriginal interests are recognized in Sections 25 and 35. The politics of the “court party” involves the calculated attempts by these groups to maintain and expand their visibility and status. The key currency here is explicit recognition as a constitutional category: “Constitutional status gives a group official public status of the highest order, and groups who enjoy it have an advantage impressing their claims against government over groups who do not” (Knopff and Morton, 1992: 82). The self interest of those groups demands that any who are already in the “Charter club” must seek to exclude other entrants, no matter how politically relevant. And the club members constantly fight amongst themselves for relative power, attempting to

105 IJCS / RIÉC construct pecking-orders or hierarchies of constitutionally protected interests that are to their own particular advantage. Needless to say, this is not a flattering picture of the role in Charter politics played by contemporary citizens’ groups. Indeed, they are portrayed as a divisive and potentially undemocratic element in our public life. Yet even right-wing Charterphobes recognize that the formalism of legalized politics and the biases of the judicial process have so far combined to limit the legal victories of feminist, aboriginal, social action or ethnocultural groups. Still, as Alan Cairns and others have shown, the greatest influence of such groups has been realized in constitutional politics. This, too, is a result of their official recognition as Charter club members—that is, as potentially affected groups they demand involvement in any process that might be consequential for their constitutional fate. According to many right-wing Charter critics, this has a divisive rather than a unifying influence. Thus, in this area at least, the dreams of Charter supporters to forge a national consensus around shared Charter rights is unrealized. Indeed, it may be argued that the very multiplicity of group concerns works against the Charter’s intended success at creating a single, unifying Canadian identity.

Review and Criticism As we have seen, both left- and right-wing Charterphobes condemn the rise of legalized politics and bemoan the undemocratic consequences of judicial review of the Charter. But as is the case in interpretations of legal decisions, the important part is less the verdict than the reasons behind it. It is here that we find considerable tension between the philosophies underlying these majority concurring decisions. The bottom line for the legal left is that the Charter is a disaster because it is a liberal document. For these critics, “Liberalism is a failure: it cannot pass conceptual, social, legal, or political muster. A continued reliance on its intellectual assumptions and ideological prescriptions is indefensible” (Petter and Hutchinson, 1988: 295). The immediate need is to abandon liberal individualism and to replace it with some form of social democracy that might be capable of responding to the inequalities of economic and political power that liberalism and its disciples permit and condone. This would entail a real redistribution of power in ways contradicting the logic of the marketplace. It would mean, at a minimum, a significant expansion of the public sector and a contraction of the private sphere (Mandel, 1989: 267). Needless to say, this is not a prospect to which right-wing Charterphobes look forward with great joys of anticipation. They are more likely to respond, in the spirit of Adam Smith, that a system of private property rights is the best way to channel natural human selfishness into socially useful projects. What is more, intervention by the state on the behalf of groups who are disproportionately at the lower levels of status and class hierarchies is seen by most on the right as a violation of the democratic idea of the formal equality of rights. It should be condemned, as well, for strictly practical reasons: human nature being what it is, success in planning the lives of other people or of society as a whole is likely to be limited. In any event, the eradication of free market capitalism in Canada does not seem immanent. Hence, right-wing Charterphobes are willing to take their chances that the ideas of Mandel, Petter, and others on the anti-Charter left will fail to capture much of a market share in any free and open democratic competition.

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What is more troublesome, from their point of view, is the ascendancy of a pro- Charter, left-liberal egalitarian democracy. It is this ideology that Knopff and Morton fear has taken over the legal profession and justified the granting of an unfair advantage to “special” interest groups—groups based more on gender, race and ethnicity than on class. But is there any concrete evidence to support these claims? I think not. First, right-wing Charterphobes can point to few cases where their fears have been realized concerning activist judicial review of the Charter forcing governments to spend money against their wishes. Second, recent evidence suggests that we should not exaggerate the audacity of the courts, except perhaps in legal rights cases. After an original spurt of judicial activism, the Supreme Court seems to have settled back to a more comfortable role of simply ensuring that Charter rights are not violated flagrantly. The Court has rather tired of actively challenging governments’ decision-making prerogatives. One indication of this is the steep drop in the rate at which the Court has been striking down legislation. It is often pointed out that in its first fifteen Charter decisions the Supreme Court upheld the Charter claim in a staggering nine cases—a 60% success rate for Charter claimants. According to one recent count, however, the Charter success rate fell to 17.5% in 1989-90 (7 out of 40 cases), and to a minuscule 11.8% (2 out of 17) in cases outside criminal law (Eliot: 1992). There might be several reasons for this: the changing nature of cases coming forward; the conservative influence of recent judicial appointments; or a rethinking by the justices themselves of their role in the political process. In any event, the evidence seems to point to a greater acceptance of judicial self-restraint, at least since the Edwards Books decision in 1986. Of course, the numbers may not tell the whole story. The very possibility of negative judicial decisions may be forcing governments to make corrections or assessments prior to the enactment of legislation. Since politicians would inevitably rely upon lawyers within their Justice Departments to carry out these assessments—to make sure that legislation is “Charterproof,” to use Patrick Monahan’s phrase (1992)—political power may have gravitated towards the technical, legal experts and away from the elected politicians. This means another triumph for legalized politics and raises alarms about democratic legitimacy and policy-making competence similar to those sounded by left- and right-wing Charterphobes. But is it necessarily a bad thing that governments have learned to double-check their plans against the prevailing values and standards of Charter provisions? Indeed, if politicians cannot convince their own bureaucrats that their policies and programs are sensible, necessary, or otherwise “demonstrably justifiable in a free and democratic society,” then perhaps they have no business enacting them, after all. And anyway, the courts are only assessing legislation according to provisions placed in a charter only recently by duly elected governments, governments that have the power to amend those provisions (or to override most of them) in the event of overwhelming popular evidence that this is necessary. Yet Canadian governments have still failed to demonstrate that, when left to themselves, they can be trusted to make sure that their legislation passes Charter standards. This was proved during the three years allotted to them to clean up statutes that might violate Section 15. Few governments made wise use of that time and many found themselves having to react in a near panic situation.

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Moreover, even the most progressive gains that have been made in the courts against the will of governments by certain individuals and groups have not, in my mind, come at the expense of any fundamental principles of Canadian democracy. Voting rights for people with disabilities, new rules about sentencing individuals found not guilty by reason of insanity, expansion of the due process rights of alleged perpetrators or incarcerated persons, decriminalization of abortion, rollbacks of pay equity caps, rights to UIC benefits for those over sixty-five, limited expansion of benefits to same sex couples, abolition of discriminatory “spouse in the house rules” for social services—all of these victories for underprivileged individuals and groups enhance, rather than undermine, the democratic character of our society. The fact that they were won in the courts rather than in the legislative arena does not make them any less democratic. And what about the central component to the right-wing Charterphobic attack—the rise of a “court party”? Here, too, I see little evidence that feminists, anti-racists, multicultural activists, or any other special groups have pursued their social policy agendas in the courts to the disregard of other, more direct, forms of democratic politics. And even if they did, would this not be more of a condemnation of our system of party politics that has shut them out rather than of our legalized Charter politics? Indeed, the very assumption that there are “special” interest groups that somehow shun the open glare of the public stage to pursue their narrow interests behind the closed doors of the courtrooms conveys a distorted image of reality. First, it ignores the fact that representatives of disadvantaged individuals and groups have been extremely active for generations in a variety of political forums, though not always successfully. The advent of the Charter has simply increased access to the courts of Canada for a wider range of groups. This only means that now they, too, can approach the courts as a supplement to their other forms of activity, in the exact same way more institutionalized groups—largely business -oriented ones—have done for years. What seems to disturb right-wing Charterphobes most, then, is the types of groups that have now gained access. Yet groups with “special” interests—those from specific provinces or regions—have always been recognized players within federal- provincial relations or federalism jurisprudence. On this score, I fail to see why the narrow focus of regional interest is proper and legitimate, while the same is not true of the shared interest of women or people of colour. More important philosophically is the argument that special-interest group activity violates democratic ideals. This is said to be so because group or collective rights contradict the formal logic of free competition between equally rights-empowered individuals, and this makes it impossible for the majority will to have the final say on all public issues. Political scientist Iris Young shows how this view assumes the intrinsic value of attaining some sort of “universality of a general will that leaves difference, particularity, and the body behind in the private realms of family and civil life” (Young, 1990: 97). Young demonstrates that this idea of an “impartial general will” is a myth that serves ideological functions by masking the ways in which the particular perspectives of dominant groups claim universality, thus justifying hierarchical decision-making structures. Hence, she argues that the full inclusion and participation of everyone in public discussion requires more than a formally equal right for individual participation—it requires mechanisms for group representation. Social justice and equality for members

108 Left- and Right-Wing Charterphobia in Canada: A Critique of the Critics of disadvantaged groups will only be had, she says, if difference is recognized and affirmed. And this sometimes means the accommodation of special rights that attend to specific group differences in order to undermine oppression and disadvantage (Young, 1989: 117-41). Our Charter certainly does not guarantee that less advantaged groups will be given the means to overcome oppression and inequality. But by recognizing the special needs of those who have historically been targets for discrimination, the Charter helps to prevent at least the worst rights abuses and announces our society’s commitment to a certain standard of decency and respect for others. And contrary to the suspicions of some right-wing Charterphobes, it does so without harming unnecessarily the privileges of those already relatively well off in terms of social and economic power. For the anti-Charter left, of course, the fact that some fundamental rights are protected is not enough. The Charter, they say, recognizes only negative and not positive rights, and its formalism demands that rights protection be applied equally to everyone. Furthermore, whatever marginal utility is derived from rights discourse is perceived by the legal left as being had at the expense of agendas for social reform. So concerned are these scholars that some imaginary future government’s progressive social or economic policies might be overturned by conservative judges, that they are willing to allow existing governments to do what ever they want. This left-wing Charterphobic argument exaggerates, in my view, the disutility of rights in political advancement for disadvantaged groups. It ignores (or at least downplays) the fact of a long history of Canadian legislation against the interests of women, the poor, aboriginals and racial and ethnic minorities. And its argument that negative rights are disutile, even harmful, trivializes the lived experience of any person or group whose vulnerability has been truly protected by rights. As Patricia Williams, an African American legal scholar, explains: “For the historically disempowered, the conferring of rights is symbolic of all the denied aspects of their humanity: rights imply a respect that places one in the referential range of self and others, that elevates one’s status from human body to social being. For blacks, then, the attainment of rights signifies the respectful behaviour, the collective responsibility, properly owed by a society to one of its own” (1991: 153). Williams reminds us that one’s sense of empowerment defines one’s relation to the law and to rights. Hence, the male white left, already rights-empowered, may feel that rights discourse should be replaced by some sort of needs discourse that would justify positive state action on behalf of the truly needy. But those who have been historically disempowered may not trust that the replacement of a formal legal rights system by a more informal political one will lead to better outcomes. A case in point is the debate within aboriginal communities over the utility of Charter rights. Male Native leaders tend to want aboriginal self-governments to be exempt from the Canadian Charter. Representatives of Native women’s associations see things differently: “Native women and children need a safeguard against the abuse of power by male leaders and,” Gail Stacey Moore says, “until an acceptable alternative is put in place, we insist on having the safeguard of the Charter” (Globe& Mail [Toronto], 29 May 1992: A6). One cannot assume that the accommodation of collective or group aspirations will include the protection of significant individual rights. Nor should we assume that the majority of citizens out in the larger world want to overcome sexism, racism and alienation rather than heartily embrace them. This underscores Williams’ sense of the importance of rights: “rights are to law what conscious

109 IJCS / RIÉC commitments are to the psyche. This country’s worst historical moments have not been attributable to rights assertion but to a failure of rights commitment” (1991 159). On a more empirical level, as well, the left-wing Charterphobic argument is a poor guide to life in Charterland. As many have pointed out since 1982, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms includes not just negative individual rights but also a long list of collective rights and some exemptions from rights (Elkins, 1989: 699-716). Without exhausting the list, one could mention “society’s rights” as conferred in Section 1; linguistic and minority language education rights; aboriginal and treaty rights; multicultural rights; affirmative action provisions in Sections 6(4) and 15(2); provincial group rights in Sections 38(2) and (3); and the override provision in Section 33. Moreover, the Charter lacks some of the more individualistic concepts found in the American Bill of Rights, most importantly property rights. Consequently, the Charter is not as liberalizing, individualizing and Americanizing as some critics would suggest. Still, left-wing Charterphobes have been right to point out that the introduction of the Charter has highlighted some real problems in our legal system: e.g., access to the courts is unequal and judges are unrepresentative of the general population. But is this the fault of the Charter or are these structures the products of social forces and of individuals who want them this way? It is certainly true, for instance, that by making it difficult for all but the economically powerful to access the courts, high litigation costs help to determine how Charter guarantees will be interpreted. This is because vague Charter provisions will only be clarified through a process of judicial interpretation. If the issues and concerns of the wealthy and powerful are given disproportionate attention in the courts, then that will shape and influence the authoritative decisions about the nature and scope of various rights in ways that reflect these vested interests (Petter, 1989: 156-57). Yet governments can make policy decisions that would equalize access either by changing the rules to reduce litigation costs or by providing public funds to allow economically disadvantaged groups to participate in Charter cases as litigants or as interveners. The Court Challenges Program, recently terminated by the Mulroney government, is a very modest example of the latter approach. The crucial point, however, is that decisions about the creation, expansion and demise of this program were made by elected politicians, the representatives of the many, and not by the few who are judges or lawyers. What is more, discussions about the high costs of litigation should not overlook the fact that there is also an extremely high cost associated with electoral participation or with non-judicial, interest-group activity. This works to exclude socially and economically disadvantaged individuals and groups from democratic politics just as surely as it does from legalized politics. Likewise, one should not dismiss judicial review because of the unrepresentativeness of judges without looking at the reality of representation in the other two branches of government. In fact, there are more reasons to be optimistic about the possibility of greater representativeness in the judiciary than in Parliament, where the party-centred system continues to create obstacles for the advancement of females and other disadvantaged individuals. For instance, the composition of the judiciary is closely tied to law school populations, and there have been dramatic changes in these institutions: in 1971, only nine percent of law school graduates were women; by 1991, however, a full 51 percent of law students were women. This expanding pool

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of female lawyers will no doubt have its effect on the composition of the judiciary in a few years. Moreover, the very fact that so many leftist and feminist scholars are now teaching in law schools bodes well for the future development of a progressive left-liberal orientation in the legal profession. This brings us to a paradoxical feature of left-wing Charterphobia—it is in many ways the more “conservative” of the two approaches. Left-wing Charterphobes want to “conserve” or “preserve” the parliamentary status quo, partly in order to help protect those practices and attitudes that distinguish Canadian from American political culture. Yet can we assume, as Blakeney and Martin do, that our British-style, parliamentary democratic institutions work well enough as it is? A brief glance at the historical record should dispel any notions that freedom was better protected in the past by parliamentary governments than we can expect it to be by the courts in the future. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms joins four other instruments that have long been part of our constitutional system: (1) the rule of law; (2) the division of jurisdiction; (3) statutory bills of rights; and (4) the institutions of Parliament. But how effective have these been as rights protectors? The idea that the rule of law is the bulwark that protects us from arbitrary treatment from the executive was brought home dramatically by the case of Roncarelli v. Duplessis in 1959. But there are few other such dramatic cases. Reference re Alberta Statutes (1937) and Switzman v.Elbling (1957) prove that when courts decide on jurisdictional matters they can also protect rights and freedoms. But these cases were rare and they do not demonstrate that the violation of democratic freedoms would be beyond all legislatures, only provincial ones. Moreover, the federal government’s passage of the Canadian Bill of Rights in 1960 did not usher in a bright new dawn of rights enjoyment in this country. Aside from Drybones v. the Queen (1970), the Supreme Court was notoriously unwilling to strike down legislation even when it was clear that rights or freedoms mentioned in the Bill were being denied. Finally, there is little evidence to suggest that the institutions of Parliament also serve to protect the rights and freedoms of individuals. The party system and the rules of the House of Commons help to make sure that the opposition has little weight as an important sanction against repressive laws, even if it is opposed to them.

Conclusion In conclusion, then, I remain unconvinced by the recent crop of anti-Charter writers that we have taken the wrong path by adopting an entrenched charter. This does not mean that I think the Charter is perfect, that it cannot be improved upon. Indeed, the response from citizens and interested parties during the so-called “Canada Round” of constitutional negotiations demonstrates that the Charter suffers from several serious omissions. Most importantly, there is a lack of a better recognition that, as self-governing, majority cultures, aboriginals and Quebeckers have claims to distinct rights that are different in status to claims made by, say, religious or ethnic minorities. The Charlottetown Accord would have addressed some of these concerns by entrenching into the Constitution an inherent right to aboriginal self-government and by recognizing Quebec as a distinct society within Canada. What is more, there has been a concerted effort in recent years to expand the existing list of rights to include some social or economic rights as well. It was more difficult for governments to agree to this change, however, and the Charlottetown Accord included only an unjusticiable provision

111 IJCS / RIÉC committing governments to the principle of preserving and developing Canada’s social and economic union. What is more, there are still concerns with the incompatibility between an entrenched charter and a legislative override provision. In fact, the notwithstanding clause—the only Charter provision applauded by both right- and left-wing Charterphobes—remains the most unpopular element of the Charter. Consequently, the Special Joint Committee on a Renewed Canada, the Beaudoin-Dobbie Committee, heard pleas for the dismantling of Section 33 in every city where hearings were held. Representatives from minority groups, in particular, ureed that at least Section 15 (1) should be exempted from the clause. With the legislative override still in place, they argued, minorities and other less advantaged Canadians remain inadequately protected from rights abuses. Any changes to this provision would require unanimous provincial consent, however, and knowing that this would be impossible, the drafters of our various constitutional reform packages since 1982 have consistently left out any such change. In the end, of course, the Charlottetown Accord was rejected in the October 1992 referendum. Crucial to its defeat were the lobbying efforts made by various pro-Charter constituencies, including women’s groups, social justice advocates, and groups representing ethnic and racial minorities. Governments that supported the constitutional reforms were consistently put on the defensive, forced to insist that the rights recognized and protected under the Charter would not be infringed or denied by any of the new provisions. Canadians, it would seem, have not only become used to life after the Charter, but recognize the Charter as a valuable and authoritative symbol of this country’s commitment to freedom, equality and human dignity. I would add, nevertheless, that in spite of all the ink spilled over it, the Charter is only a part of our political system as a whole and its nature and function will be shaped and formed within the same matrix of social and economic forces that influence the other parts of the system. As a result, the Charter has not had a dramatic effect on the distribution of wealth and power or on the level of social justice in Canadian society, nor should it have been expected to on its own. As Shelagh Day notes: “It doesn’t mean that women aren’t still being beaten, it doesn’t mean that women aren’t still earning less than men” (Victoria Times-Colonist [Victoria], 12 April 1992: A5). Of course, she is right: we still have children living in poverty; we have rampant racism and homophobia; and we have people with disabilities who are prevented from achieving their full potential or who are not institutionalized when they ought to be. Still, the constitutional guarantees in the Charter have altered the way Canadians view their relationship with government and the way they argue for change. In my view, this has been for the better. Not only has the Charter given women and other disadvantaged groups access to an additional arena of democratic participation, it has also signalled to those who resist progressive change that they cannot so easily ignore the claims of Charter rights-holders. In this sense, the Charter, by holding out the prospect of attainment of equality or fairness under the law, has been a fiercely motivational force for those who have not always enjoyed much hope. It is for this reason that we must be warned against debasing rights or abandoning the project of rights protection under a charter. “In discarding rights altogether,” as Williams points out, “one

112 Left- and Right-Wing Charterphobia in Canada: A Critique of the Critics

discards a symbol too deeply enmeshed in the psyche of the oppressed to lose without trauma and much resistance” (1991: 165).

Notes * An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the annual meetings of the Canadian Political Science Association in Charlottetown, PEI, June 1992. The author would like to thank Ted Morton and Rainer Knopff for helpful comments on the text.

Bibliography Bakan, Joel (1990). “Constitutional Interpretation and Social Change: You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” In The Canadian Bar Review 70: 307-328. Cairns, Alan C. (1991). Disruptions: Constitutional Struggles, from the Charter to Meech Lake. Ed. Douglas E. Williams. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. Campbell, Kim (1992). “Opening Remarks” to the conference “The Charter: Ten Years After.” May 15-16. Simon Fraser University at Harbour Centre, Vancouver BC. Forthcoming (1993) in P. Bryden, S. Davis and J. Russell (eds.), The Charter: Ten Years After. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Cheffins, Ronald I. and Patricia A. Johnson (1986). The Revised Canadian Constitution: Politics as Law. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson. Christian, William and Colin Campbell (1983). Political Parties and Ideologies in Canada. 3rd Ed. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson. Eliot, Robin (1992). “The Effect of the Charter on the Role of the Courts.” Forthcoming in The Charter: Ten Years After. Grant, George (1965). Lament for a Nation. Toronto: The Carleton Library No. 50, McClelland and Stewart. Greunding, Dennis (1990). Promises to Keep: A Political Biography of Alan Blakeney. Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books. Hutchinson, Alan C. (1989). “Determinacy and Democracy: An Essay on Legal Interpretation.” In University of Miami Law Journal 43: 541-76. Hutchinson, Alan C. (1991). “Waiting for Coraf (Or the Beatification of the Charter).” In University of Toronto Law Journal 41: 332-56. Knopff, Rainer and F.L. Morton (1992). Charter Politics. Scarborough: Nelson. Knopff, Rainer (1987). “What do Constitutional Equality Rights Protect Canadians Against?” In The Canadian Journal of Political Science 20: 265-86. Knopff, Rainer (1988). “Parliament vs. the Courts: Making Sense of the Bill of Rights Debate.” In Legislative Studies 3:2. Knopff, Rainer (1989). Human Rights & Social Technology: The New War on Discrimination. Ottawa: Carleton University Press. Mandel, Michael (1989). The Charter of Rights and the Legalization of Politics in Canada. Toronto: Wall and Thompson. Martin, Robert (1991). “The Charter and the Crisis in Canada.” In After Meech Lake: Lessons for the Future. Ed. David E. Smith, Peter MacKinnon and John C. Courtney. Saskatoon: Fifth House. Monahan, Patrick (1992). “The Impact of the Charter on Government Policy-Making.” Forthcoming in The Charter: Ten Years After. Morton, F.L. (1987). “The Political Impact of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” In The Canadian Journal of Political Science 20: 31-55. Morton, F.L. (1990). “Morgantaler vs. the Queen: A Political Analysis.” In A Time for Life, Abortion and Human Rights. Ed. Ian Gentles. Toronto: Stoddart. Morton, F.L. (1991). “The Charter Revolution and the Court Party.” Paper prepared for “Roundtable Conference on the Impact of the Charter on the Public Policy Process.” Centre for Public Law and Public Policy. November 15-16. York University, Toronto Ontario. Morton, F.L. (1992). “Institutional Retooling: The Evolution of the Supreme Court of Canada from Adjudicator to Policy-Maker.” Paper prepared for the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association. May 31. University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown PEI. Morton, F.L. and Rainer Knopff (1990). “Permanence and Change in the Written Constitution: The ‘Living Tree’ Doctrine and the Charter of Rights.” In Supreme Court Law Review, Second Series 1: 533-46. Morton, F.L. and Rainer Knopff (1992). “The Supreme Court as the Vanguard of the Intelligentsia: The Charter Movement as Postmaterialist Politics.” Research Study 8.1, Occasional Papers Series, Research Unit for Socio-Legal Studies. University of Calgary.

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Morton, F.L., G. Soloman, I. McNish and D.W. Poulton (1990). “Judicial Nullification of Statutes Under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” In Alberta Law Review 28: 396-425. Petter, Andrew (1986). “The Politics of the Charter.” In Supreme Court Law Review 8: 473-505. Petter, Andrew (1987). “Immaculate Deception: The Charter’s Hidden Agenda.” In The Advocate 45: 857-66. Petter, Andrew (1989). “Canada’s Charter Flight: Soaring Backwards into the Future.” In Journal of Law and Society 16: 151-65. Petter, Andrew and Alan C. Hutchinson (1988). “Private Rights/Public Wrongs: The Liberal Lie of the Charter.” In University of Toronto Law Journal 38: 278-97. Petter, Andrew and Alan C. Hutchinson (1989). “Rights in Conflict: The Dilemma of Charter Legitimacy.” In UBC Law Review 23: 531-48. Petter, Andrew and Alan C. Hutchinson (1990). “Daydream Believing: Visionary Formalism and the Constitution.” In Ottawa Law Review 22: 365-85. Russell, Peter H. (1982). “The Effect of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms on the Policy-Making Role of Canadian Courts.” In Canadian Public Administration 25: 1-33. Russell, Peter H. (1983). “The Political Purposes of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” In The Canadian Bar Review 61: 30-54. Sheppard, Robert and Michael Valpy (1982). The National Deal: The Fight for the Constitution. Toronto: Fleet Books. Simpson, Jeffrey (1992). “Rights Talk: The Discourse of the 1990s.” Forthcoming in The Charter: Ten Years After. Smiley, Donald (1983). “A Dangerous Deed: The Constitution Act, 1982.” In And No One Cheered: Federalism, Democracy and the Constitution Act. Ed. Keith Banting and Richard Simeon. Toronto: Methuen. Williams, Patricia J. (1991). The Alchemy of Race and Rights. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Young, Iris Marion (1989). “Polity and Group Differences: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship.” In Feminism and Political Theory. Ed. Cass R. Sunstein. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. Young, Iris Marion (1990). Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

114 Janet Hiebert

Rights and Public Debate: The Limitations of a “Rights Must be Paramount” Perspective

Abstract This paper focuses on the impact of rights-based language on constitutional debate. After a decade of entrenchment there has been a tendency to embrace a “rights must be paramount” view of Canadian politics where protected rights are assumed to be paramount to all non-enumerated values. This perspective is criticized in the paper for its constraining effect on political debate. The paper speculates that a “rights must be paramount” approach is only a transitional feature of learning to live with the Charter; that the more we face conflicts between enumerated rights and non-enumerated values, the more likely we are to realize that the resolution of difficult and contentious political issues may not be amenable to assumptions about the primacy of protected rights. One example of this was the relative lack of rights-based opposition to the distinct society clause in 1991 which can be explained, in part, by an implicit recognition of the limitations of a “rights must be paramount” approach in accommodating Quebec’s sense of community.

Résumé Cet article traite des effets sur le débat constitutionnel d’un discours basé sur la primauté des droits. Au cours des dix années qui ont suivi leur enchâssement, on a eu tendance à considérer la politique canadienne selon une optique qui affirme la « suprématie absolue » des droits constitutionnalisés sur les valeurs non inscrites dans la Charte. Or, cette perspective gêne le déroulement du débat politique. Selon l’auteure, il ne s’agit que d’une attitude transitoire permettant d’apprivoiser la Charte. Plus les oppositions entre les droits inscrits et ceux qui ne le sont pas se multiplieront, plus nous nous rendrons compte que la solution des dossiers politiques délicats et litigieux suppose la désacralisation des droits constitutionnalisés. Soulignons, à titre d’exemple, qu’on s’est très peu opposé en 1991 à la clause de la société distincte en invoquant la Charte. Cela tient en partie au fait qu’on admet implicitement la nécessité de relativiser la « priorité absolue » des droits constitutionnalisés afin de reconnaître la personnalité collective du Québec.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms has significantly influenced the way we, as a polity, assess the priorities of competing social, political and economic values. For many, the Charter has fundamentally altered the political system by prescribing rights which are insulated from government action. This approach is misleading because it does not recognize the role of s. 1, the Charter’s limitation clause, in accommodating values not specifically enumerated but which are demonstrably justified and consistent with a free

International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 7-8, Spring-Fall/Printemps-automne 1993 IJCS / RIÉC and democratic society.1 Nevertheless, an unbridled enthusiasm for the Charter has generated a propensity to assume a “rights must be paramount” view of Canadian politics2 which affords little scope for s. 1 in justifying values not easily accommodated in the specific rights-based provisions of the Charter. A “rights must be paramount” perspective was evident in many of the interventions on the proposed Charter before the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Constitution in 1980-1981 which argued that the inclusion of an explicit limitation clause was not necessary because courts would impose the appropriate limits when two specific Charter rights collide. This implies, though, that the Charter itself provides exhaustive coverage of the range of values worthy of protection: that governments may not legitimately assert the primacy of non-enumerated values (Hiebert, 1990, 127). A “rights must be paramount” perspective is often characteristic of the assumptions of many Charter litigants and intervenors, particularly as expressed in factums.3 A “rights must be paramount” perspective was also assumed by some critics of the proposed distinct society clause in the Meech Lake constitutional accord, in particular, Newfoundland Premier Clyde Wells and some women’s groups, who argued that it was constitutionally illegitimate for non-enumerated collective values to be given primacy over protected Charter rights. More will be said of this later in the paper. Despite the ascendency of a “rights must be paramount” perspective, the paper will argue that it is not a particularly helpful way of engaging in “Charter” debate. Further, the paper will argue that those who assume that protected rights must at all times be paramount to other competing values will likely be challenged by new circumstances and conflicts which fundamentally test their assumptions of the primacy of protected rights. These arguments are premised on the assumptions that 1) many provisions in the Charter are indeterminate and, therefore, offer incomplete guidelines on the basic values that need to be respected in the course of state action, 2) the Charter’s emphasis on individual rights may not easily accommodate the more collective or communitarian tenets of the Canadian polity, particularly the cultural aspirations of the Québécois, and 3) we are in a transitional phase of learning to live with the Charter. A working hypothesis in the paper is that the more we face conflicts between protected rights and strongly held values, the more we will come to realize that not only does the Charter fail to provide the necessary answers, but that resolving conflicts may involve making choices that go beyond the vindication of rights-based claims. Any polity which attempts to codify fundamental rights and values will face conflicts between these protected values and others which, while not specifically enumerated, may also be strongly respected. In Canada, this conflict is even more inevitable given our commitment to collective and general welfare values which may not be easily accommodated in the primarily individualistic language of the Charter. Yet the reluctance implicit in a “rights must be paramount” perspective to recognize that s. 1 serves a broader role than to reconcile conflicts between explicitly enumerated “Charter” rights4 or serve as an emergency safety valve (Cohen) places constraints on the political process. It represents the potential frustration of meaningful debate about the appropriate priorities of competing social, cultural and political values. In the decade since the Charter took effect, we have faced few situations in which a judicial review of the competing values at stake challenged our

118 The Limitations of a “Rights Must be Paramount” Perspective intuitive, moral and political senses of what is right, just or fair, or engage us in protracted and contentious discussions of the merits of values in conflict with protected rights. The abortion debate, it might be argued, has pitted fundamentally contested views of rights-based entitlements against conflicting societal expectations; however, the full scope of this issue has yet to be addressed.5 Perhaps the best example of an issue that required a difficult choice between protected rights and non-enumerated values was the entrenchment of a distinct society clause. Constitutional recognition of Quebec as a distinct society was one of five demands by the Quebec government in return for participating in the 1986 constitutional renewal. Of the political issues that contributed to the failure of the Meech Lake Accord, the role of the distinct society clause most encapsulated the different perceptions of the appropriate relationship between citizens and the state and between protected rights and non-protected values. This paper will examine debate on the distinct society clause in the 1987 Meech Lake Accord and 1991 federal constitutional proposal in terms of whether there has been a movement away from a “rights must be paramount” assessment of constitutional change. The pivotal role of the distinct society clause in the Meech Lake round contrasts significantly with the comparatively minor role it played in the 1991-1992 constitutional discussions. Whether out of a change in commitment to the primacy of protected rights or a realization of the possible difficulties of accommodating Quebec’s sense of nationhood in a Charter- based constitutional order, the 1991-1992 constitutional debate did not demonstrate the same degree of concern to insulate protected rights from the possible implications of a distinct society clause. Before exploring this argument, we must first examine more closely how the Charter affects the way the political process is viewed.

Overview of Charter’s Impact on the Political Process The language of rights promoted by the Charter has contributed to a growing tendency to assume that non-enumerated values in conflict with protected rights are constitutionally inferior. One problem with this perspective is the assumption that the Charter is exhaustive of all fundamental values and that recourse to it offers an exclusive basis for resolving rights-based conflicts. Many commentators have observed the general and vague nature of the Charter’s provisions (Mandel 1989; Monahan 1987). For example, the wording of the Charter offers no clear explanation why freedom of expression should protect the ability to advertise in one’s preferred language on commercial signs or communicate for the purposes of prostitution, or why freedom of association should not protect collective bargaining. There are no universal or self-evident “principles” that dictate these findings; rather, they are the result of judicial reasoning or “policy” determinations. While courts develop judicial rules and principles to aid in the interpretation of rights (for example, the Supreme Court has adopted the position that the scope of freedom of expression should not depend on the content of the message) the Charter itself provides little direction as to the specific circumstances that are protected by its vague and general provisions. Further, even if we have the utmost faith in the judicial capacity to expound, at all times, the appropriate values and circumstances protected by the Charter (this is an assumption that many, including the author, are not prepared to make), can we be confident that the bureaucratic and political drafters of the Charter have captured all of the

119 IJCS / RIÉC fundamental values that we, our children and their descendants will value in the future? It is not only the protected rights that are indeterminate of particular outcomes. Even more significant is the indeterminacy of the limitation clause in s. 1. Courts have assumed the responsibility of determining whether government policies that conflict with a protected right are nevertheless reasonable and justified in the context of a free and democratic society. The difficulty for the Court, however, is that the values integral to a free and democratic society are subject to dispute. There is little reason to assume that nine judges are inherently more capable of expounding democratic principles than governments, political philosophers or citizens. Yet a core assumption in a “rights must be paramount” position is that the requirements of a democratic society can be readily inferred from the Charter. Some consider the reference in the limitation clause to a free and democratic society and the actual enumerated rights in the Charter to be one and the same. In other words, the specified rights in the Charter embody the rights necessary for a free and democratic society6 and, therefore, exhaust the range of values entitled to limit a protected right. The language of rights encourages the positing of Charter claims in terms of inviolable and non-negotiable principles that supersede and surpass the importance of alternative “policy” considerations. This assumption that rights-based claims immediately and unquestionably vault ahead of alternative values (often interpreted by rights claimants as little more than utilitarian, politically expedient or institutionally self-interested considerations) has significant implications on how government power is conceptualized. Those subscribing to this or some similar reading of the Charter’s impact on government, no longer consider it valid for governments to exercise discretion when determining the issues, interests, values that should shape policy, at the expense of protected rights. While conflicts between competing rights are inevitable and require resolution, many believe that entrenchment itself resolves disputes about the relative importance of competing values clearly in favour of those explicitly provided for in the Charter. One implication of this assumption on policy development is that legislative objectives not easily accommodated within the language of the Charter are deemed by many to lack sufficient importance to warrant limiting a protected right. This is because these objectives relate merely to policy objectives, not matters of rights and, therefore, are not entitled to restrict a protected right. By assuming that the Charter is exhaustive of the most fundamental values in society and that the requirements of a free and democratic society consist primarily, if not exclusively, of the enumerated rights themselves, this view offers little recognition that the values essential to a free and democratic society are contested. Further, assumptions concerning the primacy of protected rights discourage an approach to the Charter which recognizes collective or general welfare values. The assumption in a “rights must be paramount” approach that the Charter is, and should be considered, exhaustive of all fundamental values places an ideological and institutional constraint on the values that can be promoted. It excludes those values which fall outside the specific, and highly individualistic, language of the Charter. While the Charter gives limited recognition to collective rights, such as minority education rights, the extent to

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which the Supreme Court recognizes collective values as a protected activity depends largely on judicial assumptions about the philosophical content of these values. A telling example of this was in the labour trilogy cases where a majority of the Supreme Court declined to recognize the collective right to strike as a protected form of freedom of association because striking did not have any individual analogy.7 The predominantly individual rights contained in the Charter do not address the ideological and cultural aspirations of a polity whose political culture reflects collective values generated by tory and socialist influences (Horowitz). Evidence of our hybrid political culture is suggested in strong public support for a range of collective or general welfare concerns, even when they conflict with the individualistic assumptions of the Charter. One such example is the attempt to promote the collective security of women through a rape shield policy (to prevent a woman’s sexual past from being raised in court) despite possible implications on individual legal rights.8 A challenge to the primacy of individual rights also arises in public support for regulating election expenses (and hence restricting free speech) for the general welfare objective of promoting a fair and equitable election process.9 Although these are but two examples of collective values, they raise important questions concerning whether elements of our political culture which diverge from a strictly individualistic perspective will be unduly inhibited by an approach that assumes that protected rights must invariably be paramount to all other values. The question of how much discretion governments should retain to impose limits on protected rights invites controversy precisely because questions of limits on rights strike at the heart of debates about the relationship between individuals and community: specifically, should the state promote a particular substantive view of the “good life” if so doing conflicts with individual rights? That there are fundamentally contested views around this issue in Canada was particularly apparent in the controversy surrounding the use of the legislative override by the Quebec government in 1988 to protect its cultural policy of promoting the French language from rights-based challenges under the Charter. Basing his reasons on the need to protect collective rights, Premier Robert Bourassa’s assumptions about the requirements of preserving and promoting the French culture clearly contradict the belief of many that the protected rights in the Charter, which are primarily individual based, should have primacy over all other policy objectives: When two fundamental values clash, someone has to make a choice, and find a balance between both. An unavoidable arbitration has to take place. Anywhere else in North America, the arbitration would have been made in favour of individual rights. . . At the end, when a choice had to be made between individual rights and collective rights, I arbitrated in favour of collective rights, by agreeing to invoke the notwithstanding clause. ...Iamtheonly head of government in North America who had the moral right to follow this course, because I am, in North America, the only political leader of a community which is a small minority (Globe and Mail, 1988).

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Aside from reduced confidence in the legitimacy of governments exercising discretionary judgments about the priority of values, a “rights must be paramount” interpretation of the Charter potentially constrains debate. In rejecting the legitimacy of other values because they lack the same status as rights, and therefore do not warrant constitutional protection, the language or terms of the debate are altered to an extent that compromises are more difficult to achieve.10 How can society, after all, compromise fundamental constitutional principles? Notwithstanding the powerful rhetoric of appealing to principles, if the circumstances protected by the Charter cannot be readily inferred from the text and the values essential to a democracy are contested, it seems misdirected to assume that only those claims which can be neatly collapsed into rights-based terms are worthy of protection. Further, if the Charter is neither determinate nor exhaustive of fundamental values, it is equally questionable to assume that governments themselves should not play some role in advancing, under s. 1, values that represent reasonable and justifiable limits on protected rights. The principal objection to a “rights must be paramount” position, therefore, is its assumption that governments no longer have the legitimacy to pursue and promote values that conflict with protected rights. This criticism neither presumes a particular ideological or value preference nor is motivated by disdain for the Charter. It must be stressed that this paper is not arguing that governments do not have an obligation to respect protected rights or that courts should defer to whatever choices governments make. Courts should be anything but deferential to legislative policies where these do not reflect sincere attempts to debate the relative merits of competing values, or design legislation in a way which imposes as minimal an infringement on the protected right as is reasonably possible. But this argument is for another paper. The argument here is that a “rights must be paramount” position implicitly rejects the legitimacy of governments or societies questioning and challenging the parameters of Charter protection. By doing so, it becomes difficult to engage in necessary and meaningful political debate about the priorities that should be attached to competing values. Even if the indeterminacy and incompleteness of the values promoted by the Charter are accepted, many will continue to place greater trust in judicial rather than political resolutions to rights-based conflicts. This greater faith in the courts is often associated with the institutional differences between courts and legislatures; courts, for example, are thought to be insulated and detached from popular passions that may be hostile to minority interests. This paper does not intend to debate which institution is best equipped to protect Canadians’ rights and values. Rather, it seeks the more modest task of questioning the assumption that it is illegitimate to look beyond the specific provisions of the Charter or court interpretations of them, when seeking answers to rights-based conflicts.

Rights-based Criticisms of Distinct Society in Meech Opposition to the distinct society clause in the Meech Lake Accord arose for a number of reasons. Although this paper focuses on the implications of the clause on the Charter, it is difficult to disentangle Charter-based objections from broader concerns. The clause was not only debated in terms of how it would affect protected rights, but also in terms of which vision of Canada it represented. Critics argued that the clause was an invitation to re-emphasize a territorially-focused polity and a rejection of the pan-Canadian rights-based

122 The Limitations of a “Rights Must be Paramount” Perspective approach embodied in the Charter. Where the two fronts of the Meech Lake debate intersected was on critics’ conception of the purpose of entrenched rights. One of the purposes of entrenchment was to be an instrument of nation building. By applying to all Canadians by virtue of citizenship rather than geographical residence, centralists hoped that the Charter would strengthen national identity at the expense of regional affiliation. Further, by altering the political system and modifying the concept of “legislative supremacy” the Charter would undermine province-building. While Charter proponents, for pragmatic reasons, were quick to suggest that the Charter does not actually transfer power from one level of government to the other, many analysts expected that the impact of judicial review would be felt more pronouncedly by the provinces (Knopff and Morton, 1985; Russell, 1983). The relationship between the distinct society clause and the protected rights in the Charter went to the heart of the debate over what vision of Canada should be promoted. Not only did the distinct society clause prescribe a shift away from the pan-Canadian model but, in the opinion of many, it also represented a rejection of our newly enacted “Charter regime.” By failing to provide explicitly for the Charter’s exemption from the distinct society clause, many feared that the clause would remodify the political system to the extent that some decisions about limiting rights in Quebec would effectively remain in the hands of governments. This view presumed that courts would have given a generous interpretation of the distinct society clause, granting Quebec governments significant latitude to limit protected rights for the purpose of promoting cultural values.11 Some of the most significant rights-based objections to the distinct society clause came from women’s groups, primarily outside Quebec. In the 1987 hearings on the proposed constitutional amendments, five national women’s organizations argued before the Parliamentary Committee that the Accord would jeopardize equality rights.12 Language minority groups, especially English-speaking groups in Quebec, were also concerned that the distinct society clause would weaken protection for language rights in the province. Although it is difficult to generalize the nature of objections to the clause, a number of concerns were shared by more than one group. Women’s groups argued that the distinct society clause could undermine women’s equality rights in essentially four ways. First, the clause could encourage courts to adopt a more restrictive interpretation of equality rights in light of possible conflicts with the objectives of a distinct society clause. Second, the clause could create a constitutionally stated justification for limiting rights. The assumption was that the consideration of reasonable limits in s. 1 would become more expansive, to include cultural objectives associated with the distinct society clause and, as a result, provide additional grounds and greater ease for a Quebec government to promote cultural values that require limiting equality rights. Third, the distinct society clause might insulate legislation from Charter review. This would occur if courts were to define distinct society as constituting a fundamental principle of Confederation and, therefore, of parallel constitutional importance and not subject to the Charter. And fourth, the distinct society clause could place a lower priority on equality rights than on the collective rights of Québécois. This is because the proposed clause s. 16, which stated that multicultural and aboriginal rights in ss. 25, 27 and 35 would not have been affected by distinct society, did not explicitly exclude equality rights in ss. 15 and 28. It was argued, therefore, that equality rights could be subordinated to or affected by the distinct society clause because they, unlike

123 IJCS / RIÉC some rights, were not explicitly exempted from its ambit (Smith, 1988; Brock, 1990). It would be misleading to characterize all women’s groups’ opposition to the distinct society clause as embodying a “rights must be paramount” perspective. A significant factor in women’s opposition to the Meech Lake Accord was their frustration at not being able to engage in open and honest debate about the potential implications of a distinct society clause for equality rights (Baines, 1988). Further, while many considered it illegitimate to treat collective or cultural values as being paramount to equality or other protected rights, others called for debate on the priorities that should be attached to each (Smith, 1988). Also, for those frustrated with the traditional legislative processes, a “rights must be paramount” perspective offers an important symbolic and political position from which to challenge systemic inequalities. This is particularly true in light of the concern that equality rights, being excluded from the list of provisions exempted from the scope of the distinct society clause, might be interpreted as of lesser importance. These caveats notwithstanding, many of the women’s groups’ objections to the distinct society clause shared similarities with the assumptions of a “rights must be paramount” perspective: namely, that the clause could allow for collective and non-enumerated rights to be given primacy over individual rights; that governments would continue to play a discretionary role in promoting values that conflict with protected rights; and that protection for equality rights may not be universal but rather might vary in and out of Quebec. While these assumptions are legitimate depending on one’s vision of society and of governmental responsibilities, they are limiting in their capacity to allow debate where disagreement exists on the priority of contested values. For example, the perception that protected rights must be insulated from government attempts to promote collective values made it difficult for non- Francophone women’s groups to reconcile themselves to the likelihood that the Charter would be interpreted in the context of the distinct society clause. Further, suspicions of any differentiation in the limits imposed on equality rights for collective purposes made it difficult to be assured by Francophone women’s claims that part of what it means for Quebec to be a distinct society is the progress made in the last couple of decades in terms of equality concerns and the status of women (Bonenfant, 1987).

Political Proponents’ Response Federal and provincial supporters of the Accord seemed impervious to women’s concerns. Early criticisms of the distinct society clause were greeted with disparaging comments implying that anyone opposing the amendment was somehow “anti-Quebec.”13 Not only did political proponents dismiss the need to reassess the clause,14 there was little recognition that protected rights would even be affected. Instead of acknowledging the possibility that interpretations of the distinct society clause could influence what activities are considered a justifiable limit on equality or other protected rights, political supporters of Meech Lake insisted that the distinct society clause would not “override” protected rights.15 The combined effect of a “rights must be paramount” critique of the distinct society clause and political proponents’ refusal to sincerely address rights- based concerns was an absence of meaningful debate on the following important questions: would distinct society likely affect the interpretation of

124 The Limitations of a “Rights Must be Paramount” Perspective equality or other rights (either by influencing their definition or, more likely, by broadening the scope of permissible limits on them); given Quebec’s sense of community and the importance of collective rights, are territorial-based differences in how limits on rights are interpreted acceptable; and would the kind of collective values envisaged in a distinct society be consistent with a free and democratic society?

Distinct Society Clause in the 1991 Federal Proposal In sharp contrast to the Meech Lake round, one interesting aspect of the 1991- 1992 constitutional debate was the relative lack of contention surrounding the distinct society clause. Although Charter-based criticisms of the clause were raised, the level cannot be compared with the experience of the Meech Lake round. The 1991 distinct society clause would have been explicitly placed within the text of the Charter, requiring that courts interpret the Charter in a manner consistent with “the preservation and promotion of Quebec as a distinct society within Canada” and “the preservation of the existence of French-speaking Canadians primarily located in Quebec but also throughout Canada, and English-speaking Canadians, primarily located outside Quebec but also present in Quebec.” In contrast to its vague definition in Meech, the new distinct society clause was defined to include a French-speaking majority, a unique culture and a civil law tradition (“Shaping Canada’s Future Together: Proposals,” 51). Placing the distinct society clause within the Charter left little doubt that interpretations of protected rights would be affected. The Charter already recognizes the existence of collective values in the aboriginal rights and multicultural heritage clauses of ss. 25 and 27. Like these clauses, distinct society would have been an interpretive clause, providing guidelines for interpretation. Rather than conferring a substantive entitlement on its own, it would more likely have affected the way protected rights were interpreted and, more significantly, potentially widened the scope of permissible limitations on protected rights under s. 1. As an interpretive clause, distinct society does not appear to have been paramount to any single Charter provision. Of particular concern for women, the clause seems to have been subordinate to s. 28 which is a gender “notwithstanding” clause; s. 28 provides for equality between men and women “notwithstanding anything in this Charter” and, presumably, notwithstanding the distinct society clause. In contrast to the Meech clause, which exempted from its ambit certain rights but not equality rights, the proposed federal clause did not lead to the same concern that a hierarchy of rights would be created. The new clause addressed some of the concerns raised in the Meech round, but not all of them. For individuals and groups concerned about the rights-based implications of the Meech version, the 1991 version was still vulnerable in at least two respects: the clause could have affected how courts interpret the scope of a protected right — what circumstances are actually protected — and would likely have entered into judicial decisions about whether limits on protected rights are reasonable and demonstrably justified. This second role is the most significant. Judicial review of the Charter has tended to proceed in two analytically distinct stages in which decisions about whether a right has been infringed are often distinct from the determination of whether a limit is justified. Because the distinct society clause would provide

125 IJCS / RIÉC an interpretive aid when determining reasonable limits, courts could expand the scope of permissible limits on equality or other protected rights for distinct society purposes. This could include either enlarging or altering the definition of what objectives are considered reasonable or worthy of limiting protected rights to include those necessary for the promotion of a distinct society. Or it could affect the way courts assess whether distinct society objectives meet the proportionality guidelines in the Oakes test (R. v. Oakes, [1986] 1 S.C.R. 103). Many have argued that judicially created guidelines for determining s. 1 issues are generally indeterminate of specific outcomes (Peck 1987; Hiebert 1991). Therefore, judicial discretion in determining whether a legislative or executive objective has been designed or administered in a manner that itself is reasonable, could be affected by judicial commitment to the objective itself. The potential of the 1991 distinct society clause to influence judicial opinion on the worthiness of related objectives may have been significant for those concerned with the primacy of equality rights. It could be argued that the Supreme Court has already indicated some sympathy for the promotion of a distinct society. In the Ford case (Quebec signs law), the Court went a considerable distance in reading a distinct society interpretation into the limitation clause of s.1. In that case, the Court agreed with the Quebec government’s claim that protecting the French language is crucial to the survival of French culture to assure the “reality of Quebec society is communicated through the visage linguistique” and that this was a justifiable objective in a free and democratic society. Its difficulty and reasons for finding the signs law invalid were not based on the objective itself but on the fact that some attempt had not been made to accommodate the use of other languages (Ford v. Quebec [Attorney General], [1988] 2 S.C.R. at 778-779). Despite the potential implications of the 1991 distinct society clause in undermining the primacy of protected rights, little concern was expressed about its rights-based implications. Most of the commentary and criticisms of the 1991 federal proposal focused on issues other than distinct society. And when distinct society was considered, particularly during the constitutional conferences, the issue was not its impact on rights but whether the concept of a distinct society should also be applied to aboriginal peoples (Renewal of Canada Conferences: Compendium of Reports, 1992). As significant as the magnitude of criticisms during the Meech Lake process was the relative absence of a sustained critique of the distinct society clause in the 1991-92 discussions. Many of the women’s groups who went on record for criticizing aspects of the distinct society clause in Meech were noticeably silent in the 1991-92 round of constitutional hearings. Only the National Action Committee on the Status of Women took a public stand on the issue. And NAC, which endorsed the distinct society clause in the hearings, focused little attention on the Charter implications of the clause (NAC, 1991). Unlike NAC’s response to the Meech version of distinct society, there was no explicit criticism of the clause in terms of its potential effect on equality rights. In NAC’s view, some of the concerns of women’s organizations in the Meech Lake round had been addressed by placing the provision explicitly in the Charter. The result of this, NAC implied, was that the sexual equality clause of s. 28 would be paramount to other Charter provisions or interpretive clauses (Ibid.) Further, NAC President Judy Rebick indicated that it may be inappropriate to require universal treatment of equality concerns; that just as

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sameness of treatment may not be desirable in a sexual context, it may also be undesirable in the context of cultural or aboriginal concerns: . . . (W)e understand in the women’s movement...that equality doesn’t mean treating everyone the same way. Equality often means special measures — that terrible word — to correct historical inequalities. . . [W]e also need special powers...forQuebec...to recognize the fact that they have a disadvantage in being the only French-speaking nation or province in the whole of North America. They need those powers and they want those powers to protect their language, their culture and the institutions. (Rebick, 29 Oct. 1991, 10:18-19). Some might object to this characterization of Quebec’s concern for special status as a measure to overcome historical disadvantages. They may, instead, interpret Quebec’s claims for different treatment as reflecting collective values and state obligations that are the result of a political culture different from the rest of Canada. Nevertheless it is significant that NAC moved away from a pan-Canadian approach to protected rights. It has also indicated a significant movement away from the principle that “rights must be paramount” under all circumstances. Another significant change in support for the distinct society clause came from one of the most ardent critics of the distinct society clause in the Meech Lake round, and subscriber to a “rights must be paramount” position, Newfoundland Premier Clyde Wells. Having earlier argued that the distinct society clause should serve little purpose other than an historical and sociological recognition of Quebec as a distinct society, Wells grudgingly accepted the principle that distinct society allows for possible variations in how protected rights are interpreted. Wells made it clear that this was not his preference but implied it was a reasonable concession to accommodate the constitutional concerns of the Quebec Francophone majority.16 While philosophically I personally...would prefer to see the Charter apply to every part of the country and to each individual in exactly the same manner, if the majority of citizens of Quebec want their individual charter rights to be somewhat subordinated to their collective rights, then it is difficult for the citizens of any other province to say we don’t want to see that happen in Quebec...Some limited subordination of individual rights to collective rights within Quebec, if that is what the people of Quebec want, may not be an unreasonable concession to accommodate the legitimate concerns of a province that is, by reason of its culture, language and legal system, distinctly different from any other province in the country. (Wells, 22 October 1991, 8). The comparatively minor role of Charter-based criticisms of the distinct society clause does not mean all groups changed their opinions on the legitimacy of the clause. A handful of smaller women’s and minority language groups continued to criticize the distinct society clause precisely because of its potential to undermine a “rights must be paramount” position. For example, the Brandon Women’s Study Group opposed the idea that women’s equality rights could be “subject to the collective interests of Quebec’s distinct society.”

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The issue here is not whether Quebec society is distinct or whether it should have the capacity to preserve and promote its culture; it is about whether the preservation and promotion of a collectivity should be done at the expense of individual, disadvantaged, or minority group rights. It will not help the women of Canada to have a clearly articulated statement that the interests of women must be subordinate to those of their national or linguistic group. ...werespect the right of Quebec to claim a distinct society, but request that it does so in a way that would not override the fundamental equality rights of women...Equality rights must be maintained above any cultural, linguistic or ethnic encroachments. (Everitt, 6 Nov. 1991, 18:7-8). Similarly, another women’s group, Equality Eve, raised concerns that locating the distinct society clause in the Charter could “trump” protected rights. For example, it argued that had the distinct society clause been entrenched at the time of the signs law decision, the Supreme Court “would probably find that freedom of expression would not be violated” (Equality Eve, 1991). Concerns of how the 1991 version of the distinct society clause would affect interpretations of protected rights were not confined to women’s groups. Anglophones in Quebec expressed concern, as they did during Meech, that the clause could undermine individual rights. This objection was similar to that of women’s groups — that the clause would either narrow the interpretation given to protected rights or broaden the scope of permissible limits (Henderson, 1991). Notwithstanding these objections, there was an order of magnitude change in the criticism extended towards the clause in the 1991-92 constitutional debate, despite the potential for rights-based objections. Those who opposed the distinct society clause in Meech, because of its potential to narrow the interpretation of protected rights and, more significantly, broaden the scope of permissible limits on rights, should have had similar concerns with the 1991 version. So why were these criticisms not more vocal? An important part of the explanation for the relatively minor role the distinct society clause played in the 1991-92 constitutional process is no doubt accounted for by the political fallout over the death of the Meech Lake Accord. Given that the clause generated significant differences between Quebec and other women’s groups, it is not surprising that equality concerns were pursued in different forms, for instance, increasing political representation of women via a reformed Senate with a gender rather than territorial composition, the implications of entrenching property rights, and the effects of decentralization on family law, among others (Schneiderman, 1992). While significant, this is only part of the explanation for why rights-based criticisms of the distinct society clause did not play a more prominent role in the 1991 and early 1992 constitutional debate. This paper partly attributes the relative lack of criticism to an implicit reassessment of the utility of a “rights must be paramount” approach. Considerations in 1991-92 about whether or not to accept an entrenched distinct society clause approximate the kind of dilemma discussed earlier, in which protected rights clash with important, although contested, non-enumerated values. Given the gulf that existed between Francophones and Anglophones on the desirability of the clause, it

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has become increasingly apparent that the resolution of our constitutional impasse may depend less on vindicating rights-based claims than on making difficult choices about the priorities that should be attached to competing values. In this context, the choice may be seen as having been between 1) a universal approach to rights, which would likely be rejected by Quebec and 2) possible variations on how limitations on rights are interpreted to better reflect and accommodate the different political culture of Quebec. That there has been greater accommodation of the latter choice seems clear in NAC’s willingness to extend concern about “sameness of treatment” from the sexual equality realm to recognize Quebec’s different sense of community. In a less generous manner, Wells similarly recognized that for the sake of unity we may have to accommodate Quebec’s different understanding of the balance between collective and individual rights and the role of governments in promoting this balance. The relative lack of contention surrounding the distinct society clause in the 1991-92 constitutional debate indicates a greater sensitivity among constitutional participants and commentators to the difficulties of accommodating Quebec’s sense of nation in a Charter-based constitutional order. Whether out of consignment to the view that the price of remaining a unified country may involve tolerating some variation in the Charter’s interpretation or recognizing that the range of Quebec’s cultural objectives is consistent with a free and democratic society, the implication is that the vindication of rights-based concerns may not resolve all of our constitutional difficulties. Having argued this, however, it is premature to conclude that a “rights must be paramount” perspective no longer influences the way many assess constitutional proposals. This was made abundantly clear during debate on the Charlottetown Accord in the fall of 1992. Unlike the 1991 federal proposal, the Charlottetown Accord did not contain a separate distinct society clause but included it within a broader Canada clause. The Canada clause, which was an interpretive clause, defined a number of fundamental characteristics of Canada, including Canada’s parliamentary and federal system of government and the principles of aboriginal self-government and Quebec as a distinct society. While the majority of criticisms focused on aspects of the clause other than distinct society,17 they emphasized similar objections to those raised about the distinct society clause during the Meech Lake debate: that the Canada clause would increase the discretion given to governments to limit protected rights. The most blunt characterization of this was that the Charter would be “trumped” by the Canada clause (Baines, 24, 1992). Rights-based criticisms of the Canada clause speculated on the implications of Canada’s fundamental characteristics being defined in terms of certain institutional features, such as federalism, parliamentary government and aboriginal self-government, while failing to specify the Charter. The complaint was that this could undermine the relative significance of the Charter in the judicial review of conflicts between governmental and rights- based claims. It was also argued that the rights protected under the Charter might suffer because the clause provided that the entire Constitution, including the Charter, “shall be interpreted in a manner consistent” with these fundamental characteristics. The concern raised was that the use of the word “including” might encourage the courts to assume that the Charter is subordinate, and therefore inferior, to the Canada clause:

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[The draft text uses] “including” which is not an ambiguous word. To the contrary, it means to treat as subsumed, as subordinated. At the present time, Charter values are not subordinated to any other values. However, if the Charlottetown agreement is adopted, they will be subordinated to the contents of the Canada Clause. More specifically, Charter values will be measured against the first three fundamental characteristics that are itemized in the Canada Clause. These three are flat-out assertions of governmental and federalism characteristics...Both their wording and their positioning will be interpreted as indicative of the strength of the call for deference to governmental actors. (Ibid., 25). The preceding criticism of the Canada clause faulted the proposal for its failure to secure protected rights against governmental encroachments. Critics rejected the Canada clause on the basis of assumptions that governmental power and the Charter are inherently conflictual and that governments ought not to be permitted to promote non-enumerated values that conflict with protected rights. This “rights must be paramount” critique of the clause had a constraining effect on debate. It allowed opponents to reject the Accord on the basis of “principle,” in that the Canada clause did not adequately insulate protected rights from government action, without addressing the following questions which would have contributed to a healthier and more vibrant debate: are there fundamental values, in addition to those in the Charter, that governments might promote in light of this clause; where conflicts with protected rights arise, is the wording of the clause sufficient to ensure that rights are appropriately considered; and will the clause encourage a meaningful assessment of the justification of governmental objectives in conflict with rights? A second and more compelling criticism of the Canada clause was its ambiguity regarding whether aboriginal women, under a system of aboriginal self-government, would be protected by the Charter. The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) sought an injunction to halt the referendum on the bases that 1) its members were excluded from the constitutional review process and 2) the Accord would undermine protection under the Charter. This second argument is most relevant here. The concern arose from a proposal to entrench a “contextual statement” to ensure that the Charter would not prevent aboriginal governments from safeguarding and developing their languages, cultures, economies, institutions and traditions. NWAC’s criticism was that the Accord would confer significant discretion upon aboriginal governments to promote traditional and collective values that may undermine protection for individual women’s rights (NWAC, 3). In response to heavy pressure from aboriginal women, the drafters of the constitutional accord inserted a clause to address the equality of aboriginal men and women (Fine). However, the draft legal text, which was available only late in the referendum debate, contained ambiguous clauses on the relationship between aboriginal policy values and the Charter. While a proposed amendment to the Constitution Act 1982 would have guaranteed the rights of aboriginal peoples equally regardless of gender (s. 35(7)), the Canada clause, an interpretive clause for the entire constitution including the Charter, would have guaranteed aboriginal governments the “right to promote their languages, cultures and traditions and to ensure the integrity of their societies”

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(s. 2(b)). These clauses did little to address NWAC’s concern that women can, and historically have been, harmed by actions taken in the name of cultural or traditional values (NWAC, 3). It is difficult to conclude that aboriginal women’s reliance on a “rights must be paramount” framework to assess the constitution discouraged meaningful debate on the relationship between rights and aboriginal self-government. It would have been virtually impossible to engage in thoughtful debate about the relative significance of collective values, given the undefined nature of the proposal for aboriginal self-government as well as the ambiguity and apparent conflict between the preceding clauses.

Conclusions It is difficult to draw any sharp conclusions about whether the rights must be paramount perspective will continue to characterize constitutional debate. Despite an implicit reassessment of the utility of this approach in the 1991 and early 1992 constitutional debate, rights-based assessments assumed an important role in criticisms of the Charlottetown Accord in the fall of 1992. Memories of the sharp Anglophone/Francophone division generated by the distinct society debate in the Meech Lake Accord likely created a reluctance to engage in a similar debate in 1991 and early 1992. Further, as this paper has suggested, this ethnic/linguistic division subsequently encouraged greater sensitivity to the issue of whether Quebec’s more collective approach to rights and values could be accommodated within a “rights must be paramount” perspective. Rights-based assessments of the proposed constitutional amendments did not generate the same Anglophone/Francophone division in the later Charlottetown round. Secure in the knowledge of wide-spread opposition to the Accord (both in and out of Quebec), conveyed and reinforced by frequent public opinion polling, those with rights-based objections did not have to weigh these principles against the risk of further alienating Quebec. There was not, in other words, sufficient or compelling reason to reassess the prudence of adopting a “rights must be paramount” assessment of the Accord. Given our limited experience with the Charter, it is hardly surprising that attitudes about the relationship between citizens and the state, limits and rights or governments and courts are still adjusting to the significant societal and institutional changes represented by the Charter. Aside from the distinct society debate, we simply have not been compelled by circumstances to reassess uncritical assumptions about the primacy of protected rights. Further, we have not yet been exposed to many fundamentally divisive judicial outcomes in which Charter-based entitlements are fundamentally at odds with deeply held values. While there has been a handful of contentious judicial cases, these have not been of the kind that fundamentally challenge our intuitive, moral and political senses of what is right, just or fair, or that engage us in protracted and contentious discussions of the merits of values in conflict with protected rights. Increasingly, as rights-based claims call into question the validity of strongly held values, we may realize that, under some circumstances, the Charter’s contribution to the political process will be less a matter of vindicating rights-based claims and more a responsibility of determining where our priorities and emphases should be placed when reconciling conflicting values. One consequence of living with the Charter may be pressure to rethink the utility of a “rights must be paramount”

131 IJCS / RIÉC perspective, given its inherent limitations in fostering and contributing to a meaningful debate about the priorities we assign to competing values. In light of the incompleteness and indeterminacy of the Charter’s values, it is simply no answer to argue that if a value is not explicitly mentioned in the Charter, it cannot and should not be accommodated in the constitutional order.

Notes 1. Nor does it recognize the potential of s. 33 as a means of reconciling non-entrenched values by temporarily limiting the applicability of the Charter. However, the unpopularity of the legislative override outside Quebec makes it difficult to engage in this discussion. 2. This argument was first made by the author in “Representation and the Charter: Should Rights be Paramount?” in David Smith and John Courtney (ed.), Drawing Boundaries: Legislatures, Courts and Electoral Values, 1992. 3. See for example, Hiebert, “Representation and the Charter: Should Rights be Paramount?” 4. The word Charter here is placed in quotations to recognize the limitations of talking about Charter rights as opposed to protected rights. The difficulty with using the word Charter in this context is that it connotes, to many, the belief that only those rights actually contained in the Charter, as recognized by the Court, are constitutionally legitimate. But the argument being made in this paper is that by recognizing different values and policies not specifically enumerated, as a reasonable limit under s. 1, courts may provide constitutional protection to a broader range of values than those specifically enumerated. Through section 1 interpretations, therefore, other values also receive Charter recognition. For this reason, the term “protected rights” is preferable to “Charter rights.” 5. One other particularly controversial decision was R. v. Seaboyer; R. v. Gayme (1991) 2 S.C.R. 577, in which rape shield legislation (designed to shield women from having their sexual histories discussed in sexual assault proceedings) was struck down. Intensive lobbying, however, resulted in revised legislation which, because it defines consent and places the onus on the alleged assaulter to show intent had been given, may be viewed as a significant improvement over the previous provisions. This revised legislation has not yet been challenged under the Charter. 6. One of the clearest expressions of this position is offered by Lorraine Weinrib, “The Supreme Court of Canada and Section One of the Charter.” Supreme Court Law Review,v. 19, 1988. 7. The trilogy consisted of Reference re Public Service Employee Relations Act (Alta.), (1987) 1 S.C.R. 313; Government of Saskatchewan v. Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union, Locals 544, 496, 635 & 955, (1987) 1 S.C.R. 460; and R. v. Public Service Alliance of Canada (1987) 1 S.C.R. 424. 8. See, for example, the intervening factums by Women’s Legal Education Action Fund in R. v. Seaboyer; R. v. Gayme (1991) 2 S.C.R. 577. 9. During the public hearings of the Lortie Commission (Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing), four-fifths of intervenors who addressed the issue of election spending limits favoured this principle. This sentiment was mirrored by the results of an attitudinal study in which 93% of respondents supported spending regulations for political parties. Reforming Electoral Democracy, v. 1, 1991, p. 334. 10. Mary Ann Glendon raises similar criticisms of American “rights talk”. See Mary Ann Glendon, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse, 1991. 11. Critics who viewed the distinct society clause in this manner ascribed little significance to the pan-Canadian aspects of the clause; specifically, the recognition in s. 2(1)(a) of French- speaking Canadians present in Quebec which are part of the fundamental characteristics of Canada. 12. These organizations were the National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL), the Women’s Legal Education and Act Fund (LEAF), the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women (CACSW), the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) and the Ad Hoc Committee of Women on the Constitution. 13. Carol Goar, “How PM Infuriated Women’s Groups,” Toronto Star, August 27, 1987, A2.

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14. The only change made was a modification of the skeleton proposal of the April 30, 1987 meeting of 11 First Ministers. In that day-long session the Ministers achieved agreement in principle for the Meech Lake proposals but left, for a later date, the task of fleshing out the legal text. Changes were in response to criticisms that the clause, as originally worded, promoted the notion of “two Canadas.” The original clause recognized “the existence of French-speaking Canada, centred in but not limited to Quebec, and English-speaking Canada, concentrated outside Quebec but also present in Canada.” The new phrasing reflected an attempt to eliminate the conception of two Canadas by altering the reference to “French-speaking Canada” and “English-speaking Canada.” The new wording recognized “the existence of French-speaking Canadians...andEnglish-speaking Canadians”. The significance of the change is the clause defined groups of people rather than geographical regions. 15. Senator Lowell Murray was particularly emphatic in his suggestion that the distinct society clause would not adversely affect protected rights in the Charter. Joint Parliamentary Committee, August 4, 1987, 2:50. 16. While Wells was willing to consider having the Charter interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and promotion of Quebec as a distinct society within Canada, he did express concern with the wording of the federal proposal. His recommendation was to make it clear that the distinct society clause would only affect Charter interpretations of Quebec and not federal laws. A second concern with the wording was the possibility that the definition of “distinct society” might be broadened over time to include considerations other than language, culture and the civil law tradition. 17. Some individuals and groups have continued to argue that the distinct society clause would undermine individual rights. However, like the 1991 federal proposal, the clause did not generate the same degree of opposition as during the Meech Lake debate. For criticism of distinct society in the Charlottetown Accord, see Deborah Coyne and Robert Howse, No Deal: Why Canadians should reject the Mulroney Constitution, 1992.

Bibliography Baines, Bev. “Why Lawyers Should Vote ‘No’,” Kate Sutherland, ed., Perspectives on the Charlottetown Accord, Centre for Constitutional Studies, 1992. Bonenfant, Claire. Fédération des femmes du Québec, Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence of the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and of the House of Commons on the 1987 Constitutional Accord, 13:44-45. Brock, Kathy L. “A Mandate Fulfilled: Constitutional Reform and the Manitoba Task Force on Meech Lake.” 1990. Canada. Reforming Electoral Democracy, v. 1, 1991. Canada. Renewal of Canada Conferences: Compendium of Reports, Constitutional Conferences Secretariat, 1992. Canada. “Shaping Canada’s Future Together: Proposals,” Minister of Supply and Services, 1991. Cohen, M. Joint Parliamentary Committee Hearings, 18 October 1980, 7:86. Dworkin, Ronald, “Liberalism,” in Michael Sandel, ed., Liberalism and its Critics, 1984. Equality Eve. “The Government’s Proposals and How They Could Affect You,” 1991. Everitt, Donna. Brandon Women’s Study Group. Special Joint Committee. Fine, Sean. “Native Women aim to block national referendum campaign in Court,” Globe and Mail, Oct. 13, 1992, A10. Globe and Mail, “Bourassa’s use of Charter clause shows his vision of distinct Quebec”, December 22, 1988, A1, A5. Goar, Carol. “How PM Infuriated Women’s Groups,” Toronto Star, August 27, 1987, A2. Henderson, Keith. Canadians for Equality of Rights under the Constitution, Special Joint Committee, 17 December 1991, 32:34. Hiebert, Janet. “The Evolution of the Limitation Clause in the Charter,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal, Winter 1990. Hiebert, Janet. “Representation and the Charter: Should Rights be Paramount?”, David Smith and John Courtney (ed.), Drawing Boundaries: Legislatures, Courts and Electoral Values, 1992. Hiebert, Janet. Ph.D dissertation, “Determining the Limits of Charter Rights: How Much Discretion do Governments Retain?”, University of Toronto, 1991. Horowitz, G. “Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, v. xxxii, 1966.

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Knopff, Rainer and F.L. Morton. “Nation-Building and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in Canada, Alan Cairns and Cynthia Williams, eds., Coordinators, 1985. Mandel, Michael. The Charter of Rights and the Legalization of Politics in Canada, 1989. Monahan, Patrick. Politics and the Constitution: The Charter, Federalism and the Supreme Court of Canada. 1987. NAC Response to Federal Constitutional Proposals. Oct. 25, 1991. Native Women’s Association of Canada, Press Release, September 21, 1992. Peck, Sidney. “An Analytical Framework for the Application of The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” Osgoode Hall Law Journal, v. 25, 1987. Rebick, Judy. President National Action Committee on the Status of Women. Special Joint Committee on a Renewed Canada, 29 Oct. 1991, 10:18-19. Russell, Peter H. “Political Purposes of the Canadian Charter,” The Canadian Bar Review, March 1983. Schneiderman, David. (ed.) “Conversations Among Friends,” Proceedings of an interdisciplinary Conference on Women and Constitutional Reform, Centre for Constitutional Studies, Edmonton, 1992. Smith, Lynn. “The Distinct Society Clause in the Meech Lake Accord: Could it Affect Equality Rights for Women?” in Competing Constitutional Visions. 1988 Wells, Clyde. “Commentary on the Federal Government’s Proposals, Shaping Canada’s Future Together,” 22 October 1991, Presented to the Newfoundland and Labrador Committee on the Constitution.

134 Linda Cardinal

Les mouvements sociaux et la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés*

Résumé Cet article propose une analyse critique de trois modes d’interprétation quant à la portée de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés : la judiciarisation de la politique; la prédominance des droits individuels sur les droits collectifs; et, enfin, les rapports entre démocratie et citoyenneté. Bien que ces modes aient donné le ton aux débats sur les possibilités de changement dans la société canadienne, leur validité est loin d’être démontrée. En conclusion, l’article tente d’élucider les rapports entre les mouvements sociaux et la Charte.

Abstract This article offers a critical analysis of three ways of interpreting the scope of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: the judicialization of politics; the predominance of individual over collective rights; and, lastly, the ties between democracy and citizenship. Although these interpretations have set the tone of debate over possibilities for change in Canadian society, their validity is far from proven. In conclusion, the article attempts to elucidate the ties between social movements and the Charter.

L’éclosion, dans les années 1980, de mouvements sociaux avant tout préoccupés de la précarité des droits de la personne semble avoir favorisé l’émergence à l’échelle mondiale des conditions nécessaires à l’action sociale et politique (Cairns, 1986). Scandalisés par le totalitarisme de plusieurs pays dits démocratiques et populaires, des gens de divers horizons ont entrepris de remettre en cause la problématique révolutionnaire (Ferry et Renault, 1985), si bien que l’idée d’une transformation « radicale » de la société ne se posera plus réellement (Keane, 1988). Désormais, le changement découlera davantage de l’action de groupes à l’intérieur de mouvements qui deviendront, eux, des lieux d’appartenance et des espaces de rassemblement (Melucci, 1983). Le Canada n’a pas échappé à ce courant. Soucieux de protéger les citoyennes et citoyens contre les abus, le gouvernement fédéral adopte en 1982 la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés, ce qui devait entraîner l’apparition au pays d’un « mouvement social » voué à la défense des droits de la personne. Quoique fragmenté, ce mouvement en vient à constituer une force bien supérieure à celle de tout groupe particulier. La nouvelle loi constitutionnelle ouvre en outre aux mouvements sociaux des champs d’action en faveur des personnes directement touchées par la Charte : femmes, autochtones, personnes handicapées, membres des minorités raciales, ethniques et linguistiques. Elle encourage la politisation de leurs revendications, notamment en matière d’avortement, d’action positive, de droits des autochtones et des minorités de langue française de l’extérieur du Québec. Si,

International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 7-8, Spring-Fall/Printemps-automne 1993 IJCS / RIÉC en un sens, la Charte ne fait qu’accompagner des changements qui étaient déjà en marche avant 1982, son adoption marque toutefois un moment important pour les mouvements sociaux. Elle les amène à sortir leurs revendications du domaine des questions spécifiques pour en faire des questions de droits de la personne en même temps que des enjeux politiques reliés à la définition de la citoyenneté au Canada, leur permettant d’acquérir en corollaire une légitimité politique sans précédent au pays. Cette situation fait du Canada un cas intéressant en vue d’une réflexion sur les mouvements sociaux d’aujourd’hui, puisque la Charte nous oblige à reconsidérer le rapport entre les intervenants sociaux et l’espace politique. Malheureusement, on n’a guère étudié l’incidence de la Charte sur les mouvements sociaux au Canada. Nous savons que les groupes, notamment le mouvement des femmes (Gotell, 1991), ont pris part au débat menant à l’adoption de la Charte, mais peu d’analyses ont porté sur l’utilisation qu’ils en ont fait par la suite. À l’exception de certaines études de cas, réalisées surtout par les féministes (Fudge, 1987; Brodsky et Day 1989; Razack, 1991; Brodie et al., 1992), presque tout reste à faire1. On s’en est tenu jusqu’ici à débattre ses effets sur la société canadienne, se demandant, par exemple, si elle ne condamnait pas le Canada à suivre la voie des États-Unis dans l’utilisation que l’on pourra faire de la référence aux droits de la personne. Certaines, certains ont décrit de nouveaux phénomènes qui confirmeraient cette hypothèse : la judiciarisation2 de la politique (Mandel, 1989) et la prédominance des droits individuels sur les droits collectifs (Bourque, 1990). D’autres ont cherché à comprendre comment la Charte permettait de repenser les rapports entre la démocratie et la citoyenneté (Cairns, 1986; Taylor, 1986). Sans porter directement sur les mouvements sociaux, ces différents modes d’interprétation ont cependant donné le ton aux débats sur les possibilités de changement aujourd’hui, agissant ainsi sur l’articulation du lien entre les groupes et la Charte. Or, aussi bien sur les plans théorique qu’empirique, la validité des hypothèses qu’on nous propose reste à démontrer, surtout lorsqu’elles intéressent les mouvements sociaux. Comme, par ailleurs, la sociologie s’oriente depuis 1982 vers l’analyse de l’action des groupes, une lecture critique des modes d’interprétation de la Charte s’impose donc. Qui plus est, nous tenterons dans ce texte d’articuler les deux domaines en vue de repenser les mouvements sociaux en fonction de la Charte. Il s’agira, dans un premier temps, de procéder à un bref rappel de la sociologie des mouvements sociaux afin d’en préciser l’expression et de situer nos propos dans le temps avant de nous livrer à une lecture critique des différentes interprétations de la portée de la Charte sur la société canadienne. Pour conclure, nous reprendrons ces analyses pour mieux revenir à notre questionnement : définir le rapport des actrices et acteurs à l’espace politique et tenter d’esquisser les grandes lignes de notre compréhension de la pertinence de la Charte dans l’étude des mouvements sociaux et du changement. Parce qu’elle repose essentiellement sur l’efficacité de notre dialectique et, en bout de ligne, sur nos opinions, pareille entreprise a des limites évidentes, notamment celle de ne pas éclairer la portée de la Charte sur le plan empirique. Néanmoins, elle nous apparaît nécessaire dans la mesure où nous sommes

138 Les mouvements sociaux et la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés insatisfaite de ce que nous proposent les interprètes de la Charte, surtout lorsqu’ils interpellent les mouvements sociaux.

La sociologie des mouvements sociaux Nous rattachons notre étude du cas canadien à la sociologie des mouvements sociaux, car notre intérêt principal est le changement social contemporain tel qu’il a été étudié dans ce champ. Alain Touraine (1974), qui a donné le ton aux analyses sur la question, a réussi à créer un consensus autour de la définition de mouvement social, définition que son collaborateur Michel Wieviorka résume ainsi : ...une action conflictuelle, inscrite dans un rapport structurel de domination, portée par un acteur capable de se reconnaître dans une identité sociale et d’en reconnaître une à son adversaire, capable également de se situer sur un terrain qui est le même pour l’acteur auquel il s’oppose — et donc d’agir pour le contrôle des mêmes enjeux, des mêmes ressources culturelles. (1991 : 154) Depuis les années soixante-dix, la sociologie des mouvements sociaux s’appuie largement sur cette définition et ses analyses portent principalement sur les protagonistes, leurs projets, leurs luttes, leur culture politique et leur capacité à limiter le pouvoir de l’État (Castoriadis, 1975, 1979; Maheu, 1983; Touraine, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1984). Pendant les années quatre-vingts, nous avons aussi été amenés à nous demander si les mouvements étaient porteurs d’une stratégie de radicalisation de la démocratie (Laclau et Mouffe, 1985), d’une politique de radicalisme auto-limitatif (Cohen 1985), d’une action en vue du développement d’une société civile démocratique et socialiste (Keane 1988) ou de pratiques individuelles et collectives mondiales (Hégédus, 1989). Au Canada, les analyses des mouvements sociaux ont accordé une grande importance à la société civile (Briskin, Adamson et McPhail, 1988; Gagnon et Rioux, 1988; Magnusson, 1990; Thériault, 1985). Ces quelques références montrent que la sociologie des mouvements sociaux a beaucoup été préoccupée par les fins, c’est-à-dire par l’option politique, se caractérisant par une approche de type volontariste selon laquelle les acteurs seraient au centre des changements sociaux (Skocpol, 1985). Par conséquent, elle s’est moins intéressée au rapport entre les protagonistes et le contexte politique et ses institutions. Au Canada, avant comme après l’adoption de la Charte, la sociologie s’est peu penchée sur la façon dont, par exemple, l’État (les pouvoirs législatif, exécutif et judiciaire) a contribué au développement et à la structuration de l’action. De surcroît, la sociologie des mouvements sociaux n’a pas encore, à notre connaissance, proposé de repères d’ordre théorique susceptibles de nous éclairer sur la question des droits. Elle est demeurée relativement silencieuse sur la signification des revendications en matière notamment d’avortement, d’égalité, de paix, d’autodétermination3. Elle a plutôt pensé les mouvements sociaux à l’extérieur de la problématique des droits pour analyser leurs visées de changement plus radical. Également, elle a étudié les mouvements sociaux en postulant essentiellement que l’État ne pouvait que s’employer à les contrôler (Keane, 1988; Ng, 1990). Or, au Canada, les gouvernements ont, jusque pendant les années quatre- vingts, joué un rôle relativement important dans la mobilisation des groupes

139 IJCS / RIÉC sociaux, que ce soit au moyen de programmes visant à encourager la participation démocratique des citoyennes et des citoyens au développement communautaire4, de commissions royales d’enquête5 ou de subventions directes à des groupes donnés. Ces quelques observations montrent que nous n’avons pas suffisamment de moyens pour expliquer la part qui revient aux mouvements sociaux dans le changement contemporain. Nous savons qu’ils sont des espaces de rassemblement et de débats, qu’ils soulèvent des enjeux importants et qu’ils font avancer les mentalités. L’absence d’études de cas pouvant nous éclairer sur la question traduit toutefois la nature plutôt générale à ce jour des analyses à ce sujet. Notre intérêt pour la Charte provient donc de ce fait qu’elle oblige la sociologie à situer l’action des groupes sur le plan politique6 et à comprendre son développement.

La Charte Rappelons rapidement que la Charte vient remplacer la Loi canadienne sur les droits de la personne promulguée en 1960, laquelle n’avait aucune portée constitutionnelle ni effet dans les champs de compétence provinciaux. À cet égard, la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982 va beaucoup plus loin, reconnaissant, entre autres, certains droits à caractère collectif et la légitimité des mesures d’accès à l’égalité (affirmative action). Ainsi, l’article 15 (1), par exemple, stipule que:«Laloinefait acception de personne et s’applique également à tous, et tous ont droit à la même protection et au même bénéfice de la loi, indépendamment de toute discrimination, notamment des discriminations fondées sur la race, l’origine nationale ou ethnique, la couleur, la religion, le sexe, l’âge ou les déficiences mentales ou physiques », tandis que le paragraphe (2) du même article exempte expressément les mesures visant à « améliorer » la situation des groupes des effets restrictifs des dispositions relatives à l’égalité formelle7. L’article 27 consacre le principe du multiculturalisme de la société canadienne alors que l’article 28 précise que la Charte s’applique également aux hommes et aux femmes8. De plus, ses articles 16 à 20 consacrent la nature bilingue du pays et l’article 23 garantit les droits à l’éducation dans la langue maternelle des membres des minorités linguistiques. Tandis que la Loi canadienne sur les droits de la personne donne lieu à peu d’activisme juridique en ce qui a trait à la défense des droits civils, la Charte inaugure un important processus de révision judiciaire. Mis à part les cas relevant du Code criminel qu’on attendait de régler avec l’entrée en vigueur de la Charte, les mouvements sociaux, tout particulièrement, choisiront de soumettre aux tribunaux diverses questions touchant les droits à incidence collective, comme ceux des femmes et des minorités. Pour faciliter ce processus, le Secrétariat d’État créera la Commission des droits de la personne qui subventionnera les groupes désireux d’emprunter la voie judiciaire pour faire reconnaître leurs droits. Jusqu’en 1992, le gouvernement canadien finance aussi un programme de contestation judiciaire dont le budget de plus de 8 millions de dollars servira à appuyer financièrement « la contestation devant les tribunaux judiciaires de causes types reliées, entre autres, aux litiges de nature linguistique » (1991 : 1). Ce programme soutenait aussi les causes touchant le droit des groupes (femmes, autochtones, personnes handicapées et minorités visibles) à l’égalité.

140 Les mouvements sociaux et la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés

De plus, certains groupes créent leur propre fonds pour « financer des contestations découlant de la Charte » (Knopff et Morton, 1986 : 175) et intervenir dans des causes types afin de faire avancer la jurisprudence dans ces dossiers9. Signalons, entre autres, l’Association canadienne pour les libertés civiles, le Comité canadien d’action sur le statut de la femme (CCA), l’Association nationale des femmes et du droit (ANFD), le Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF). Pour leur part, les juges, sous le nouveau régime de 1982, ont eu à prendre des décisions importantes en ce qui a trait, par exemple, au choix en matière d’avortement (Morgentaler, 1988), à la Loi 101 au Québec (Brown, 1990), ou à la gestion scolaire en milieu francophone minoritaire (Mahé, 1990). Manifestement, la Charte a poussé les mouvements sociaux sur la voie de l’activisme juridique et du changement institutionnel. Elle a aussi eu pour effet de les sortir du modèle traditionnel de gestionnaires de la revendication sociale pour devenir des gestionnaires de droits qui favorisent l’avènement de titulaires de nouveaux droits et donc de nouveaux protagonistes constitutionnels. Or, si la sociologie s’est peu intéressée à ce phénomène, des interprètes de la Charte n’ont pas tardé à faire connaître leurs vues sur ses effets. En se demandant si la Charte contribuait à l’américanisation de la société, à la prédominance des droits individuels sur les droits collectifs et à la remise en cause de la démocratie politique, ils ont indiqué des pistes de réflexion fécondes pour une sociologie des mouvements sociaux qui tente de comprendre le politique. D’où l’intérêt que nous leur portons.

La Charte et ses interprétations Trois types d’interprétation de la Charte et de sa portée sur les groupes et, de façon plus large, sur le développement de la société canadienne, soit la citoyenneté méritent d’être examinés. Un premier discours, formulé par Michael Mandel (1989) et la gauche canadienne-anglaise, juge que la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982 relève d’actions non démocratiques servant à dépolitiser le débat sur les questions sociales. Elle aurait pour effet de réduire la politique au juridique accélérant ainsi le mouvement, déjà en cours, d’américanisation de la société canadienne. Un deuxième, tenu par Gilles Bourque (1990) et les nationalistes québécois, estime que la Charte consacre la prédominance des droits individuels sur les droits collectifs, ce qui accentuerait également l’américanisation de la société canadienne et renverrait à l’histoire toute vision de la nation fondée sur la communauté. Une troisième approche, adoptée par Alan Cairns (1986) et une certaine élite libérale canadienne-anglaise, concentre son analyse sur les objectifs initiaux de la Charte : la protection des droits des citoyennes et des citoyens et l’épanouissement de la nation canadienne (le « nation-building »). Les deux premières interprétations interpellent les mouvements sociaux parce qu’elles supposent que la Charte les condamne à participer à l’américanisation de la société canadienne. Aux yeux des tenants de la troisième interprétation, la Charte favoriserait plutôt « la reconnaissance de clivages sociaux au pays à partir desquels la capacité de la Charte à contribuer à l’unité canadienne semble plus difficile à réaliser que prévu. » En effet, selon Cairns, « du point de vue de la démocratie, le problème est le suivant : la politisation des divisions sociales, jointe à la multiplication des différentiations typiques de la société moderne, érode notre identité de citoyens préoccupés par la totalité de la société » (1986 : 92). De plus, le rapprochement de l’État et des groupes pour structurer l’action de ces derniers mène à l’établissement d’un rapport patron-

141 IJCS / RIÉC client, ce qui rend encore plus difficile l’identification de ces groupes à une vision commune de la citoyenneté. Ainsi, les objectifs politiques de la Charte interpellent les mouvements sociaux dans la mesure où ils seraient, selon cette dernière interprétation, devenus la cinquième roue du carosse. Doit-on conclure que les mouvements sociaux entravent la réalisation des objectifs d’unité nationale ou d’une redéfinition de la citoyenneté au Canada ? La thèse de Cairns porte à réfléchir sur cette dernière question, et c’est ici qu’une sociologie des mouvements sociaux devrait permettre de la valider ou non. De surcroît, elle pourra aussi se demander si les mouvements sont l’objet d’une manipulation politique au profit d’une américanisation de la société ou encore des besoins de légitimité de l’État canadien. Nous allons, dans les pages qui suivent, tenter de jeter un certain éclairage théorique sur ces questions.

L’hypothèse de la judiciarisation de la politique La première hypothèse, nous l’avons déjà dit, a été formulée largement par l’intelligentsia canadienne-anglaise (de gauche), notamment par Michael Mandel, auteur du livre The Charter of Rights and the Legalization of Politics of Canada (1989). Selon lui, la Charte est une initiative non démocratique relevant d’un mouvement qui vise la judiciarisation de la politique au Canada et qui est, de surcroît, au service du plus fort. Ainsi, les individus et les groupes concernés par la Charte deviendraient des victimes de garanties constitutionnelles qui devaient, en principe, les protéger contre les abus des plus forts. Évidemment, nous ne pouvons nier le fait que la Charte encourage une certaine judiciarisation des débats politiques au Canada et l’avènement d’un gouvernement des juges qui peuvent désormais se substituer aux législateurs. Les juges interviennent dans les débats en vertu de leur autorité et du pouvoir qui leur est conféré, ce qui peut parfois inquiéter même dans les cas où ils décideraient en faveur des « plus faibles ». Mais à l’opposé des tenants de l’hypothèse de la judiciarisation, nous estimons que cette situation est antérieure à 1982. À titre d’exemple, de 1969 à 1988, le débat sur le droit des femmes en matière d’avortement a été fortement caractérisé par l’intervention des juges chargés d’interpréter la loi existante. Par contre, en 1988, le jugement de la Cour suprême du Canada dans l’affaire Morgentaler se démarque de cette tendance en déclarant la Loi sur l’avortement inconstitutionnelle. Ainsi, les juges renvoient aux femmes et aux hommes politiques la responsabilité de légiférer sur la question. Ils s’abstiennent également de recommandations en la matière, indiquant clairement à la classe politique leur refus d’assumer son rôle. Pour sa part, le gouvernement Mulroney tire profit du fait que ce soit les juges qui tranchent la question de l’avortement, évitant ainsi de se mettre à dos une partie de l’électorat. De fait, le débat sur le droit des femmes en cette matière illustre bien comment, au Canada, les législateurs et le gouvernement veulent confier aux juges le soin de décider de quel côté il faut pencher10 !De plus, le droit qui se projette comme un moyen de transformation sociale est ici perçu comme une échappatoire. Néanmoins, les questions qui hantent la société canadienne — avortement, droits linguistiques et équité—ainsi que les débats n’en sont pas pour autant dépolitisés et les mouvements démobilisés. Aussi, l’idée de la judiciarisation de la politique semble bien constituer un prétexte pour faire valoir une vision

142 Les mouvements sociaux et la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés

manichéenne du pouvoir : celle des « forts » contre les « faibles », celle du pouvoir juridique contre le pouvoir politique. Cependant, la critique selon laquelle la judiciarisation du politique se produirait au détriment du lien communautaire qui unit les membres d’un groupe ne manque pas d’intérêt (Thériault, 1988). Elle vise à comprendre l’incidence du droit sur le développement des communautés francophones et acadiennes du Canada tout en permettant de contextualiser le recours au droit au lieu de le dénoncer. Selon Thériault (1990), il faut reconnaître que les luttes judiciaires francophones pour le droit à l’éducation se situent dans la mouvance actuelle de l’individualisme en ce qu’elles libèrent « l’individu des pesanteurs du social » (1990 : 141). Cela lui permet d’entretenir une relation légale avec le monde plutôt qu’un rapport organique. Et plus une société se posera la question des droits, plus on assistera à un élargissement de son espace juridique11. Ainsi, le phénomène de la judiciarisation de la politique fait appel à une réflexion plus large sur le droit comme facteur de modernisation des sociétés. Cette analyse rejoint celle de Taylor (1986 : 253) selon qui on ne peut, en effet, nier la pertinence du droit ou des droits dans la société moderne. Il nous ramène néanmoins à la question de l’américanisation de la société canadienne en proposant de situer le droit dans le contexte de la démocratie. Le Canada, précise-t-il, est une société davantage fondée sur un modèle politique de participation que sur celui des droits individuels. Aussi, une société qui prône un modèle de droits individuels comme les États-Unis reconnaît aux groupes ou particuliers la possibilité d’affirmer leurs droits contre l’opinion de la majorité (1986 : 237). On doit donc conclure que le choix du droit comme moyen de faire avancer la situation des groupes sociaux défavorisés peut conduire à l’américanisation de la société. Or, il n’en demeure pas moins que l’utilisation qu’en ont fait, par exemple, les femmes et les minorités linguistiques a enfin permis d’actualiser des droits que la majorité reconnaissait en principe.

Des droits qui s’affrontent La question de la judiciarisation de la politique déborde sur une autre interprétation selon laquelle la Charte conduit à renforcer la prédominance des droits individuels sur les droits collectifs. Cette idée, soutenue tout particulièrement par les nationalistes québécois, a été formulée principalement par Gilles Bourque (1990) puis étudiée par Robert Vandycke (1990). Selon Bourque, « la Charte tend à provoquer une véritable régression des aspects communautaires de la représentation du monde12 » (1990 : 158), ajoutant qu’elle produit « un net rétrécissement de la communauté nationale minoritaire » (159). Pourtant, certaines de ses dispositions, notamment celles portant sur l’action positive (affirmative action) reconnaissent l’existence de groupes même s’il est vrai qu’elle n’enchâsse pas le droit des Québécoises et des Québécois à l’autodétermination, lequel correspondrait à un droit collectif. Mais la Charte ne peut être réduite, comme dans le cas des jugements par les dispositions de la Loi 101 en matière d’affichage, à certaines interprétations de juges qui auraient accordé la priorité au droit individuel d’afficher en anglais sur les droits collectifs des Québécoises et des Québécois. L’accent que le Québec met sur les droits collectifs peut donner l’impression que celui-ci est prêt à sacrifier les droits individuels de sa population alors que la Charte

143 IJCS / RIÉC québécoise des droits et libertés reconnaît elle aussi des droits individuels à ses citoyennes et citoyens. L’interprétation selon laquelle la Charte fait prédominer les droits individuels sur les droits collectifs participe elle aussi d’une vision manichéenne du pouvoir : celle des Canadiens anglais contre les Québécois francophones et vice-versa. La distinction entre les deux notions de droits individuels et de droits collectifs relève plutôt de la confusion. On mélange, comme l’écrit Marie (1988 : 191-200), « le titulaire des droits de l’homme » et « les conditions de réalisation de ceux-ci en réduisant le sujet au mode d’exercise de ses droits ». Droits individuels et droits collectifs ne sont pas nécessairement des synonymes mais, selon Marie, « le droit des peuples à l’auto-détermination a souvent été présenté, tant lors de l’élaboration de pactes qu’après l’adoption de ces instruments, comme la condition indispensable du respect des droits de l’homme » (194). Nous pourrions citer longuement ce spécialiste des droits de la personne qui a réussi à clarifier les ambiguïtés « sémantiques » et « méthodologiques » qui caractérisent les notions de droits individuels et de droits collectifs13. En effet, le Québec reconnaît dans sa propre Charte la question des droits individuels et le Canada, nous l’avons vu précédemment, fait de même pour les droits collectifs. D’ailleurs, l’actualisation des droits, que l’on parle de droits à portée individuelle ou collective, est identique dans les deux cas. Tout comme Thériault (1990), nous insistons sur le fait que les droits, qu’ils soient individuels ou collectifs, remettent en question l’espace de la communauté et ses fondements historico-génétiques, et c’est en cela qu’ils sont intéressants. Le droit permet aux individus de se projeter dans l’avenir à partir d’une discussion sur leur devenir et de participer à une communauté ou à des mouvements sur une base volontaire. Ainsi, le droit rejoint les aspirations des mouvements sociaux d’une société qui vise l’autonomie individuelle et collective. Autrement, ils sont condamnés à fonder leur appartenance au monde sur une communauté empirique et inscrite dans une autre réalité, notamment biologique, alors que le rejet du naturalisme est justement un de leur cheval de bataille14. Comme cas d’espèce, le conflit entre francophones et anglophones correspond plutôt à une incompatibilité d’idéologies politiques justifiée par la référence symbolique aux droits individuels par rapport aux droits collectifs qu’à des réalités nécessairement contradictoires15. Il faudrait voir davantage le jeu de l’idéologie dans le contexte de la Charte afin de mieux comprendre pourquoi des groupes peuvent se prévaloir de certains droits alors que cela est impossible pour d’autres, comme c’est le cas pour les Québécoises et les Québécois par rapport au Canada16.SilaCharte contribue à la dépolitisation des débats, elle révèle d’emblée sa nature politique. Par contre, affirmer qu’elle aurait été conçue, comme le veut le sens commun nationaliste, en vue de remettre le Québec à sa place dans la Confédération relève autant de la théorie de la conspiration que de dire qu’elle ne sert que le droit du plus fort. On confond l’effet avec la cause.

Vers une nation éclatée ? La troisième interprétation fait porter son analyse sur les objectifs politiques de la Charte, soit la protection des droits et libertés des citoyennes et citoyens canadiens et le rafermissement de l’unité nationale. Alan Cairns, principalement, s’intéressera aux objectifs politiques de la Charte pour

144 Les mouvements sociaux et la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés constater que « les processus politiques complexes qui en ont permis l’émergence ont fait en sorte que maints clivages et divisions internes ont été reconnus, et parfois même stimulés » (1986 : 73). Et il ajoutera : ...ce qui surprend davantage, et qui révèle la politisation d’une gamme toujours plus étendue de clivages et d’identités, c’est la mesure avec laquelle la Charte complète sa reconnaissance de base de droits individuels en établissant des distinctions à l’égard d’un certain nombre de groupes particuliers, lesquels font l’objet d’une reconnaissance constitutionnelle spéciale. Cairns s’intéressera à la façon dont la Charte amorcera l’avènement d’un « mouvement social » des droits de la personne au Canada, mouvement dont l’influence risque, selon lui, de remettre en cause la réalisation de l’unité nationale. Ainsi, les mouvements sociaux seront-ils directement interpellés par les objectifs politiques de la Charte sur la question de la citoyenneté. Or, ils seront aussi, par le fait même, les premiers à être véritablement concernés par les attentes vis-à-vis l’État que la Charte contribuera à susciter chez les groupes en question. Entre autres, l’État devra participer à la mise en place de mesures visant à garantir le bien-être de certains groupes qui totalisent, par ailleurs, pratiquement 70 p. 100 de la population du pays. On intègrera de nouveaux groupes sociaux à l’État-providence, non seulement sur la base de leur situation socio-économique, mais sur celle de la reconnaissance de la nécessité de mesures spéciales visant à réparer des erreurs et à rompre avec la discrimination. Cette situation amènera Alan Cairns à conclure également que les mouvements sociaux se retrouveront dans un rapport de clients à patron par rapport à l’État (1986 : 75). Selon lui, la Charte aura contribué à l’avènement d’une plus grande proximité des groupes avec l’État et une plus grande intégration au processus bureaucratique. Devenus des professionnels de la négociation et de la consultation, les groupes s’installeront dans le rapport clients-patron au détriment de leur lien avec la communauté et ses membres. Le réseau associatif francophone est un bon exemple d’un mouvement propulsé dans la négociation et la consultation avec les gouvernements et qui, au détriment de leur base et de leur référence au développement communautaire, se muera en groupe d’intérêts. Au nom de la « participation », les groupes auront à évaluer des lois, des projets, des programmes. Ainsi, l’État garantira le financement d’une certaine bureaucratie d’expertes et d’experts détachés de leur base et bénéficiera du fait que le rapport clients-patron contribuera à maintenir les clivages entre les groupes. En effet, chacun viendra défendre ses intérêts particuliers et non une vision commune de la nation. Nous confirmons donc les inquiétudes de Cairns. Par contre, les groupes gagneront de ne pas avoir à se justifier politiquement. Ils représentent, et cela semble suffire pour engager le dialogue avec l’État. Or, qui parle et à quel titre ou au nom de quel « nous » ? Qui parmi les organisations nationales des groupes de femmes au Canada sont les plus représentatives de la population féminine canadienne ? En quoi, les regroupements autochtones sont-ils représentatifs de leur base ? Quelle est la place du processus démocratique et de la représentation au sein des mouvements sociaux ? Ces questions semblent plus ou moins importantes. Les groupes sont, en partie, devenus des groupes d’intérêts dont on ne remet pas en cause la représentativité, car, en bout de ligne, ils confèrent une légitimité à

145 IJCS / RIÉC l’État. Or, si la démocratisation de la société est inévitablement accompagnée d’une certaine bureaucratisation (Turner, 1986), ce processus ne se déroule-t- il pas au détriment d’une reconstruction des mouvements sociaux comme lieu de socialisation politique (Urry, 1981) ? La bureaucratie devient une forme de vie en soi, détachée de son contexte, d’où la démobilisation des groupes et l’avènement d’une oligarchie de militants professionnels. D’où aussi la vulnérabilité de ces groupes devant l’État. En résumé, largement intégrés à l’État, les mouvements sociaux semblent contraints à ne rien faire d’autre que de négocier, voire de surveiller le processus de reconnaissance de leurs droits. L’État devient un mal pour le meilleur ou pour le pire et cela risque même d’avoir une portée sur la parole politique des groupes, notamment sur leur capacité de proposer une vision commune de la nation.

Citoyenneté et mouvements sociaux : une autre hypothèse Selon Alan Cairns, nous l’avons vu plus haut, le rapprochement entre l’État et la société civile vient exacerber les différences nationales et risque de porter atteinte à l’unité nationale. La Charte aurait contribué à politiser différentes formes d’identité constitutives du tissu social canadien, mais peu de groupes seraient en mesure de donner un contenu universel à leur situation particulière. « Du point de vue de la démocratie, affirme-t-il, le problème est le suivant : la politisation des divisions sociales, jointe à la multiplication des différentiations typiques de la société moderne, érode notre identité de citoyens préoccupés par la totalité de la société » (1986 : 92). Bref, la Charte entraînerait une sorte de balkanisation des spécificités sociales. Par ailleurs, Cairns (1992) reconnaît que l’on ne peut plus négliger les intérêts des nouveaux « citoyens de la Charte », — le cas des francophones hors du Québec qui insistent sur le fait qu’ils ont des intérêts divergents d’avec ceux du Québec est ici pertinent. Quoiqu’il en soit, on voit mal pourquoi cette situation empêcherait les mouvements sociaux de se projeter politiquement dans une nouvelle définition de la citoyenneté ? La sociologie des mouvements sociaux n’a-t-elle pas réussi à démontrer qu’ils constituent des espaces de rassemblement (Melucci, 1983), de discussion et de politisation (Keane, 1988; Laclau et Mouffe, 1985) et non pas de simples extensions des gouvernements ? Aussi ne faudrait-il pas voir comment cette dimension de leur réalité est ou n’est pas (ou n’est plus) à l’oeuvre dans le rapport des groupes à l’espace politique. C’est ici que s’impose aussi une autre réflexion sur l’État et le droit pour approfondir l’analyse des mouvements sociaux comme actrices, acteurs constitutionnels participant, à ce titre, au débat politique sur la citoyenneté au lieu de jouer un rôle plus passif au niveau du processus d’institutionnalisation de leurs revendications. Notre hypothèse est que le droit a fait avancer la cause des groupes et, contrairement aux hypothèses de l’américanisation de la société et de la difficulté du « nation-building », que les mouvements sociaux contribuent plutôt à un renouvellement du débat sur la citoyenneté. À titre d’exemple, le droit de gestion scolaire accordé aux francophones vivant en milieu minoritaire a permis de faire passer l’importance de la culture dans le droit (Bastarache, 1986). Aussi, les interventions du Women’s Legal and Education Action Fund ont permis d’exposer les inégalités entre les hommes et les femmes dans les jugements des différents tribunaux (Razack, 1992). Grâce à la fonction de socialisation politique des mouvements sociaux, nous assistons en vérité à l’avènement d’un discours sociologique dans le droit qui

146 Les mouvements sociaux et la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés

force la reconnaissance de réalités collectives et montre que tous les groupes n’ont pas également accès à la citoyenneté. Ce discours met à nu le pouvoir de domination d’un groupe sur l’autre sans pour autant tomber dans l’essentialisme ou le génétique. Concurremment, le droit oblige la communauté ou le groupe à se départir de ses fondements historico- génétiques, donc à dénaturaliser le social. Rappelons-le, le droit, nous dit Thériault, « libère l’individu des pesanteurs du social » (1990 : 141); il lui permet d’entretenir une relation légale et non plus seulement organique avec le monde. Ainsi, les groupes deviennent des représentants de catégories politiques et de sujets agissant au sein de l’espace public. Même s’ils sont aussi toujours un peu l’« autre », ces sujets s’affirment puisqu’ils résistent à la totalisation17. Les mouvements sociaux participent à la construction d’un « nous » articulé autour d’un principe d’équivalents démocratiques, c’est-à- dire d’un principe qui reconnaît l’égalité de chaque élément. Chantal Mouffe (1992), à qui nous empruntons l’expression d’équivalents démocratiques définit celui-ci comme « un principe d’articulation qui touche l’agent dans ses différentes situations de sujet en même temps qu’il lui permettrait une pluralité d’allégeance particulière et la liberté individuelle18. » À travers ce principe, une nouvelle vision « commune » de la citoyenneté respecterait la pluralité des groupes et des individus. Il n’y aurait donc plus d’identité qui dominerait l’ensemble des identités. Nous n’avons pas le choix, semble-t-il. Pour contrer ce que Cairns appelle une balkanisation des particularismes sociaux encouragée par l’État, il faut repenser la citoyenneté commune à partir de ce nouveau langage de « l’équivalence démocratique ». Autrement dit, si la citoyenneté sert à traduire notre appartenance à la société politique canadienne, elle devra s’articuler autour d’une nouvelle définition de l’égalité, qui doit se fonder sur une reconnaissance des groupes. Et si l’État exerce un certain contrôle sur les groupes par le truchement du processus de négociation et de bureaucratisation, rien n’indique qu’il puisse orienter de façon décisive le débat sur la citoyenneté. En somme, à notre avis, la Charte donne enfin la possibilité aux Canadiennes et aux Canadiens de se retrouver autour d’un ensemble de valeurs communes redéfinissant la problématique de l’égalité sans pour autant tomber dans l’essentialisme et le génétisme ni entraîner l’américanisation de la société. Ce discours, les mouvements sociaux en sont les principaux porte-parole, et la légitimité qu’ils ont gagnée depuis 1982 leur permet de l’exprimer sur la scène politique. Certes, il est simultanément restreint par le jeu politique et l’omniprésence de l’État dans la gestion de leurs droits, ce qui montre à quel point le changement est un processus complexe qui n’est pas régi par la seule volonté des groupes ou de l’État. Ainsi, l’analyse du versant proprement politique de la Charte nous oblige à relativiser ou à contextualiser davantage la capacité des mouvements à participer au changement sans pour autant tomber dans le volontarisme des acteurs ou le déterminisme des structures. La sociologie des mouvements sociaux a tout à gagner d’un passage par l’analyse du politique. Or, des analyses de la Charte que nous proposent les Cairns, Mandel, etc., aucune ne nous permet de voir comment la Charte est porteuse d’avenir pour la société canadienne. Le pessimisme aurait-il plus de crédibilité que l’optimisme, ou est-ce justement la frontière entre la sociologie et la politique qui fait que les uns s’occupent trop de la volonté des acteurs et les autres, des forces incontrôlables ? En fait, c’est à une étude du jeu d’équilibre entre le juridique et

147 IJCS / RIÉC le politique, les mouvements sociaux et l’État, la socialisation et la bureaucratisation que nous sommes aujourd’hui conviés. Alors que le contexte politique participe à la structuration de l’action des groupes, l’étude du jeu d’équilibre entre l’État et le droit permettrait de voir si les acteurs peuvent jouer un rôle dans le débat sur la citoyenneté.

Conclusion Nous avons tenté dans ce texte de passer en revue les différentes interprétations de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés pour déterminer leur apport à l’analyse des mouvements sociaux actuels, nous arrêtant à chacune d’elles. Ainsi, nous avons commenté les thèmes de la judiciarisation de la société, de son américanisation, de la prédominance des droits individuels et de l’éclatement d’une vision commune de la nation. Notre analyse critique nous a aussi conduite à une autre interprétation de la Charte selon laquelle la question des droits collectifs pouvait nous porter à repenser favorablement la question de la citoyenneté. Quant à la sociologie des mouvements sociaux, elle acquiert, de ce passage par l’analyse politique, une approche dynamique et complexe de la place du politique, notamment de l’État et du droit, dans la structuration de l’action. Elle doit s’ouvrir au droit qui s’ajoute aux modes d’action des groupes et leur donne une relative efficacité malgré l’omniprésence de l’État. La sociologie des mouvements sociaux doit aussi examiner davantage la question de l’égalité dans ses rapports avec la citoyenneté : elle a tout à gagner en reconnaissant que les mouvements vivent à l’heure des droits et des choix, bref, qu’ils ont eux aussi droit à une certaine légèreté de l’être !

Notes * Une première version de ce texte a été présentée en 1991, à Madrid, au colloque « Le Canada, un défi ». Nous tenons à remercier Anne-Andrée Denault, Carole Dion, Martine Perrault, Marie-Blanche Tahon ainsi que les évaluateurs anonymes pour leurs commentaires et suggestions de révisions. Nous remercions aussi Danielle Juteau pour ses précieux conseils. Cet article a pu être rédigé grâce à une subvention du Conseil de recherche en sciences humaines du Canada. 1. Un des évaluateurs de ce texte nous a fait remarquer qu’une analyse de la littérature portant sur les mouvements sociaux dans d’autres pays « pourrait peut-être laisser entrevoir que ce qu’on impute à la Charte sont des phénomènes très semblables à ce qu’on retrouve ailleurs. » On pourrait aussi poser la question autrement et demander pourquoi, au Canada, il a fallu l’avènement de la Charte pour que l’on assiste à certains changements, certes en marche avant 1982, alors que dans d’autres pays, les mouvements sociaux n’ont pas eu besoin d’invoquer un tel document pour faire avancer leur cause ? Une sociologie comparée des trajectoires des mouvements sociaux dans des pays qui possèdent une Charte et d’autres qui n’en ont pas permettrait de vérifier cette hypothèse. Malheureusement, nous ne pouvons pas nous consacrer à cette question dans ce texte. 2. En anglais, le terme legalization traduit bien l’idée selon laquelle le politique est soumis au juridique. En français, nous utiliserons le néologisme « judiciarisation » pour exprimer la même chose. 3. Claude Lefort, dans L’invention démocratique (1981), propose une réflexion des plus pertinentes sur la question, sauf qu’elle n’a pas vraiment réussi à trouver sa place dans les analyses sur les mouvements sociaux. 4. À titre d’exemple, en 1968, le gouvernement fédéral mettait sur pied un programme au sein du Secrétariat d’État en vue de contribuer au développement des communautés francophones vivant en milieu minoritaire. À la même époque, le ministère de l’Emploi et de l’Immigration implantait des programmes devant contribuer au développement communautaire. Les groupes sociaux ont fortement bénéficié de ces programmes. Nous

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pensons ici aux groupes de femmes qui ont réussi par ce moyen à embaucher des animatrices sociales qui les ont aidées à s’organiser, à faire du recrutement et à se mobiliser. Ces quelques exemples montrent que l’État n’était pas qu’au service de ses propres intérêts « absolutistes ». Il a contribué à la mobilisation des groupes au sein de la société civile. Qu’il ait récupéré les groupes comme le veut le sens commun est une autre question qu’il ne faut pas négliger. Mais alors que le sens commun veut que la question de la récupération ou de l’intégration soit perçue comme la cause ultime de l’engagement étatique dans le changement social, la sociologie des mouvements sociaux devrait proposer une analyse plus dynamique qui articule le rapport État-société dans toute sa complexité. 5. Nous n’avons qu’à penser à la façon dont la Commission royale d’enquête sur le bilinguisme et le biculturalisme au Canada (Commission Laurendeau-Dunton, 1963) a mobilisé la population canadienne de même que la Commission royale d’enquête sur le statut de la femme au Canada (Commission Bird, 1971), pour prendre conscience du rôle important joué par les gouvernements dans le développement des mouvements. Il est maintenant courant de voir les théoriciennes du mouvement des femmes se rapporter à la Commission Bird comme catalyseur du féminisme au Canada. Voir notamment Jeri Wine et Janice Ristock (1991). 6. On pourrait objecter qu’une sociologie des groupes d’intérêts réalise déjà ce type d’analyse. En réalité, une telle sociologie ne s’intéresse pas au développement de l’action mais à la capacité d’influence de certains groupes sur le processus de formulation des politiques ou de l’opinion publique. À l’opposé, une sociologie qui analysera le développement de l’action devra plutôt faire apparaître la situation qui contribue à l’action et voir comment les groupes sont différemment situés et motivés politiquement. Elle devra s’intéresser au déroulement de l’action et voir si les résultats sont ce que les groupes escomptaient. 7. L’article 15 (2) se lit comme suit : Le paragraphe (1) n’a pas pour effet d’interdire les lois, programmes ou activités destinés à améliorer la situation d’individus ou de groupes défavorisés, notamment du fait de leur race, de leur origine nationale ou ethnique, de leur couleur, de leur religion, de leur sexe, de leur âge ou de leurs déficiences mentales ou physiques. 8. Cette disposition a été incluse à la suite d’une campagne intensive de démarchage politique de la part des groupes de femmes auprès du gouvernement et des partis politiques. Cette revendication faisait partie d’un ensemble de garanties que les féministes n’ont pas pu décrocher, notamment la garantieà«laliberté de reproduction » ainsi que la protection contre toute discrimination fondée sur le statut marital et l’orientation sexuelle (Hosek, 1983). 9. Pour plus de détails, voir l’étude du groupe LEAF par Sherene Razack dans Canadian Feminism and the Law. The Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund and the Pursuit of Equality. Toronto, Second Story Press. 10. Pour plus de détails, voir l’ouvrage de Janine Brodie, Shelley A.M. Gavigan et Jane Jenson, The Politics of Abortion, Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1992. 11. Le phénomène de différentiation sociale a été largement étudié par Talcott Parsons, Le système des sociétés modernes, Paris, Dunod, 1973. Il a vu ce mouvement bien en place dans le système américain, système qui était, selon lui, le plus moderne. Il accorde une place centrale à l’individu et fonctionne de façon autonome selon le mode du pluralisme social et le développement de sphères précises de compétence : juridique, politique, sociale, économique, culturelle. D’où l’équation entre États-Unis et modernité, bien que ce phénomène se pose pour l’ensemble des systèmes sociaux qui épousent ce mode de fonctionnement. D’où aussi l’idée selon laquelle la société canadienne s’américaniserait continuellement. 12. Voir aussi, sur cette même question, J.-Yvon Thériault dans « Individualisme, nationalisme et universalisme : l’affaire Durham », communication présentée au colloque Québec-Brésil, à Montréal, 1991. 13. Voir Marie (1988 : 195) : Si l’on peut éventuellement parler « de droits individuels », c’est seulement en raison de « l’individualité » qui caractérise le sujet des droits de l’homme, et non parce que ceux-ci se trouveraient restreints à une sphère imaginée comme un vase clos où l’individu évoluerait dans un superbe isolement... Au sens strict, il n’existe sans doute pas plus de « droits individuels » qu’il n’existe de « droits collectifs » en matière de droits de l’homme, ou plutôt

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tous les droits sont « individuels » par leur titulaire et tous sont « collectifs » par leur processus de reconnaissance, leur mode d’exercice et leur méthode de protection. 14. Pour plus détails, voir Danielle Juteau, « Visions partielles, visions partiales : visions (des) minoritaires en sociologie », Sociologie et sociétés, vol. XIII, no 2, 1981, 33-49. 15. Sur cette question, nous rejoignons Yvon Thériault dans « Individualisme, nationalisme et universalisme », op. cit. 16. L’entente constitutionnelle de Charlottetown, rejetée par la population canadienne le 26 octobre 1992, montre à nouveau la réalité de cette incompatibilité de vision entre le Canada qui revendique l’égalité des provinces et le Québec qui se reconnaît comme le pôle central d’affirmation de l’existence politique d’une société particulière francophone. 17. Pour Hannah Arendt, le sujet est aussi un paria soit, « l’irréductible, le non assimilable, l’anti-conformiste, celui dont l’étrangeté résiste à l’anonymat du social » (Colin, 1986 : 60). En tant que paria (Arendt était juive), le sujet ne peut que s’affirmer comme autre (58); « sujet qui s’il n’est pas auteur de ses actes n’en est pas moins l’agent, ou l’acteur » (58). 18. Notre traduction de:«Itisanarticulating principle that affects the different subject positions of the social agent while allowing for a plurality of specific allegiances and for the respect of individual liberty » (1992 : 32). Cette idée rappelle aussi les réflexions de Georges Gurvitch sur le pluralisme juridique dans Déclaration des droits sociaux, 1944.

Bibliographie Adamson, Nancy, Linda Briskin et Margaret McPhail. Feminist Organizing for Change. The Contemporary Women’s Movement in Canada. Toronto : Oxford University Press, 1988. Arendt, Hannah. Condition de l’homme moderne. Paris : Calmann-Lévy, 1961. Bastarache, Michel. Les droits linguistiques au Canada. Montréal : Éditions Yvon Blais, 1986. Bourque, Gilles. « La sociologie, l’État, la nation », Cahiers de recherche sociologique,no14, 1990. Brodie, Janine, Shelley A.M. Gavigan et Jane Jenson. The Politics of Abortion. Toronto : Oxford University Press, 1992. Brodsky, Gwen et Shelagh Day. La Charte canadienne et les droits des femmes, progrès ou recul? Ottawa : Conseil consultatif canadien sur la situation de la femme, 1989. Cairns, Alan C. « L’État omniprésent : les relations entre l’État et la société au Canada » dans Keith Banting, L’État et la société : le Canada dans une optique comparative. Ottawa : ministère des Approvisionnements et Services, 1986. ______. Charter versus Federalism. The Dilemmas of Constitutional Reform. Montréal et Kingston : McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992. Castoriadis, Cornélius. L’institution imaginaire de la société. Paris : Seuil, 1975. ______. Le contenu du socialisme. Paris : Éditions Générales, 1979. Colin, Françoise. « Du privé et du public », Les cahiers du GRIF, no 33, 1986. Ferry, Luc et Alain Renaut. La pensée 68. Paris : Gallimard, 1986. Fudge, Judy. « The Public\Private Distinction: The Limits of the Use of Charter Litigation To Further Feminist Struggles », Osgoode Hall Law Journal, no 25, 1987. Gagnon, Gabriel et Marcel Rioux. À propos d’autogestion et d’émancipation. Québec : IQRC, 1988. Gotell, Lise. The Canadian Women’s Movement, Equality Rights and the Charter. Ottawa : ICREF, 1990. Gurvitch, Georges. Déclaration des droits sociaux. Paris : Éditions de la Maison Française, 1944. Hégédus, Zsuzsa. « Social Movements and Social Change in Self-Creative Society: New Civil Initiatives in the International Arena », International Sociology. vol. 4, no 1, 1989. Juteau, Danielle. « Visions partielles, visions partiales : visions (des) minoritaires en sociologie », Sociologie et Sociétés, vol. XIII, no 2, 1981. Keane, John. Civil Society and the State. London : Verso, 1988. Knopff, Rainer et F.L. Morton. Charter Politics. Scarborough : Nelson Canada, 1992. ______. « Le développement national et la Charte » dans Alain C. Cairns et Cynthia Williams, Le constitutionnalisme, la citoyenneté et la société au Canada. Ottawa : Approvisionnements et Services, 1986. Laclau, Ernesto et Chantal Mouffe. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London : Verso, 1985. Magnusson, Warren. « Critical Social Movements: Decentering the State » dans Alain G. Gagnon et James Bickerton, Canadian Politics. Peterborough : Broadview Press, 1990. Maheu, Louis. « Les mouvements de base et la lutte contre l’appropriation étatique du tissu social », Sociologie et Sociétés, vol. 15, no 1, 1983. ______. « Mouvements sociaux et politiques. Les enjeux d’une articulation entre grandes problématiques du politique » dans Gérard Boismenu, Pierre Hamel et Georges Labica, Les

150 Les mouvements sociaux et la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés

formes modernes de la démocratie. Montréal/Paris : L’Harmattan/Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1992. Mandel, Michael. The Charter of Rights and the Legalization of Politics in Canada. Toronto : Wall & Thompson Inc, 1989. Marie, Jean-Bernard. « Relations entre droits des peuples et droits de l’homme : distinctions sémantiques et méthodologiques », L’annuaire canadien des droits de la personne. Ottawa, Université d’Ottawa, no 5, 1988. Melucci, Alberto. « Mouvements sociaux, mouvements post-politiques », Revue internationale d’action communautaire, 10/50, 1983. Morton, F.L. « The Political Impact of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom », Canadian Journal of Political Science, 20 : 31, 1987. Mouffe, Chantal. « Citizenship and Political Identity », October, no 61, 1992. Ng, Roxana, Gillian Walker et Jacob Muller (éd.). Community Organization and the Canadian State. Toronto : Garamond Press, 1990. Parsons, Talcott. Le système des sociétés modernes. Paris : Dunod, 1973. Pentney, William F. « Les principes généraux d’interprétation de la Charte » dans Charte canadienne des droits et libertés,2e édition (sous la dir. de Beaudoin et Ratushny). Montréal : Wilson et Lafleur ltée, 1989. Programme de constestation judiciaire. Rapport annuel. Ottawa, 1991. Razack, Sherene. Canadian Feminism and the Law. The Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund and the Pursuit of Equality. Toronto : Second Story Press, 1991. Russell, Peter H. Leading Constitutional Decisions,3eédition. Ottawa, Carleton University Press, 1982. ______. « The Political Purposes of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms », Canadian Bar Review, 61 : 30, 1983. Skocpol, Theda. États et révolutions sociales. Paris : Fayard, 1985. Taylor, Charles. « Des avenirs possibles : la légitimité, l’identité et l’aliénation au Canada à la fin du XXe siècle » dans Le constitutionnalisme, la citoyenneté et la société au Canada (sous la dir. de A. Cairns et C. Williams). Ottawa : ministère des Approvisionnements et Services, 1986. Thériault, J.-Yvon. « Individualisme, nationalisme et universalisme : l’affaire Durham », communication présentée dans le cadre du colloque Québec-Brésil, UQAM, 1991. ______. « Lourdeur et légèreté du devenir de la francophonie hors Québec », 1990. ______. « Pays réel, pays légal : le fait minoritaire entre la communauté et le droit », communication présentée dans le cadre du colloque annuel de l’ACSALF, Université de Moncton, 1988. ______. « Mouvements sociaux et nouvelle culture politique », Politique, vol. 12, 1987. Touraine, Alain. La production de la société. Paris : Seuil, 1974. ______. Le retour de l’acteur. Paris : Fayard, 1984. Touraine, Alain, François Dubet, Zsuzsa Hégédus et Michel Wieviorka. Lutte étudiante. Paris : Seuil, 1978. ______. La prophétie anti-nucléaire. Paris : Seuil, 1980. ______. Le Pays contre l’État. Paris : Seuil, 1981. Turner, Brian. Citizenship and Capitalism. The Debate Over Reformism. London : Allen & Unwin, 1986. Urry, John. The Anatomy of Capitalist Societies. The Economy, Civil Society and the State. New Jersey, Humanities Press, 1981. Vandycke, Robert. « La Charte constitutionnelle et les droits économiques, sociaux et culturels », L’annuaire canadien des droits de la personne. Ottawa : Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa, 1990. Wieviorka, Michel. L’espace du racisme. Paris : Seuil, 1991. Wine, Jeri et Janice Ristock. Women and Social Change. Feminist Activism in Canada. Toronto, James Lorimer, 1991.

151 Andrew D. Heard

Québec Courts and the Canadian Charter of Rights*

Abstract Many Québécois initially viewed the Canadian Charter of Rights with hostility, since it was part of the 1982 Constitution Act enacted over the objections of the Québec government and legislature. This paper studies the subsequent treatment of the Canadian Charter in the reported decisions of Québec’s Appeal Court and Superior Court in order to examine whether the Québécois have treated the Charter in any manner remarkably different than that found in other jurisdictions. The results demonstrate that Québec litigants have frequently relied on the Canadian Charter, and that the reception given to it by Québec judges falls within comparable patterns seen elsewhere.

Résumé À l’origine, nombre de Québécois furent hostiles à la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés parce qu’elle faisait partie intégrante de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982, promulguée en dépit des objections du gouvernement et de l’Assemblée nationale du Québec. Cet article examine les décisions publiées qui ont été rendues par la Cour d’appel et la Cour supérieure de la province dans des causes s’appuyant sur la Charte, afin de déterminer si les Québécois se sont comportés en cette matière d’une façon nettement différente des autres juridictions. Les résultats indiquent qu’au Québec, les plaideurs ont fréquemment invoqué la Charte et que les décisions judiciaires correspondent grosso modo à celles qui ont été prises par les autres tribunaux canadiens.

While the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is intended as a national rights document, it came into force without the consent of the Québec government, legislature or people. Indeed, the Québec legislature objected to the 1981 federal-provincial accord that led to the 1982 Canada Act, through which the Charter came into being.1 Once the Charter took effect, the Parti Québécois quickly ushered a bill through the National Assembly that inserted a clause into all provincial legislation exploiting the Charter’s notwithstanding clause to the full. Every existing statute was declared to operate independently of Sections 2 and 7 through 15 of the Charter; a similar provision was later added to each new bill introduced prior to the 1985 election.2 The Charter was seen by many in Québec as an unwanted development foisted upon them by English Canada. With this hostile genesis in mind, an examination is long overdue of the subsequent treatment by the Québécois of the Canadian Charter of Rights. One might suspect that the citizens of Québec would turn their backs on this piece of “legal imperialism” from English Canada, or that Québec judges and

International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 7-8, Spring-Fall/Printemps-automne 1993 IJCS / RIÉC lawyers would try to develop a distinctive Québécois jurisprudence whenever the Canadian Charter was raised. After all, much has been made in many contexts of the fact that Québec operates under its own Code civil and that its traditional values purport to favour collective over individual interests. The fear of an antagonistic treatment of the Charter has fuelled much of the animosity towards a “distinct society” clause outside Québec since the 1987 Meech Lake Accord. The aim of this study is to provide an insight into how the Canadian Charter of Rights has fared in Québec through an empirical analysis of the reported judgments delivered by the Québec Court of Appeal and Superior Court between 1982 and 1989. To gain some appreciation of how the Canadian Charter has been employed in Québec, a variety of issues need to be explored. A broad view of the Charter’s use emerges from examining who has resorted to it and which particular rights have been raised. However, the best insight into the Canadian Charter’s reception in Québec is revealed by the way in which Québec judges have dealt with these claims. The use made of precedents from outside the province gives an indication of the acceptance of the national values that the Charter supposedly embodies. The interplay between the Canadian Charter and Québec’s own Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms may also reveal the extent to which the Canadian Charter’s interpretation in Québec is rooted in the province’s distinctive legal culture. While the focus of this paper remains Québec, references will be made where possible to research on approaches to the Charter in other jurisdictions. A previously compiled identical data set for Nova Scotia will be used to make many comparisons between these two provinces.3 The Québec experience will also be compared to the results of other studies on the Charter in Saskatchewan, the Supreme Court of Canada and Ontario, as well as one paper based on national data.4 This comparative perspective is crucial to understanding the significance of the Charter’s particular treatment in Québec. The manner in which the Canadian Charter has already been dealt with in Québec has an important bearing on current constitutional disputes. Much public debate has raged over whether the force of the Canadian Charter would in some way be diminished if references to Québec’s distinct society were included in the Constitution. Although uncertainties about future interpretations cannot be dispelled, evaluations of the impact of a distinct society clause should be based upon an understanding of how distinctively the Canadian Charter has already been treated in Québec.

Data Collection The data for this study were collected from 216 Appeal and Superior Court judgments published in two sources, the Québec Appeal Cases and the Recueil de jurisprudence du Québec, all delivered by the end of 1989.5 Data for a further 49 unreported Superior Court judgments were compiled from the reported decisions of their later appeals. A reliance upon published judgements poses particular problems for empirical research such as this, since only a subset of all judgments end up in print. A far smaller portion of Québec court decisions is published in comparison with other jurisdictions, presumably because of the smaller market for these expensive volumes. Most substantive Appeal Court judgments are published, but only a selection of trial decisions are reported. The inferential reliability of generalizing trends in Québec courtrooms from the sample used here depends

154 Québec Courts and the Canadian Charter of Rights upon all cases having a relatively equal chance of being reported; this is believed to be the case with the present sample set. The Société québécoise d’information juridique receives and reviews copies of all Superior Court judgments, and publishes those considered to be the most important. Although not ideal from a methodological viewpoint, this selection process does ensure that all judgments have had a chance to be included in the data set. Since the reported cases form the vast majority of those cited as precedents in later cases, this data set depicts the working reality of Québec courts. This study includes any case where an attempt was made to raise a claim under the Charter, regardless of whether the judge refused to consider the argument or decided the case on other grounds, since even these cases involve a judge’s discretionary reaction to the Charter. A case is deemed to result in a successful claim only if some remedy is granted. In a number of cases, judges find that a right has been infringed but offer no remedy—either because the infringement is saved by another section of the Charter or because the infringement is not serious enough to warrant a remedy; these are not regarded as successful claims in this study.

Players, Claims and Outcomes Despite hostile reactions by Québec’s provincial politicians to the Canadian Charter of Rights, little evidence indicates that this antipathy carries over into the Charter’s treatment in Québec courts. Québec litigants have frequently launched claims based on the Charter, with no overt reluctance by judges to consider or allow them. A broad cross section of Québec society has advanced claims under the Charter in a variety of contexts, and the overall rates of acceptance are consistent with those of Charter claims in other Canadian jurisdictions. Nevertheless, some variations emerge when the particular use made of the Charter in Québec is compared to other jurisdictions. One measure of the Canadian Charter’s general acceptance among the Québécois is the proportion of Québec cases that involve the Charter. The easiest way to estimate the relative use of the Charter is to calculate the percentage of reported Appeal Court decisions involving the Canadian Charter. The first 30 volumes of the Québec Appeal Cases, covering mid-1986 to 1989, contain 1,035 fully reported cases, 56 of which raise Charter claims.6 Thus, 5.4% of the Québec Appeal Court’s workload in this period involved Charter cases. This is somewhat less than the 8.4% of such cases heard by the Nova Scotia Appeal Court between 1986 and 1989. Given these low percentages it is difficult to infer whether the fewer Charter cases heard in Québec indicate a reluctance to use the Charter, or whether the mix of cases reflects different procedural rules; the Nova Scotia Appeal Court was unable to refuse leave to a substantial number of Charter appeals that were only minor variations of criminal cases it had already dealt with. A more difficult issue is the extent to which the blanket use of the notwithstanding clause has reduced the number of Charter cases in Québec. While some diminution must be attributed to this factor, a number of challenges to the use of the notwithstanding clause added to total number Charter cases in Québec. Nevertheless, the data do not indicate that Québec litigants were strikingly hesitant to raise the Canadian Charter. During the period from 1982 to 1989, the judges of Québec’s two most senior courts granted some remedy in 27.5% of all cases involving claims under the Canadian Charter. As with other jurisdictions, the Appeal Court accepted

155 IJCS / RIÉC fewer claims than did the superior trial court (24.4% and 29.1% respectively). These rates of acceptance are quite consistent with those of other jurisdictions, as indicated by the following table of the success rates of Charter claims in other appellate courts.

Table 17

Charter Success Rates

Appeal Court Percentage of Charter Cases with Successful Claims Québec – 1982-89 24.4 Nova Scotia – 1982-90 17.4 Ontario – 1982-89 25.7 Saskatchewan – 1982-87 19.6 Supreme Court of Canada – 1982-89 31.4

Thus, Québec judges do not demonstrate any greater reluctance to grant Charter claims than their colleagues in other Canadian jurisdictions. Indeed, Appeal Court judges in Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan rejected far more claims than Québec Appeal Court judges. Unfortunately, the data do not permit a reliable analysis of the individual voting patterns of particular judges. Other work has demonstrated that individual judges evolve widely differing track records in their acceptance of Charter claims.8 Although 90 Charter decisions of the Québec Appeal Court were reported during the period under study, the division of the sixteen-judge court into three- or five-judge panels means that too few judges have dealt singly with a sufficient number of cases to allow a detailed analysis of their voting behaviour. However, the data indicate that Québec judges are likely to be as individualistic in their approach as other judges. For example, two of the Appeal Court judges with the most Charter experience show quite different rates of claim acceptance: Vallerand granted a remedy in only two of the sixteen Charter cases he heard, while Chouinard accepted claims in seven of his seventeen cases. Significant differences of opinion among Québec Appeal Court judges emerge in the frequency with which members of a panel hearing a Charter case disagreed with each other. The following table presents this information with comparative data from other jurisdictions.

156 Québec Courts and the Canadian Charter of Rights

Table 2

Rate of Agreement on Charter Claims Among Panel Members in Senior Appellate Courts

Percentage of Cases Decided Québec Ontario Nova Scotia Supreme Court of Canada Unanimously 51.1 92.9 94.1 48.8 With Concurring Opinions 39.6 4.9 2.2 38.0 With Dissenting Opinions 17.7 7.1 7.2 30.6

Clearly, members of Québec’s Appeal Court hold significantly different views on either the general outcome of a case or the reasons for that outcome, or at least are much more willing to express those differences than judges in Nova Scotia or Ontario. However, the behaviour of Québec Appeal Court judges is more consistent with that of Supreme Court of Canada judges; both courts have low rates of unanimity, although Québec judges dissent less frequently than Supreme Court judges. Some of the differences between Québec and the Nova Scotia or Ontario appeal courts may relate to institutional traditions. Until the mid-1980s, all judges who sat on Québec Appeal Court panels consistently delivered their own opinions, even if only a few brief paragraphs to say they agreed with one or both of the other opinions. Since then, Québec judges have followed closer in line with their common law counterparts, with the more regular delivery of a single opinion for the panel or the majority. In the Québec cases studied, the Charter was raised by individuals in 73.6% of cases; and by corporations, unions and media groups in 21.1% of cases. This indicates a much broader use of the Charter than in Nova Scotia, where individuals accounted for 94% of Charter claimants compared to only 5% involving unions, media or other corporations.9 Part of this discrepancy may relate to the presence of many more corporate head offices in Québec than Nova Scotia, as well as the relative prosperity of Québec companies and unions; one would expect that Ontario might exhibit a pattern closer to Québec’s than Nova Scotia’s. One important finding relates to the infrequent permission to participate granted to intervenors by Québec judges. In only 3% of Québec Charter cases were either individuals or groups allowed to participate as intervenors, which is similar to Nova Scotia’s record of 2.2% of cases with private intervenors. This low participation rate is largely due to the very restrictive rules governing permission to intervene that discourage such participation.10 The closed nature of Charter litigation has important policy implications, since the courts hear only from a very small number of interested parties before reaching their decisions. This contrasts with the parade of groups and individuals who testify before legislative committees examining policy issues that may later be challenged in court. The situation in Québec and Nova Scotia appears to differ somewhat from the Supreme Court of Canada, where a higher proportion of

157 IJCS / RIÉC hearings (6.6%) involve submissions by private intervenors. It is quite understandable that interest groups would participate in a larger number of Supreme Court cases, since the high costs of preparing and arguing a case likely encourage groups with scarce resources to concentrate on the most important hearings by the nation’s top court. As with other jurisdictions, the Charter is most likely to be referred to in Québec by parties facing prosecution for federal or provincial offenses; 57.7% of the cases studied were criminal cases. However, this figure is significantly lower than the 80.9% of Nova Scotia’s 1982 to 1990 cases that involved criminal charges, 80% in Saskatchewan from 1982 to 1987, and 77% which Morton and Withey found nationally between 1982 and 1985.11 The lower proportion of criminal cases in Québec appears to reflect the greater use made of the Charter by the Québec media and trade unions, who rarely were charged with offenses. Québec has displayed a distinctive pattern in its relative use of the Charter for different types of rights. Table 3 indicates that Québec litigants raised fewer claims under the legal rights of the Charter than did Nova Scotians, considerably more fundamental rights claims, and fewer claims for equality; neither province saw many claims under the sections involving language education rights.

Table Three12

Type of Right Claimed Jurisdiction

Québec Nova Scotia Fundamental 13.6 5.5 Mobility 4.5 2.5 Legal 70.7 75.7 Equality 9.3 14.3 Language Education 1.9 1.9 Percentage of all claims in s96 (1982-89)

The greater emphasis on fundamental freedoms in Québec appears to arise from the larger overall involvement of corporations, the media and trade unions. These litigants accounted for 55% of Québec cases in which fundamental freedoms were raised, compared to only 11% of such cases in Nova Scotia. The use made of individual sections of the Charter reveals the most striking differences among jurisdictions. The three most frequently litigated sections in Québec were s7, s11d and s8, which were respectively involved in 33.5%, 22.3% and 15.1% of all cases.13 This mix of rights differs considerably from the top three rights in Nova Scotia: s10b, s7, and s15(1).14 But two of the three rights most frequently argued in Québec are among the top three that Morton and Withey found in their national study of the 1982 to 1985 period: s7, s8, and s10b. The surprising difference is the virtual absence in Québec of s10b claims to the right to counsel on arrest or detention. While this right was a recurrent

158 Québec Courts and the Canadian Charter of Rights subject in Nova Scotia and nationally, less than 5% of Québec Charter cases involved this section. Possible explanations for the paucity of s10b cases include: very meticulous work by Québec police officers, the unlikely possibility that lawyers are overlooking a good argument, or some problem in the reporting of Québec cases. There were also different success rates for the various groups of rights. The following table indicates the success rates of the three most frequently litigated groups of rights.

Table 415

Success Rates Most Litigated Types of Rights

Type of Right Jurisdiction Québec Nova Scotia Nationally Fundamental 21 46 24 Legal 26 17 28 Equality 11 32 25

Que & N.S.: s96 courts; National: all

Québec judges accepted more claims to legal rights, and fewer claims to fundamental freedoms or equality rights, than did Nova Scotia’s judges; Québec judges fell only slightly below the national average seen in the first three years of the Charter for legal and fundamental claims, but accepted significantly fewer claims for equal treatment under s15 than did courts across the country during the initial period of this section’s enactment. The low success rate of equality claims largely reflects the failure of cases arguing discrimination against particular professional groups by regulatory schemes or disciplinary procedures; these represented one-quarter of all equality cases, and all but one were rejected.16 In some respects, the general objects of Charter claims were quite similar in Québec and other jurisdictions. More challenges involved the actions of officials (75%) than legal rules (37%); these figures were 75% and 33% respectively for Nova Scotia between 1982 and 1990, while Morton and Withey found the national aggregate proportions to be 66% and 34% respectively between 1982 and 1985.17 However, Québec courts produced a fairly distinctive pattern of outcomes with very similar success rates for cases involving laws and actions. This relative uniformity contrasts with other provincial jurisdictions, with challenges to legal rules being much less successful than claims against an official’s actions, as the following table illustrates.

159 IJCS / RIÉC

Table 518

Success Rates of Challenges to Laws and Actions

Jurisdiction Challenge to: Law Action Québec (1982-89) 27 29 Nova Scotia (1982-90) 22 32 Ontario & Federal Courts (1982-86) 26 34 Nationally 28 33 Percentage of cases with successful claims

The approach by Québec judges to these two kinds of Charter cases is interesting; one would anticipate a substantially higher success rate for challenges to actions for two reasons. First, the construction of the Charter is such that any infringement by a law of a right may be saved under s1, if it is found to be “demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” However, there is no such general saving provision for officials’ actions; only when the exclusion of evidence is sought must a judge overtly decide whether the infringement is serious enough to warrant a remedy. Secondly, the nature of the historic relationships between the three branches of government would suggest that the judiciary is less reluctant to overrule executive actions than legislation; the courts perform judicial oversight of officials in many contexts outside Charter litigation. Québec produces a further surprise within the group of cases that challenged legislation. In other jurisdictions, more claims have been made against federal than provincial legislation. In Québec, however, 59 challenges related to provincial statutes, while only 21 cases involved federal laws. The preponderance of challenges to provincial statutes may seem a little astonishing, given that the sweeping use of the notwithstanding clause (s33) should have greatly reduced the number of these cases. But the employment of s33 became the object of many challenges itself. Even though Jules Deschênes of the Superior Court upheld the validity of the original use of s33 in an April 1983 decision, litigants continued to attack its general use on the grounds that exempting all legislation violated the intent of the Charter. Other Superior Court judges followed their Chief Justice’s lead, until the Court of Appeal overturned his decision in June 1985.19 In all, sixteen cases during the period studied in Québec involved s33. By the time the Supreme Court of Canada eventually upheld the blanket use of the notwithstanding clause in the 1988 Ford case, the original amendments to pre-Charter legislation had reached their five-year limit and expired.20 This course of events may help explain the many challenges to Québec statutes; following a number of initial challenges to the use of s33, the existing statutes amended by the 1982 blanket use reverted back to the Charter’s authority between 1985 and late 1988. In any event, it is quite clear that Québec residents have not hesitated to challenge their own laws under the national values embodied in the Canadian Charter of Rights.

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Québec judges have accepted a lower proportion of challenges to provincial legislation to federal law: 22% as opposed to 28.6%. One may be tempted at first to say that this deference to provincial legislation illustrates an attempt to protect the provincial political system from the centralizing influences of the national Charter. However, such speculation is complicated since the lack of success in challenges to provincial laws is augmented by ten cases in which a notwithstanding clause precluded any judgment of the merits of the legislation. When these cases are excluded, the success rate of challenges to provincial laws rises to 26.5%. The comparative data on the relative vulnerability of federal and provincial legislation shows rather mixed patterns. However, Québec judges acted in a somewhat similar fashion to Ontario judges, who allowed fewer challenges to provincial than federal statutes.21 Nova Scotia’s Appeal Court, on the other hand, showed virtually identical treatment of federal and provincial statutes; roughly 17% of challenges to either set of laws were accepted.

The Use of Precedents Since the wording of much of the Canadian Charter of Rights is vague, judicial decisions play a key role in giving substance to particular sections of the Charter. Only through judicial decision-making do we come to know just what sort of activities are protected by any one of the rights enunciated in the Charter, as well as what kinds of limitations on those rights are acceptable. As the body of court decisions on the Charter grows, judges have more material at their disposal to solve the dilemmas of a case at hand. However, a certain amount of latitude is available to lawyers and judges in choosing which past decisions are considered in a particular case. While lower court judges are bound by the decisions of higher courts in the same jurisdiction, and of the Supreme Court of Canada, they are very free to draw from decisions handed down by courts in other jurisdictions. With so many Charter decisions available, judges have considerable discretion in choosing and applying precedents to a current case. Just how often judges in one jurisdiction consider precedents from other jurisdictions is an indication of how much cross- pollination of values may result from the Charter. Considerable use of precedents from other provinces or from the national courts could lead to a strengthening of uniform values; indeed, early speculation about the Charter centred on its potential as a centralizing force on the political and legal cultures across Canada that had evolved so differently under our federal structures.22 In order to gain some idea of how autonomously Québec judges have been interpreting the Canadian Charter, a record was kept of which jurisdictions judges drew their precedents from in Charter cases. The following table shows the distribution of precedents considered by Québec judges and by Nova Scotian judges for comparison purposes.

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Table 6

Percentage of Reported Cases Citing Precedents From:

Jurisdiction23 Québec Nova Scotia NFLD 3.2 2.8 NS 3.2 46.2 PEI 0.5 2.4 NB 1.9 2.4 QUE 47.7 2.1 ONT 32.9 45.2 MAN 6.9 11.0 SASK 7.4 17.6 ALTA 13.4 11.0 BC 14.4 16.2 FED CT 9.7 3.8 SCC 65.7 54.1 USA 6.5 11.0 UK 7.4 4.8

Several important points emerge from this table concerning the breadth of sources which Québec judges rely upon.24 First, Québec judges consider precedents from their own jurisdiction as frequently as Nova Scotian judges. Secondly, the two sets of data reveal a rough similarity in the geographic distribution of the precedents considered. Within these corresponding patterns, however, a couple of differences emerge: Québec judges rely more heavily on Supreme Court of Canada decisions and less on Ontario precedents than Nova Scotian judges. The Supreme Court of Canada clearly enjoys a tremendous influence in the shaping of Charter decisions in Québec. In 16% of reported cases where the Charter issue is substantively addressed, only precedents from the Supreme Court of Canada are considered; by contrast, 7.4% of these cases considered Québec decisions alone. The greater use of Supreme Court precedents in Québec than in Nova Scotia may be partially explained by the Supreme Court having decided seventeen appeals from Québec but only four from Nova Scotia by the end of 1989. Ontario also emerges as a very strong influence on the Charter’s interpretation in other provinces; the sheer volume of reported Ontario decisions allows that province to play a leading role. Québec judges have clearly depended upon values shaped by a national dialogue in order to interpret the Charter. While judges in Québec may be drawing from the national debate on the Charter, it is quite apparent that judges in other jurisdictions pay very little attention to judicial interpretations of the Charter in Québec. Nova Scotian judges considered Québec precedents in just over 2.1% of their Charter cases. Peter McCormick has established that the appeal courts of both Saskatchewan and Manitoba have also referred to very few Québec precedents. In analyses of all (not just Charter) decisions in 1987, McCormick found that Québec Appeal Court precedents were referred to in only 1.1% of Manitoba’s Appeal Court

162 Québec Courts and the Canadian Charter of Rights

decisions, and in only 0.8% of Saskatchewan’s Appeal Court judgments.25 Thus, Québec’s judges are interpreting the Charter with full consideration of precedents from across the country, but judges in the rest of Canada are reaching their decisions in blissful ignorance of most developments in Québec. This state of affairs is probably due to the fact that most Québec judges and lawyers are functionally bilingual, and can readily use judicial decisions written in English, while judges and lawyers in the rest of Canada are predominantly unilingual. Since only a tiny fraction of Québec decisions are either written in English or later translated, most Canadian courts operate without the benefit of the important Charter interpretations being delivered in Québec. The evidence of this linguistic divide challenges the established line of judicial reasoning that has not required judicial decisions to be translated. The right to use French and English in Québec and New Brunswick courts has been interpreted to mean that litigants and judges have the choice of language, not that all proceedings and judgments must be conducted and written in both languages. This is quite different from the duties imposed on the executive and legislature to publish laws and regulations in both languages.26 It seems strange to require that statutes and the regulations expanding or defining them be in both languages, while the court decisions that ultimately give substance to these statutes and regulations can be in only one language. Even more peculiar is that litigants across Canada who try to make a claim under one of the rights in the Charter may be deprived of key judicial decisions simply because they, their lawyers, or the judges hearing the case are unilingual.

The Québec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms One distinguishing feature of the use of the Canadian Charter in Québec courts is the frequent, simultaneous submission of claims under Québec’s own Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.27 The provincial Charter came into force in 1975, but initially lay little used. However, the Parti Québécois government greatly strengthened the provisions of the Québec Charter around the time that the Canadian Charter came into effect.28 During the 1980s, many more claims have been launched under the Québec Charter; indeed, there is an almost identical number of cases in the first 30 volumes of the Québec Appeal Cases (covering mid-1986 to 1989) that involve either Charter. Claims under the Québec Charter have been raised in 34.7% of the cases in which the Canadian Charter has been argued. In most instances, the provincial Charter is simply a reinforcement of the Canadian Charter, since several of both Charter’s provisions are very similar. In other cases, however, the Québec Charter claims are additional or complimentary to those made under the Canadian Charter. Where claims are made under both Charters, the outcome of the claims is identical 81.5% of the time, with both sets of claims either being accepted or rejected. In only 15.2% of the dual-Charter cases are the provincial claims accepted and the national ones rejected; most of these would involve cases where the Canadian Charter was excluded because of the use of a notwithstanding clause. The frequent use of the Québec Charter could conceivably have led to a more distinctive interpretation of the Canadian Charter, with precedents from the provincial Charter affecting interpretations of the national Charter. This direction of influence was extremely rare, however, whereas precedents from the Canadian Charter are frequently used to interpret the Québec Charter. As a

163 IJCS / RIÉC result, the national values of the Canadian Charter of Rights have strongly shaped the substance of the Québec Charter. However, the actual extent of the Canadian Charter precedents’ influence on the Québec Charter cannot be ascertained without a full study of all cases involving the provincial Charter. If any nationalist aversion exists in Québec to the Canadian Charter, it would likely occur among those who have chosen to make claims under the Québec Charter, rather than the Canadian one. Unfortunately, this factor cannot be measured without determining how many of the Québec Charter cases involve claims that could also have been argued under the Canadian Charter, but were not.

Conclusion The results of this empirical study clearly indicate that the Canadian Charter of Rights has become an integral element of Québec’s legal culture. The Canadian Charter has been relied upon frequently and by a wide range of Québec litigants. Québec judges have shown no reluctance to entertain or accept claims under the national Charter. The overall success rates of Charter claims in Québec are well within the range seen in other jurisdictions where comparable data are available. While the cases studied reveal that a different mix of particular rights has been argued in Québec, and with varied results, each jurisdiction for which there is data enjoys its own distinctive patterns as well. Perhaps the most telling evidence of Québec’s absorption of national values through the Canadian Charter is seen in the geographical range of precedents considered by Québec judges, as well as the interpretation of the Québec Charter through the Canadian Charter. While the Canadian Charter of Rights may have had a controversial political origin, it has since been widely accepted in Québec.

Notes * The author wishes to express his gratitude to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, whose funding of a Canada Research Fellowship has made this research possible. 1. One of the objections listed in the resolution was aimed at the Charter of Rights, where Québec wanted an override in any matter within provincial jurisdiction. See: Sheilagh M. Dunn, The Year in Review 1981: Intergovernmental Relations in Canada, (Kingston: Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, 1982), 35-36. 2. Loi Concernant la Loi Constitutionnelle de 1982, L.Q. 1982, c.21. This Act removed Québec legislation from the purview of the sections of the Canadian Charter that provide fundamental freedoms, legal rights and equality rights. 3. Some of the results were included in: “The Charter of Rights in Nova Scotian Courts, 1982- 1990,” a paper presented at the Canadian Political Science Association meeting in Kingston, June 1991. 4. The results of this research on Québec may be compared to those examining the treatment of the Charter in Ontario and the Federal Court [Patrick Monahan, Politics and the Constitution, (Toronto: Carswell, 1987) at 33-49], Saskatchewan [Saskatchewan Law Review Editorial Board, “The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal and the Charter” (1988), 52 Saskatchewan Law Review 191; Peter McCormick, “Case-Load and Output of the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal: An Analysis of 12 Months of Reported Cases” (1989), 53 Saskatchewan Law Review 341], and Manitoba [Peter McCormick, “Caseload and Output of the Manitoba Court of Appeal: An Analysis of Twelve Months of Reported Cases” (1990), 19 Manitoba Law Journal 31]. McCormick’s studies of Saskatchewan and Manitoba involve the whole range of the appeal courts’ caseload, rather than just relating to the Charter. The Supreme Court of Canada’s Charter record has been examined in: Andrew D. Heard, “The Charter in the Supreme Court of Canada: The Importance of Which Judges

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Hear an Appeal” (1991), 24 Canadian Journal of Political Science 287; and, F.L. Morton, Peter H. Russell, and Michael J. Withey, “Judging the Judges: The Supreme Court’s First One Hundred Charter Decisions,” in Paul W. Fox and Graham White (eds), Politics: Canada, 7th ed., (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1991). A national of study of the use made of the Charter has been published in: F.L. Morton and Michael J. Withey, “Charting the Charter, 1982-1985: A Statistical Analysis” (1987), Canadian Human Rights Yearbook 65. 5. These two report series are the principal sources for reports of full judgments of Québec cases. Digest summaries of many more cases can be found in Jurisprudence express, but the information in these summaries was insufficient to be used in this study. 6. These Charter cases included two which were decided in 1990, and are thus not included in other analyses in this paper. 7. In this and following tables, data are from original research except where otherwise noted. Data for Saskatchewan is calculated from Saskatchewan Law Review Editorial Board, “The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal and the Charter,” 193. 8. See: Morton, Russell, and Withey, “Judging the Judges: The Supreme Court’s First 100 Charter Decisions,” 73-75; and Heard, “The Charter in the Supreme Court of Canada.” 9. In Québec, the figures for these litigants are: media 6.4%, non-media corporations 11.3%, trade unions 3.4%; in Nova Scotia the comparable breakdown of litigants is: 0.4%, 3.5%, and 0.9% respectively. 10. An indication of how narrow the rules are is seen in the only case where LEAF was allowed to intervene: R. c. Caron [1988] 20 QAC 45. 11. Saskatchewan Law Review Editorial Board, “The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal and the Charter,” 193; Morton and Withey, “Charting the Charter, 1982-1985,” 73. 12. All data are from original research. 13. Section 7 of the Charter states: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.” The provision in s8 reads: “Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure.” Section 11d provides, “Any person charged with an offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law in a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal.” 14. Section 10b stipulates, “Everyone has the right on arrest or detention to retain and instruct counsel without delay and to be informed of that right.” Equality rights are protected in s15(1): “Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.” 15. National data are from: Morton and Withey, “Charting the Charter, 1982-1985,” 71. 16. The exception was a case which allowed a challenge to the differing benefits due under worker’s compensation to various occupational groups: Coulombe c. Commission d’appel en matière de lésions professionnelles, (1987) R.J.Q. 1822 (C.S.). 17. Morton and Withey, “Charting the Charter, 1982-1985,” 72. 18. National data are from Ibid., 72; data for Ontario s96 courts and the Federal Court combined are from: Monahan, Politics and the Constitution, 38. The other data are from original research. 19. Deschênes’ decision was given in: Alliance des professeurs de Montréal c. P.G. du Québec, (1985) CS 1272. The judgment of the Appeal court which overturned this case is found at: (1985) CA 376. 20. Ford v Quebec (Attorney General), [1988] 2 SCR 712. 21. Monahan, Politics and the Constitution, 38. 22. See some early discussion of this topic in: Donald Smiley, The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 1981 (Toronto: Ontario Economic Council, 1981) at 56-61; Peter H. Russell, “The Political Purposes of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms” (1983), 61 Canadian Bar Review 30. A later discussion of the effects of the Charter can be found in: F.L. Morton, G. Solomon, I. McNish, and D.W. Poulton, “Judicial Nullification of Statutes under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 1982-1989” (1990) 28 Alberta Law Review 396- 427.

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23. Québec decisions are for all reported decisions of s96 courts where the Charter was substantively considered; Nova Scotia figures are for all levels of courts. 24. It is worth noting that the civil law setting in Québec appears to have virtually no bearing on the treatment of precedents in Charter cases. At an impressionistic level, no differences could be seen in the way in which Nova Scotian and Québec judges considered and applied precedents. In 16.2% of Québec cases, the Charter issues were settled without referring to any previous cases, while 17.6% of Nova Scotian cases were similarly decided. 25. McCormick, “Caseload and Output of the Manitoba Court of Appeal,” p.47; McCormick, “Caseload and Output of the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal,” p.356. 26. These rights are found in several sources. Québec and the federal government are bound by s133 of the 1867 Constitution Act, while the New Brunswick and the federal government are bound by sections 16 to 20 of the Charter of Rights. Judicial decisions are routinely translated in the Federal Court and the Supreme Court of Canada. Some key decisions on these rights are: A.G. Quebec v Blaikie (No.1), [1979] 2 SCR 1016; A.G. Quebec v Blaikie (No.2), [1981] 1 SCR 312; Société des Acadiens v. Association of Parents, [1986] 1 SCR 549; Pilote c. Corporation de l’Hôpital Bellechasse, (1988) RJQ 380 (C.S). 27. R.S.Q. c.C-21. 28. For more information on the Québec Charter see: J.-Y. Morin, “La constitutionnalisation progressive de la Charte des droits et libertés de la personne,” (1987) 21 Revue juridique Thémis 25; André Morel, “La coexistence des Chartes canadiennes et québécoise: problèmes d’interaction,” (1986) Revue de droit, Université de Sherbrooke 49.

166 François Rocher Daniel Salée

Démocratie et réforme constitutionnelle : discours et pratique1

Résumé Comme on a pu l’observer, aussi bien les représentants des groupes d’intérêts qu’une majorité de citoyens ont violemment critiqué le caractère non démocratique du processus de révision de la Constitution canadienne. Le présent article analyse les propos à cet égard des uns et des autres avant d’examiner l’approche des intellectuels afin de voir si ces derniers ont renouvelé la pensée sur la démocratie en des termes différents de ceux utilisés par les élites politiques et sociales au Canada.

Enfin, en opposant au discours constitutionnel que l’on nous a servi une vision de la démocratie qui se veut large et ancrée dans le social, les auteurs démontrent qu’aucune tentative de penser l’imbrication du corps politique et de la société civile à la lumière de concepts aussi fondamentaux que liberté, égalité, autorité ou obligation n’a jamais véritablement marqué les exercices de révision constitutionnelle.

Abstract Both the representatives of interest groups and a majority of Canadians have harshly criticized the undemocratic nature of the Canadian constitutional review process. This article analyzes statements in this regard by the various parties concerned, and then proceeds to examine the approach taken by intellectuals, to determine whether they have reopened the discussion of democracy in different terms than those used by Canada’s political and social elites.

Lastly, by comparing the constitutional discourse already presented to us with a broad, socially-centred vision of democracy, the authors demonstrate that the process of constitutional review has never truly attempted to situate the body politic and civil society within such fundamental ideas as freedom, equality, authority or obligation.

À l’instar des sociétés occidentales, le Canada vit actuellement l’épuisement du modèle de développement hérité des années d’après-guerre. Cet épuisement, on le sent à travers une certaine crise de légitimité socio- institutionnelle qui, si elle n’est pas toujours manifeste dans le comportement quotidien des Canadiens, n’en est pas moins en train d’affaiblir le tissu social. Un sondage réalisé par le Globe and Mail en octobre 1990 indiquait que seulement 4 p. 100 des répondants estimaient que le régime actuel fonctionnait bien. Par contre, 34 p. 100 réclamaient une « refonte complète » du système

International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 7-8, Spring-Fall/Printemps-automne 1993 IJCS/RIÉC alors que 32 p. 100 souhaitaient des « changements considérables » et 29 p. 100, « certains changements » (Dobell et Berry, 1992 : 19). Une compilation des sondages effectués depuis quinze ou vingt ans sur la satisfaction des Canadiens à l’égard de leurs institutions politiques montre un net déclin de la confiance et du respect vis-à-vis le système, le gouvernement et les élus (Dobell et Berry, 1992 : 5-12). Le rapport Spicer faisait d’ailleurs écho à ce désenchantement en notant la « perte de la foi envers le système politique » et le « désir unanime d’un changement profond » (Panitch, 1991 : 19). Le processus intense de révision constitutionnelle dans lequel le gouvernement a engagé le pays depuis l’Accord du lac Meech ne peut faire abstraction de ce mécontentement et du malaise socio-politique qui marquent cette fin de siècle. Alors que cela aurait pu être un moment privilégié de réflexion collective sur les paramètres de l’existence sociale, sur les valeurs et les normes qui doivent régir les rapports socio-économiques mutuels et la reconfiguration même de la communauté, les débats sur la Constitution ont souvent été un vain exercice de rhétorique politique et juridique dominé par les experts et les politiciens. Faut-il s’en étonner ? Reg Whitaker n’observait-il pas, il y a dix ans, que toute réflexion sur la nature de la Constitution canadienne ou sur les réformes qu’il y aurait peut-être lieu d’y apporter a toujours eu tendance à mettre l’accent sur les rapports entre les différents ordres de gouvernement plutôt qu’entre l’État et la population ou entre les divers agents sociaux. Avec pour résultat que la révision constitutionnelle n’a jamais abordé la question pourtant cruciale de l’imbrication du corps politique et de la société civile à la lumière de concepts tels que la liberté, l’égalité, l’autorité ou l’obligation (Whitaker, 1992 : 207). Ce texte participe de la conviction que peu de choses ont changé depuis dix ans. En dépit des dénonciations de l’approche exclusiviste qui a présidé à la négociation de l’Accord du lac Meech (11 hommes blancs réunis à huis clos décidant de l’avenir du pays), en dépit aussi de l’engagement maintes fois réitéré après son échec de solliciter l’avis de la population et d’inclure les représentants des divers groupes dans le processus de renouvellement constitutionnel, les débats sur la Constitution canadienne et les propositions de réforme qui en émanent restent étrangement confinés à la mécanique de partage de pouvoirs administratifs et à la reconfiguration des institutions parlementaires. Même les groupes dont on aurait pu espérer qu’ils forcent un déplacement vers des questions de fond sont le plus souvent cooptés par la logique institutionnaliste du discours sur la Constitution et s’enferment eux aussi dans ses paramètres étroits. Bizarrement, personne ne semble s’être encore attardé de manière sérieuse aux fondements sociétaux sur lesquels devrait reposer, au moins théoriquement, toute refonte de la Constitution. Peu d’intervenants réalisent que le débat constitutionnel est aussi un débat de société et que l’État et la société n’existent pas en vase clos, indépendamment l’un de l’autre. Nous soutiendrons dans ce texte que c’est là une erreur eu égard aux exigences de la démocratie. Tout le débat autour de la Constitution s’est fait en fonction d’une conception étroite de la démocratie, comme si des garanties institutionnelles suffisaient pour maintenir un niveau acceptable de démocratie en assurant un modus vivendi non seulement entre les institutions parlementaires et politiques, mais aussi et surtout des interactions multiples et variées entre les agents sociaux. L’enjeu véritable des réformes constitutionnelles ne doit pas se limiter aux seules

168 Démocratie et réforme constitutionnelle : discours et pratique modifications institutionnelles; il réside aussi dans un vouloir vivre collectif, dans la capacité d’empathie, de solidarité et de réciprocité. Le but du présent texte est de démontrer que le discours autour de la réforme constitutionnelle canadienne, tant celui des experts que celui des politiciens et des divers autres intervenants, n’a fait que reconduire les catégories traditionnelles de la démocratie parlementaire et les principes de base sur lesquels le fédéralisme canadien s’est historiquement constitué et développé. Dans un premier temps, il s’agira de relever les propos tenus par les représentants de différents groupes ou par les particuliers qui se sont prononcés sur les pratiques démocratiques de l’exercice constitutionnel, soit pour en dénoncer les carences ou pour en justifier les mécanismes existants. Depuis 1987, les Canadiens ont eu de nombreuses occasions de faire valoir leurs points de vue sur les modalités de modification de la Constitution. Nous avons particulièrement retenu les opinions exprimées devant les comités parlementaires pertinents : le comité Tremblay-Speyer, le comité Beaudoin- Edwards ainsi que sur les propositions déposées par le gouvernement fédéral en septembre 1991 (comité Beaudoin-Dobbie). Nous croyons que ces différents moments permettent de saisir la multiplicité des positions défendues. Dans un second temps, nous nous pencherons sur la manière dont les experts, les universitaires et les intellectuels ont envisagé la problématique de la démocratie. La question qui se pose est de savoir dans quelle mesure ils ont renouvelé la pensée sur la démocratie en des termes différents de ceux mis de l’avant par les élites politiques et les figures de proue des mouvements sociaux au Canada. Finalement, en opposant au discours constitutionnel que l’on nous a servi jusqu’à maintenant une vision de la démocratie qui se veut large et ancrée dans le social, nous tenterons de démontrer combien l’exercice actuel de réforme de la Constitution canadienne participe d’une fiction institutionnelle qui risque en fait de nous éloigner d’une pratique authentique de la démocratie.

La démocratie parlementaire et le fédéralisme exécutif au banc des accusés Nombre de gens ont reproché au processus qu’a mené à l’Accord du lac Meech un caractère élitiste et oligarchique qui favorisait le secret et écartait délibérément la participation du public. Aux yeux de plusieurs, le mépris des politiciens à l’endroit des principes démocratiques exigeait une remise en question des mécanismes politiques présidant aux modifications constitutionnelles. Si ces critiques avaient toutes en commun un certain désenchantement à l’égard de la conduite des affaires publiques par les politiciens, elles ne partagaient pas une identité de point de vue quant aux origines du mal à circonscrire et aux moyens à mettre en oeuvre pour y arriver. Il importe donc de jeter un regard critique sur les doléances formulées à l’endroit du processus pour saisir la vision de la démocratie qui les alimente. On peut classer les points de vue soulevés en deux catégories : d’une part, ceux ayant trait à la représentation de certaines catégories de la population dans le cadre des négociations constitutionnelles formelles et, d’autre part, ceux touchant la participation du public aux diverses étapes du processus. D’un côté comme de l’autre, il s’agit d’une remise en cause de la démocratie parlementaire et du fédéralisme exécutif tels que pratiqués au Canada. Ce sont surtout les représentants des groupes autochtones et de femmes qui ont protesté contre leur absence à la table des négociations. Pour les premiers, la

169 IJCS/RIÉC structure politique du Canada et le principe de la majorité électorale contribuent à marginaliser les peuples autochtones (Canada, 1987, 9 : 29) et ne leur permettent pas de vraiment participer à la Confédération canadienne. Ils réclamèrent donc d’être partie prenante aux conférences des premiers ministres afin de pouvoir veiller à la protection de leurs droits et oeuvres à une refonte de la Constitution qui leur soit favorable (Canada, 1991a, 26 : 32). Quant aux représentantes des groupes de femmes, elles ont reproché aux gouvernements leur exclusion du processus (Canada, 1987, 15 : 154) et exigé d’être présentes lorsque leurs droits font l’objet de discussions, car aucun autre intervenant n’était mieux en mesure que les femmes elles-mêmes de faire valoir leur point de vue avec l’angle d’approche qui est le leur (Canada, 1992, 10 : 26). En somme, chez les autochtones comme chez les femmes, on voulait participer au processus afin d’infléchir le cours des événements : pour les premiers, en vertu de leur statut de minoritaires; pour les seconds, à cause d’une absence de sensibilité aux problématiques des femmes. Les représentantes des groupes de femmes soutenaient même que les députées étaient moins en mesure qu’elles de défendre la cause des femmes étant donné que leurs groupes avaient jusqu’alors été les porte-parole de leurs intérêts auprès des institutions politiques (Maillé, 1992). Leur inclusion respective à la table des discussions répondrait, pour une large part, aux critiques formulées à l’endroit du processus des négociations constitutionnelles. Il faut toutefois faire remarquer que, ce faisant, c’est l’économie générale des institutions politiques et de la démocratie formelle qui en aurait été modifée, et ce, pour deux raisons. D’une part, l’ajout de nouveaux intervenants sociaux dans les mécanismes traditionnels de négociations issus du fédéralisme exécutif mettrait face à face des porte-parole dont la légitimité ne repose pas sur les mêmes bases. Les premiers ministres tiennent leur autorité de leur élection et du mandat qu’ils ont reçu d’une pluralité d’électeurs. La légitimité des représentants de groupes d’intérêts repose davantage sur la nature des liens qui les unit à leurs groupes respectifs. Ces leaders doivent bien entendu rendre des comptes, mais sur la base d’une obligation de résultats touchant à des aspects beaucoup plus restreints. Élus à partir d’un vaste programme, les politiciens sont les mandataires de la volonté populaire qui s’est exprimée à l’occasion d’élections générales. La participation des groupes d’intérêts aux négociations soulève donc la question de leur représentativité. Dans le cadre d’une démocratie parlementaire, les élus sont des fondés de pouvoir pour l’ensemble des électeurs. L’arrivée de nouveaux intervenants peut être interprétée comme un aveu d’incapacité de la part du régime politique traditionnel de représenter certains intérêts particuliers. Dans le cas des autochtones et des femmes, leurs situations respectives expliquent en grande partie leur insatisfaction à l’égard d’une démocratie qualifiée de tyrannie de la majorité. Toutefois, l’inclusion de leurs représentants constituerait une reconnaissance implicite de l’illégitimité des politiciens à les représenter et confirmerait même l’incapacité de ces derniers à comprendre les tenants et aboutissants de leurs revendications et signifierait qu’ils ne parlent désormais que pour une portion de plus en plus congrue de la population, tous les autres clivages étant confondus. La remise en question du processus de négociation de la Constitution a soulevé un second ordre de critiques faisant référence à l’absence ou à la faible participation de la population. Suite à Meech, on a reproché au processus de

170 Démocratie et réforme constitutionnelle : discours et pratique manquer de transparence et de favoriser indûment le secret. En d’autres termes, Meech fut pris à partie pour avoir été concocté en catimini, entériné par onze premiers ministres sans consultation publique préalable et présenté comme intouchable jusqu’à sa ratification finale, qui n’eût d’ailleurs jamais lieu (Canada, 1987, 3 : 92; 13 : 27; 15 : 139; Canada, 1991a, 25 : 81). Certains ont même accusé les gouvernements d’avoir délibérément privilégié l’exclusion du public. La démocratie parlementaire et le fédéralisme exécutif ont été dénoncés comme favorisant la complicité des élites sans égard aux attentes de la population (Canada, 1991a, 31 : 48), renforçant le pouvoir d’une « oligarchie » constituée des premiers ministres (Canada, 1991a, 15 : 47), illustrant la manipulation du public par les élites et, par le fait même, niant les principes du gouvernement responsable (Canada, 1991a, 31 : 38). On y stigmatise le fédéralisme exécutif, lequel n’exige aucune participation de la population au processus (Canada, 1991a, 10 : 70). Ce phénomène est parfaitement bien illustré par la formule d’amendement qui est définie uniquement dans la perspective du fédéralisme, laissant de côté les dimensions démocratique et populaire de la gouverne politique. En somme, au fédéralisme exécutif on oppose la souveraineté populaire. On soutient que la Constitution appartient d’abord au peuple et qu’elle ne saurait être modifiée sans que celui- ci n’ait eu l’occasion de se prononcer sur le nouveau contrat social négocié par les élites, que ce soit par le biais de la convocation d’une assemblée constituante ou par la tenue d’un référendum (Canada, 1991a, 29 : 60-61 et 9 : 37). Pour plusieurs, la modification de la Constitution pourrait se réaliser non plus en ayant recours au fédéralisme exécutif, mais par la convocation d’une assemblée constituants chargée d’en rédiger une nouvelle. Manifestement, pareille idée s’oppose au pouvoir des élites politiques traditionnelles qui ne seraient pas investies du mandat de transformer la loi fondamentale du pays. Les pourfendeurs de la démocratie parlementaire ne sont pas moins virulents. Selon eux, le principe du gouvernement responsable serait entaché par la règle de la discipline de parti qui écarte l’idée que les gouvernements sont d’abord élus à titre de représentants de la population et doivent démissionner ou obtenir un nouveau mandat s’ils perdent la confiance du public. Dans les faits, soutiennent-ils, le gouvernement responsable et représentatif est une vue de l’esprit. Encore ici, la formule d’amendement constitutionnel illustre bien l’exclusion de la population du processus politique (Canada, 1991a, 2 : 88-89). C’est donc toute la légitimité du processus qui est remise en cause. Pour les uns, comme Cairns, il importe d’abord et avant tout d’y incorporer les principaux groupes sociaux:«lalégitimité du processus et son utilité à long terme pour les Canadiens dépend de l’incorporation d’une pluralité d’intérêts incluant les gouvernements, les groupes visés par la Charte, les peuples autochtones et un nombre important d’autres groupes qui restent souvent sur la touche » (Canada, 1991a, 23 : 22-23). Cette nécessité découle non seulement de la nouvelle réalité politique qui s’est mise en place au Canada depuis 1982 et de l’adoption de la Charte des droits et libertés, comme le prétend Cairns, mais traduit aussi un sentiment de déception, pour ne pas dire d’animosité, à l’endroit des politiciens. Certains en sont même venus à accorder une crédibilité équivalente, sinon supérieure, aux représentants des groupes sociaux (Canada, 1991a, 26 : 25). Pour d’autres, comme Brad Morse, il s’agit plutôt d’accorder une plus large place aux citoyens et de les consulter tout au long du processus, ne serait-ce que pour leur donner l’impression qu’ils participent aux changements constitutionnels (Canada, 1991a, 3 : 67).

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Derrière cet ensemble de critiques se profile la volonté exprimée par plusieurs intervenants de donner à la population l’occasion de se prononcer à un moment ou à un autre du processus de négociation constitutionnelle. La démocratie est perçue d’abord sous sa forme institutionnelle. La question posée est celle de savoir quels mécanismes permettraient une meilleure participation populaire. Ou cherche en partie à atténuer le cynisme des citoyens à l’égard de leurs politiciens et du système politique en suggérant une foule de propositions en vue d’accroître cette participation, allant de l’assemblée constituante à un référendum national. Comme l’a fait remarquer Katherine Swinton, il faut distinguer au moins trois étapes dans le processus de modification de la Constitution : l’élaboration des modifications proposées, leur négociation et, enfin, leur ratification (Canada, 1991a, 9 : 37). Le type de participation peut donc varier en fonction de chacune des étapes. Les promoteurs de l’idée de la convocation d’une assemblée constituante, dont la composition et le rôle variaient selon les intervenants, visaient surtout à accroître la participation du public lors de la première étape. Ce mécanisme est présenté comme le seul véritablement démocratique dans la mesure où il garantit la présence des citoyens dans le processus, regroupe des individus plus représentatifs de la société canadienne, limite la partisanerie qui entrave la représentation et la possibilité d’établir un consensus et rend légitime les propositions aux yeux des Canadiens (Canada, 1991b : 47). Ceux- ci sont tenus de représenter les points de vue de ceux qui les ont élus. Le référendum, quant à lui, correspond à l’étape de la ratification des modifications proposées. Pour Vincent Lemieux, c’est le meilleur moyen de faire participer la population; à cet égard, il est supérieur aux audiences publiques ou aux commissions parlementaires (Canada, 1991a, 2 : 86-87). Toutefois, la formule du référendum n’est pas en soit miraculeuse. Certains ont exprimé la crainte que les résultats sèment la discorde en révélant des clivages nationaux ou régionaux préjudiciables à la recherche ou la consolidation de l’unité nationale. Un référendum ne saurait contredire la nature fédérale du régime politique et être utilisé pour faire l’économie d’une entente entre les premiers ministres (Canada, 1992, 38 : 24). Force est de constater qu’à travers toutes ces récriminations à l’endroit du processus et de son caractère plus ou moins démocratique, on ne retrouve aucune réflexion approfondie sur le sens de la démocratie. On s’est surtout penché sur le caractère formel de l’exercice (possibilité plus ou moins grande de participation). Cela étant, il était facile à certains observateurs de faire remarquer, comme l’a fait Swinton, que « les négociations constitutionnelles du lac Meech ont sans doute été les plus démocratiques de notre histoire si tant est que la démocratie se mesure au degré de participation du pouvoir législatif » (Canada, 1991a, 9 : 37). Au sens strict, il n’est pas faux de faire remarquer que si l’élaboration du projet de réforme a été le fait du pouvoir exécutif, la participation du pouvoir législatif a été sans précédent, car toutes les assemblées législatives se devaient d’entériner l’Accord. En ce sens, l’échec de Meech s’explique en grande partie par l’opposition d’une forte majorité de la population canadienne qui a trouvé écho au sein de deux assemblées législatives plus récalcitrantes que d’autres. Paradoxalement, certains pourraient même soutenir que l’échec de Meech confirme le succès de la démocratie, vue comme la manifestation de la volonté populaire. De la même manière, d’un point de vue instrumental, on peut arguer que la formule actuelle de modification de la Constitution n’a pas besoin d’être

172 Démocratie et réforme constitutionnelle : discours et pratique changée pour permettre une plus grande participation du public. Il s’agirait seulement de généraliser la tenue d’audiences publiques pour que la population ait davantage d’occasions de faire valoir ses attentes (Brock, 1991). La transparence du processus pourrait être assurée par une meilleure information du public sur les progrès accomplis et les consensus atteints. De plus, il est loin d’être certain que la formule de l’assemblée constituante produirait les effets attendus. L’élection des participants ne pourrait être impartiale compte tenu des intérêts partisans en jeu. Plutôt que d’être ouverts aux compromis, les élus de ces assemblées pourraient bien s’en tenir à la position défendue au moment de leur élection, insufflant dans le processus plus de rigidité qu’il n’y en a à l’heure actuelle (Canada, 1991b : 51). D’autres ont soutenu, comme Richard Simeon et J. Peter Meekison, que le processus ayant conduit à Meech n’était pas illégitime. Cette entente n’a pas été conçue subitement au cours des quelques heures de négociations en mai et juin 1987. Au contraire, les éléments qui s’y sont retrouvés ont fait l’objet de débats approfondis pendant de nombreuses années et l’ordre du jour fut établi publiquement. On rappelle que le gouvernement conservateur avait fondé une partie de sa campagne électorale sur cette question (Canada, 1987, 5 : 74, 87 et 10 : 41). Il importe de faire remarquer qu’en dépit de l’omniprésence des discours sur la démocratie dans les critiques à l’endroit du processus de révision constitutionnelle, les intervenants — groupes sociaux ou particuliers — s’en sont essentiellement tenus au caractère instrumental de la pratique de la démocratie. On n’y retrouve pas de véritable remise en question du mode d’insertion des individus et des groupes marginalisés au sein de la société canadienne. En vérité, le débat constitutionnel a tourné autour de questions relativement techniques : les modalités de nomination des participants à une assemblée constituante, les bienfaits de la tenue d’un référendum, les mécanismes devant présider à la conduite des audiences publiques, etc. Bien sûr, certains n’ont pas manqué de souligner au passage les lacunes du fédéralisme exécutif et de la démocratie parlementaire, mais toujours pour faire ressortir l’absence d’une véritable participation des citoyens. Cette approche fait l’économie d’une réflexion approfondie sur les faiblesses de la pratique démocratique, une réflexion qui mettrait l’accent sur les principes de solidarité sociale et les conditions de la citoyenneté. Au contraire, tout se passe comme si les individus et les groupes s’opposaient les uns aux autres à travers les institutions formelles du système politique, recherchant à la fois protection et promotion de leurs droits, définis sur la base de catégories sociales déterminées.

Le fédéralisme comme fondement de la démocratie et de la citoyenneté ? Reg Whitaker, qui réfléchit depuis longtemps à la problématique de la démocratie dans le cadre fédéral canadien (1992 : 165-230, 283-328), a été l’un des premiers à prévoir la dénonciation du caractère antidémocratique du processus constitutionnel. Son analyse fine des sources politiques et idéologiques de la Constitution canadienne indique la nature profondément élitiste et antidémocratique de ses fondements et des pratiques politiques qu’elle a soutenues. Certes, avec le temps, reconnaît-il, la notion britannique de souveraineté incarnée par le « Gouverneur en conseil » de même que la doctrine à la fois rivale et complémentaire de suprématie parlementaire se sont quelque peu étiolées sous l’action combinée de l’extension du suffrage

173 IJCS/RIÉC universel et de la montée des partis politiques. Mais c’est plutôt du côté du fédéralisme, non pas en tant que système administratif de partage de pouvoir mais comme appui de la démocratie, que Whitaker propose de regarder pour élargir le champ de la pratique démocratique. Le fédéralisme moderne, soutient-il, permet d’éviter que l’expression de la volonté de la majorité nationale agisse comme seule base légitime de législation. Le cadre fédératif empêche que la majorité nationale s’impose comme seul critère de la souveraineté, cette dernière se répartissant entre diverses souverainetés régionales. Certes, Whitaker admet que les particularités du système électoral canadien peuvent parfois diluer le potentiel démocratique du fédéralisme : au Canada, la majorité nationale n’équivaut bien souvent à rien de plus que la suprématie d’une province ou d’une région sur les autres. Quoi qu’il en soit, Whitaker n’en proclame pas moins la compatibilité du fédéralisme et de la démocratie en ce que l’un et l’autre se renforcent mutuellement. Le fédéralisme, prétend-il, offre les garanties institutionnelles d’une citoyenneté plus complexe et plus large. Cela peut, bien sûr, conduire à une multiplicité d’expressions politiques, de volontés contradictoires de représentation et de loyautés identitaires antagoniques qui constituent autant de défis à la pratique démocratique, mais qui l’obligent aussi à se renouveler. Whitaker symbolise en quelque sorte le malaise et l’ambiguïté actuels de la pensée sur la démocratie au Canada. En posant le fédéralisme comme un fondement important de la démocratie, il montre combien sa conception de la démocratie est finalement dépendante de l’appareillage institutionnel qui en permet l’exercice. On cherchera en vain chez Whitaker une définition précise des éléments constitutifs de la citoyenneté préalable à la pratique démocratique. L’intérêt du fédéralisme à cet égard tient au fait que sur le plan institutionnel, il assure une représentation plus juste et égalitaire des droits des individus contre la tyrannie de la majorité. Whitaker nous met peut-être sur une piste intéressante, car dans sa forme pure et absolue, le fédéralisme permet en effet une décentralisation de la souveraineté. Cependant, dans la mesure où les paramètres d’insertion des particularismes restent indéfinis, on ne peut se rallier complètement à Whitaker. En bout de piste, la position qu’il défend approuve la démocratie de représentation — surtout si elle est tempérée par des codes de libertés fondamentales qui protègent les opinions minoritaires — et se range à l’intérieur de la conception territoriale traditionnelle de la politique canadienne qui ne cherche finalement qu’à assurer la protection des volontés régionales. Whitaker n’offre aucune vision sociétale de la démocratie, dont la problématique s’identifie aux mécanismes de la gouverne. En fait, Whitaker compte peut-être parmi les rares à avoir cherché quelque sens démocratique à la quête constitutionnelle canadienne. De façon générale, les experts, les universitaires et les intellectuels qui s’intéressent au dossier et qui ont exprimé leur avis durant ou en marge des débats ont rarement poussé leur pensée jusque sur le terrain d’une reconceptualisation du sens de la démocratie. Dans presque tous les cas, ils ou elles se sont conformés au cadre étroit de réflexion imposé par les élites politiques. Il suffit pour s’en convaincre de consulter les procès-verbaux des audiences des diverses commissions sur la Constitution qui ont sondé les Canadiens au cours des dernières années. Que ce soit dans le cadre des ces commissions lors de forums publics ou semi-publics, ces gens n’ont jamais tenté de renouveler le discours sur la démocratie. Tout comme les groupes, associations et particuliers qui ont présenté des mémoires, l’intelligentsia canadienne s’est surtout attachée à relever les faiblesses institutionnelles qui menacent l’exercice de la

174 Démocratie et réforme constitutionnelle : discours et pratique démocratie sans se préoccuper des conditions sociales essentielles à la démocratie ou encore des paramètres idéaux d’une citoyenneté élargie. Elle est tombée, elle aussi, dans le panneau des discussions de plomberie institutionnelle. À lire l’imposante documentation sur la question (à titre indicatif voir Behiels, 1989; Barrie, 1988; Smith, 1991; Cairns, 1992a; Silipo, 1991), on s’aperçoit vite que c’est d’abord la démocratisation du processus de réforme constitutionnelle qui retient l’attention des experts et non pas le contenu même de la démocratie. En cela, leurs propos ne s’écartent guère des multiples positions exprimées devant les comités parlementaires. Certes, il n’est pas inutile de chercher les moyens d’une juste représentation, mais l’élargissement de la démocratie ne tient pas aux seuls mécanismes de la représentation. Alan Cairns (1988) fournit les éléments d’une explication à cette espèce d’obsession institutionnelle. D’après lui, la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982 marquait une rupture dans la façon d’aborder la chose constitutionnelle au Canada et dans la manière surtout de s’y sentir partie prenante. L’enchâssement d’une charte des droits et libertés dans la Constitution a créé, d’après Cairns, une Constitution de citoyens encourageant les groupes et les individus historiquement exclus de la dynamique politique à prendre la place qui leur revient de droit. Alors que les discussions relatives à la Constitution ont toujours été le moment de tractations entre élites bureaucratiques et politiques, la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982 a invité les citoyens à se considérer aussi comme acteurs à part entière. Ce changement important dans la culture politique du pays pose inévitablement tout le problème de la participation et de la représentation et donc des modalités d’insertion institutionnelle des intérêts multiples et antagoniques appelés à se manifester (Fortin, 1992 : 5-6). L’échec de l’Accord du lac Meech tiendrait en partie à ce qu’on avait compté sans la réaction des groupes et citoyens nouvellement « accrédités » par la Charte, qui n’auront pas accepté de n’avoir pas été inclus dans le processus (Cairns, 1991 : 19). Dans un texte récent (1992), Jane Jenson a bien retracé cette dynamique qu’elle lie à l’évolution du sens de la citoyenneté et aux modifications du contenu identitaire au Canada. Durant presque toute la première moitié du 20e siècle, observe-t-elle, la région et la culture ont défini les clivages politiques les plus importants. Les groupes dont l’action se réclamaient de l’identité régionale utilisaient le système de partis pour obtenir d’Ottawa un partage équitable des ressources socio-économiques. De même, ceux qui se mobilisaient sur la base de l’appartenance culturelle utilisaient à la fois les canaux provincial et fédéral pour faire valoir leurs revendications. Jusqu’à la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, les intérêts régionaux et ethnoculturels s’exprimeront essentiellement à travers la représentation partisane et ministérielle. Après 1945, c’est dans le cadre de négociations intergouvernementales surtout que se manifesteront les prétentions à la citoyenneté. Toujours selon Jenson, depuis l’entrée en vigueur de la Charte, cependant, l’action des groupes tend à se situer en dehors du système partisan et des mécanismes intergouvernementaux. Ainsi, l’échec de Meech manifeste l’échec des institutions représentatives de la démocratie libérale, à savoir le système de partis et le fédéralisme exécutif. Le processus de prise de décision fut dénoncé parce qu’il niait les principes de la souveraineté parlementaire ainsi que les nouvelles formes de représentation des mouvements sociaux et des groupes d’intérêts. Ces nouvelles formes de représentation offrent une utre voie au secteur populaire qui ne compte plus sur le système de partis pour faire

175 IJCS/RIÉC valoir ses intérêts (Breton et Jenson, 1991 : 201). L’espace politique vital de ces groupes serait autrement défini : leur identité est intimement liée à leur préférence pour des formes nouvelles de démocratie politique. Jenson soutient que l’émergence de nouveaux mouvements sociaux, de même que la récente prééminence politique de groupes tels que les autochtones, marquent le point de départ d’une reformulation de la démocratie au Canada. Leurs positions et revendications particulières remettraient en cause le « déficit » démocratique que représentent la définition de la Constitution et l’opération des institutions intergouverne- mentales et partisanes. En fait, Jenson n’est pas loin de suggérer que ces nouveaux mouvements sociaux pourraient constituer les fondements d’une pratique élargie de la démocratie au Canada. Notre lecture de la situation n’est pas aussi enthousiaste que celle de Jenson. Sur la base des préoccupations exprimées devant les comités parlementaires, nous croyons plutôt que les revendications des nouveaux mouvements sociaux participent d’abord d’un désir de reconnaissance institutionnelle et ne remettent pas en cause les paramètres fondamentaux actuels du système politique et de la citoyenneté. D’après ce que nous avons pu déceler, rares sont les groupes qui essaient d’amener le débat sur le terrain d’une conception qui transcenderait leur intégration aux mécanismes institutionnels tels qu’ils existent à l’heure actuelle. Ainsi, ils ne remettent pas en question les fondements usuels de la citoyenneté et de la démocratie. Bien sûr, certains groupes se sont montrés fort critiques à l’endroit du mode de fonctionnement de la démocratie et ont souligné avec véhémence la faible participation de la population au processus constitutionnel. La mise en application de leurs suggestions aurait certes pour effet de modifier les institutions, mais en suivant toujours les principes de la démocratie parlementaire. De plus, leur volonté d’être entendus ou représentés, d’une manière ou d’une autre, à la table constitutionnelle, ne modifie que marginalement le fédéralisme exécutif et le recours à l’accommodation des élites comme lieu de prise de décision comme l’a pertinemment rappelé Smith (1991 : 80). Mais au-delà de ces critiques et de ces suggestions, les groupes et les nouveaux mouvements sociaux dont parle Jenson ont adopté une posture étroitement individualiste en cherchant simplement à obtenir la parité de leurs droits avec ceux des autres groupes. Leur conception de la citoyenneté se limite en fait à leur seule inclusion dans l’appareil institutionnel existant. Pire, leurs inquiétudes quant à la défense de leurs intérêts propres ne se manifestent bien souvent qu’en fonction des pertes ou des gains relatifs à la plus ou moins grande centralisation du fédéralisme canadien. Par exemple, les groupes de femmes considèrent souvent que le gouvernement fédéral offre de meilleures garanties de respect des principes d’universalité et d’accessibilité aux soins de santé que les provinces, d’où leur attachement à l’adoption de normes nationales (McLellan, 1992 : 10). Mais pour plusieurs, la réflexion s’arrête là. Toute la problématique est toujours posée selon l’axe traditionnel centralisation- décentralisation alors que le problème de la santé des femmes a un caractère éminemment social qui va au-delà des calculs renvoyant uniquement à la mécanique administrative et institutionnelle du partage des compétences. Ces questions sont, certes, pertinentes. Mais limiter la réflexion à ces seules balises réduit la complexité du problème et fait peu pour situer le débat à l’extérieur des institutions gouvernementales et partisanes comme le soutient Jenson. De plus, cette façon d’aborder la question ne contribue que marginalement à une redéfinition plus globale de la citoyenneté.

176 Démocratie et réforme constitutionnelle : discours et pratique

En raison de leur « obsession institutionnaliste, » les représentants des groupes et des nouveaux mouvements sociaux ne contribuent pas véritablement au changement de la culture politique qui assurerait un renouvellement de la pratique démocratique au Canada. Alors que ces groupes pourraient être le ferment de valeurs nouvelles à la base d’une citoyenneté et d’une pratique démocratique renouvelée, leurs actions et leurs intérêts respectifs semblent les diviser. En d’autres termes, la démarche privilégiée par certains groupes peut les amener à opposer leurs intérêts et leurs droits à ceux mis de l’avant par d’autres. Par exemple, on peut s’interroger sur la complémentarité entre la reconnaissance du principe de l’autonomie gouvernementale réclamée par les chefs autochtones et le respect des droits des femmes autochtones. Celles-ci n’avaient-elles pas demandé un siège à la table constitutionnelle craignant l’édulcoration de leurs droits contenus dans la Charte ? L’attention des intervenants socio-politiques et des spécialistes qui se sont penchés sur notre problématique s’est essentiellement portée sur les modalités d’une participation accrue sans qu’il ne soit question des fondements théoriques de la Charte. En d’autres termes, les interrogations ne portent pas sur les valeurs qui l’animent, sinon pour reprendre les grands principes du libéralisme. Or, il nous faut nous demander si ces valeurs sont suffisantes pour garantir l’exercice d’une véritable démocratie. C’est maintenant cette question qui va faire l’objet de nos propos.

Repenser la démocratie Selon la conception généralement acceptée dans les sociétés occidentales, l’exercice de la démocratie relève de la dimension politico-administrative de la vie sociale; la démocratie n’a de sens et d’existence propres qu’à travers les manifestations directes et indirectes des institutions parlementaires. La démocratie est d’abord une question de droits politiques consentis aux individus et le progrès en la matière se mesure à l’aune de la protection qu’une société est prête à garantir à ces mêmes droits. La démocratie s’appuie ainsi sur les préceptes du libéralisme individualiste qui pose comme prémisses ontologiques fondamentales la défense et la promotion de la liberté individuelle. Elle participe d’un concept négatif de la liberté, puisque celle-ci apparaît d’abord comme l’absence de contraintes ou d’interférences extérieures à l’individu. Dans ce cadre, le rôle de l’État se limite à protéger l’individu contre les menaces à sa liberté et surtout contre toute atteinte à son droit inaliénable à la propriété privée. La tradition libérale en ce domaine ne se préoccupe guère d’objectifs de coopération, de justice ou d’égalité sociale; légiférer de tels objectifs porterait ombrage à la liberté que doit avoir l’individu de faire ses propres choix. L’émergence de l’État-providence et la primauté accrue accordée à la promotion de l’égalité socio-économique ont démontré en un sens l’inadéquation d’une application stricte du libéralisme individualiste à la démocratie. L’expérience welfariste des sociétés occidentales au cours des quarante ou cinquante dernières années prouve que la démocratie se joue aussi en dehors des frontières de la sphère politique. Les revendications constantes pour la reconnaissance de droits sociaux et économiques, les luttes pour l’égalité non pas simplement politique mais aussi sociale montrent que pour plusieurs, la démocratie n’est pas qu’affaire de droits politiques et de libertés civiles. Au cours des années récentes, plusieurs penseurs ont remis en question les principes traditionnels de fonctionnement de la démocratie libérale. Non seulement s’inscrivent-ils souvent en faux contre l’adéquation qui est

177 IJCS/RIÉC généralement faite entre libéralisme et démocratie ou encore entre parlementarisme et démocratie (Mouffe, 1992a; 1992b), mais encore ils cherchent à déborder les confins institutionnels étroits dans lesquels on enferme aussi l’exercice de la démocratie. On s’oriente ainsi vers une reconceptualisation plus globale, plus sociétale de la démocratie (Labica, 1992) qui permettrait la création d’espaces publics de participation qui ne tiendrait pas seulement aux critères de la représentation, mais aussi et peut-être surtout au désir d’inclusion sociale et économique. Cette vision « alternative » ne cherche pas la reviviscence de la démocratie dans le remaniement cosmétique des institutions en place, elle lie le renouvellement de la démocratie à la reconfiguration du rapport salarial, à la transformation des rapports sociaux, au recul des hiérarchies, au respect de l’égalité dans la différence et à la mise en place de nouvelles formes de solidarité et de mécanismes de représentation plus organiques (Lipietz, 1992 : 283-284). Bref, le renouvellement de la démocratie tiendrait dans la capacité des sociétés modernes d’opter pour une remise en question du paradigme démocratique dominant. Dans la pratique sociale, le plein développement de la démocratie n’est possible que si l’on consent à en camper l’exercice, par-delà le formalisme parlementaire et représentatif, dans le champ beaucoup plus global et généreux d’un dialogue ouvert entre tous ceux et celles dont l’épanouissement personnel est à la merci des conditions sociales et matérielles. Or, il ne peut y avoir épanouissement de la personne sans coopération sociale, sans solidarité entre les individus, sans réciprocité; c’est un préalable. La garantie sociale d’un bien-être matériel et moral pour tous sans exception représente la condition nécessaire à l’épanouissement de la personne et, de manière concomitante, à l’expansion de la démocratie (Gould, 1988; Guttman, 1988; Doyal et Gough, 1991). Le projet démocratique exige l’égalité entre les individus. Il ne s’agit pas ici d’une égalité formelle ou de principe, mais d’une égalité d’accès aux conditions sociales et matérielles d’épanouissement individuel. Le droit égal pour tous de participer aux décisions relatives aux activités communes liées à l’épanouissement individuel doit constituer une facette incontournable de la démocratie. Ces aires communes de décision ne relèvent pas seulement du domaine politique; elles doivent aussi s’insérer dans tous les domaines de la vie sociale et économique. Vivre la démocratie, c’est donc dépasser la tyrannie de la majorité pour aller vers des formes plus consensuelles où les minoritaires ne sont pas exclus d’emblée des choix de société. C’est également travailler à combler les écarts socio-économiques qui éloignent et polarisent les divers segments de la société. Vivre la démocratie, c’est penser une société fondée sur le partage des biens, des obligations et du savoir, une société axée sur la possibilité offerte à tous de participer aux mécanismes du devenir collectif. Vivre la démocratie, c’est finalement investir l’espace public et exercer pleinement les responsabilités de la citoyenneté. Mais de quelle citoyenneté s’agit-il ? L’idée de citoyenneté a historiquement été élaborée et comprise dans son sens universel et général. Elle repose d’abord et avant tout sur la présence de traits communs, presque toujours institutionnels, auxquels peuvent s’identifier les agents sociaux, sans égard à ce qui les différencie. L’universalisme du concept classique de souveraineté conduit à la mise en place de lois et de règles socio-institutionnelles qui se répercutent sur tous et chacun indistinctement. Les lois et les règles qui émanent de la citoyenneté traditionnelle ne tiennent pas compte des

178 Démocratie et réforme constitutionnelle : discours et pratique particularités individuelles et des différences socio-économiques qui distinguent et opposent même les agents et les groupes sociaux. Dans son acception actuelle, la citoyenneté équivaut ni plus ni moins à un déni de l’existence de réalités sociales multiples. Le véritable défi de la réflexion sur la démocratie à l’aube du 21e siècle consiste à penser la citoyenneté non plus comme un idéal universel et général — essentiellement défini par les classes dominantes et auquel tous se doivent d’adhérer — mais bien comme un objectif politique tangible qui viserait à donner la parole aux groupes socio- économiques qui ont été historiquement exclus du processus socio-politique et des mécanismes institutionnels et administratifs et qui continuent d’être relégués à la marge des lieux de pouvoir et laissés pour compte dans l’élaboration de projets de société (Young, 1990). En clair, il ne saurait y avoir de projet véritablement démocratique sans solidarité ni réciprocité, mais surtout sans l’apport de tous à la définition de l’architecture sociale et de l’économie générale de la société. Les sociétés libérales se sont toujours cachées derrière l’illusion rassurante qu’offre la représentation parlementaire : l’exercice régulier du droit de vote n’est-il pas la preuve la plus tangible, le signe le plus irrévocable de la citoyenneté ? Rien n’est moins clair aujourd’hui alors que le processus électoral se confond bien souvent avec pratique civique ritualisée, passive et sans substance. Le système électoral simule la citoyenneté; il ne permet pas l’engagement direct et critique de l’électorat au processus de formulation et de discussion des politiques publiques. Certes, le pluralisme bon teint dont se targuent les sociétés libérales offre l’image d’une démocratie sereine et enviable. Dans les faits, la consultation, par élection ou sondage, des citoyens participe de l’illusion démocratique. Non seulement reconduit-elle, quelle que soit sa forme, le système socio-politique dans toute sa conformité, jamais elle ne fait vraiment participer le citoyen. Spectacles orchestrés par des élites socio-économiques qui ne cherchent qu’à assurer leur propre dominance sociale et politique, ces coups de sonde ne servent plus qu’à entretenir l’impression de la démocratie auprès de populations repoussées à la marge et que l’on entend surtout maintenir là. Et ainsi se reproduit le cercle vicieux du désengagement politique : éventuellement persuadées qu’il leur est impossible d’agir sur le système, ces populations ne voient plus l’utilité de s’informer et de revoir la légitimité du système; leur apathie et leur ignorance confirment en bout de piste l’idée qu’entretiennent les élites politiques au sujet de l’incapacité du peuple à se gouverner lui-même (Lyon, 1992 : 125). Au Canada, fédéralisme et démocratie sont généralement associés. On sait aujourd’hui que l’un n’est pas garant de l’autre (Whitaker, 1992) et qu’ici, ils ne l’ont jamais été. Pourtant, l’on persiste à penser que le fédéralisme à la canadienne est porteur de démocratie. La crise constitutionnelle actuelle reflète en grande partie l’insatisfaction croissante face à la nature même du régime démocratique que prétend être le fédéralisme canadien. La grande problématique qui ressort des différentes consultations relatives à la Constitution porte dans presque tous les cas sur l’inadéquation ressentie par les individus, les groupes ou les associations des mécanismes de représentation et d’inclusion dans les processus décisionnels. Que ce soit pour des questions de représentativité territoriale, ethnique, linguistique, sociale, économique ou sexuelle, les doléances de tous et chacun témoignent de l’incapacité du fédéralisme canadien et des institutions parlementaires qui le soutiennent d’assurer une place et un rôle équivalents dans la formulation des politiques

179 IJCS/RIÉC publiques et des décisions politico-administratives qui influent sur la vie des citoyens. À certains égards, le processus de fragmentation du tissu social et la tendance vraisemblablement irrévocable à la personnalisation du social (Lipovetsky, 1983) qui caractérisent la dynamique sociétale de cette fin de siècle sonnent le glas des institutions politiques traditionnelles. L’emprise croissante sur le discours politique des revendications en faveur des droits individuels et la multiplication des regroupements d’êtres identiques pour la reconnaissance publique de leur différence ou simplement pour partager leur vécu rend obsolète un système politique comme celui du Canada, attaché qu’il reste à l’idée d’un État territorial souverain et centralisé. Dans un tel contexte de transformation des valeurs, des normes et des paramètres de la vie sociale, le système politique devient inapte à répondre aux exigences et aux attentes d’une partie croissante de la population. Au Canada, cela se vérifie d’autant plus que la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982 a donné voix aux chapitre aux groupes et aux individus qui avaient été historiquement exclus du processus politique. Forts de la caution juridique que leur offre la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés, ceux-ci exigent plus que jamais la reconnaissance de leur différence et de leur particularité, exerçant du même coup des pressions auxquelles ni le système politique ni les élites ne peuvent donner suite (Cairns, 1988; Rocher et Salée, 1991; Whitaker, 1992). Force est de constater que la structure institutionnelle et administrative du fédéralisme canadien est en train de céder parce qu’elle est de plus en plus inapte à combler les aspirations démocratiques suscitées à la fois par la nouvelle donne imposée par la Charte, le mouvement général de personnalisation du social et la redéfinition concomitante de la citoyenneté. La tradition théorique qui anime le système politique canadien (c’est celle en fait sur laquelle se fonde toute la conceptualisation de l’organisation politique en Occident et qui puise dans la pensée des Bodin, Hobbes et Machiavel) est ancrée dans la conviction que la fonction de régie (governance) est l’objet privilégié du politique. Suivant cette optique, l’élaboration de projets de société passe d’abord par la mise au point des mécanismes de régie; les impératifs de la raison d’État conditionnent et stabilisent la société. Or, vivre la démocratie en ces temps de fragmentation sociale, c’est tenter de dépasser cette vision du politique qui n’a de sens finalement qu’en contexte de grande homogénéité sociale. Vivre la démocratie, c’est tenter de réorganiser la société non plus en fonction du pouvoir de l’État et d’un idéal institutionnel et instrumental, mais bien en fonction de la société elle-même, c’est-à-dire des réalités multiples et variées qui la composent et des volontés d’autonomie qui la traversent (Hueglin, 1992). Ces questions n’ont malheureusement pas alimenté le débat sur le nécessaire arrimage entre la transformation de la pratique démocratique et la transformation des mécanismes de négociations constitutionnelles au cours des dernières années. On peut d’ailleurs se permettre d’être sceptique quant à la possibilité d’enregistrer à plus ou moins long terme quelque progrès à cet égard , tant et aussi longtemps que l’on continuera d’agir à l’intérieur des mécanismes institutionnels actuels. Au-delà des raisons particulières et souvent partisanes qui ont poussé une majorité de Canadiens à rejeter l’entente de Charlottetown, l’issue du référendum d’octobre 1992 traduit aussi un désaccord populaire assez profond face au processus même de révision constitutionnelle, un certain cynisme

180 Démocratie et réforme constitutionnelle : discours et pratique quant au potentiel de développement démocratique qu’aurait pu contenir une telle révision, de même qu’un désenchantement à peine voilé face à la classe politique canadienne. Il serait étonnant que le débat constitutionnel soit rouvert dans un avenir rapproché. Les tribulations constitutionnelles et référendaires des dernières années ont conduit à l’écoeurement politique des Canadiens qui, à court terme tout au moins, refuseront de s’interroger sérieusement à propos de leur système politique ou des tenants et aboutissants de la démocratie. En attendant, le problème reste entier. En dernière analyse, ce que démontre le rejet de l’entente de Charlottetown et, avant cela, l’échec de l’Accord du lac Meech, c’est bien l’épuisement, voire la faillite, du modèle traditionnel des relations fédérales-provinciales pour solutionner les problèmes inhérents à la dynamique de la société civile. Il y a peut-être là un mal pour un bien. La défaite référendaire vient en quelque sorte confirmer ce qu’Alan Cairns a si finement identifié comme la non- concordance, provoquée par la constitutionnalisation de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés, entre deux logiques contradictoires : celle des citoyens désormais détenteurs de droits et drapés de prétention multiples et polymorphes à la différence; et celle des gouvernements, gestionnaires historiques et souverains de l’expression des droits individuels et des revendications communautaires. Ces deux logiques commandent des mécanismes institutionnels opposés et, somme toute, irréconciliables (Cairns, 1992b). Le drame de l’histoire constitutionnelle canadienne récente tient dans cet entêtement à arrimer l’une et l’autre logique, et même parfois la tentation d’imposer l’une à l’autre. Le référendum de 1992 enseigne finalement que cet arrimage est impossible et qu’il faut chercher ailleurs. La question demeure ouverte : où chercher ? La forme et la cohérence institutionnelle de l’État participent toujours plus ou moins des modulations particulières de la société civile, bien que dans certaines conjonctures historiques, il arrive que l’État imprime à celle-ci ses propres paramètres. En instaurant une mouvance politique désormais fondée sur les droits, la réforme constitutionnelle de 1982 a remis en quelque sorte la société civile à l’avant- scène. La dynamique politique s’accomplit de plus en plus dans l’interface entre des citoyens parés de leurs droits distinctifs, individuels et collectifs—droits des femmes contre ceux des hommes, droits des Autochtonnes et des minorités visibles contre ceux de la majorité blanche. C’est dans ce registre nouveau et inhabituel pour la culture politique canadienne que s’expriment maintenant les prétentions à la citoyenneté et que d’aucuns entendent jeter les fondations d’une démocratie élargie, inclusive, cherchant à équilibrer la reconnaissance des droits individuels universels à la nécessaire reconnaissance des particularismes. Tout n’est pas réglé pour autant. Si l’échec référendaire a démontré les limites de l’hégémonie institutionnelle du fédéralisme canadien et annoncé la réaffirmation de la société civile, cela ne garantit pas une redéfinition institutionnelle idéale exempte de conflits. Dans le contexte actuel où les droits individuels dominent de plus en plus le discours politique, l’unanimité devient presque impossible, puisque tout est contestable et qu’il n’existe plus de rationalité unique et universelle. Pour certains, le processus de personnalisation, évoqué plus haut, constitue un premier pas vers le renouveau démocratique des sociétés occidentales, la garantie de l’essentielle remise en question des consensus (Lipovetsky, 1983 : 183 et sq.). Certes, on peut espérer, à la façon de certains philosophes libéraux

181 IJCS/RIÉC communautariens, que, puisque la production de l’identité subjective résulte du désir humain de reconnaissance par les autres, et donc d’un nécessaire dialogue, le respect des identités individuelles et des différences débouche sur une société inévitablement plus démocratique où chacun est ouvert à l’autre, où les identités individuelles s’épanouissent par le dialogue collectif et une conception unanimement partagée de la communauté (Taylor, 1992). Dans la réalité, la glorification actuelle des droits individuels et l’obsession juridique qui l’alimente reposent sur une vision atomiste du social — vision décriée avec conviction par les philosophes communautariens, Taylor en tête — où chaque être est une île autosuffisante qui ne doit rien à la communauté. Dans un tel contexte, le dialogue est forcément, et plus souvent qu’autrement, un dialogue de sourds. Une juriste américaine observait récemment qu’aux États-Unis, la primauté accordée aux droits individuels dans le discours politique avait conduit à une situation qui

in its absoluteness, promotes unrealistic expectations, heightens social conflict, and inhibits dialogue that might lead toward consensus, accommodation, or at least the discovery of common ground. In its silence concerning responsibilities, [rights talk] seems to condone acceptance of the benefits of living in a democratic social welfare state, without accepting the corresponding personal and civic obligations. In its relentless individualism, it fosters a climate that is inhospitable to society’s losers, and that systematically disadvantages caretakers and dependents, young and old (...). We make it difficult for persons and groups with conflicting interests and views to build a coalition and achieve compromise, or even to acquire that minimal degree of mutual forbearance and understanding that promotes peaceful coexistence and keeps the door open to further communication (Glendon, 1991 : 14-15). Sans doute que le Canada n’en est pas rendu là. Mais comme le donne à penser le rejet de l’entente de Charlottetown, l’incapacité à définir les conditions minimales de coexistence des identités plurielles laisse croire que le processus est déjà bien amorcé. Comme nous l’avons indiqué plus haut, seule la reviviscence des liens fondamentaux de solidarité communautaire et de réciprocité peut stopper ce glissement. Mais entre pareille exhortation normative et la réalité, un fossé semble se creuser dont personne ne peut prédire l’ampleur, ni même s’il ira en s’élargissant. Tout dépendra de la dynamique sociétale que les Canadiens se forgeront.

Notes 1. Nous tenons à remercier Michel Sarra-Bournet qui nous a assistés dans la phase préliminaire de la recherche.

Bibliographie Barrie, Doreen (1988), « Who Spoke for Canada ? » dans Roger Gibbins (dir.), Meech Lake and Canada. Perspectives from the West, Edmonton, Academic Printing and Publishing, pp. 143-146. Behiels, Michael D., (dir.), (1989), The Meech Lake Primer. Conflicting Views on the 1987 Constitutional Accord, Ottawa, Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa.

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Breton, Gilles et Jane Jenson (1991), « After Free Trade and Meech Lake: Quoi de neuf ? », Studies in Political Economy, no 34, Spring, pp. 199-218. Brock, Kathy L. (1991), « The Politics of Process » dans Douglas M. Brown, (dir.), Canada: The State of the Federation 1991, Kingston, Institut des relations intergouvernementales, pp. 57- 87. Cairns, Alan C. (1988), « Citizens (Outsiders) and Governments (Insiders) in Constitution- Making: The Case of Meech Lake », Canadian Public Policy, vol. 15, september, pp. S121- S145. Cairns, Alan C. (1991), « The Charter, Interest Groups, Executive Federalism, and Constitutional Reform » dans David E. Smith et al., After Meech Lake. Lessons for the Future, Saskatoon, Fifth House, pp. 13-31. Cairns, Alan C. (1992a), The Constitutional World We Have Lost, communication présentée au congrès annuel de l’Association canadienne de science politique, Charlottetown, University of Prince Edward Island. Cairns, Alan C. (1992b), Charter Versus Federalism. The Dilemmas of Constitutional Reform, Montréal et Kingston, Mc-Gill-Queen’s University Press. Canada (1987), Procès-verbaux et témoignages du Comité mixte spécial du Sénat et de la Chambre des communes de L’entente constitutionnelle de 1987, Ottawa, 17 fascicules. Canada (1991a), Procès-verbaux et témoignages du Comité mixte spécial du Sénat et de la Chambre des communes sur le Processus de modification de la Constitution du Canada, Ottawa, 34 fascicules. Canada (1991b), Le processus de modification de la Constitution, Rapport du comité mixte spécial du Sénat et de la Chambre des communes, Ottawa. Canada (1992), Procès-verbaux et témoignages du Comité mixte spécial sur Le renouvellement du Canada, Ottawa, 65 fascicules. Dobell, Peter et Byron Berry (1992), « La colère à l’égard du régime : mécontentement politique au Canada », Le gouvernement parlementaire, no 39, janvier, pp. 3-22. Doyal, Len et Ian Gough (1991), A Theory of Human Need, New York, The Guilford Press. Fortin, Sarah (1992), Le discours démocratique et l’enjeu constitutionnel, Montréal, inédit. Glendon, Mary Ann (1991), Rights Talk. The Impoverishment of Political Discourse, New York, Free Press. Guttman, Amy, dir., (1988), Democracy and the Welfare State, Princeton, Princeton University Press. Maillé, Chantal (1992), La réforme constitutionnelle pensée dans une perspective féministe : quelques remarques préliminaires à un débat à venir, communication présentée à l’Association canadienne droit et société, Congrès des sociétés savantes, Charlottetown. McLellan, A. Anne (1992), « Women and the Process of Constitution-Making » dans D. Schneiderman (dir.), Conversations. Among Friends « » Entre Amies, Proceedings of an Interdisciplinary Conference on Women and Constitutional Reform, Edmonton, Centre for Constitutional Studies, Alberta Law Fondation, pp. 9-13. Gould, Carol C. (1988), Rethinking Democracy. Freedom and Social Cooperation in Politics, Economy, and Society, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Hueglin, Thomas (1992), « Have We Studied the Wrong Authors? On the Relevance of Johannes Althusius », Studies in Political Thought, vol. 1, no 1, Winter, pp. 75-93. Jenson, Jane (1992), Citizenship Claims: Routes to Representation in a Federal System, paper presented for Federalism and the Nation State Conference, Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, June. Labica, Georges (1992), « Pour une nouvelle rationalité politique » dans Boismenu et al.(dir.), Les formes modernes de la démocratie, Montréal et Paris, Presses de l’Université de Montréal et L’Harmattan, pp. 53-65. Lipietz, Alain (1992), « Bases pour une alternative démocratique », dans Boismenu et al., (dir.), Les formes modernes de la démocratie, Montréal et Paris, Presses de l’Université de Montréal et L’Harmattan, pp. 275-296. Lipovetsky, Gilles (1983), L’ère du vide. Essais sur l’individualisme contemporain, Paris, Gallimard. Lyon, Vaughan (1992), « Stalemated Democracy—the Canadian Case », Revue d’études canadiennes, vol. 26, no 3, pp. 120-139. Mouffe, Chantal (1992a), « Penser la démocratie moderne avec, et contre, Carl Schmitt », Revue française de science politique, vol. 42, no 1 février, pp. 83-96. Mouffe, Chantal (1992b), Dimensions of Radical Democracy. Pluralism, Citizenship, Community, Londres, Verso. Panitch, Leo (1991), « Démocratie et Constitution », Le gouvernement parlementaire, vol. 10, no 1, pp. 19-20. Rocher, François et Daniel Salée (1991), « Charte et société : vers un nouvel ordre politique canadien ? », Revue québécoise de science politique, no 20, automne, pp. 35-64. Silipo, Tony (1991), « S’ouvrir aux nouvelles réalités », Le gouvernement parlementaire, vol. 10, no 1, pp. 11-13.

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Smith, Jennifer (1991), « Representation and Constitutional Reform in Canada » dans David E. Smith et al., After Meech Lake. Lessons for the Future, Saskatoon, Fifth House, pp. 69-82. Taylor, Charles (1992), Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition”, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press. Whitaker, Reg (1992), A Sovereign Idea. Essays on Canada as a Democratic Community, Montréal et Kingston, McGill-Queen’s University Press. Young, Iris Marion (1990), « Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship » dans Cass R. Sunstein, (dir.), Feminism & Political Theory, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, pp. 117-141.

184 Stephen McBride

Renewed Federalism as an Instrument of Competitiveness: Liberal Political Economy and the Canadian Constitution*

Abstract This article examines attempts by Canada’s Conservative government to introduce proposals based on the principles of liberal political economy into a constitutional renewal process driven by other issues. From the viewpoint of liberal political economy, a suitably renewed Constitution and federal system could serve as an instrument of economic success and competitiveness. The Meech Lake Accord, the government’s 1991 constitutional proposals, and the Charlottetown Accord are analyzed. The article concludes that although Canada’s ongoing constitutional crisis provided an opportunity for the introduction of this type of constitutional proposal, other aspects of Canada’s political system—political culture and the federal system itself—have obstructed the government’s agenda. The rejection of Charlottetown was, in this respect, less decisive than the dilution of the government’s proposals that had occurred earlier in the process.

Résumé Cet article porte sur les tentatives du gouvernement conservateur canadien de profiter du processus de révision de la Constitution pour faire adopter des propositions fondées sur les principes de l’économie politique libérale. Dans l’optique de cette dernière, un renouvellement efficace de la Constitution et du régime fédéral pouvait favoriser l’essor et le compétitivité du pays. Après avoir passé en revue l’Accord du lac Meech, les propositions constitutionnelles de 1991 ainsi que l’Accord de Charlottetown, l’auteur en arrive à la conclusion que le débat constitutionnel en cours offrait manifestement une bonne occasion de soumettre un tel projet, mais d’autres aspects de la situation politique canadienne — la culture politique et le régime fédéral lui-même — ont fait avorter le programme gouvernemental. Le rejet de l’Accord de Charlottetown a été moins déterminant que les modifications qu’il a subies au cours des négociations antérieures.

Liberal Political Economy and the Constitution The end of the Keynesian era has stimulated a renewed interest in the connection between economic doctrines and political programs. The conservative, or neo-conservative, political parties that have benefited from Keynesianism’s failure to deal with the problems created by an increasingly internationalized economy have become much more doctrinaire organizations than their pragmatic predecessors of the 1950s and 1960s. Despite the neo-

International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 7-8, Spring-Fall/Printemps-automne 1993 IJCS / RIÉC conservative label, however, the doctrine they espouse consists of a refurbished version of classical liberal political economy. There is a large literature on the policy agenda of various neo-conservative governments. Much has been written on the policy impact of the economic theory which inspires these parties. Thatcher’s Britain and Reagan’s America are seen as laboratories in which liberal political economy has been applied. Perhaps because of the emphasis on these two countries, much less has been written about the constitutional impact of liberal political economy; neither Mrs. Thatcher nor Mr. Reagan were great constitutional innovators. Nor were they leaders of countries in which constitutional politics plays a great role. Yet liberal political economy has much to say about the “good constitution” and its potential role in facilitating such economic ends as competitiveness. In Canada, which has been in the throes of constitutional crisis and debate for quite some time, a greater opportunity existed to take action on the Constitution. Canada’s own neo-conservatives may have had to play second fiddle to their more renowned foreign cousins in many areas, but in attempting to constitutionalize the principles of liberal political economy they have been in the vanguard. This article explores their efforts. Liberal political economy’s response to economic globalization and intensifying competitive pressures is to downsize the state and liberate market forces from its regulatory constraints. Restraint and retrenchment of state activity can, of course, be accomplished without constitutional change. The role of the state may simply be reduced by normal political processes. However, there is a corresponding danger that such processes will, in a later period, lead to an expansion of the state’s role—thus reversing the neo- conservative revolution. Hence, the possibility of rendering the neo- conservative assault on the state’s role permanent, through constitutional change, has its attractions. A number of analysts have noted the challenge posed for all nation-states by the growing power of transnational corporations and the markets in which they operate (eg. Simeon 1991:47-9). And, in light of Canada’s free trade solution to these pressures, it is worth noting the widespread perception that North American integration and Canadian disintegration are directly correlated (eg. Simeon 1991:51; and Watkins quoted in Norman, 1991:27). The impact of globalization on Canada’s political system has increased the constitutional strains generated by Canada’s internal and idiosyncratic cleavages based on language and region. Thus, the fact that the institutional arrangements of the country are unsettled has provided an opportunity for Canadian neo-conservatives that has been denied their colleagues in other countries. Even though the process of constitutional change itself has been driven by a different agenda, expressed in the discourse of Quebec’s demands, provincial powers, and the dissatisfaction of regions, it has been possible for neo-conservatives to initiate constitutional reforms that reflect their political and economic agenda. Indeed, according to Jenson (1989, 1990), the connection between the two constitutional agendas may be more intimate than suggested by this discussion. This is because “the paradigm which helped to stabilize the fordist mode of regulation in Canada after World War II was organized around national identities... The social compromises and institutionalized relationships of the welfare state were rationalized in terms of the needs of the

188 Renewed Federalism as an Instrument of Competitiveness whole nation and of the federal system. Therefore, when the fordist paradigm began to dissolve, it would do so around the issues of national existence and proper state forms” (Jenson 1989:84). This is not the place to explore this insight in great depth, but there is certainly a conjunction between the development of a crisis in Canada’s institutions and the opportunity to use the Constitution to bind the state to a role consistent with neo-conservative ends. These ends include reducing the role of government generally, and in particular the welfare state (Marchak 1991: Chapter 5; Shields 1990; Whitaker 1987), although students of actually existing neo-conservative governments have noted a tendency to condemn the state in theory while simultaneously relying on a strong state in certain spheres of state activity. Given these ambiguities, is it possible to identify a body of neo-conservative constitutional theory which might serve as a benchmark in evaluating the Mulroney government’s constitutional initiatives? Three themes may be emphasized. First, there is a genuine desire to confine the state to a much more restricted sphere of intervention in the economy and social policy. While this might be accomplished by normal political activity, it is also possible to restrict the state’s role by constitutional provisions. By prohibiting the state from certain activities it can also be insulated from democratic pressures—a goal some have attributed to liberal political economy (Shields 1990:162). Second, however, the state must be sufficiently strong to confront and defeat the special interests that can be expected to defend the welfare state, to police and protect the market order, and to uphold authority in society. Finally, in federal political systems we may not find a permanent theoretical position in favour of assigning powers to a particular level of government, but in practice decentralization will be viewed in most cases as more likely to lead to “less government in general and less redistributive activity in particular” (Boadway 1992:3). These guidelines provide a profile of the constitutional preferences of liberal political economy. How are these preferences connected to the basic economic strategy favoured by Canadian neo-conservatives? What kinds of specific constitutional proposals emerge from the conjunction of economic and constitutional preferences? The interplay of economic strategies and constitutional preferences has been most comprehensively analyzed by Peter Leslie (1987: especially Chapter 9) who outlines the constitutional and political implications of three potential economic strategies. In one of these, which he terms the liberal-continentalist option, minimal government intervention occurs and continental free trade obtains. It is the strategy recommended by the Macdonald Commission and, in broad terms, adopted by the Mulroney government. What are the constitutional correlates of this option? Although liberal political economy generally favours a reduced role for the state in the economy and in social policy, it is often necessary to assign matters to one or other level of government given the constitutional principle of the supremacy of Parliament. In general this will lead to a preference for a decentralization of powers to the provinces. An alternative approach would be to expand those elements in the Canadian Constitution which prohibit either order of government from undertaking certain activities. One might therefore look for some combination of limits on federal powers and transfer of jurisdictions to the provinces. Through decentralization and deference to the market, the ideal of a limited and constrained state might be approximated.

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However, Leslie (1987:167-70) notes that even the liberal-continentalist option requires a strong state: “the market-enhancing policies advocated by the [Macdonald] commission are anything but anodyne in their constitutional effects. Indeed, they demand more extensive limitations on provincial powers than anything proposed by the federal government during the [earlier constitutional] negotiations” (Leslie 1987:24). For example, the divided jurisdiction over fiscal policy that is involved in any federal system of government opens the possibility that one level of government may use its fiscal powers to offset initiatives taken by the other. If a low tax and low spending policy is to prevail, some form of coordination would seem necessary. Similarly, for a truly free market to exist in Canada, a more complete economic union than that guaranteed by Section 121 of the British North America Act is necessary. Section 121 has not prevented the creation of barriers to interprovincial trade by both levels of government. Striking down such obstacles seems to require strengthened national institutions. Finally, the Macdonald Commission anticipated that the federal government’s lack of a treaty implementation power, where treaties touched areas of provincial jurisdiction, might make problematic the implementation of continental free trade with the United States (see Leslie 1987:108-9). Thus, the constitutional program of liberal political economy might include a general predeliction to weaken the powers of the central government, especially as far as economic and social intervention are concerned, together with a selective strengthening of the federal government’s ability to overcome interventionism by the provinces. One might expect also some reliance upon the American connection, as manifested in the Free Trade Agreement, to provide strong state support for a free market economy should domestic politics in Canada deny it. Among the chief supporters of such an agenda have been the business community, especially as represented by the Business Council on National Issues, and the mainstream of the economics profession, many of whose ideas found expression in the report of the Macdonald Royal Commission (Simeon 1987; Carmichael, Dobson, Lipsey 1986). Other vocal supporters of the agenda include a range of think-tanks and research institutes associated with the business community (see, for example, Ernst 1992).

Canadian Business and the Constitution: Macdonald, Meech and Post- Meech The Macdonald Commission devoted most of the third volume of its report to political institutions and reforms to the political system. Many of its recommendations found their way, in one form or another, into either the Meech Lake Accord or the federal government’s 1991 constitutional proposals, Shaping Canada’s Future Together. The Macdonald Report (v.3, 385-408) recommended Senate reform to enhance regional representation, recognition of the distinctive character of Quebec, a form of constitutional veto for Quebec, and opt-out rights with compensation to all provinces. The existence of barriers within the Canadian economic union occupied the attention of the Commissioners and the report called for an amendment to extend the provisions of Section 121 to include services, and for a Code of Economic Conduct to help eliminate non-tariff barriers to trade in goods and services. An intergovernmental agency to police the economic union was proposed and the Commission foresaw that if a Code of Economic Conduct were eventually made legally enforceable it would become “a regulatory agency ... that regulates governments” (v.3:393). The Commission also

190 Renewed Federalism as an Instrument of Competitiveness recommended a constitutional amendment to make international treaties enforceable, even when their substance lay in areas of provincial jurisdiction, subject to the proviso that the relevant sections of the treaties be approved by the legislatures of seven provinces containing 50 percent of the population. The Commission stopped short of recommending formal limitations on the federal spending power, but felt its future use ought to be subject to conditions and guidelines. Some of the Commission’s thinking found its way into the Meech Lake Accord. Both were supported by the Business Council (BCNI 1990). The Accord’s demise, though regrettable to business among others, did provide an opportunity to initiate a new constitutional round. It was widely conceded that the agenda in this—the Canada Round—would need to be broader than that of Meech. As a result one finds a more consistent expression of liberal political economy than had been possible in the Quebec round represented in Meech. The BCNI became more specific about the linkages between the economy and political system, and the ways in which the latter might be restructured to more adequately serve the former. “In the quest for competitiveness, the Canadian political system must be an ally and not an impediment. First and foremost, the reforms to our federal system must ensure that the Canadian common market is established in fact and that the Canadian economic union is strengthened. The free movement of labour, capital, goods and services must be guaranteed under any new constitutional arrangement, and in this area, we see the federal government having a strengthened role” (Business Council on National Issues 1991:8). This goal outweighed all others in business’s mind. So while the BCNI was prepared to countenance “meaningful decentralization or a reduced federal government role in fields assigned to the provinces under the current Constitution or a revised Constitution,” this was subject to the proviso that “any decentralization must be accompanied by concrete arrangements to assure greater coordination or co-operation—otherwise, the existing Canadian economic union, and the benefits it confers, will be threatened” (Business Council on National Issues 1992:24). Essentially the Business Council’s constitutional program consisted of contriving a new balance such that the threat of Quebec separatism would be removed and a reformed federation, characterized by political stability, could function effectively and contribute to economic competitiveness and prosperity. A re-ordered division and sharing of powers was viewed as necessary to this end—but this by no means implied a wholesale decentralization of powers; in some areas, at least, enhanced federal power would result. To render this palatable to regional opinion, reform of federal institutions, including the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the development of new consultative procedures for federal-provincial communication, was necessary (Business Council on National Issues 1991). Clearly these measures amount to a form of intra-state federalism.

Meech Lake The Meech Lake Accord was driven by the refusal of the Quebec government to endorse the 1982 Constitution. A number of propitious circumstances in the mid 1980s—the departure of Trudeau and Levesque, the election of a federal Conservative government pledged to national reconciliation and wishing to consolidate its new found electoral support in Quebec, and the election of a Liberal government in Quebec whose chief priority was to normalize the position of the province (McRoberts 1988: Ch.11) explain why the attempt was made when it was.

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My own concern here, of course, is not with the Quebec issue or Meech Lake per se, but with the opportunity which Canada’s unfinished constitutional agenda afforded for the neo-conservative view of the good Constitution to be implemented. The federal government sensed that success in “bringing Quebec back in,” a considerable political prize in its own right, would be enhanced to the extent that the agenda was limited (see Monahan 1991:50-4). This meant that it should be restricted, as far as possible, to the specific points raised by the Quebec government. For this reason it is unrealistic to search for the intrusion, into an already difficult set of negotiations, of an explicit commitment to the constitutional principles of liberal political economy. The most that one can expect to find is a correspondence or consistency between the federal government’s position in the Meech Lake Accord and its general ideology. Much of the fabric of Canada’s post-war welfare state was developed at federal initiative but in areas of provincial jurisdiction. The federal government’s spending power was used as an instrument to create shared-cost social programs. While the precise arrangements varied by program, a common feature was provincial delivery of the service, but with significant financial contribution from the federal government which, also, imposed conditions designed to produce national coherence in the programs. Under the Meech Lake Accord, the Government of Canada undertook to provide “reasonable compensation to the government of a province that chooses not to participate in a [new] national shared-cost program... in an area of exclusive provincial jurisdiction, if the province carries on a program or initiative that is compatible with national objectives.” The opposition to federal spending power had originated with Quebec and thus forms part of the traditional constitutional agenda, based on language and territory. However, significant support existed among the other provinces for Quebec’s proposal to limit the spending power. Some of them had argued for years that Ottawa’s social policy initiatives distorted provincial priorities and that, in an era of fiscal restraint, the federal government had become an unreliable financial partner. Once established, social programs were politically difficult to terminate. As the federal government pared back its financial support, the provinces were left to sustain some very expensive programs. Quebec, therefore, could rely on considerable support, from other provinces on this issue. Some of this support came from provinces in which neo-conservative thinking was influential, such as Alberta and British Columbia, and which had been in the forefront of demands for constitutional change.1 What was new in the mid-1980s was the hostility of the federal government to the nation- building and social reform agenda that the spending power had promoted. This meant that the provinces’ demands met little resistance. There was thus a conjunction of interest between those whose theory of federalism was based on the claims of language and territory and the neo-conservative desire, on the part of both federal and some provincial governments, to reduce the state’s role in economic and social policy. The linkage between the Accord’s provisions and the preferences of liberal political economy was drawn most clearly by those opposed to Meech. Coyne (1989:246-8) argued that the ability to opt-out of future national programs, without financial disincentive, would erode Ottawa’s ability to build a national identity based on relatively standardized access to social provision. When combined with other provisions in the Accord, she considered that the effect “involves a substantial devolution of power to the provinces and significant

192 Renewed Federalism as an Instrument of Competitiveness shift of political dynamism on matters of national importance away from the federal Parliament, as well as undermining the Charter of Rights and Freedoms” (247). Probably the most controversial item in the Meech Lake Accord was the inclusion in the constitutional draft of an interpretive clause recognizing Quebec as a distinct society. Since this article concerns the neo-conservative agenda that is driven largely by the economic and social values expressed in liberal political economy, while the distinct society clause addresses the traditional linguistic cleavage in Canadian federalism, the debate need not detain us unduly. The neo-conservatives conditional preference for a decentralized federation may have played a minor role in rendering asymetrical arrangements palatable to them, in a way that they never were for the nationally-focused Trudeau Liberals. However, the Mulroney government’s prime motivation was probably to be found in the political and partisan imperatives of building a coalition between Western provincialists and Quebec nationalists. Other elements of the Meech package appear to demonstrate the strength and impact of the “all provinces are equal” doctrine. In making these concessions to provincial pressure, neo-conservative tolerance for a decentralized federation is probably of greater significance; quite simply, there were few purposes for which neo- conservatives required a strong national government (though there were some), and many uses to which a strong national government could be put that were inimical to the neo-conservative project. This interpretation of Meech is reinforced when it is considered in tandem with the Free Trade Agreement. The connection between the two has been forcefully expressed by Simeon (1989:4-6): “the Free Trade Agreement is far more significant a restraint on governments in general than Meech Lake is, and more of a restraint on the federal government than it is on the provinces ... each does have this one element underlying it: a sense of the need to limit and constrain the state in the modern era...one can at least make the argument that both in the long-run are likely to increase domestic fragmentation and certainly to inhibit a strong nation-building policy led by the federal government...for the many who argue for both, the two are tied together by hostility towards an activist, interventionist, national state, both in its nation-building role and in its economic development role...decentralization and a degree of non- interventionism go together.” To what extent, then, can the Meech Lake Accord be viewed as an expression of a neo-conservative constitutional agenda? Banting (1988: 588-9) views the debate over Meech Lake as one between those committed to a nation-building, centralist view of federalism in which a strong central government is the key instrument of national integration, and between those who view Canadian politics as being about the reconciliation of regional, territorial and linguistic differences. The latter view favours a decentralized federation since the cleavages to which it is sensitive require locally differentiated policies and programs. Meech Lake, therefore, involved asserting the primacy of linguistic and territorial cleavages over those class-based cleavages which led to an agenda of social reform and national integration. Neo-conservatives would clearly prefer the former to the latter since it involved weakening the federal level: “the new stress on interdependence is purchased almost entirely at the cost of reducing the autonomy and discretion of the federal government, and of strengthening the role of provincial governments in virtually every area

193 IJCS / RIÉC touched by the Accord” (Cairns 1991:158). In this sense at least the Accord was decentralizing and could be viewed with favour by neo-conservatives, even if the strengthening of provincial governments was somewhat problematic. And, although there are various explanations for federal compliance, one of these is that provincial governments were less likely to impede realization of a neo-conservative economic and social agenda. This perception is based upon the historical roles played by the two levels of government: “The creation of a political culture conducive to the creation of a social service state was slow to emerge. Governments, particularly those at the provincial level, preferred to spend their tax revenues on private and public projects that contributed directly to capital accumulation. Provincial governments saw little or no political advantage to involving revenues in projects of legitimization, such as health and social welfare programs” (Behiels 1989:236). When this situation began to change it was primarily as a result of federal government initiatives. On the basis of historical experience, transferring powers to the provinces might reasonably be expected to lead to policy outcomes consistent with liberal political economy. Certainly, these calculations could help to account for a striking feature of the federal government’s negotiating posture: an apparent indifference to the maintenance of federal authority. One provincial premier has been reported as saying that Mulroney “kept asking if we had a deal... It was as if he didn’t have any idea what the deal was or he didn’t care that much as long as he got one” (cited in Cairns 1991:252). Yet a journalist’s account, also cited by Cairns (153), points to the underlying content or substance of an otherwise incomprehensible attitude. According to this account, the Prime Minister gave Lowell Murray “carte blanche to negotiate away whatever federal powers were necessary to get Quebec into the Constitution.” Obviously, there was no shortage of willing takers. Moreover, as Trudeau pointed out (1989:90), Mulroney had already made major concessions of powers to the provinces before the constitutional talks began (abolition of the National Energy Program, grant of offshore resources to Newfoundland, etc.). There are some interesting parallels between the government’s negotiating strategy at Meech Lake and that adopted in the Free Trade negotiations with the Americans. In Clarkson’s view (1991:116), Mulroney: ...put Canada in the weakest possible bargaining situation ... As demandeur in the negotiations, Canada laid its cards on the table.... The United States made no concessions but sat back and waited. When the bargaining crunch came, the Canadian negotiators were under instructions to do anything to get a deal. The ultimate document represented an astonishing gain for American trade diplomacy while surrendering virtually no American sovereignty. ... Canada had made enormous concessions that limited the federal and provincial governments’ capacity to make industrial policies to promote their exports, to husband their energy reserves, or to foster their cultural industries. How can we explain the negotiating stance of the federal government? Was it monumental incompetence? Or, as the substance of the agreements suggests, was it the practical extension of the logic of liberal political economy? In my view the latter is the more realistic position. Both Meech and the Free Trade

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Agreement constrained governments: the federal (and most interventionist) government most severely. And, although the Meech Lake Accord strengthened provincial governments, the exercise of some of the new powers would be constrained by the Free Trade Agreement. Taken together the two agreements may not represent the perfect situation from the viewpoint of liberal political economy; but they do represent a preferable situation to that inherited by the Mulroney government. Awkwardly, from the point of view of this happy scenario, the Meech Lake Accord was not ratified. In 1991-92 the constitutional question had to be addressed once more.

The “Canada Round,” 1991-92 The demise of the Meech Lake Accord and the sense of crisis it occasioned led inevitably to another round of constitutional proposals. The agenda was broadened partly by Quebec’s shift to a “maximalist” set of demands expressed in the Allaire and Bélanger-Campeau reports (in contrast to the modest proposals of 1986). These were reinforced by legislation to hold a referendum by the fall of 1992. However, there was intense and widespread activity elsewhere on the fate of the Constitution which featured initiatives by both governments and private individuals and organizations. The demand for citizen input in the new round of constitutional renewal sprang from the widespread perception that the Meech Accord had been hatched in the back rooms or, more formally, that it was the result of executive federalism rather than popular participation. The federal government unveiled its own constitutional proposals in September 1991 (Canada 1991a). Quantitatively, in terms of the proportion of proposals dealing with “prosperity,” the government seems to have accorded greatest priority to transforming the Constitution into the help-mate of economic success. The federal proposals in this part of the package, together with property rights which was included elsewhere, represent the core of the neo-conservative constitutional agenda. Competitiveness as a Rationale for Renewed Federalism In the past, the government argued, the mutually supportive combination of a federal political system and an economic union, had enabled Canada to become one of the world’s most prosperous countries. For these benefits to be maintained in the face of the impact of globalization on national sovereignty, the basic combination must continue—“economic and political integration go hand-in-hand” (Canada 1991b:9). But a variety of challenges, internal and external, meant that continuity was insufficient—“to prosper we must change” (Canada 1991a:29). More specifically, the external challenge of globalization and technological change required “Greater adaptability and more effective approaches to how federal and provincial governments interact with each other and with the private sector” (Canada 1991b:1). Internally, the existence of barriers to the free flow of goods and services, combined with the phenomena of federal and provincial policies working at cross purposes to each other, pointed in the same direction. In the government’s view, one of the key ingredients of future competitiveness lay in strengthening the free market basis of the economic union: “At the heart of effective economic integration must be the absence of

195 IJCS / RIÉC restrictions to the free flow of people, goods, services and capital and the existence of a common currency, which encourages this free flow by removing exchange rate uncertainty and transaction costs that can impede trade.” Strengthening the Economic Union The impact of various government policies was recognized as on-going and the need as one of harmonization and predictability. However, the core of the proposal is the laissez-faire notion that, as far as possible, governments should be constrained from interference with the operation of markets. This viewpoint, dear to the hearts of liberal political economists, found expression in the text of the proposal to amend Section 121, the common market clause of the existing Constitution: “(1) Canada is an economic union within which persons, goods, services and capital may move freely without barriers or restrictions based on provincial or territorial boundaries. (2) Neither the Parliament or Government of Canada nor the legislatures or governments of the provinces shall by law or practice contravene the principle expressed in subsection (1).” Although some exceptions follow, the core of the proposed article is clear: the principle that no government can legitimately interfere with market relations would be constitutionally entrenched. It is a clear case of the Canadian government seeking to constitutionalize its particular economic theory or ideology.2 General exceptions could be made by the federal government, with the consent of seven provinces with at least 50 percent of the population: (a) to exempt any barrier from judicial review, by declaring it in the national interest; (b) to legislate on anything related to the efficiency of the economic union. Thus, the substance of the proposed amendment was both decentralizing, in than it prohibited any level of government from interfering with the free flow of economic activity, and centralizing, in its impact on federal-provincial relations. If provinces wish exemptions they must obtain federal permission (plus that of sufficient other provinces). On the other hand, the federal government “has almost unlimited capacity to interfere with democratic outcomes within a particular province, as long as enough other provinces agree” (Howse 1991:15). Traditionally, centralization in the Canadian political economy has been a formula for an active government and for nation- building projects. But as the earlier discussion of business’ constitutional program indicated, a degree of central political authority is necessary for other policy regimes as well. Under the Mulroney government, centralization seems to be envisaged as an instrument to enforce a minimalist conception of government. If we bear in mind the “free economy, strong state” depiction of neo- conservative political economy, any paradox is only apparent. Liberal political economy posits that large, barrier-free markets permit economies of scale, more efficient use of resources, and thus maximize the general welfare. There is no shortage of documentation that existing provincial and federal practices deviate from the neo-classical ideal. Many of these policies have, of course, been the stock-in-trade of the nation-building (and province-building) efforts of activist Canadian governments. Their prohibition, and its entrenchment in the Constitution, would represent a strong defence for the market order against democratically-elected governments seeking to satisfy their electorates by moderating market outcomes. Of course, the assumption that free trade, whether internally or internationally, will produce a net increment in welfare depends upon assumptions, such as full-

196 Renewed Federalism as an Instrument of Competitiveness employment, which demonstrably are not present in Canada (Jackson 1992:73-5; Furlong and Moggach 1990).3 Such a development entrenches one value—efficiency—as the prime goal of social activity in the country. Entrenchment constrains potential democratic majorities who may favour a different value, say equity, from achieving their ends. The effect is to insulate from democratic control something which ought to be subject to it. In the context of a federal system, a watertight economic union may be incompatible with the theory of federalism: “The very purpose of fiscal federalism ... inevitably leads to differences in the levels of taxation and public services ... (which) ... may interfere with the most efficient allocation of resources and location of industry for the region (nation) as a whole; such is the cost of political subdivision” (Musgrave, cited in Courchene 1986:204). The federal proposals, therefore, had far reaching implications. Harmonization Measures A related proposal was designed to achieve better coordination of federal and provincial fiscal policies, to improve the harmonization of these with Canada’s monetary policy, and to apply moral suasion to a province pursuing disharmonious policies. The government proposed new procedures such as a relatively fixed annual budget cycle; a fixed annual schedule of the Finance Minister’s meetings; the publication by all governments of pre-budget economic/fiscal outlooks; and common accounting conventions (Canada 1991a:32). Beyond that, however, “guidelines” to better coordinate policies were foreseen. If approved by the federal government and seven provinces with at least fifty percent of the population, meeting in a new Council of Federation, the guidelines would be set in federal legislation under the new economic union power. Although up to three provinces could opt-out, with a 60 percent vote in their legislative assemblies, the opt-out was only for three years and it was unclear, in the federal proposals, whether such measures were renewable. The federal government also favoured establishing an independent agency “to monitor and evaluate” the macroeconomic policies of the federal and provincial governments. The effect was clearly centralizing (albeit requiring substantial provincial consent). Certainly a common reaction in Quebec was that the proposals represented a federal “power grab.” More generally, it is reasonable to infer that the ability of any province, or small number of provinces, to deviate from a national majority viewpoint would be circumscribed under these proposals. In the context of Canadian electoral history this might be expected to be more of a problem for provinces with a left-leaning government than for those with more conservative administrations. Reforming the Bank of Canada’s Mandate The government included in its constitutional proposals a number of ideas for changing the Bank of Canada’s mandate, and for changing the appointments system to the Board and Governorship of the Bank. Since the Bank is under the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal authorities this could be accomplished without provincial involvement and without amending the Constitution in any way. The changes in appointment procedures must be seen as largely symbolic. This is because the Bank’s mandate, under the rest of the federal proposal, would be focused on a single goal—the preservation of price stability. At

197 IJCS / RIÉC present the Bank’s mandate is much broader: “to regulate credit and currency in the best interest of the economic life of the nation, to control and protect the external value of the national monetary unit and to mitigate by its influence fluctuations in the general level of production, trade prices, and employment, so far as may be possible within the scope of monetary action, and generally to promote the economic and financial welfare of Canada” (Canada 1991b:38). Nothing in the package demonstrates more clearly the influence of liberal political economy upon the government’s constitutional agenda than the argumentation surrounding this proposal: “The only contribution the Bank of Canada can make to the well-being of all Canadians in the long run is to pursue policies which maintain the purchasing power of the nation’s money.... The references to mitigating fluctuations in production, trade and employment and other objectives should be eliminated as they represent objectives either that history has taught us a central bank cannot achieve or that can only be achieved through price stability” (Canada 1991b:38-9). This is, of course, a somewhat selective and theoretically blinkered reading of what history has to offer. Pierre Fortin (1991:3) comments that the new mandate, zero inflation would “force our central bank to support a priori a scientific position that is highly controversial at best and, at worst, completely in error.” Re-distribution of Powers The decentralization of federal powers previously noted in the Meech Lake Accord was replicated and expanded in the 1991 proposals. A number of areas were to be recognized as being within exclusive provincial jurisdiction: training, tourism, forestry, mining, recreation, housing, and municipal and urban affairs. A number of other areas were identified for review to see which level of government could best provide them. With respect to immigration and culture, the federal government was prepared to negotiate and constitutionalize agreements with individual provinces. In addition, the government proposed a constitutional amendment to permit the delegation of legislative authority between the two levels of government. It was also willing to remove the federal declaratory power from the Constitution and to recognize provincial possession of the residual power on “non-national matters not specifically assigned to the federal government under the Constitution or by virtue of court decisions.” Finally, the Meech objective of limiting the federal spending power found a place in the 1991 proposals. The result would be major decentralization of Canadian federalism (Johnson 1992). Most of the decentralizing measures are consistent with neo- conservative principles, and the federal government’s desire to rid itself of these responsibilities is unsurprising. However, the impulse to decentralization should be placed in the context of other proposals which, in certain areas, would have had the effect of enhancing federal authority. Property Rights The government failed to advance any rationale for its proposal to include in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms a guarantee for property rights. Bakan (1992:118) offers three possible reasons: a desire to undercut Reform Party support, to give themselves a bargaining chip in the constitutional negotiations, or a desire “to elevate their market ideology to constitutional status. David Milne argued that property rights provisions are a “favourite vehicle for conservative interests resisting social legislation and the welfare state” (cited in Mittelstaedt 1991). Such comments demonstrate the

198 Renewed Federalism as an Instrument of Competitiveness consistency of the property-rights proposal with the general neo-conservative constitutional agenda. The government’s precise motivation in making the proposal at this time, however, remains unclear.

The Process 1991-92 The government’s economic constitutional proposals were not well- received by the Renewal of Canada conferences called to discuss them. The principle of a strong economic union seems not to have been problematic. However, the proposed mechanisms for achieving it were. In particular, the proposed Section 91A granting Parliament (subject to provincial approval on the 7/50 formula) the right to make laws it declared to be for the efficient functioning of the economic union, was rejected almost unanimously on the grounds that it was unnecessary, illegitimate and inappropriate (Canada 1992a:10-13; 19- 22). The proposals for greater harmonization of fiscal policies, and of fiscal policy with monetary policy, received the same response. Delegates to the conference were quite suspicious of rigid and constitutionally entrenched mechanisms for dealing with problems they felt ought to be addressed flexibly (Canada 1992a:14-16). Delegates unequivocally felt that the Bank of Canada reforms ought not to be part of the constitutional process and that the Bank’s mandate should not be narrowed to focus only on price stability (Canada 1992a:17-18; Canada 1992b:11). The Conference on Identity, Rights and Values overwhelmingly rejected the inclusion of property rights (Canada 1992c:15-16). Further, the proposal to include a Social Charter in the Constitution, clearly neither part of the federal government’s proposals nor a neo-conservative preference, surfaced in a number of the conferences and it was apparent that the idea enjoyed substantial support. Finally, although the results of the Conference on the Division of Powers could not be construed as a repudiation of the federal proposals, there was clearly strong support for a strong central government, national standards, and a willingness to deal with Quebec’s aspirations through asymmetry rather than through generalized devolution (Canada 1992d:21). Given its composition, one could expect the Beaudoin-Dobbie Committee to be generally supportive of the federal proposals. While this expectation was met, even the Conservatives who belonged to it were affected by the process of public discussion. In a number of areas the Report suggested alterations to the federal package; the Committee felt further consultations with the artistic and cultural communities should take place before proceeding with the proposal to transfer jurisdiction over culture to the provinces (Beaudoin- Dobbie 1992:77); it favoured a non-judicial dispute settlement mechanism for policing the economic union (87); the inclusion in it of undertakings to pursue the goals of full-employment and ensuring that all Canadians have a reasonable standard of living (88-9); and the inclusion of a “social covenant” (87). In addition, the report recommended that the issue of the Bank of Canada’s mandate not be part of the constitutional discussions.

Enter the Provinces However widespread the public consultations, the amendment of the Constitution remains an intergovernmental process. A number of provinces had well defined constitutional demands to pursue once the negotiations began in the spring of 1992. These included Alberta’s advocacy of a Triple E Senate, Manitoba’s concern to see a “Canada clause” in the new package that would express the underlying values of Canadians and thus help unify the

199 IJCS / RIÉC country, and Ontario’s demand for a social charter to guarantee social programs and national standards. A number of provinces had differing concerns about aboriginal issues and the proposed recognition of an inherent right to self-government. The most detailed, longest, and most public list of constitutional requirements was that of Quebec, which declined to participate in the negotiations until the rest of Canada came up with an acceptable “offer”—a position Premier Bourassa had adopted after Meech unravelled. Despite the complexities and the clash of agendas the nine provinces and the federal government arrived at an agreement covering a wide range of topics on July 7, 1992. On this basis Quebec rejoined the constitutional negotiations and on August 28, in Charlottetown, an agreement was reached between the federal government, all provinces, and native and territorial leaders. Here we shall be concerned only with those provisions previously identified as part of a neo-conservative constitutional agenda. All references will be to the Charlottetown agreement unless otherwise stated. A number of the federal government’s original proposals, including measures to harmonize fiscal policy, change the Bank of Canada’s mandate, and entrench property rights, were absent. A number of the items that were included were either undesirable from the viewpoint of liberal political economy or, at best, a mixed blessing. A non justiciable provision described the commitment of the governments and legislatures to preserve and develop Canada’s social and economic union, and called for a monitoring mechanism to be established by a future First Ministers’ Conference. Presumably such a mechanism could apply moral suasion against any goverment deviating from the policy objectives of the social and economic union. The policy objectives themselves, however, provide little joy to the liberal political economist. In addition to a commitment to strengthen the economic union and the free movement of persons, goods, services, and capital, which was obviously acceptable, the clause included items that were not. Under the social union, governments and legislatures would be committed to maintain a health care system which met the criteria established by the current Canada Health Act, provision of adequate social services, and high quality and accessible education, together with protection of workers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively. Under the economic union, the goals of full- employment and ensuring that all Canadians have a reasonable standard of living were prominent. Another provision, which was to be justiciable, strengthened the federal government’s commitment to regional equalization under Section 36 of the Constitution Act. Henceforth the federal government would be charged with ensuring that “provincial governments have sufficient revenues to provide reasonably comparable levels of public services at reasonably comparable levels of taxation” and to provide “reasonably comparable economic infrastructures of a national nature in each province and territory.” Although the precise impact of such language was difficult to predict, its fiscal consequences were potentially contrary to the goals espoused by liberal political economy. Certainly the wish list of policy objectives in the non-justiciable clause could have served to legitimate Keynesian policies as or more easily than neo-conservative ones. In the July 7 accord, Section 121, the common market clause, was to be strengthened by preventing any interprovincial trade barrier “by law or practice that arbitrarily discriminates on the basis of province or territory of residence, origin or destination and unduly impedes the efficient functioning

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of the Canadian economic union.” The provision was to have been policed by an independent tribunal which, to strike down a barrier, would have to find that it (a) was arbitrary and (b) unduly impeded the economic union. Liberal political economists were quick to denounce this language as weak and limited (e.g. Corcoran 1992). In addition there was a lengthy list of areas in which interprovincial trade barriers could continue to function. This included subsidies or tax incentives aimed at encouraging investment, “reasonable” public sector investment programs, agricultural marketing and supply management programs, consumer and environmental protection, and the establishment and maintenance of government-owned monopolies. Clearly these were much weaker measures than originally proposed by the federal government. During the summer’s negotiations, a number of changes were made to the provisions affecting the common market. Under the August 28 agreement, Section 121 would remain unchanged and a future First Ministers’ Conference would discuss how best to implement a number of “principles and commitments related to the Canadian Common Market” that were included in the accord. These principles included a prohibition against governments erecting interprovincial trade barriers and the criteria that a possible future enforcement agency would apply were strengthened slightly. Instead of having to find that an arbitrarily discriminatory measure unduly impeded the efficient functioning of the Canadian economic union, it would suffice to find that such a measure did impede its efficient functioning. However, a lengthy list of exemptions continued to be appended to this section. Only in the area of transferring powers to the provinces did the Charlottetown package reflect the federal agenda. Although decentralization is consistent with the preferences of liberal political economy, it is a second best solution unless combined with measures to prohibit market intervention by all levels of government. This clearly was the purpose of the strong economic union proposals. Without those proposals, decentralization represents only a partial victory for liberal political economy since the interventionism it abhors at the federal level could continue at the provincial level. Also, the non-justiciable but highly symbolic language on the social and economic union could be used to legitimate provincial or popular pressures for federal interventionism.

Conclusions The defeat of the Charlottetown proposals brought the process of constitutional reform to a no doubt temporary conclusion. No definitive explanations have yet emerged for the defeat of the Accord; clearly there were many factors at work and their interaction was complex. What can be stated with some certainty is that the 1991-92 constitutional process served to highlight some of the obstacles to implementing a constitutional agenda based on neo- conservative political economy. Since the introduction of the Charter, it is apparent that a great many Canadians, especially in English Canada, have become attached to the (primarily liberal) individual rights it contains—they have, as Cairns has put it, become “Charter Canadians.” But there is little evidence of attachment to liberal political rights extending to the liberal economic values expressed in the federal government’s constitutional agenda. If the views of the Renewal of Canada conferences can be taken as in any way representative of informed Canadian opinion, it would seem that Canadian political culture still inclines

201 IJCS / RIÉC toward collective social provision and tolerates reasonable levels of government intervention in the economy to moderate the effects of market forces. Members of the current Canadian government may have become “true believers” in liberal political economy but, in this respect, their position is incongruent with the broader political culture. A second obstacle, of course, is the federal system itself. Although many provinces are prepared to accept some decentralization of the federal system, this is normally accompanied by a desire to maximize the powers of the provincial government rather than to repudiate the powers of government in general. Certainly many of them found the attachment to pure market economics represented in the economic union proposal to be unacceptable in practice. Further, a number of provinces continue to support and demand a strong federal role in some areas. In taking this position they seem to be congruent with the preferences of Canadians—at least those outside Quebec—where opinion poll data regularly demonstrates a preference for a strong federal government. Canada’s ongoing constitutional crisis provided an opportunity for Canada’s neo- conservatives to attempt to shape the outcome along the lines of their ideology. To date, however, it appears that Canada’s traditionally statist political culture, combined with its federal institutions, have been strong enough to dilute that effort to a very significant degree. Indeed, given the context, neo-conservative constitutional proposals were widely viewed as an unhelpful intrusion into an already complicated situation. As a result, any renewed federalism that eventually emerges may not provide a better instrument to achieve competitiveness, as defined by liberal political economy, than the present arrangements. Yet the neo-conservative effort continues. Having failed to strengthen the Canadian economic union by constitutional means, the federal government, spurred on by business pressure (Globe and Mail, 5 December 1992:B3), is trying to achieve it through a new approach to intergovernmental negotiations. If agreed to by the provinces, the comprehensive negotiating process, modelled on the free trade negotiations with the United States, would force the governments to come up with an all-or-nothing agreement by June 30, 1994, and to pass enforcing legislation by mid-1995. There are other parallels with free trade: many of the goals pursued in the constitutional talks may be achievable through the provisions of the Free Trade Agreement (and its NAFTA successor, if ratified). Informed commentators on the latter refer to it as an “economic Constitution for North America.” It remains to be seen whether this approach will be more successful from the neo-conservative viewpoint than the constitutional renewal process ended for the moment by the October 26 Referendum.

Notes * An earlier version of this article was prepared for presentation at the annual conference of the Atlantic Provinces Political Studies Association, Halifax, October 16-18, 1992. I am grateful for comments received from participants at the conference, and thanks are also due to my colleagues Gary Munro and Douglas West, and an anonymous reviewer, for other comments and suggestions. 1. These provinces, together with Quebec, were also, of course, among the most enthusiastic about the centrepiece of the neo-conservative policy agenda—free trade with the U.S. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for emphasizing this linkage. 2. It might be argued that the priority accorded a stronger economic union pre-dated the Mulroney government and that the identification of that government with an agenda based on liberal political economy is therefore overdrawn. Certainly the Trudeau government

202 Renewed Federalism as an Instrument of Competitiveness

advocated a stronger economic union. Two differences between the Trudeau government’s proposals and those of the Mulroney government should be noted. First, the Trudeau government was “far less accommodating to the devolutionary demands of the provinces” [Russell 1992: 110]. This was a government about to launch an interventionalist “third national policy.” It was more concerned to assert federal power over the economy than to deny such power to any level of government. Second, and consistent with the first point, in the Trudeau proposals the power of the federal government to escape the limitations imposed by stronger language on the economic union, on the grounds of “overriding national interest,” were unconstrained by the need for provincial approval. In the Mulroney proposals this would only be possible with provincial approval on the 7/50 formula. This made federal intervention less likely and was therefore more consistent with the principles of liberal political economy. 3. In addition to its utility in constraining domestic government intervention, the Business Council on National Issues pointed to the advantages it believed a strengthened economic union would confer in international trade negotiations: “Canadian negotiators are able to offer our trading partners improved access to the broad, diversified Canadian market. ... Two concessions made by Canada to win better access to the U.S. market during the free trade negotiations illustrate the advantage of having a national economic union. Under the FTA, Canada agreed: i) to provide the U.S. with certain guarantees with respect to access to Canadian energy, and ii) to modify duty remission schemes and certain other policies related to the Auto Pact. Only a single central government authority, able to negotiate on behalf of all regions of the country, could deliver on these issues. A fragmented Canada would not have been in a position to offer these concessions“ (Business Council on National Issues 1992, 17).

Bibliography Bakan, Joel (1992), “Against Constitutional Property Rights” in Cameron and Smith, eds. (1992), 117-26. Banting, K. G. (1988), “Federalism, Social Reform and the Spending Power,” Canadian Public Policy, XIV Supplement, 581-92. Beaudoin, Gérald A. and Dorothy Dobbie (1992), Report of the Special Joint Committee on a Renewed Canada (Ottawa). Behiels, Michael D., ed. (1989), The Meech Lake Primer: Conflicting Views on the 1987 Constitutional Accord (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press). Boadway, Robin (1992), The Constitutional Division of Powers: An Economic Perspective (Ottawa: Economic Council of Canada). Business Council on National Issues (1990a), The Meech Lake Accord and Constitutional Renewal (Ottawa: BCNI). Business Council on National Issues (1990b), Canada’s Constitutional Options (Ottawa: BCNI). Business Council on National Issues (1991), Canada and the 21st Century: Towards a More Effective Federalism and a Stronger Economy (Ottawa: BCNI). Business Council on National Issues (1992), Canada’s Economic Union (Ottawa: BCNI). Cairns, Alan C. [edited by Douglas E. Williams] (1991), Disruptions: Constitutional Struggles, from the Charter to Meech Lake (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart). Cameron, Duncan and Miriam Smith, eds. (1992), Constitutional Politics: The Canadian Forum Book on the Federal Constitutional Proposals (Toronto: James Lorimer). Canada (1991a), Shaping Canada’s Future Together: Proposals (Ottawa: Supply and Services). Canada (1991b), Canadian Federalism and Economic Union: Partnership for Prosperity (Ottawa: Supply and Services). Canada (1992), Renewal of Canada Conferences: Compendium of Reports (Ottawa): (a) Economic Union Conference; (b) Institutional Reform Conference; (c) Identity, Rights and Values Conference; (d) Division of Powers Conference. Carmichael, E.A., W. Dobson and R.G. Lipsey (1986), “The Macdonald Report: Signpost on Shopping Basket,” Canadian Public Policy 12, Supplement, 23-39. Clarkson, Stephen (1991), “Disjunctions: Free Trade and the Paradox of Canadian Development” in Drache and Gertler, eds. (1991), 103-26. Corcoran, Terence (1992), “How They Eviscerated the Common Market” Globe and Mail,10 July, B2. Courchene, Thomas J. (1986), Economic Management and the Division of Powers (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, v.67 Studies of the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada).

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Coyne, Deborah (1987), “The Meech Lake Accord and the Spending Power Proposals: Fundamentally Flawed,” in Behiels, ed., (1987), 245-71. Ernst, Alan (1992), “From Liberal Continentalism to Neoconservatism: North American Free Trade and the Politics of the C.D. Howe Institute,” Studies in Political Economy 39, 109- 140. Fortin, Pierre (1991), “Exclusive focus on zero inflation: A dangerous proposal,” The Network (November-December), 2-5. Furlong, Kieran and Douglas Moggach (1990), “Efficiency, Competition and Full Employment in Canadian Free Trade Literature,” Studies in Political Economy 33 (Autumn). Howse, Robert (1991), “Economic Integration or Political Fragmentation?” The Network (October) 14-15. Jackson, Andrew (1992), “The Economic Union” in Cameron and Smith, eds. (1992), 70-8. Jenson, Jane (1989), “Different but not Exceptional,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology. Jenson, Jane (1990), “Representations in Crisis: The Roots of Canada’s Permeable Fordism,” Canadian Journal of Political Science XXIII, 653-83. Johnson, A.W. (1992), “A National Government in a Federal State” in Cameron and Smith eds. (1992) 79-91. Leslie, Peter (1987), Federal State, National Economy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press). Marchak, M. Patricia (1991), The Integrated Circus: The New Right and the Restructuring of Global Markets (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press). McRoberts, Kenneth (1988), Quebec: Social Change and Political Crisis (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart,Third Edition) Miliband, Ralph, Leo Panitch and John Saville, eds. (1987), Socialist Register 1987 (London: Merlin Press). Mittelstaedt, Martin (1991), “Property-rights plan under fire,” Globe and Mail, 2 October. Monahan, Patrick J. (1991), Meech Lake: The Inside Story (Toronto: University of Toronto Press). Norman, Wayne, rapporteur (1991), “Network Seminar on Economics,” in Network Seminar on the Constitution, Taking Stock (Ottawa 1991). Russell, Peter (1992), Constitutional Odyssey: Can Canadians Be A Sovereign People? (Toronto: University of Toronto Press). Shields, John (1990), “Democracy Versus Leviathan: The State, Democracy and Neo- conservatism,” Journal of History and Politics 8, 153-74. Simeon, Richard (1987), “Inside the Macdonald Commission,” Studies in Political Economy 22, 167-79. Simeon, Richard (1989), “Parallelism in the Meech Lake Accord and the Free Trade Agreement,” in Whyte and Peach eds. (1989), 3-8. Simeon, Richard (1991), “Globalization and the Canadian Nation State,” in Doern and Purchase (1991), 46-58. Trudeau, Pierre Elliot (1989), “Who Speaks for Canada: Defining and Sustaining a National Vision,” in Behiels ed. (1989), 60-99. Whitaker, Reg (1987), “Neo-Conservatism and the State” in Miliband, Panitch and Saville, eds. (1987), 1-31. Whyte, John D. and Ian Peach eds. (1989), Re-Forming Canada? The Meaning of the Meech Lake Accord and the Free Trade Agreement for the Canadian State (Kingston: Queen’s University Institute of Intergovernmental Relations).

204 Lilianne E. Krosenbrink-Gelissen

The Canadian Constitution, the Charter, and Aboriginal Women’s Rights: Conflicts and Dilemmas

Abstract This article examines Indian women’s conflicts and dilemmas with the Constitution and the Charter of 1982 as a result of their culture and gender. Their dual identity has made it difficult for them to settle on an acceptable balance between their aboriginal and sexual equality rights. By examing the views of the Native Women’s Association of Canada, a national, aboriginal women’s group, the author describes Indian women’s aspirations and strategies for reformulating an Indian female identity within the aboriginal constitutional reform process.

Résumé L’article examine les tiraillements que provoquent la Constitution de 1982 et la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés chez les amérindiennes en raison de leurs antécédents culturels et de leur sexe. Leur double identité rend difficile la réalisation d’un équilibre entre les aspirations à l’autonomie de leurs peuples et leurs droits à l’égalité sexuelle. À partir des vues adoptées par la Native Women’s Association of Canada, un organisme national de femmes autochtones, l’auteure expose les aspirations et les stratégies des amérindiennes eu égard à la redéfinition de leur identité en tant que femme à l’occasion de la réforme constitutionnelle.

Having been classified as a Métis, as a non-status person, and now as a status Indian, having lived in a city all my life, and having to deal with discrimination whether I was or was not a status Indian, I believe that all native people, including women, have aboriginal rights in this country no matter where they live, no matter what distinctive category has been assigned to them. (Aggamaway Pierre, former president of NWAC 1983:68; emphasis added) The time has come to break down the mentality forced upon us as Aboriginal people by the Indian Act. The time has come to rebuild our nations with all of our people — not just those who meet criteria established not by us but by the government. (NWAC, cited in: Govt. of Canada 1992:32) Since the repatriation of the Constitution and the establishment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, the profile of aboriginal issues in the Canadian political culture has grown considerably. Three aboriginal issues have become especially prominent: aboriginal peoples and the criminal justice

International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 7-8, Spring-Fall/Printemps-automne 1993 IJCS / RIÉC system; aboriginal land title; and the legal rights of aboriginal groups and individuals within the Canadian state (cf. Hall 1992:42). Aboriginal self- government, which integrates these three areas, has emerged as a preeminent issue on the aboriginal constitutional reform agenda. The Canadian Constitution and the Charter have vitally affected aboriginal women as a group. However, aboriginal women’s experiences as well as their political concerns have been largely neglected in academic and political discourse on both aboriginal rights and women’s rights. Aboriginal rights demands largely reflect the interests of aboriginal men, while women’s rights demands, until very recently, have largely reflected the interests of white, middle-class women. In both cases, aboriginal women’s distinct perceptions are ignored. This article focuses on the Constitution, the Charter and women’s rights specifically as they pertain to First Nations’ women. I will explore the nature and degree of the problems that the Constitution and the Charter raise for Indian women,1 based on the views of their national political body, the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC). Because they face a double discrimination, in contrast to their male counterparts, Indian women encounter special conflicts and dilemmas in trying to reconcile, as aboriginal persons and as women, their self-government aspirations and their sexual equality aspirations. First, I will describe NWAC’s political aspirations and arguments with respect to the Constitution and the Charter of 1982. Secondly, I will review sexual equality as it relates to aboriginal rights within the Constitution Act of 1982, and the problems NWAC perceives in this Act. Thirdly, I will briefly review the constitutional process on aboriginal matters (1982-1987) and NWAC’s strategy to re-define the aboriginal female identity in order to balance Indian women’s self-government aspirations with their feminist aspirations. I will also discuss Indian women’s problems after the 1984 constitutional amendment and the new Indian Act of 1985. These problems remain intact and have a bearing on NWAC’s strong rejection of the aboriginal rights provisions set out in the Charlottetown Accord which went down to defeat on October 26, 1992. Although the material for this article primarily covers the period from 1982 to 1987, it is also relevant to the period from 1987 to 1992. Indian women’s problems concerning the legal protection of their rights as First Nations citizens and as women remains, and NWAC continues to pursue its political aspirations and arguments.2

The Native Women’s Association of Canada The development of a distinct, aboriginal women’s movement in the early 1970s is rooted in two global movements; the human rights movement and the women’s movement. The first movement redirected the public’s and politicians’ attention to the fundamental group rights of minorities within nation-states. As a consequence, since 1970 (and after the withdrawal of the 1969 “White Paper” plans to terminate Indian people’s separate legal status and special rights), the Canadian federal government began to promote self- control mechanisms on Indian reserves and to foster the establishment of national aboriginal organizations that could effectively negotiate with the government aboriginal peoples’ future status within the Canadian cultural and political constellation. The second movement brought about a growing awareness of women’s subordinate status, made women’s issues more relevant to the public discourse, and fostered the political will to change the position of women in society. The creation of the Royal Commission on the

208 The Constitution, the Charter, and Aboriginal Women’s Rights: Conflicts and Dilemmas

Status of Women (later the Advisory Council on the Status of Women) by the government in 1967 reflects these new developments. The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) was established in 1974 to politically represent aboriginal women’s views. NWAC’s mandate consisted of promoting the interests of aboriginal women, and changing their image among Canadian society at large and among aboriginal men. Aboriginal women felt that existing national aboriginal organizations, particularly the National Indian Brotherhood (later the Assembly of First Nations), were male- dominated in their leadership, their decision-making processes, and their political mandates. As a result, aboriginal women’s particular concerns were not addressed (cf. Jamieson 1979; Krosenbrink 1991:67-90). Although NWAC was an Indian (status and non-status), Inuit and Métis women’s organization, it predominantly reflected Indian women’s grievances and aspirations since they comprised the overall majority. To date, Indian men and women in particular have serious political differences. These can largely be accounted for by colonial Indian policies that were sex-discriminatory and detrimental to Indian women’s legal and socio-political status both in their own communities and in Canadian society as a whole. The Indian Act of 1876 is synonymous with federal Indian policy. To this day, the Indian Act regulates who may legally claim to be Indian and controls Indian people’s lives to a significant degree. Traditional Indian political institutions were largely replaced and Indian male chieftainship was instituted to back-up the colonial system. Women were barred from political decision- making processes. From 1869 until 1951, they could not hold electoral office nor vote for male representatives in their own communities. Furthermore, the imposed Eurocanadian nuclear family structure, and the roles and rights of women therein, constructed Indian women as a subordinate gender. Women were assumed to be dependent subjects who could only derive rights from their fathers or husbands. Most importantly, Indian ethnic belongingness could only be legally established through the male line of descendance. As a result, Indian women suffered from discrimination on the basis of their sex and marital status. Indian women, in contrast to men, could lose their legal status as Indians upon marriage to a non Indian man, including their offspring. Status Indians, who were automatically band members, enjoyed certain exclusive rights such as the right to live on a reserve, to participate in band politics, and to receive free education and health care assistance. More importantly, status Indians had their cultural identity officially recognized, including their link to a homeland (reserve). Several other Sections of the Indian Act discriminate against Indian women (cf. Sections 4, 10-6, 74, 76, 109, and 110 of the Indian Act 1970). However, I will limit my comments to Section 12(1)b of the Indian Act since it came to symbolize sexual discrimination against women. Jamieson (1978:1) summarizes the impact of the Indian Act on Indian women who lost their legal status as follows: The woman, on marriage, must leave her parents’ home and her reserve. She may not own property on the reserve and must dispose of any property she does hold. She may be prevented from inheriting property left to her by her parents. She cannot take any further part in band business. Her children are not recognized as Indian and are therefore denied access to cultural and social amenities of the Indian community. And most punitive of all, she may be prevented from

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returning to live with her family on the reserve, even if she is in dire need, very ill, a widow, divorced or separated. Finally, her body may not be buried on the reserve with those of her forebears. Until the Indian Act was amended in 1985, the “old” Indian Act implicitly held 19th century European assumptions on women. Legal Indian status regulations did not respect the cultural variety of Indian people’s social and political organizations. They imposed a uniform, Eurocanadian system reflecting racial images of Indians and male dominance in gender relations. Gradual internalization of the western notions of femaleness distorted the Indian consciousness. Over the years, sexually discriminatory regulations had dramatic consequences not only for women, who lost their legal status as Indians by being deprived of their birth right, but also in terms of gender relations within Indian communities. The Lavell and Bedard cases of 1973 as well as the Lovelace case of 1977, involving non-status Indian women who fought to regain their Indian rights, proved that Indian women could hope for little support from Indian men. Male Indian political leaders merely used women’s grievances with the Indian Act to force the federal government into negotiating a revised Indian Act (or better, a repeal) to allow for Indian self- government (cf. note 3; Fiske 1992:12-4; Krosenbrink 1991: 84-102; Silman 1987). The 1970s can be characterized as a period when Indian men and women, through their political organizations, engaged in often bitter debates over the nature of “Indian rights” and “women’s rights.” It appeared that the National Indian Brotherhood more or less interpreted “Indian rights” to mean rights to which only status Indian men were entitled. The Native Women’s Association argued that Indian women did not fight for sexual equality as such; they fought for “Indian rights for Indian women” which were withheld through both the legal instruments of the federal government and male chauvinist attitudes within band councils on the reserves. Thus, Indian women felt that there was a serious denial through sex discrimination of equal Indian rights for Indian women (ibid). Considering the different experiences of Indian men and women, it is no wonder that NWAC formulated different goals within the framework of constitutional aboriginal reform. All national, aboriginal organizations, including NWAC, focused on defining the nature of self-government within the constitutional aboriginal rights provision. However, NWAC claimed that the principle of sexual equality between aboriginal men and women must clearly and constitutionally stand above and permeate all aspects of aboriginal rights, including self-government (NWAC 1980, 1981). Indian women, and also Métis and Inuit women, wanted clear, unambiguous and adequately secured constitutional protection for aboriginal women. Thus, the main issue for NWAC was that aboriginal self-government, irrespective of its diversity, should always legally guarantee and practically reflect gender equality. NWAC’s sexual equality aspirations grounded its arguments for rejecting the aboriginal self-government wording of the Charlottetown Accord. NWAC primarily concerns itself with constitutional protection of aboriginal women’s rights. The Association considers law a valid instrument in seeking changes in women’s status and ensuring their full participation within their own aboriginal communities. So, when speaking in terms of legal rights, what is it that the Native Women’s Association of Canada explicitly wants?

210 The Constitution, the Charter, and Aboriginal Women’s Rights: Conflicts and Dilemmas

Aboriginal Women’s Rights Part I of the Constitution Act (Sections 1-34) is referred to as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Charter sets out basic guarantees of rights and freedoms that apply to all Canadians, including aboriginal persons. According to Section 15(1): Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability (Govt. of Canada 1981:6). Gibson (1985:45) argues that before the establishment of the Charter there was no constitutional protection for aboriginal persons against discrimination based on their aboriginal ancestry. On the contrary, Section 91(24) of the British North America Act provided the Canadian state with the constitutional right to discriminate particularly against Indian persons. However, the Indian Act is now subject to the Charter. Section 15 was not to come into effect until three years after patriation of the Constitution (April 17, 1985) to enable the federal and provincial governments to make the necessary adjustments to their laws. One of the many reasons for the three year delay was to allow time to revise the Indian Act (cf. Govt. of Canada 1982:13-4). Section 15 makes it difficult for the courts to restrict sexual equality. The listed grounds, such as race or sex, serve to alert the courts that any form of discrimination should be combatted in a more rigorous fashion than was previously the case. For instance, that marital status is not spelled out in the equality rights provision does not mean that discrimination is allowed. Should an Indian woman ever decide to litigate on the grounds that the sex- discriminatory provisions of the Indian Act violate Section 15 of the Charter (after April 17, 1985), it is most likely that the Supreme Court would be compelled to declare the offending Sections of the Indian Act invalid. Thus, a decision such as in the Lavell case could not be repeated (cf. Mahoney 1992; NWAC Newsletter 1, 5, 1982:7).3 The sexual equality rights in Section 15 refer to individual human rights which are nevertheless quasi-collective human rights as well. Indian women, as a group, have suffered as a result of the sex-discriminatory provisions of the Indian Act (cf. Richstone 1983:42-43). Affirmative action, as set out in Section 15(2) of the Constitution Act 1982, will enable aboriginal women in general, and Indian women in particular, to further their needs and goals as a collectivity (ibid:52). Section 15, albeit crucially important to aboriginal women, is not of primary concern to them. Whereas the women’s movement in Canada focuses on Section 15, the aboriginal women’s movement focuses on Section 25 of the Charter.4 The reason for this difference may be that equality rights, as formulated in Section 15, are perceived as non-aboriginal, liberal democratic concepts that may contravene the cultural traditions of aboriginal peoples. For instance, the traditionally exclusive right of Iroquois women to choose a (male) chief violates the rights of Iroquois men as stipulated in Section 15 of the Charter (cf. Tooker 1984, in Spittal 1990). Nevertheless, we should not underestimate the power of Section 15. It dictated foremost a repeal of all

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Sections in the “old” Indian Act which discriminate against Indian women on the basis of their sex and marital status. Furthermore, according to Section 28: Notwithstanding anything in this Charter, the rights and freedoms referred to in it are guaranteed equally to male and female persons (Govt. of Canada 1981:10). This section is meant to ensure that “person” includes females as well as males. It should restrict loopholes for the provinces to legislate outside total agreement with Charter rights. Thus, Section 28 does assert the primacy of sexual equality rights over all other Charter rights, and in this respect it is important to aboriginal women as well (Gibson 1985:48-49; Mahoney 1992:242; NWAC Newsletter, 1,5, 1982:8-9). The term “notwithstanding” could eventually create problems. Although it may be presumed that the courts will subject the collective rights of aboriginal peoples to individual equality rights, there is no absolute guarantee. No matter how important to aboriginal women’s rights, Section 28 could be used to debilitate the collective rights of aboriginal peoples which are referred to in Section 25: The guarantee in this Charter of certain rights and freedoms shall not be construed so as to abrogate or derogate from any aboriginal, treaty or other rights or freedoms that pertain to the aboriginal peoples of Canada including (a) any rights or freedoms that have been recognized by the Royal Proclamation of October 7, 1763; and (b) any rights or freedoms that may be acquired by the aboriginal peoples of Canada by way of land claims settlement (Govt. of Canada 1981:9). This Section creates an exemption for aboriginal rights from being subjected to Charter rights. It ensures that Section 15 will not be used to strike down any collective rights of the aboriginal peoples.5 In contrast to Section 15, Section 25 does nothing to advance the position of the aboriginal peoples (Gibson 1985:46). Aboriginal rights also refer to the collective right of aboriginal peoples to decide group membership for themselves. The Indian Act, therefore, violates Section 25 of the Charter, for it prevents Indian people from determining Indian status and band membership as long as the Indian Act remains intact. Within this framework, a repeal of the Indian Act is necessary as well.6 However, the important question is whether Section 25 is subject to the equality rights of individuals. If not, then the rights of aboriginal women in aboriginal constitutions could be easily ignored. Indian self-governing bands may design constitutions that provide for the equality rights of Indian men and women, but they could be easily modified to do away with the rights of women by majority consent of the band. Given the internalization of patriarchal notions as a result of the sex-discriminatory provisions of the Indian Act, Section 25 could represent a potential risk to Indian women that their equality rights may be denied by their own communities. Furthermore, it could mean that Indian self-government does not provide uniform equality rights for Indian men and women (Richstone 1983:55). The uneasiness experienced by Indian women in trying to reconcile their culture (Section 25) and gender (Section 15) was clearly expressed by the president of the Native Women’s Association during 1992 debates on the Charlottetown Accord. She argued that when First Nations exercise powers under self-government, individuals deserve a guarantee of their basic human rights as set out in Section 15. If a First Nation should develop its own aboriginal Charter of Rights and

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Freedoms, it must include equality. This should be entrenched in the Canadian Constitution and be enforceable in courts. Only then would she agree to replacing the Canadian Charter (cf. note 4; Govt. of Canada 1992:32). Indian women’s serious concerns are closely related to their experience. When local Indian control was established in the early 1970s—meaning that Indian agents as government representatives left the reserves, thereby assigning the execution of Indian Act regulations to band councils— differences among bands in the treatment of women became evident. Whereas one band might have decided not to evict Indian women upon loss of their legal status, a neighbouring band might have done just the opposite. Furthermore, in 1981, bands were given the opportunity to request suspension of Section 12(1)b of the Indian Act although less than twenty percent of all bands appears to have done so (Holmes 1987:6n6; NWAC Newsletter 1, 3, 1982:18). The relationship between Sections 15 and 28—in providing for (individual) sexual equality rights—and Section 25—in providing for (collective) aboriginal rights—is seriously strained. Given the experiences that Indian women, in particular, have faced as a result of their dual discrimination, the Charter presented them with a dilemma. What rights should come first, those relating to their gender or those relating to their aboriginal ancestry? Feminist groups have continually argued that sexual equality under all circumstances should prevail over aboriginal self-government. The National Indian Brotherhood (later the Assembly of First Nations) has always taken the position that no constitutional provision may supercede the aboriginal peoples’ right to self-government, including sexual equality rights. To aboriginal women, and most particularly Indian women, the situation was not that clear at all. They could not escape conflicts in reconciling their gender and cultures. The implications of the sex-dicriminatory status regulations of the Indian Act play a crucial role in their experiences of conflict and dilemma (cf. Duclos 1990:369). The aboriginal rights provision considered the most important victory by aboriginal peoples is Section 35: (1). The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed. (2). In this Act, “aboriginal peoples of Canada” includes the Indian, Inuit and Metis peoples of Canada’ (Govt. of Canada 1981:11). Although Section 35 is not part of the Charter, there is no doubt that the rights described in it are as effectively enforceable by the courts as the Charter rights (Gibson 1985: 46-47). Its entrenchment was vigorously fought for by aboriginal peoples, especially during the November 1981 Constitution repatriation upheavals. Because of its entrenchment, aboriginal peoples regained new pride in their distinct cultures and identities. For instance, the inclusion of the Métis as an aboriginal people gave a considerable boost to the Métis’ self-image. The term “existing” aboriginal rights in Section 35 creates ambiguity. With reference to aboriginal women, “existing” aboriginal rights could be interpreted as the perpetuation of existing discrimination, against Indian women in particular, as stipulated in the Indian Act (NWAC Newsletter, 1, 5, 1982:10). For this reason, NWAC insisted that not only sexual discrimination

213 IJCS / RIÉC be repealed but also that women and children who had previously lost their Indian rights as a result of sex discrimination should have their rights restored. The meaning of aboriginal rights is not clear. For the purpose of defining these rights, Section 37 of the Constitution provided for a negotiation process between state authorities and national aboriginal organizations. Aboriginal peoples in general refer to aboriginal rights as a multitude of socio-economic, political, legal and cultural rights. More specifically, these rights are integrated in the aboriginal peoples’ concept of aboriginal self-government which has become the single most important issue on the agenda for Section 35 discussions. Neither First Nations nor the federal government are precise about what self-government means. Most generally, it refers to a collective right of the aboriginal peoples—in accordance with their own traditions—to control their lands, their resources, their own destiny and their own political future. Whereas the collective rights of aboriginal peoples are referred to in Sections 25 and 35, Sections 15 and 28 pertain to the equality rights of individuals. There is an obvious tension between individual and collective rights of aboriginal peoples that creates a serious dilemma for Indian women: if they give priority to women’s rights, they might endanger the collective (self- governing) rights of Indians; and should they give priority to the collective rights of Indians, they risk sexual discrimination by their own people. As a result of the Indian Act system, the collective rights of Indians as a group collide with individual Indian women’s rights. Thus, Inuit and Métis women’s issues are more integrated into community issues and they do not experience conflicts and dilemmas in their political aspirations to the extent that Indian women do. As yet, the Native Women’s Association has argued that women do not see their rights as First Nations citizens and as women explicitly protected in the Canadian Constitution.

The Constitutional Process: The Indian Traditional Motherhood Concept in Defence of Aboriginal Women’s Rights For the purpose of defining “aboriginal rights” in Section 35 of the Constitution Act the federal government invited the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), the Native Council of Canada, the Métis National Council, and the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada to participate in the First Ministers’ Conferences on Aboriginal Constitutional Matters that took place in 1983, 1984, 1985 and 1987. Both the federal government and the Native Women’s Association’s male counterpart, the AFN, objected to its participation. The government denied Indian women a formal seat on the grounds that NWAC was not democratic since it only represented women. Furthermore, the government felt that aboriginal women were already represented in the negotiation process by their respective national (male-dominated) organizations. The Assembly of First Nations objected because it feared that Indian women would steer the constitutional discussions away from self-government by focussing on the sexual equality issue. Hence, the Native Women’s Association was only accorded observer status. Even after 1987, and to this day, NWAC has never won a seat at the constitutional table.7 In contrast to the AFN, the federal government nevertheless recognized the need to address aboriginal women’s rights within the constitutional context. Except for NWAC, each one of the four national aboriginal organizations received extra funds to study sexual equality rights (Krosenbrink 1986;

214 The Constitution, the Charter, and Aboriginal Women’s Rights: Conflicts and Dilemmas

Secretary of State 1985:21). However, it took until May 1984 before the Assembly of First Nations was willing to discuss with the Native Women’s Association the issue of sexual equality among Indian men and women. AFN nevertheless insisted that sexual equality was a matter that could only be dealt with by individual bands once self-government was constitutionally entrenched as an aboriginal right and became operational. Hence, the AFN did not consider non-status Indian women wrongly deprived of their birth rights or entitled to participate in band decisions on developing self-government (Krosenbrink 1991:160-4). NWAC’s fundamental condition that the principle of sexual equality should constitutionally stand above aboriginal self-government aimed to clearly guarantee that status as well as (in future reinstated) non-status Indian women have an equal right to participate in First Nations community life and would not encounter discrimination by band councils under self-government (cf. NWAC Newsletter, 1, 8, 1983:3; Silman 1987:219). The following quote from NWAC (1984:15) is most illustrative: There is an obvious contradiction in attempting to negotiate [aboriginal] rights that predate the very existence of the Canadian government if the only base for recognition is a registration system [Indian Act] created by that government. It is therefore essential that all aboriginal people, whether or not they possess a government number, realize the potential consequences of endorsing the status quo. Indian women did not want to wait until Indian self-government was established on reserves for fear that the bands would not treat them fairly and would not be willing to restore their rights. Whether sexual inequality is authentically Indian or an historical offshoot of the Indian Act is not important. Nowadays, Indian women, as well as Metis and Inuit women, do not wish to be sexually discriminated against either by law or in practice: In any case the appeal to tradition is irrelevant. If it had been part of our tradition to castrate first born males, this would not make it right or just to practise now. There is always room for improvement (IRIW 1980:5). As long as the constitutional right of aboriginal self-government was not entrenched, the Indian Act remained a regulating force. NWAC realized that one cannot do away with the Indian Act overnight, because several generations of Indians had based their identity and existence on it. Therefore, a lot of Indian bands would most likely establish their self-government, including band membership, along the lines of the Indian Act regulations. Constitutional equality guarantees were perceived as a prerequisite to aboriginal self- government or a review of the Indian Act. NWAC eventually aimed to legally upgrade the socio-political status of Indian women in particular. Whoever or whatever would decide membership in the future, Indian women were not prepared to tolerate sexual discrimination anymore. As one of my female Indian informants summarized: “Sexual equality in law will help women to resume their traditional roles and to exercise the power that comes with them naturally” (cited in: Krosenbrink 1991:139).

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To NWAC and its constituency, sexual equality comprised a whole range of issues, such as employment, political decision-making, recognition of women’s roles in communities, political respect by band councils and, most importantly, the equal right to transmit status and band membership to their families. The main problems for NWAC were: how to resolve differences of opinion with the Assembly of First Nations; how to get involved in and have an impact on decision-making in the constitutional process despite Indian women’s marginalization; and, how to legitimatize the notion that aboriginal self-governing powers should not extend beyond the sexual equality provisions of the Charter (meaning that NWAC’s political claims contravened the principle of aboriginal self-government). Within the aboriginal constitutional process from 1982 to 1987, NWAC began to re-define “female Indian identity” and to re-formulate its political goals to make them valid and relevant within the self-government negotiations. The Native Women’s Association knew that the federal government was in no position to oppose its objectives. Through equality provisions in the Charter, as well as through international legal obligations, the government was compelled to resolve sexual discrimination against Indian women before April 17, 1985. The federal government in particular appeared prepared to repeal the sex-discriminatory status regulations in the Indian Act while at the same time providing for an equality guarantee within the aboriginal rights Section of the Constitution Act. In order to make its claims relevant, particularly to its male counterpart, the Assembly of First Nations, NWAC began to operationalize the Indian people’s traditional motherhood notion. Traditional Indian motherhood reflects Indian men’s and women’s contemporary views of women’s past, de-symbolizes male authority, and expresses women’s distinct double identity as women and as Indians. During fieldwork in Ottawa (1985, 1986, and 1987) among national aboriginal organizations, all male and female informants claimed that aboriginal women from all different cultures traditionally played central roles. Just as in other societies, and in other times, Indian women were predominantly defined by their reproductive role. However, this role was esteemed much differently. Indian women were traditionally responsible for the biological and cultural continuity of their communities. In the “old days,” they were much respected for their ability to give birth and for their family and community roles. This was so strongly felt that metaphors of motherhood came to stand for female Indian identity. Mottos such as: “Indian women are the centre and wheel of life”; “Women are the core of Indian cultures”; “Indian women are the ultimate leaders”; “Women are the keepers of Indian cultures”; and “Without Indian women there would be no Indian nations” directly refer to the symbolism of traditional Indian motherhood. There is no question that Indian people recognize cultural diversity among themselves and differences in sociopolitical organization. They are well aware that women in traditionally matrilineal cultures have more fundamental rights than women in patrilineal cultures. In spite of this, Indian men and women confirm that there was still more equality among the sexes in all traditional Indian cultures than non- Indians would ever recognize. For example, Lavell, an important spokesperson for the Native Women’s Association during the early 1970s, argued: [Indian] women had much respect and had decision-making powers within their own community. Perhaps it was not as evident to the

216 The Constitution, the Charter, and Aboriginal Women’s Rights: Conflicts and Dilemmas

anthropologist, but within our system it was there (cited in: House of Commons:15). Furthermore, it was claimed: The fundamental role of the Indian mother as a basic link in the cultural and linguistic continuity must not be underestimated if the preservation and growth of the Indian way of life in Canada is indeed a priority (IRIW 1979:14). Irrespective of the many cultural differences, Indian men and women do believe that their traditional societies were egalitarian; that the sexes had different but equal socio-political positions (Krosenbrink 1991:44-8, 123-8).8 By contextualizing and exploring the functional mechanisms of the ideological concept of traditional Indian motherhood, its importance for a political strategy becomes comprehensible. Unity, Boundary Establishment, and Mobilization Firstly, NWAC supported the Assembly of First Nations’ notion of self- government: As women we speak for ourselves, our children and the generations yet unborn, and join with the aboriginal peoples of this land in unity to declare that our rights, our nations and our sovereignty are ours to proclaim and ours to exercise (NWAC 1980). Secondly, by using the ideological concept of traditional Indian motherhood, NWAC facilitated group cohesiveness since Indian, Inuit and Métis women and men agreed upon it. Lastly, the motherhood concept was instrumental to the aboriginal peoples’ political opposition to Canadian society at large. The Federal government’s colonial policies were blamed for the current gender inequality within Indian communities which is considered inherently un- Indian. Paula Gunn Allen (a famous Pueblo Indian woman, feminist, scholar and poet) claims that gender equality inhered in all traditional First Nations’ cultures of the North American hemisphere: “Among the major conceptual gifts First Nation people shared with the world is the concept of the central value of women in every sphere of community life; that the proper place of women, especially of elder women, is at the center of the spiritual, social, political, and economic life of the nation” (1992:3). Hence, NWAC did not have to publicly blame the AFN for its reluctance to perceive women’s issues as relevant. AFN’s statement (1984:10-1) on Indian women’s sexual equality during the 1984 constitutional conference is most illustrative: The discrimination they [women] suffered was forced upon us by white colonial government through the Indian Act. It was not the result of our traditional laws, and in fact it would not have occurred under our traditional laws. We must make it perfectly clear why we feel so strongly that we must control our own citizenship (...). The AFN maintains that “equality” does already exist within the traditional “citizenship code” of all First Nations people.

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As the president of NWAC argued earlier: “Band governments must not mimic the discriminatory practices of the dominant governments” (NWAC Newsletter, 1, 8, 1983, p. 3). And, in accordance with the Native Women’s Association’s Declaration of Principles and Beliefs (1980): We believe that it is the right of the aboriginal people to determine their own citizenship, and that it is the right of all people of aboriginal descent who so wish to be recognized as such ... We believe that it is the fundamental right of Native women to have access and participation in any decision-making process, and full protection of the law without discrimination based on sex or marital status ... We believe that our future lies as sovereign nations with our rights as women protected. We desire to live under a government of our own making. The traditional Indian motherhood concept is an integral part of the traditional culture argument used in the Indian people’s struggle for self-government. Indian self-government is only attainable when cultural traditions reestablished. Hence, there cannot be true Indian self-government without sexual equality. NWAC’s arguments therefore compelled the AFN to discuss sexual equality within the aboriginal constitutional context. Legitimization of NWAC’s Separate Existence and Exclusive Mandate The traditional motherhood concept is inextricably tied to notions of care as they apply to women. Indian women are traditionally held responsible for caring about the cultural and biological continuity of their families and their communities. Firstly, NWAC expanded these notions of care to legitimize Indian women’s political separateness, respecting both their organization and their aspirations: In fact, all subject areas have a direct affect on us, as they do on all segments of aboriginal society. However, there are some issues which are of more particular interest to us because of our special role in aboriginal society and the direct influence those issues have on native women (NWAC Newsletter, 1, 8, 1983:2). Secondly, in fulfilling their caring roles, Indian women integrate their care for themselves with care for their families and their communities, and this automatically motivates women to political participation and action. For example, women’s political struggle to acquire clear water and sewer systems on today’s reserves is motivated by their responsibility to care. This entails that women’s roles and responsibilities cannot be met unless women have decision-making rights (cf. Fiske 1990-1, 1992). NWAC claimed that, on the basis of women’s caring responsibilities, they had to politically take care also. This way, the Association was able to legitimize itself among its own constituency, other (male-dominated) national aboriginal organizations, and the Canadian government. This was necessary for NWAC to become involved and to play a role in the constitutional process on aboriginal matters in spite of lacking a formal participant position. Mainstreaming Indian Women’s Constitutional Challenge for Change Particularly with respect to NWAC’s lack of a formal position it was necessary to formulate political aspirations within the frame of reference of both the

218 The Constitution, the Charter, and Aboriginal Women’s Rights: Conflicts and Dilemmas

government and the AFN (cf. Adamson et al. 1988:180-190). NWAC had to reckon with non-aboriginal perceptions of aboriginal peoples, as well as the views of women held by society at large and those held by aboriginal men. Hence, because of Indian women’s double identity—gender and culture—they were in triple jeopardy.9 If NWAC had disengaged from the aboriginal movement it would have seriously risked compromising its goals within the aboriginal constitutional context.10 It is not a matter of “buying-off” but rather an Indian women’s challenge to re-define femaleness and to engender aboriginal identity. In view of the above, the only avenue open for NWAC was to formulate its aspirations within the context of aboriginal self- government. Dissociation from the Women’s Movement There can be no doubt that aboriginal women and their way of politically organizing has been considerably influenced by the Canadian women’s movement since the late 1960s and early 1970s. But Indian women in particular faced the challenge of balancing loyalty to the aboriginal peoples’ self-government aspirations and their feminist aspirations. In order for NWAC to integrate women’s rights into aboriginal rights, it had to choose a strategy of dissociation from the Canadian women’s movement, which was largely portrayed as white, middle-class dominated. Discussions on Indian women’s issues—through the underlying traditional motherhood notion—were replaced from the context of human, individual and white feminist rights to that of aboriginal, collective rights. The connection between sexual equality and aboriginal rights was necessary to establish better terms with the Assembly of First Nations and to gain support (Krosenbrink 1991:128-41; cf. NWAC 1980). However, it appears that after 1990 the old controversy between NWAC and AFN revived, and that the Native Women’s Association (particularly the national office) re-established relations with the National Action Committee of Women, an umbrella organization of Canadian women’s groups (The Globe and Mail, October 9/92). The strategic use of the ideological concept of Indian traditional motherhood together with Indian women’s actions and lobbying was not without positive results. NWAC was able to play a role in the negotiations on aboriginal constitutional rights. NWAC presented position papers to the heads of the federal and provincial governments as well as to the other national aboriginal organizations. It vigorously lobbied through its National Committee on Aboriginal Rights. After all, it took part in the First Ministers’ Conferences on Aboriginal Constitutional Matters as delegates from several provincial governments (e.g. Ontario, Manitoba, Quebec, and Saskatchewan), as delegates of the Native Council of Canada (1983 and 1984), and later of the AFN (1985 and 1987). The Association also participated in parliamentary commissions on Indian self-government and on the Indian Act (Krosenbrink 1991:146-79). When the constitutional process on aboriginal matters officially ended in March, 1987, NWAC could count its gains. Sexual equality was put on the aboriginal constitutional agenda by the government. The Constitutional Accord on Aboriginal Rights of 1983, which became the 1984 Constitution Amendment Proclamation, entailed a sexual equality guarantee in the aboriginal rights provision of Section 35. However, since the matter of aboriginal rights (self-government) was not resolved during the constitutional process—and the Charlottetown Accord that included recognition of the right

219 IJCS / RIÉC to aboriginal self-government was defeated by referendum in 1992—the provision has only symbolic value. Furthermore, AFN and NWAC joined in May 1984 to uphold an Indian Act amendment whose details they objected to (cf. AFN/NWAC Press Statement on Bill C-47, 22-6-84). Lastly, in 1985 the Indian Act was amended by Bill C-31. The sex-discriminatory regulations in the old Act were repealed and reinstatement was provided to persons who had lost or who had never had these rights as a result. The new Indian Act also provided for Indian band control of membership, meaning that legal status and band membership in future are disconnected and that bands may decide to include certain non-status Indians in, and to exclude certain status Indians, from their membership (cf. Indian Act 1985; Krosenbrink 1991:170-94). Since self-government has not been constitutionally defined and entrenched as yet, the Indian Act, with its legal status stipulations, is still the most important regulator of Indian people’s lives. The new Indian Act, Bill C-31, is far too complex to discuss in this article.

Where Do Indian Women Go From Here? Given NWAC’s marginal position, and in view of Indian women’s conflicts and dilemmas in balancing aboriginal and feminist aspirations, we can conclude that NWAC was relatively successful in reaching its goals with respect to the Constitution and the Charter by 1987. NWAC’s strategic use of the Indian traditional motherhood concept largely attributed to its success. However, as Mancini Billson argues: Although the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms entrenches equality for women and minorities, the eradication of racism, ethnocentrism and sexism will be harder to guarantee (1991:64). A comprehensive assessment of the impact of Bill C-31, which was released by Indian Affairs in 1990 (in conjunction with particularly NWAC and AFN), clearly illustrates that Indian women still suffer from sexual discrimination (INAC 1990). The Indian Act may have done away with some aspects of sexual discrimination but has given room to others. Not all persons who had lost or never gained Indian status are eligible for reinstatement. Children of reinstated Indian women do not have the same right to transmit status and band membership as children of their mother’s brother. Not only do the new rules appear to perpetuate (residual) sexual discrimination, but Indian bands themselves appear to put up barriers to prevent directly or indirectly reinstated women from exercising their (automatic) band membership rights. Indian women who have their birth rights restored are excluded from their communities’ political processes and are hampered from residing on their homeland and from voting in band elections. Thus, Indian women still face legal and practical problems in reconciling their culture and gender (cf. Holmes 1987; Duclos 1990). To some bands, practical and economical reasons for denying reinstated women the exercise of their Indian rights, such as access to their reserves, may have a greater weight than any argument leading in the direction of sexual discrimination. However, Indian women who have never lost their status and who have lived on a reserve all their lives appear to suffer from sexual discrimination also (cf. Silman 1987). Many bands oppose the old as well as the new Indian Act as the government’s tool for setting the parameters of

220 The Constitution, the Charter, and Aboriginal Women’s Rights: Conflicts and Dilemmas

Indian self-government. To these bands, the issue of sexual discrimination or sexual equality is not relevant (cf. Duclos 1990). However, to Indian women, their struggle for sexual equality remains inextricably tied to Indian self- government. So, where do Indian women go from here? Firstly, I argue that it is necessary that both the government and the Assembly of First Nations recognize the Native Women’s Association as a separate organization with a legitimate mandate and that they include it in all national political discussions on an equal footing. This is particularly important in view of future self-government negotiations during the “Charlottetown aftermath.” Secondly, the government, which was responsible for Indian women’s problems in the first place, has to provide very explicit and unambiguous guarantees of Indian women’s equality rights. This means also that residual sexual discrimination in the new Indian Act should be eliminated. Thirdly, Indian women in the communities have to take action to alter sex-discriminatory attitudes. Lastly, the matter of Indian self-government should be constitutionally resolved in due course. Only when men’s and women’s special legal status and rights are explicitly and constitutionally recognized and affirmed may the Indian Act’s status regulations become redundant and Indian men and women better able to work together towards a future as truly self-governing First Nations.

Conclusion The Native Women’s Association of Canada can be viewed as manifestation of the Canadian Indian women’s movement. It is unique in its claim that equality between the sexes can only be established through the restoration of cultural traditions, among which gender equality. By strategically using the ideological concept of traditional motherhood the Association was able to resolve conflicts and dilemmas in connecting aboriginal and equality rights. The author argues that explicit sexual equality guarantees within the frame of constitutionally entrenched Indian self-government are a prerequisite in order for women to have their rights as First Nations’ citizens protected.

Notes 1. I am grateful for the financial support of The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) during the preparation of this article. 2. Informants’ data for the article were gathered during fieldwork in Canada in 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987 and 1990. For a more extensive study on Canadian Indian women, see Krosenbrink (1991). 3. The Supreme Court decided in a five to four vote against Lavell. The Canadian Bill of Rights (1960) was not considered effective to overrule the Indian Act, and the fact that Indian women were treated differently was not considered relevant to the case as brought forward (Eberts 1985:61; Jamieson 1978:85-86; Kerr 1975:23). 4. This argument holds specifically for the period 1982-1987. During the debates on the Charlottetown agreement in the summer of 1992, it appeared that NWAC shifted its focus to Section 15. The Association’s President argued that basic human rights as recognized in international law and enforceable under the Charter must be guaranteed to every individual including First Nations persons (Govt. of Canada 1992:32). 5. Ethnic (immigrant) groups in Canada cannot claim collective rights, other than the quasi- collective rights spelled out in section 15 of the Charter. The aboriginal peoples’ rejection of being classified as ethnic group stands in close relationship to section 25 of the Charter. 6. The U.N. decision in 1981 on the Lovelace case particularly referred to the self- determining rights of minority groups in relation to membership (cf. article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1976).

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7. In August 1992, NWAC tried through the Federal Court of Appeal to obtain the right to a formal seat at the constitutional bargaining table. Although the Association won, the federal government continued negotiations with the other four national aboriginal organizations and refused direct participation to the Native Women’s Association. On October 13, 1992, NWAC tried to block the national referendum in Federal Court because the aboriginal self- government provision of the Charlottetown Accord was not explicitly subordinated to the equality provision in the Charter (The Globe and Mail, Oct. 13/92:A8). 8. Primary and secondary source material on the (re)evaluation of Indian women’s traditional roles and positions have grown since the second women’s movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s (cf. e.g. Brant 1988; Green 1983; Gunn Allen 1989; Jamieson 1982; Krosenbrink 1984:5-27, 1991:39-48). 9. According to Hall: “Compelling arguments can be made in support of the assertion that the oppression of women in Aboriginal communities represents a distilled variety of the basis present more generally throughout Canadian society” (1992:42). 10. The National Committee on Indian Rights for Indian Women (IRIW) favoured a strategy of disengagement in the 1970s. The consequence was that they continued their existence as merely an Alberta (non-status) Indian women’s group after 1981 (Krosenbrink 1991:99).

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223 Radha Jhappan

Inherency, Three Nations and Collective Rights: the Evolution of Aboriginal Constitutional Discourse from 1982 to the Charlottetown Accord*

Abstract The 1992 Charlottetown Accord proposed to enshrine Canadian Aboriginal peoples’ inherent right to self-government. Had it been approved in the national referendum of October 1992, the Accord would have created a third order of government within the federation. Aboriginal governments would have enjoyed great latitude in exercising a variety of powers currently available only to the provincial and federal governments. As governments and the majority of citizens have previously resisted Aboriginal claims for a constitutional right to self-government, the Accord’s provisions indicated a profound shift in the Canadian mind-set regarding Aboriginal entitlements. Through analysis of position papers of the national Aboriginal organizations and other parties to the reform process, this paper surveys the central dialogue surrounding the main constitutional developments in Aboriginal affairs over the past decade. There is evidence of considerable convergence on self- government and its meaning, especially as politicians and citizens appear to have substantially accepted several of the core elements of Aboriginal discourse; inherency, the three nations concept and collective rights. However, questions regarding the application of the Charter and gender equality rights show a continuing dissonance between individual and collective rights as applied to Aboriginal governments.

Résumé L’Accord de Charlottetown de 1992 proposait la constitutionnalisation du droit inhérent des peuples autochtones à l’autonomie. Si le référendum d’octobre de la même année avait entériné l’Accord, on aurait alors assisté à la création d’un troisième ordre de gouvernement au sein de la fédération. Les gouvernements autochtones auraient pu exercer un large éventail de pouvoirs qui n’appartiennent aujourd’hui qu’aux autorités fédérales et provinciales. Comme, jusqu’alors, les gouvernements et la majorité de la population s’étaient opposés à la reconnaissance officielle du droit à l’autonomie des peuples autochtones, les dispositions à cet égard de l’Accord de Charlottetown indiquaient un changement radical des mentalités chez les Canadiens. En procédant à l’analyse des exposés de vues présentés par les organismes autochtones et d’autres participants au processus de réforme, le présent article scrute le dialogue principal qui, depuis une décennie, a mené aux développements constitutionnels majeurs dans le dossier autochtone. Une nette convergence des opinions sur l’autonomie des peuples autochtones s’est réalisée au fur et à mesure que les hommes politiques et les citoyens ont accepté les éléments clés du discours autochtone : les droits inhérents; le

International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 7-8, Spring-Fall/Printemps-automne 1993 IJCS/RIÉC concept des trois nations; et les droits collectifs. Des désaccords persistent toutefois au sujet des droits collectifs et des droits individuels quant au respect par les gouvernments autochtones de la disposition de la Charte en matière d’égalité des sexes.

In October 1992, the five hundredth anniversary of the arrival of Columbus in the Americas, the citizens of Canada voted on a constitutional reform package which could have begun the restoration of that which the European invasion was to suppress: the right of the indigenous peoples to govern themselves. If passed, the self-government provisions would have put Canada’s Aboriginal peoples in the forefront of the international movement of indigenous peoples dedicated to reclaiming the lands and the socio-economic, cultural and political rights usurped over five centuries of European settlement. In the end, however, Canadian voters rejected the package, which included a wide range of proposals apart from Aboriginal self-government. Indeed, although all but one of the Inuit communities of the North voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Accord, 62% of the on-reserve status Indian population rejected it.1 Yet despite the Accord’s ultimate defeat, what is exceptional is that constitutional entrenchment of such a far-reaching bundle of rights was contemplated at all. There has undoubtedly been a major contextual shift in Aboriginal politics in recent years. Just two decades ago, the federal government’s proposal to abolish the Indian Act met with the concerted and ultimately successful resistance of First Nations 2 across the country, who feared that they would be cut adrift from the federal government’s fiduciary responsibilities and the admittedly limited benefits of the Act.3 Furthermore, although Aboriginal peoples made an historic break-through in winning the entrenchment of Aboriginal and treaty rights in the 1982 Constitution Act (discussed below), they were unable to secure an amendment on the right to self-government in the four First Ministers Conferences on Aboriginal Matters held between 1983 and 1987. This failure was principally due to the provinces’ refusal to entrench a right, the scope and nature of which the Aboriginal organizations involved were reluctant to limit via definition. As Gibbins has argued, in the political arena, politicians could be persuaded to deal with “domain-specific” issues which were both demonstrable and amenable to remedy (issues such as unemployment, housing shortages, inadequate education and infant mortality, for example). However, while they were willing to contemplate Aboriginal autonomy in some areas of jurisdiction on an incremental basis, when issues of constitutional principle and national symbolism arose, “constitutional recognition of Indian sovereignty was a pill upon which the political system gagged.”4 In view of these problems, the recent constitutional negotiations and the proposed constitutional amendments (outlined below) have revealed a sea- change in the discourse surrounding Aboriginal peoples’ constitutional entitlements. The metamorphosis of this discourse is perceptible, not primarily among Aboriginal peoples, who have steadfastly held a core set of concepts and demands. Rather, this change is evident among political decision-makers and the public, where support for Aboriginal peoples’ political aspirations is at an all-time high.5 The Charlottetown Agreement was reached after a long process of public discussions and hearings, sparked by the government of Canada’s constitutional reform proposals of September, 1991, entitled Shaping

226 Inherency, Three Nations and Collective Rights: the Evolution of Aboriginal Constitutional Discourse

Canada’s Future Together.6 The proposals were followed by a series of cross- country hearings by a Special Joint Committee of the House of Commons and Senate (the Beaudoin-Dobbie Committee), which issued its recommendations in February 1992.7 In addition, the federal government sponsored a series of six constitutional conferences which included a sprinkling of “ordinary citizens” along with representatives of various interest groups, academics, politicians and other “experts.” Finally, the federal government provided funding for four of the major national Aboriginal organizations—the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), the Native Council of Canada (NCC), the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (ITC), and the Metis National Council (MNC)—to hold “parallel processes,” the better to ascertain the views of Aboriginal peoples on the issue of constitutional reform. Through an analysis of position papers and reports of the national Aboriginal organizations’ “parallel constitutional process” of 1991-92, this paper examines the permutations and continuities of Aboriginal constitutional discourse over the past decade, with a view to identifying its major themes and their expression. The nucleus of national Aboriginal organizations’ constitutional goals has been self-government. However, while some of the orbital concepts (such as the claims of an inherent right to self-government and to distinct society status) have persisted over the period, they have been articulated in different forms as the constellation of political forces at work in constitutional reform has shifted. Moreover, the early 1990s have witnessed the re-emergence of issues such as Aboriginal women’s rights, the “two founding nations” concept and equity of access. These issues are either relative newcomers to the Aboriginal constitutional agenda, or they have assumed enhanced significance due to the florescence of previously marginalized voices within both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal society. The first part of the paper outlines Aboriginal peoples’ constitutional position under the 1982 Constitution Act, and their potential constitutional rights under the proposed provisions of the Charlottetown Accord. The second part examines some of the factors which have induced change in Aboriginal constitutional discourse, both among Aboriginal peoples themselves and among politicians and the public. The third part of the paper tracks the development of three sets of essential, interrelated themes in the contemporary discourse. The first set of themes links assertions of Aboriginal nationalism and sovereignty to the demand for constitutional recognition of an inherent right to self-government. The second set of themes relates to the intersection of the Aboriginal constitutional agenda with Quebec’s claims to distinct society status based on the “two founding nations” concept. The analysis shows that Aboriginal peoples have launched a successful assault on the latter conception of the Canadian compact. Finally, the third set of themes is associated with the attempt to reconcile individual with collective rights. The discussion focuses on the application of the Charter of Rights and the Native Women’s Association of Canada’s quest for protection of gender equality rights under Aboriginal governments. The tension between individual and collective rights is an especially important element of constitutional discourse; it involves unresolved issues both between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities, and within Aboriginal communities themselves. Spatial limitations inevitably require a focus on some themes to the exclusion of others. Aboriginal constitutional discourse is complex, and features many interrelated elements. Quite apart from spatial constraints, however, I have chosen not to analyze (other than tangentially) issues such as the treaties,

227 IJCS/RIÉC equity of access, the Indian Act, the creation of new provinces and ethnic versus public government, on the grounds that they are of special interest to specific sections of the Aboriginal population, but not to everyone. Instead, I have selected what are, in my view, the major conceptual elements of Aboriginal peoples’ discourse in view of the new political relationship they wish to craft with Canada, and their preferred status in the constitutional order. The analysis shows that Aboriginal peoples have made some major conceptual breakthroughs in terms of constitutional talk in Canada, breakthroughs which appeared in the Charlottetown proposals. Finally, although the Accord failed (due to a range of factors mostly unrelated to the self-government provisions), it is possible that amendments on self-government may proceed separately. The paper thus concludes with an analysis of the impact of the discourse to date, and the prospects for future reforms in the area.

Comparison of the 1982 Constitution Act and the Charlottetown Accord Under the Constitution Act, 1982, Aboriginal organizations had secured for the first time in Canadian history constitutional entrenchment of Aboriginal and treaty rights, though their precise meaning has not to date been fully fleshed out by the courts. As amended in 1983, the Act provided that: 25. The guarantee in this Charter of certain rights and freedoms shall not be construed so as to abrogate or derogate from any Aboriginal, treaty or other rights or freedoms that pertain to the Aboriginal peoples of Canada including (a) any rights or freedoms that have been recognized by the Royal Proclamation of October 7, 1763; and (b) any rights or freedoms that now exist by way of land claims agreements or may be so acquired. 35. (1) The existing Aboriginal and treaty rights of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed. (2) In this Act, “Aboriginal peoples of Canada” includes the Indian, Inuit and Metis peoples of Canada. (3) For greater certainty, in subsection (1) “treaty rights” includes rights that now exist by way of land claims agreements or may be so acquired. (4) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, the Aboriginal and treaty rights referred to in subsection (1) are guaranteed equally to male and female persons. The Charlottetown Accord of August 28, 1992, would have added substantially to these provisions. Briefly, the Accord proposed to entrench Aboriginal peoples’ “inherent right of self-government within Canada,”8 thereby creating a new institutional framework under the rubric of federalism. The Canada Clause, an interpretive clause governing the entire constitution, provided that “the Aboriginal peoples of Canada, being the first peoples to govern this land, have the right to promote their languages, cultures and traditions and to ensure the integrity of their societies, and their governments constitute one of three orders of government in Canada.”9 A contextual statement in s.35(3) of the Constitution Act, 1982, would have specified that duly constituted legislative bodies of the Aboriginal peoples had the right “(a)

228 Inherency, Three Nations and Collective Rights: the Evolution of Aboriginal Constitutional Discourse to safeguard and develop their languages, cultures, economies, identities, institutions and traditions, and (b) to develop, maintain and strengthen their relationship with their lands, waters and the environment, so as to determine and control their development as peoples according to their own values and priorities and to ensure the integrity of their societies.”10 There were to be certain limitations on the inherent right. First, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was to apply to Aboriginal governments. However, the extent of the Charter’s application was rendered ambiguous by three provisions. Aboriginal governments were to have access to s. 33 (the override clause) so that they could exempt their laws from the Charter’s fundamental freedoms, legal and equality rights. In addition, the existing s. 25 exemption of Aboriginal, treaty or other rights from the Charter was to be strengthened by adding “(c) any rights or freedoms relating to the exercise or protection of their languages, cultures or traditions.” Finally, the democratic rights in s. 3 of the Charter were only to be applied to the federal and provincial legislatures, not to Aboriginal governments. Hence, it is not clear whether the Charter would have applied to Aboriginal governments in any significant way, though this is discussed in more detail below. Nevertheless, a second limitation in s. 35.4(1) stated that federal and provincial laws of general application would continue to apply until they were displaced by laws passed by Aboriginal governments pursuant to negotiated authorities. Section 35(2) represented a third limit, providing that “no Aboriginal law or any other exercise of the inherent right of self- government...may be inconsistent with federal or provincial laws that are essential to the preservation of peace, order and good government in Canada.” Fourth, no new land rights were to be created, though nothing in the provisions were to derogate from existing land rights. Fifth, s. 35.7 provided that the rights of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada were to be guaranteed equally to male and female persons. Finally, there was to be a five-year delay on justiciability. These limitations notwithstanding, the Accord would have committed governments to negotiate in good faith the implementation of self- government, including issues of jurisdiction, lands and resources and economic and fiscal arrangements. In addition, treaty rights were to be interpreted in “a just, broad and liberal manner taking into account their spirit and intent,” and the government of Canada was to establish treaty processes to clarify, implement, or rectify the terms of the treaties. In fact, the Aboriginal components of the Accord were quite extensive. They included: guaranteed Aboriginal representation in the Senate; an Aboriginal veto over constitutional amendments directly affecting Aboriginal peoples; and at least four biennial constitutional conferences on Aboriginal issues starting no later than 1996. Aboriginal representatives were to have items of their choice included on the agendas.11 Compared with the rather sparse 1982 provisions, the Charlottetown Accord would have signalled a massive change and considerable improvement in the constitutional position of Aboriginal peoples. It would have given Aboriginal governments unassailable constitutional status, while at the same time recognizing that the right to self-government preceded the Canadian constitution. At a philosophical level, several of its key provisions are indicative of the transformation of Aboriginal constitutional discourse in recent years and its acceptance by political elites. In particular, the concept of

229 IJCS/RIÉC an inherent right to self-government enshrines collective rights and is an implicit recognition of Aboriginal nationhood and sovereignty. Meanwhile, the establishment of a third order of government in the Canadian federal system displaces the traditional “two nations” conception of the Canadian federal compact. These elements of Aboriginal constitutional discourse are discussed below.

Explaining the Discursive Shift As noted above, Aboriginal organizations were unable to secure constitutional recognition of the right to self-government during the 1980s. During that decade, public interest in and support for Aboriginal political aspirations was moderate, and had even declined somewhat since the 1970s.12 Hence, there was no particular public pressure for governments to act on their demands. In fact, in 1983 the Special Committee on Indian Self-Government (the Penner Committee) had released its report which recommended that Indian self- government be constitutionally entrenched as an Aboriginal right, and that First Nation governments should form “a distinct order of government in Canada.”13 Although hailed as a breakthrough by the AFN, the Report’s recommendations were never implemented. Moreover, less than a month after the failure of the 1987 F.M.C. on Aboriginal Constitutional Matters, the Governments of Canada and the ten provinces signed the Meech Lake Accord, a reform package which dealt wholly with Quebec’s agenda, and which made no attempt to address Aboriginal concerns. In view of these events, the political process of 1991-92 and the final package proposed by the Charlottetown Accord almost suggested that we had been flipped into an alternate universe. What seemed impossible in the 1980s had suddenly become not only possible, but unavoidable. In the early 1990s, Aboriginal organizations were able to force their demands onto a constitutional agenda which was intended by the Mulroney government to address Quebec’s demands for recognition as a distinct society (among other things). Now it seems unlikely that any attempt at constitutional reform which fails to address Aboriginal demands for self-government could succeed in the foreseeable future. What has caused this curious turn of events? One of the principal explanations for the inclusion of Aboriginal demands for self-government involves the role of Aboriginal peoples in the death of the Meech Lake Accord. When Elijah Harper, an Aboriginal member of the Manitoba Legislature, used a procedural loophole to postpone debate in the Legislature until it became impossible to ratify the Accord before the deadline, he was supported by Aboriginal organizations (and many citizens) across the country. Indeed, Frances Abele has noted “the way in which Quebec and the First Nations have stumbled over each other’s progress” in the process of constitutional reform: In 1982, Aboriginal peoples registered a limited victory, in securing constitutional entrenchment of “existing Aboriginal and treaty rights” while Quebec, absent, was excluded; then the urgency of resolving Quebec’s exclusion led to the Meech Lake Accord, which in turn contributed to the failure of the First Ministers’ Conferences on Aboriginal Matters; the apparent victory of reconciliation at Meech Lake was turned into a debacle by Aboriginal resistance to their exclusion from the process.14

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Shortly after the failure of Meech, a centuries-old dispute between the Mohawks of Oka, Quebec and the imperial and Canadian Crowns flared up afresh as the town of Oka proposed to expand a golf course on their traditional burial grounds. After a peaceful blockade over several months had failed to dissuade the developers, Mohawk Warriors responded by engaging in an armed confrontation with the Quebec Provincial Police (and later the Canadian Armed Forces) at Oka and several reserves in Quebec in the late summer of 1990. The ninety-day stand-off sparked a spate of sympathetic protests by Aboriginal communities and non-Aboriginal groups and individuals across the country. Although many citizens reacted negatively to the tactic of armed protest, Oka demonstrated the profound frustration felt by many Aboriginal people. The siege provoked anxiety that more serious and possibly more bloody confrontations might ensue if Aboriginal peoples’ socio-economic conditions and political position were not remedied. This unusual demonstration of militancy drove the message home to politicians and to the viewing public that Aboriginal people were serious, impatient with the normal political process, and determined to resist encroachments on their land and political rights. Indeed, Meech and Oka are widely credited by Aboriginal leaders as the chief explanations of the discursive shift: However hideous the Oka confrontation was, it could hardly have done a better job of changing Canadian opinion, as white Canadians watched the QPP charge Mohawk barricades in order to preserve the Mayor of Oka’s self-assumed right to expand the municipal golf course. The ugliness at the Mercier Bridge brought racism out into the open, to be confronted. The Donald Marshall case, the investigation into the cover-up of Helen Betty Osborne’s murder, task forces on Aboriginal justice in various provinces—all of these have opened white Canadians’ eyes as never before, to Native issues and concerns...And then there was Meech Lake. In the brangling and hysteria of the last weeks of the Meech Lake fiasco, Elijah Harper’s quiet dignity...deeply impressed many white Canadians.15 Whereas the Aboriginal role in the demise of the “Quebec Round” of constitutional reform and the militancy of Oka signalled the growing political potency of Aboriginal peoples, renewed conceptions of collective rights following the 1982 Charter of Rights were empowered by a series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1980s. The Guerin, Sioui, Simon and Sparrow decisions acknowledged the survival of Aboriginal and treaty rights, and breathed new life into Aboriginal claims that their “natural rights” nevertheless had the force of law in the Eurocanadian legal system. In particular, in the Sparrow decision, the Supreme Court found that regulation of a right (in this case a fishing right) could neither extinguish nor determine “the scope and content of an existing Aboriginal right.”16 Moreover, in its first interpretation of s. 35 of the 1982 Constitution Act, the Supreme Court found that the section implies a fiduciary responsibility on the part of the federal government, suggesting “some restraint on the exercise of sovereign power.”17 Section 35, the Court held, was to be given “a generous and liberal interpretation,” applied as it is to a sui generis category of rights.18 Certainly, these far-reaching legal victories impressed upon politicians the fact that Aboriginal peoples’ claims to land, treaty and unextinguished Aboriginal rights were much stronger in legal and constitutional terms than many had believed. Hence, taken together, the enhanced legal recognition of Aboriginal

231 IJCS/RIÉC rights, Aboriginal peoples’ role in the defeat of the Meech Lake Accord, and the new wave of militancy and direct action inspired by the cataclysm of Oka account at least in part for the transfiguration of Aboriginal constitutional discourse and the willingness of political elites to embrace it.

Aboriginal Nationhood, Sovereignty and the Inherent Right to Self- Government Aboriginal nationalism has been developing in Canada since at least the 1970s, when the Red Power movement began to craft an ideology of opposition which rejected the dominant political ethos and the place of Aboriginal people within it. As Chartrand observes, the recently mobilizing movement of Aboriginal peoples “is characterized by an emerging sense of nationalism which presents a number of challenges to traditional notions about the nation-state in Canada...[including]...the legitimacy of a constitutional order based upon a division of powers between the federal Parliament and the provincial Legislatures.”19 Two of the core elements of Aboriginal political and constitutional discourse in recent years have been claims to nationhood and sovereignty, which have culminated in a demand for the recognition of an inherent right to self- government. The concepts of nationhood and sovereignty are not understood by Aboriginal peoples in quite the same way as they are comprehended by non- Aboriginal people. “Nationhood” is not normally understood by Aboriginal people in Canada in the sense of “nation-state.” The latter would imply an international status whereby the nation would exercise complete sovereignty over a discrete territory, while enjoying the right to make foreign policy and to enter into treaties with other nations. Rather, Aboriginal nationhood is generally understood as describing a socio-cultural (usually tribal) group, sharing a common language, history, territory and identity. Yet Aboriginal nationalism is more than cultural nationalism: it has political implications, even if these do not extend as far as a claim to full-fledged nation- statehood. As Boldt has suggested, nationalism can refer to a range of autonomous political conditions, and if full independence is one extreme on a continuum, Canada’s Aboriginal peoples are best characterized as “autonomists.”20 Perhaps the most renowned assertion of nationhood and sovereignty was the Dene Declaration of 1975, which read in part: We the Dene of the [Northwest Territories] insist on the right to be regarded by ourselves and the world as a nation. Our struggle is for the recognition of the Dene Nation by the Government and people of Canada and the peoples and governments of the world....The Dene find themselves as part of a country. That country is Canada. But the Government of Canada is not the government of the Dene. The Government of the N.W.T. is not the government of the Dene. These governments were not the choice of the Dene, they were imposed on the Dene. Our plea to the world is to help us in our struggle to find a place in the world community where we can exercise our right to self- determination as a distinct people and as a nation. What we seek then is independence and self-determination within the country of Canada.21 (emphasis added) In the 1970s, various Aboriginal writers and organizations pointed out that before colonization, Aboriginal societies were sovereign. The British Crown,

232 Inherency, Three Nations and Collective Rights: the Evolution of Aboriginal Constitutional Discourse

they argued, recognized the pre-existing sovereignty of Indian nations in particular through the Royal Proclamation of 1763,22 and through the treaties it authorized, which were conducted on a nation-to-nation basis. They argued that they never gave up their right to govern themselves. The treaties may have limited sovereignty, but they did not erase it: Prior to colonial settlement in North America, the Indian... people had uncontested dominion over their tribal territories and all the people therein. They could govern, make laws, wage war, and had their own political, social, cultural, educational, economic, and property systems. Each tribe had absolute control over the resources and products of the land. In other words, the tribes had political sovereignty. To Indian people, their title to tribal lands was explicit in this political sovereignty. The actions of the colonial powers in entering into treaties with Indian peoples were an acknowledgement of sovereignty and a recognition of Indian rights to the land.23 In contemporary discourse, however, Aboriginal nationalism and assertions of sovereignty do not require a return to the absolute autonomy of the pre-contact period. Chartrand notes that in general, “Aboriginal peoples...have not been anxious to assert that their right of self-determination requires that they separate politically and economically from Canada.”24 John Moss notes that in the early 1980s, the NIB (National Indian Brotherhood, forerunner to the Assembly of First Nations), NCC and ITC each stated that their members represented separate and distinct nations, the NIB even declaring that “sovereignty continues to reside in each [Indian] nation.” For the NIB and the NCC, their status as nations gave them the right to choose whether they wished to be part of Confederation or not.25 The prescription, however, was not secession from Canada, but rather “internal sovereignty” via new political arrangements and institutions by which Aboriginal peoples might govern their own internal affairs. For the NIB and the NCC, the answer lay in the formation of a “third order of government” where Aboriginal governments would exercise a wide range of powers (combining municipal, provincial and some federal powers). Such governments would exist within current provincial boundaries, but would not be municipalities or “arms of the provincial governments.” 26 The ITC, on the other hand, envisioned the creation of a new province in the Northwest Territories in which Inuit would form the majority, though the ITC was not proposing “ethnically-exclusive government institutions [or] anything outside this country’s fundamental political principles.”27 In the 1991-92 round of constitutional reform, the themes of nationhood and sovereignty were expressed anew. The AFN’s Constitutional Commissioners for example, reiterated the historical basis of the Aboriginal-Eurocanadian relationship: The Canadian government may try to sidestep the question of nationhood for the First Peoples, but in the 17th and 18th centuries, its predecessors had no such doubts. Treaties weren’t made between victor and defeated or between superior and inferior; they were made between equals, on the basis of mutual respect...[Presenters] said that treaty after treaty...recognized the First Nations as independent equals....[However], unilaterally, the Federal government assumed

233 IJCS/RIÉC

responsibility for “Indians” and passed the Indian Act through a Parliament for which “status Indians” were not even eligible to vote....But the people who came to join the circle were quite clear. At no point had they or their ancestors ever consented to be governed by the incomers. We govern ourselves; we have never given up that right, they told us. Self-government exists. It has always existed; it will always exist. Recognition of this fundamental fact would be simple justice, but whatever happens, we are our own people, our own Nations, with our own culture and traditions to treasure.28 As in the 1970s, the national Aboriginal organizations used the language of sovereignty, but did not see the notion as requiring secession from Canada. The ITC, for example, noted that Inuit have not advocated sovereignty or a desire to separate from Canada. Instead, “our position signifies the opposite approach, a desire to seek unity with other Canadians and become equal partners in the federation.”29 While the national organizations concurred in this view, it is not necessarily the view espoused by all First Nations, however. Indeed, some Aboriginal groups have a long history of asserting complete sovereignty and independence from Canada. For example, since the late 1950s, the Iroquois of the Six Nations Confederacy have resisted Canada’s claims to sovereignty over their peoples and territories,30 and at the 1984 FMC on Aboriginal Matters, Chief Billy Two Rivers of the Kahnawake Mohawk Council declared that: The Haudenosaunee Six Nations Confederacy have no desire to separate from Canada, since the Confederacy have never been part of Canada....[The] new constitution will have no jurisdictional authority within our territories or over our people. Our people are citizens of our nation and do not seek citizenship within the nation of Canada.31 In view of this position, it is not surprising that the Mohawks boycotted the October referendum. Nor are the Mohawks the only Aboriginal group to challenge the authority and jurisdiction of the Canadian state. In 1989, the Haidas of the Queen Charlotte Islands off the coast of British Columbia declared themselves an independent nation, and even issued passports to underscore the point. While such dramatic declarations have been the exception rather than the rule in Aboriginal politics, there is some evidence that the idea of absolute sovereignty has begun to take hold among more Aboriginal groups, and Chartrand notes that “Aboriginal leaders are now concerned with asserting the illegitimacy of the Canadian state and its constitution on the basis that it was imposed upon Aboriginal peoples.”32 Not surprisingly, the issue of sovereignty was to surface in the 1991-92 round of constitutional reform. The logic of the claim to nationhood and continuing sovereignty ultimately produces a claim to an inherent right to self-government in the present. When the federal government’s September 1991 document, Shaping Canada’s Future Together, proposed to enshrine in the Constitution a general right to self-government (subject to the Charter of Rights, federal and provincial laws of general application and a ten-year delay on justiciability), Aboriginal leaders across the country reacted with considerable skepticism. Ovide Mercredi and Saul Terry of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs

234 Inherency, Three Nations and Collective Rights: the Evolution of Aboriginal Constitutional Discourse

(among others) took the position that nothing less than the recognition of self- government as an inherent right would be acceptable. Within a month, Mercredi was threatening to boycott the Parliamentary “unity” process unless the inherent right to self-government was recognized. At the opening of the AFN’s “parallel process,” Mercredi even went as far as to say that if inherent rights were not acknowledged, Aboriginal people could form their own national government and declare sovereignty and independence from Canada.33 Although they did not necessarily support the latter claim, the other national Aboriginal organizations lined up behind the demand for the inherent right. The language of inherency has much more than merely symbolic importance. It recognizes the fact that Aboriginal peoples were historically self-governing, that they never gave up the right to govern themselves, and that the right is not granted by any other government or legislative or constitutional enactment. Ultimately, it signifies a pre-existing, natural and continuing right which cannot be abrogated or revoked by any other government, especially without the consent of Aboriginal peoples. Throughout the Aboriginal parallel process of 1991-92, speakers emphasized the inherent nature of Aboriginal rights, although its consequences were expressed in different ways. The AFN’s Commissioners noted that: The word “inherent” has caused considerable confusion. In fact, it’s very simple. The people say that First Nations self-government exists; the question is one of recognition only. The federal government cannot grant self-government to the First Nations any more than the Mayor of Sudbury can declare war on Japan. A man cannot divorce a woman who never married him....The people claim that this right stems from First Nations’ occupation of the land from time immemorial, from Aboriginal title and rights recognized under international conventions, from elementary principles of democracy. We heard that the federal and provincial governments cannot give the First Nations the right to self-government, because that right has been given them by an even more powerful governor [the Great Creator]. All governments can do is to recognize the fact.34 Each of the national organizations insisted that the inherent right should be enshrined without limitations. The ITC took the view that “by virtue of being inherent and a fundamental right of indigenous peoples, the right of self- government is of a permanent nature and cannot be restricted or limited to delegated powers.35 Meanwhile, the NCC’s Constitutional Review Commission recommended: that the inherent right be immediately entrenched without a delay on enforcement; that it include title and ownership of lands and resources; that the Indian Act system not be the basis for self-government; that the right should be “freely exercisable by all Aboriginal people regardless of their status under the Indian Act, or of where they live”; and that it could not limit or detract from “existing rights and our original jurisdictions.”36 The appearanœ of the conœpt of inherency in 1991-92 seemed to surprise the viewing public, as well as many politicians, who seemed never to have heard of it before. Yet the four national Aboriginal organizations had been using it for some years. In fact, they had tabled a “Joint Aboriginal Proposal for Self- Government” during the 1987 FMC, which proposed to recognize and affirm the inherent right. Negotiations were to proceed on such issues as lands,

235 IJCS/RIÉC resourœs, economic and fiscal arrangements, education, preservation and enhanœment of Aboriginal languages and cultures, and equity of access.37 It must be noted, however, that at that time Aboriginal issues did not enjoy a particularly high profile in Canadian politics, nor were Aboriginal organizations able to flex the political muscle developed latterly by virtue of the collapse of the Meech Lake Accord, the militancy at Oka and a variety of other factors. For several months after the release of Shaping Canada’s Future Together, the federal government vigorously resisted the idea of inherency. Tom Siddon, the Minister of Indian Affairs, said that Ottawa was willing to make jurisdictional spaœ for native self-government, “but not if it means yielding the ultimate sovereignty of the Crown and of Canada.”38 The major concern was that the idea of inherency might import a right to sovereign independence from Canada, that it might produce a “Swiss cheese map riddled with tiny pockets of independent native nations.”39 Joe Clark, the Minister Responsible for Constitutional Affairs, did not rule out inherency, but told the NCC at a meeting in Hull, Quebec on November 7, 1991, that: We believe that the word—undefined or unmodifed—could be used as the basis for a claim to international sovereignty or as the justification of a unilateral approach to deciding what laws did or did not apply to Aboriginal peoples....If Aboriginal Canadians can help define what inherency would mean in practical terms—in terms of authorities and jurisdictions and powers—in such a way that the integrity of this federation is not put in question, we would welcome that. We are not opposed to inherency.” These concerns were certainly not alleviated by the threats of secession made by Mercredi and others, and particularly by Aboriginal leaders in Quebec, who feared for their collective fate should Quebec itself secede from Canada. Nor were the government’s fears tranquilized by assurances that Aboriginal groups were really after inclusion in the federation, particularly as Aboriginal lobbying on the international front in recent years has been devoted to gaining recognition of indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination, whether within or outside existing nation-states.40 Nevertheless, governments’ concerns notwithstanding, by early 1992 the concept of inherency appeared to have penetrated the Canadian political psyche. Amid government charges that Aboriginal (and other “special interest”) groups were “hijacking” the five constitutional conferences, the final wrap-up conference in Vancouver concluded that “the inherent right of self-government, exercised within Canada, should be recognized in the Constitution, including jurisdictions over lands, resources, culture, and language.”41 Similarly, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples intervened in the process in mid-February. The Commission recommended that “...any new constitutional provision dealing with the Aboriginal right of self-government...should indicate that the right is inherent in nature, circumscribed in extent, and sovereign in its sphere.”42 Although some Aboriginal leaders (such as Yvon Dumont of the Metis National Council) objected to the limitations the Commission would place on the right even before negotiations had begun,43 the intervention nevertheless lent added credibility to the demand for an inherent right.

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In a similar vein, the Beaudoin-Dobbie Committee, which reported in late February after conducting nation-wide hearings, recommended “the entrenchment in section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 of the inherent right of Aboriginal peoples to self-government within Canada.”44 With two of the government’s own committees on-side, the demand for entrenchment of the inherent right to self-government seemed unassailable. It survived the subsequent rounds of bargaining among the First Ministers, the territorial governments and representatives of the four national Aboriginal organizations held from May to August, 1992, and appeared in the Draft Legal Text of the Charlottetown Accord of October 9, 1992. Hence, with regard to the inherent right to self-government, the Charlottetown Accord was an exceptional coup for the Aboriginal organizations and leaders (particularly Ovide Mercredi) who risked exclusion of their demands from the process of reform altogether by holding out for an unassailable inherent right. This achievement is the more notable, since, as Chartrand notes, “traditionally, the judicial dialogue of ‘rights’ has considered rights as legal boundaries beyond which the individuaT is shielded from the legislative intrusion of the State [whereas] governmental ‘rights’ to legislate have been expressed in terms of ‘powers’, not of ‘rights.”’ 45 What is significant then, is the fact that whereas the other two levels of government cannot claim “rights” vis-à-vis one another (they can at most claim the improper exercise of power beyond the jurisdictional powers set out in the Constitution Act), Aboriginal governments would have been able to claim a right to govern, and they would claim it vis-à- vis other governments. Moreover, Aboriginal governments were to enter the domain of law-making under the Constitution (albeit subject to some constraints), an historic reversal of over a century of colonial law. The Intersection of the Aboriginal and Quebec Constitutional Agendas: “Two Founding Nations” and Distinct Society Status Since before Confederation, the relationship between English and French Canada has been characterized as a compact between “two founding nations.” Indeed, federalism itself has been regarded as an arrangement designed to join the two ethnic/linguistic groups in a system which would allow each to flourish while reaping the benefits of broader union. Since Quebec’s “Quiet Revolution” of the 1960s, the agenda of constitutional reform has revolved largely around Quebec’s demands for a renegotiation of the division of powers to facilitate its nation-building strategies. The conception of Canada as a compact between English- and French- speaking peoples has been reinforced by federal policies such as official bilingualism. Moreover, various initiatives, from the Victoria Charter of 1971 to Meech Lake, to the post-Meech round of 1991-92, have attempted to solve the problem of Quebec’s demands for more provincial powers as well as a veto over subsequent constitutional change. Although challenged by the principle of the equality of the provinces and by multiculturalism, the two nations conception has survived as a dominant element of Canadian political discourse. Canada’s Aboriginal peoples, however, have long rejected the “two founding nations” conception of Canada. In fact, it is almost always characterized as a “myth.” For example, as early as 1979, the National Indian Brotherhood (NIB, later retitled the Assembly of First Nations) told theTask Force on Canadian Unity that “the myth suggesting that the French and English are founding peoples of Canada... is historically inaccurate and an insult to the Indian people of Canada.”46

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However, the Aboriginal challenge to the dominant conception of the national compact did not gain currency until the 1991-92 “Canada Round.” Throughout the four Aboriginal parallel processes (and elsewhere), opinion was uniform that this conception was in need of revision as it excluded the original inhabitants of the continent. For example, an ITC position paper pointed out that “the myth of English and French speahng Canadians as the two founding peoples of Canada ignores the contribution and needs of Aboriginal peoples as Canada’s first citizens.”47 Similarly, a number of submissions to the AFN’s First Nations Circle asserted the prior presence and unique rights of Aboriginal peoples: The principle of two founding nations is one of the biggest fallacies in this century. Time did not start ticking on this continent when the European people arrived. The constitution must recognize and give due regard to the special status the First Nations have in Canada.48 On the other hand, perhaps because a significant proportion of its constituency is Metis, the NCC has taken a less pointed and perhaps more conciliatory view of the “two founding nations” discourse. The NCC’s Executive Task Force on the Constitution in fact called for “a recognition of French Canada as a founding or distinct society,” on the basis that the Quebec and Aboriginal positions should be “mutually supportable.”49 Nevertheless, during the 1991-92 process, the two nations concept was under siege, displaced by an alternate concept: three founding peoples. The AFN First Nations Circle Commissioners, for example, concluded that “there is widespread and growing support for the position that First Nations are one of Canada’s three founding peoples.”50 In fact, the idea had surfaced during the five constitutional conferences held in various cities in early 1992. The Toronto conference in particular (which focussed on the “distinct society” clause) endorsed NCC President Ron George’s insistence that Aboriginal peoples be accepted as the first of three “founding national communities.”51 Indeed, so powerful was the displacement of the two nations concept that even central Canadian academics, who had long accepted it, began to make space in their constitutional discourse for Aboriginal peoples. Of course, the three founding peoples concept is an unsatisfactory rival to the two nations concept, since Aboriginal peoples have been adamant in their insistence that they are not an undifferentiated mass, but are distinctive nations in their own right. However, the idea was to displace the previous exclusionary discourse. More than anything, the “three founding peoples” concept challenges the core of the Canadian federal community’s self-definition; it requires a radical reconceptualization of the political compact. As Chartrand observes: The nationalistic movement among Aboriginal peoples presents a challenge to the notion of two founding nations in establishing the Canadian state. Since the Aboriginal peoples had virtually no say in the establishment of Canada, the legitimacy of Canada, not only as a constitutional entity, but as a country with a legitimate vision of its own society is being challenged. It so happens, however, that the Aboriginal nationalism is occuring at a time when the nationalism of one of the “offficial founding nations” is itself causing a fundamental re-examination of the legitimacy of the existing order.52

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The problem with the alternative conception, however, concerned its implications for the manner in which Aboriginal peoples would be recognized in the Constitution. Since the Meech Lake Accord, in which Quebec was to be recognized as a “distinct society,” the term had become widely associated with Quebec’s status claims. However, Aboriginal groups had been using it since at least the 1970s.53 In May 1987, the leaders of the four national Aboriginal organizations had written a letter to the Prime Minister asking for recognition of Aboriginal peoples as a distinct society in the Meech Lake Accord.54 Hence, by the 1990s, Aboriginal leaders resented the implication that Quebec had somehow gained a copyright on the concept. Thus began the discursive competition between Aboriginal versus Quebec claims. It was not simply a question of “whatever Quebec gets, we want too.” Instead, it was a question of prior claims, as well as of the effect of distinct society status for Quebec on the Aboriginal populations of that province. As the Commissioners of the AFN’ First Nations Circle noted: The people who spoke to us said this: of course Quebec is distinct from English Canada...The cultures are not the same...We sympathize with Quebec’s desire to preserve and transmit what is uniquely Quebecois. All we ask is that they give us the same right that they claim for themselves...Aboriginal peoples are not merely another ethnic group like the Ukrainians or the Dutch. We too are a distinct society. We are the original society....how does one define “distinctness”? Linguistic differences? As one white contributor pointed out, French and English belong to the same family of languages....Our languages belong to an entirely different group. Legal systems? The Common Law of English Canada and the Napoleonic Code may differ, but they share the same approach to crime and punishment, an approach totally unlike Aboriginal justice. Cultural differences? Consider Aboriginal attitudes towards land and ownership, which are radically different from whites’. [One] presenter noted that Aboriginal peoples are so distinct that even their biochemistry, their blood types and metabolism, are not quite the same as Eurocanadians’...If there is to be competition for Most Distinct Society in Canada, the French would not be winners. The competition matters only because Quebec, in demanding its rights, risks trampling on ours. Fear for the future of First Nations in Quebec was voiced...all across the country. It is not in Quebec’s interests to respect First Nations’ rights.55 In a similar vein, Ovide Mercredi, National Chief of the AFN, addressed the Commons-Senate Committee on a Renewed Canada (the Beaudoin -Dobbie Committee), outlining not only the Aboriginal claim to distinct society status, but also the potential dangers to Aboriginal interests if Quebec were so recognized: We want to preserve a distinct way of life that has suffered dramatically under policies of assimilation. So we look at the constitution as a vehicle for accomplishing that objective...The recognition of Quebec as a distinct society can be very detrimental to First Nations within Quebec. It does not take much to conjure numerous possibilities of how this recognition can be used to the detriment of First Nations, from land claims to hydroelectric

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developments to language programs to education and even military defence.56

These concerns were echoed by the other national Aboriginal organizations. The ITC, for example, took the position that: Inuit strongly believe that it is necessary to identify Aboriginal peoples as distinct societies...[T]he constitutional recognition of Quebec as a distinct society wlthout also recognizing Aboriginal peoples places us in a disadvantageous position. For example, it could result in Inuit language rights in certain regions of Canada being accorded secondary status.57 Again, the NCC’s position was less pointed, and the organization’s Constitutional Review Commission took the view that there was no need to apply the words “distinct societies” to Aboriginal nations, provided that terminology with an “equivalent significance and authority within the Constitution” was used.58 The NCC was concerned, nevertheless, about Quebec’s reluctance to recognize distinct society status for Aboriginal peoples, particularly as off-reserve Indian and Metis people in Quebec would be threatened by the imposition of the province’s cultural and language laws.59 It was at the Toronto conference, however, that the competition between Aboriginal peoples and Quebec over distinct society status reached new heights. Though Aboriginal organizations had not been formally invited to participate in the conference, Mercredi went anyway. He was successful in demanding the right to speak and complained about the exclusion of Aboriginal groups at the conference. The opening plenary ended with Zebedee Nungak of the ITC displaying a map of Quebec in which approximately one half of the territory (coloured red) was carved out as the Aboriginal territories which could secede from Quebec if Quebec seceded from Canada.60 A few days later, Mercredi addressed the Quebec National Assembly committee examining sovereignty, and disputed Quebec’s right to self-determination: Self-determination is not a right of a “province.” It is the right of all peoples. Are the “people of Quebec” a “people” in the international legal sense? The population of Quebec is made up of a wide range of racial and ethnic groups. It cannot be considered to be a single “people” with the right of self-determination. Otherwise, the “people of Canada” would also be a “people” for the purpose of international law. Through such interpretations, the essential purposes of self- determination would be defeated....It is not clear to whom the term “Québécois” refers. Does it imply that people of all racial, national and ethnic origins living within Quebec are a single people...with one right to self-determination? Are French Quebeckers and First Nations within Quebec part of a single people? If this is your view, then it is contrary to our right to self-determination and self- identification.6l The map incident, together with Mercredi’s comments, provoked angry reactions in Quebec It also sparked dissent among Aboriginal organizations. Ron George of the NCC, for example, told the Beaudoin-Dobbie Committee that “we are not going to get dragged into a phony war with French Canada or

240 Inherency, Three Nations and Collective Rights: the Evolution of Aboriginal Constitutional Discourse

Quebec,” and maintained that Aboriginal peoples did not need distinct society status as well as recognition of the inherent right to self-government.62 Perhaps because Mercredi realized that Quebec’s consent would be required for any constitutional amendment package (and perhaps in part because Constitutional Affairs Minister, Joe Clark, warned that such “inflammatory” demands could result in the exclusion of Aboriginal issues from the package63), Mercredi’s position softened considerably over the ensuing months. In the final rounds of negotiation over the summer of 1992, the demand for recognition of Aboriginal peoples as distinct societies was dropped. The Charlottetown Accord, however, though avoiding that terminology, included what amounted to a distinct society clause for Aboriginal peoples in s.2(b) of the Canada clause (quoted above). Hence, while Aboriginal leaders did not succeed in their quest to obtain distinct society status for Aboriginal peoples, the language of the Canada clause, together with recognition of the inherent right to self-government, were arguably stronger guarantees than that imported by the distinct society terminology. The discursive breakthrough was significant, moreover, since the bubble of “two nations” had been pricked, and as it was widely realized that Aboriginal peoples had a legitimate claim to special status which could not be neglected in constitutional reform.

Individual versus Collective Rights: Gender Equality and the Application of the Charter of Rights One of the cornerstones of Aboriginal constitutional discourse in recent years has been the primacy of collective over individual rights. Aboriginal rights claims are claims to collective rights, wherein rights inure to individuals by virtue of their group membership. Whereas an Aboriginal right (such as the right to hunt or fish) may be exercised by individuals, access to the right is pre- determined by their membership in Aboriginal communities. However, land rights under Aboriginal title, for example, cannot be claimed by individuals, as the notion of Aboriginal title is founded upon the idea that lands are held by communities, not by individuals. The discourse of rights is a rather recent phenomenon among Aboriginal peoples, who did not traditionally structure their communities around rights concepts. Aboriginal leaders and scholars in recent years have critiqued the entire basis of the rights approach to mediating the competing claims of individuals and groups. Mary Ellen Turpel, for example, points out that “rights discourse has been widely appropriated by Aboriginal peoples in struggles against the effects of colonialism.”64 However, rights discourse is based on liberal, individualist ideology with its celebration of the right to private property. This discourse, she argues, is not congruent with Aboriginal philosophies, since rights are seen as erecting fences around the individual the better to protect her against harm from others: Although there is no culture or system of beliefs shared by all Aboriginal peoples, the paradigm of rights based conceptually on the prototype of right of individual ownership of property is antithetical to the widely shared understanding of creation and stewardship responsibilities of First Nations peoples for the land, for Mother Earth. Moreover, to my knowledge there are no narratives among Aboriginal peoples of living together for the purposes of protecting

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an individual interest in property....The collective or communal basis of Aboriginal life does not really...have a parallel to individual rights: the conceptions of law are simply incommensurable....Aboriginal rights claims are, in my view, requests for the recognition by the dominant (European) culture of the existence of another, and for toleration of, and respect for, the practical obstacles that the request brings with it. While this may be cloaked in rights talk, there is something at stake that is larger than rights, and that is conceivably outside of the texts of particular documents intended to guarantee human rights...What is at stake is a more basic, less “legalized” condition of survival: the dignity of existing as Peoples.65 The clash of individual and collective rights was most clearly demonstrated in 1969 when the Trudeau government’s proposal that “the Indian people’s role of dependence be replaced by a role of equal status, opportunity and responsibility”66 was resoundingly rejected by status Indians. Those who would have been stripped of their special status and rights under the Indian Act were manifestly uninterested in the sacred cows of liberal individualist ideology—equality of opportunity and freedom from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender and so on. That is not to suggest that they favoured inequality and discrimination. Instead, they objected that such individual rights and liberties were being offered at the expense of special status and group rights. The problems of individual versus collective rights are pertinent to Aboriginal constitutional discourse in two major respects. In the first instance, Aboriginal rights (such as self-government, hunting, fishing and treaty rights) are collective claims in the positive sense of extending power to Abonginal nations to take certain actions (to make laws, for example). They are also negative in the sense of requiring freedom from interference by others in the exercise of rights. Essentially, these are rights claimed against other governments; they concern relations of power between Aboriginal and non- Aboriginal peoples. On the other hand, the intersection of individual and collective rights within Aboriginal communities is a different order of problem. With regard to the relations of power between Aboriginal and non Aboriginal peoples, many have pointed out that while the Charter of Rights may be the coronation of liberal individualism, it has nevertheless recognized certain group entitlements, such as language rights. Cenainly, the mainstream discourse of rights has expanded sufficiently to include collective rights, and in a series of cases, the Supreme Court has recognized that equality may mean treating groups (not just individuals) differently to ameliorate conditions of disadvantage.67 As the Charlottetown Accord proposed to add to the collective rights of Aboriginal peoples which had been enshrined in l982, Canadian political elites at least have shown themselves willing to accommodate certain group rights. However, the question of rights within Aboriginal communities, and particularly under self-government regimes, is an especially delicate one. It involves the ability of individuals to claim individual rights against a group exercising collective rights. This issue surfaced in the 1991-92 constitutional talks, revolving around the application of the Charter of Rights to Aboriginal governments. Aboriginal leaders have long rejected the idea that Aboriginal governments should be subject to the Charter on the grounds that some Charter

242 Inherency, Three Nations and Collective Rights: the Evolution of Aboriginal Constitutional Discourse rights could be inconsistent with the exercise of self-government, particularly in the case of communities wishing to follow their traditional modes of governance. For example, in 1982 the National Chief of the AFN told the Commons Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs that: ...as Indian people we cannot afford to have individual rights override collective rights. Our societies have never been structured that way, unlike yours, and that is where the clash comes...If you isolate the individual rights from the collective rights, then you are heading down another path that is even more discriminatory...The Canadian Charter of Rights is in conflict with our philosophy and culture.68 Mary Ellen Turpel (coincidentally the AFN’s chief constitutional adviser) has offered a number of arguments against the application of Charter or individual rights to Aboriginal governments. She points out that “it is difficult for a culturally distinct people to define the trajectory of its own development if individuals from within or outside the culture can challenge collective decisions on the basis that they infringe their individual rights under the Charter in the Canadian legal system that does not understand, or give priority to, collective goals.”69 Turpel warns of the threat to the cultural identity of communities pursuing their idiosyncratic political and spiritual traditions if they are subject to either internal challenges by their own members, or external challenges by non-Aboriginal individuals arguing that Aboriginal laws do not conform to the Charter: In the case of an external challenge, for example, on the basis of voting or candidacy rights where a non-Aboriginal complainant argued that they could not vote or stand for elections in an Aboriginal community, a Canadian court would be given the authority to decide an important part of the future for an Aboriginal people. It would have to [weigh] the protections afforded Aboriginal rights by section 25 of the Charter [against] the individual right to vote recognized in section 3. Should Canadian courts (and non-Aboriginal judges) have authority in such cases? The critical question is, do they have cultural authority?... The...internal challenge is conceivable where a member of an Aboriginal community who feels dissatisfied with a particular course of action the Aboriginal government has taken, or envisages taking, turns to the Charter for the recognition of a right. This is an equally, if not more, worrisome prospect. This kind of challenge would be a dangerous opening for a ruling by a Canadian court on individual versus collective rights within an Aboriginal community. It would...break down community methods of dispute resolution and restoration....It would also have the effect of encouraging people to go outside the community and its customs, to settle disputes in formal courts, instead of dealing with problems within the community. This is particularly threatening, perhaps even ethnocidal, to Aboriginal peoples who are on the brink of cultural destruction because of the legacy of colonialism and paternalism under the Indian Act.70 These sorts of concerns explain why Aboriginal organizations insisted that s. 3 should not be applied to Aboriginal governments. Further, in addition to democratic rights, it is possible that the legal rights in Sections 7 to 14 of the

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Charter may pose similar problems for Aboriginal governments seeking to follow Aboriginal justice traditions. Mobility and equality rights could likewise make Aboriginal governments vulnerable to both internal and external challenges. The solution in the Charlottetown Accord was to offer Aboriginal governments access to Section 33, the override clause, so that they could exempt certain of their laws from fundamental freedoms, legal and equality rights. The antagonism between individual and collective rights was not to be so easily resolved, however. One of the keenest ironies of the recent process was that, at the very moment when non-Aboriginal governments (and a large proportion of the citizenry) were accepting for the first time the idea of entrenching Aboriginal peoples’ collective rights to self-government, those rights were being assailed by the individual rights claims of the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC). Essentially, NWAC’s challenge was based on the claim that the male-dominated Aboriginal organizations and Band Councils were not representing and would not in the future guarantee gender equality for Aboriginal women under self-government regimes. Hence they demanded: first, independent funding for and representation at any and all constitutional negotiations regarding Aboriginal self-government; and second, that the Charter be applied to Aboriginal governments so that Aboriginal women would be shielded from the potentially discriminatory effects of traditional forms of government. The latter concerns are examined after a discussion of the question of representation and funding. The Native Women’s Association’s demand for independent representation and funding was to be the subject of two court cases. It must be noted, however, that NWAC had been allowed to participate in its own right at the 1983 and 1985 First Ministers’ Conferences on Aboriginal Constitutional Matters. But in the 1991-92 round of talks, it was not. However, members of NWAC participated in the parallel processes of the national organizations. In fact, Sharon McIvor, a member of NWAC’s national executive, was one of the Commissioners of the AFN’s First Nations Circle on the Constitution. In addition, each of the national organizations included women’s workshops in their parallel processes.71 The AFN and NCC had each allocated $130,000 of their grants from the Secretary of State to NWAC, money which had been earmarked in the Contribution Agreements with the federal government. A supplementary grant from Secretary of State brought NWAC’s funding to about 5% of what the Agreements had provided to each of the four national organizations, a total of some $10 million.72 Moreover, the NCC had responded to NWAC’s lobbying by assigning some of its seats to NWAC representatives in the constitutional conferences, particularly the Aboriginal Conference of March 13-15, 1992. NWAC’s main concerns about independent funding and representation were not, however, satisfied by these arrangements. In the spring of 1992, NWAC went to court to block federal grants to the four organizations. The Federal Court of Appeal substantially upheld NWAC’s claims in a judgement issued just a week before the Charlottetown Consensus Report was signed. NWAC asked the court for an order prohibiting funding to the AFN, NCC, MNC and ITC until the federal government provided equal funding to NWAC and an equal right of participation in the constitutional review process. The NCC, ITC, and MNC intervened in the case, challenging NWAC’s claim that it represented Aboriginal women. The NCC denied that it was a male or male- dominated organization, noting that the Presidents of its Alberta, Yukon and

244 Inherency, Three Nations and Collective Rights: the Evolution of Aboriginal Constitutional Discourse

Labrador constituents were women, and that it had been active in opposing gender discrimination under the Indian Act. The MNC and ITC each denied that NWAC represented Métis and Inuit women, the latter noting that Inuit women are represented by Pauktuutit, a national organization whose President is a member of the Board of Directors of ITC. In a unanimous decision, however, three judges found that: There is ample evidence that they individually [the Appellants, Gail Stacey-Moore and Sharon McIvor] and native women as a class remain doubly disadvantaged in Canadian society by reason of both race and sex and disadvantaged in at least some Aboriginal societies by reason of sex. The uncontradicted evidence is that they are also seriously disadvantaged by reason of sex within the segment of Aboriginal society residing on or claiming the right to reside on Indian reservations....The evidence establishes that [NWAC] is a grassroots organization founded and led by Aboriginal women, at least Métis and non-status Indian women.... NWAC is a bona fide, established and recognized national voice of and for Aboriginal women.73 Significantly, the Court held that none of the other national organizations adequately represented Aboriginal women’s interests. Moreover, although the AFN did not intervene in the case, the Court found that First Nations women’s interests were “likely to be injured if AFN’s position prevails”: ...AFN, and its forerunner the National Indian Brotherhood, has vigorously and consistently resisted the struggle of native women to rid themselves of the gender inequality historically entrenched in the Indian Act and has intervened in Parliamentary and legal proceedings to oppose those efforts. It opposed repeal of s.12(1)(b) of the Indian Act... and it opposed proclamation of the amendment to the ,Constitution Act, 1982 which added s. 35(4) [guaranteeing Aboriginal and treaty rights equally to male and female persons].”74 The court concluded that by inviting and funding the participation of the four national organizations, but excluding NWAC, “the Canadian government has accorded the advocates of male dominated Aboriginal self-governments a preferred position in the exercise of an expressive activity, the freedom of which is guaranteed to everyone by s. 2(b), and which is, by s. 28, guaranteed equally to men and women.”75 The court did not prohibit the government from funding the other organizations, holding that it could not compel the government either to fund NWAC equally or to invite its representatives to the bargaining table. Nonetheless, the finding that NWAC’s freedom of expression rights had been infringed should have been enough to prompt an invitation to the last round of negotiations in Charlottetown. However, no such invitation was forthcoming. NWAC subsequently petitioned the Federal Court Trial Division for an injunction prohibiting discussions between the governments and the four national organizations on subjects dealt with in the Consensus Report until NWAC was accorded the right to participate in the talks. NWAC also asked for an injunction prohibiting the Referendum scheduled for October 26, 1992, on the grounds that it was “based on a nullity” given the Appeal Court’s finding of a violation of NWAC’s freedom of expression right in the earlier case.76 After

245 IJCS/RIÉC the AFN intervened, the Federal Court delayed hearing the case in order to give other groups time to prepare their arguments.77 Though the decision was negative, in the end, events were to render the case moot as the Charlottetown Accord succumbed to defeat at the polls. Notwithstanding the play of events, however, the importance of such legal interventions cannot be underestimated. The court challenges exemplify precisely the sorts of concerns raised by Turpel and others that the overall collective rights of Aboriginal peoples would be prostrated before non- Aboriginal courts deferring to the individual rights discourse in which the Charter rejoices. They represented a challenge to the representivity of the four national organizations which in their various incarnations have been accepted and funded by the federal government for more than twenty years. As such, they question the federal government’s right to decide which groups are representative of all of the various interests of Aboriginal peoples, as well as its right to select those whose interests are to be given voice. The question of voice is especially significant in light of the aftermath of the Charlottetown Accord, when a number of First Nations (such as the Mohawks) claimed that the AFN did not represent them and that the agreement reached by the national organizations did not meet the aspirations of all Aboriginal peoples. It is also significant in view of the controversy over the government’s ability to decide who is and who is not an Indian for the purposes of the Indian Act, a power which has historically robbed thousands of Aboriginal people (mostly women) of their Aboriginal and treaty rights. This is a recurring theme in Aboriginal political discourse, since artificial legal classifications have determined access to rights and benefits. They have also created political divisions between different categories of Aboriginal peoples who have as a consequence different material and political interests. Hence, one of the major demands in the constitutional discourse has been that membership be determined by Aboriginal communities themselves, rather than by the federal government with its vested interest in limiting the number of people who can claim status and entitlements under the Indian Act. The question of equity of access to Aboriginal and treaty rights for Métis and non-status Indians has been a major concern for the MNC and the NCC.78 Hence, their inclusion in the self-government provisions of the Charlottetown Accord represented a major coup for those organizations. Unhappily, however, the issue of equal access to Aboriginal self-government rights has been cited by some Aboriginal leaders as one of the main explanations for the overwhelming treaty and status Indian rejection of the Accord.79 As noted above, throughout the 1991-92 process, NWAC demanded that the Charter be applied fully to Aboriginal governments. The concern was that Aboriginal women’s rights could be breached under self-governing regimes if they did not have access to a set of fundamental rights enforceable by an external authority. The demand was based on the history of discrimination against Aboriginal women by the Indian Act, as well as by the Band Councils it spawned. NWAC cited Section 12(1)(b) of the Act which, until its repeal in 1985, had stripped Indian women and their children of their status and rights upon marriage to non-Indian men; the provision that made women members of their husbands’ bands if they differed from their own and which imposed ‘enfranchisement’ on them if their husbands became enfranchised; and the 1869 legislation which imposed the Band system with a European-style electoral system which permitted only males to vote.80 These provisions amounted to “the statutory banishment”81 of thousands of Aboriginal women

246 Inherency, Three Nations and Collective Rights: the Evolution of Aboriginal Constitutional Discourse

and their children from their cultures. Taken together, the provisions meant forced assimilation in the dominant society. Further, NWAC noted that when Jeanette Lavell challenged s. 12(1)(b) of the Indian Act in 1971, thirteen Aboriginal organizations (including the NIB and various provincial and territorial organizations) funded by the Departments of Justice and Indian Affairs intervened to uphold the sexually discriminatory section. Finally, when s. 15 of the Charter made the section untenable, the male-dominated Aboriginal organizations had opposed the introduction of Bill C-31, which abolished s. 12(1)(b). The Aboriginal organizations claimed that their opposition was not motivated by sexism, but rather by the fact that they were not provided with extra resources to meet the housing and other material needs of those who would be reinstated. In addition, they feared an influx of non-Aboriginal men married to Aboriginal women, who might attempt to gain control of their communities through the Band Councils. These arguments notwithstanding, by 1990, some 14,000 women and their 40,000 children had regained their status, but only two percent of them have been allowed to return to their reserves.82 In view of this history, NWAC was not prepared to trust that male-dominated organizations would safeguard gender equality, especially if constitutional provisions exempted Aboriginal governments from the Charter. Indeed, although NWAC supported the idea of self-government, it was pointed out that: Some Aboriginal women have said no to self-government. Some of our women do not want more power, money and control in the hands of men in our communities. It is asking a great deal to ask us as women to have confidence in the men in power in our communities. We do not want you to create Aboriginal governments with white powers and white philosophies in our communities. We do not want the western hierarchical power structure which you have given us. We do not want Chieftain overlords created by the Indian Act.83 The Native Women’s Association directly challenged the collective rights canonized by the Aboriginal organizations on the grounds that the individual rights protected by the Charter are recognized as fundamental human rights in the U.N.’s Universal Declaration. NWAC recognized that there was a clash between the collective rights of sovereign Aboriginal governments and the individual rights of women. Nevertheless, the Charter had to be applied to them because patriarchal laws of colonial origin had stripped women of the equality they had enjoyed in traditional societies, establishing “male privilege as the norm on reserve lands.”84 The Native Women’s Association’s basic objections to the Charlottetown package were four-fold. First, NWAC objected to the Accord’s provision that Aboriginal governments were empowered to “safeguard and develop their languages, cultures, economies, identities, institutions, and traditions,” on the grounds that it was not clear who would determine the meaning of these elements. The gender equality provision in s. 35(4) had not been strengthened to ensure that it applied explicitly to s. 35(1), so there was potentially no protection against “discriminatory cultural practices emanating from the current patriarchal Indian Act governments.”85 Secondly, the Accord proposed to change the wording of democratic rights in Sections 3-5 of the Charter to exempt Aboriginal governments. Although this provision was ostensibly included in order to prevent non-Aboriginal people from claiming

247 IJCS/RIÉC the right to vote in Aboriginal elections, there was no provision that such governments would have to hold elections at all. Hence, NWAC argued that “Aboriginal citizens will have no democratic rights within Aboriginal communities under self-government.”86 This might have meant, for example, that Aboriginal governments could restrict the franchise and the rights to run for and hold public office to males only. Thirdly, NWAC opposed the extension of s. 33, the override clause, to Aboriginal governments. This would have meant that those governments could suspend fundamental freedoms (such as freedom of assembly, belief, expression, the press, religion and association), legal rights (such as “life, liberty, and security of the person,” and protection against “unreasonable search and seizure” and arbitrary detention and imprisonment), as well as s. 15 equality rights. Aboriginal governments’ ability to restrict mobility rights was especially worrying in view of the problem of the Bill C-31 reinstatees, the majority of whom have not been allowed to return to their reserves. In NWAC’s view, these provisions would have put “awesome power...in the hands of Aboriginal patriarchs.”87 Fourthly, NWAC was concerned that Aboriginal women would be forbidden to use the courts in the event of sex discrimination by Aboriginal governments. Hence, NWAC demanded not only that the Charter apply (and that s. 33 not be extended to Aboriginal governments), but that an unequivocal gender equality clause be included which was not vulnerable to suspension or subordination to any conflicting collective rights. By and large, the national organizations took the position that gender equality rights would be guaranteed by Sections 15, 28, and 35(4) of the Charter. This position seemed to ignore the fact that s. 15 is subject to the override. In addition, there is much uncertainty as to whether s. 35(4) of the Constitution Act, 1982 only guarantees general Aboriginal and treaty rights equally to male and female persons, or whether it would actually apply to the actions taken by Aboriginal governments once instituted under negotiated agreements. Basically, the NCC took the position that “governments other than our own can never be trusted to end discrimination,” and that: ...the Charter must not be used to suppress our collective titles and jurisdictions by imposing non-Aboriginal concepts of property and civil rights on us that could extinguish our status as founding peoples and nations...On the one hand, we must protect and promote the suppressed rights of women...and others who have suffered so much under colonial rule and the Indian Act. On the other hand, we must never allow European ideas about culture...to suppress the re- emergence of our traditional laws and governing systems.88 The NCC recommended that, instead of applying the Charter, the national Aboriginal organizations “should examine the idea of a manifesto of Aboriginal rights which would address the problem of how people would participate in their nation.”89 This proposal brought little comfort to those concerned about potential incursions on the individual civil rights of Aboriginal people under First Nations governments dominated by men. In fact, only the ITC was willing to have the Charter apply, and recommended including in the package an explicit “restriction on all governments—federal, provincial, and Aboriginal—preventing them from passing laws or creating or

248 Inherency, Three Nations and Collective Rights: the Evolution of Aboriginal Constitutional Discourse recognizing rights in such a way that discriminates between men and women.”90 It was AFN’s position, however, which caused the most concern to NWAC. The AFN had included a Women’s Assembly in its parallel process, and had received many submissions from women. However, in their report, the AFN Commissioners departed from their practice of recording submissions without evaluating them, and commented on the role of the Charter. They noted the women’s argument that the Charter had been instrumental in forcing the repeal of s. 12(1)(b) and was thus required under self-government so that women who are discriminated against would have legal recourse against their oppressors. They then argued against this position, and their comments are worth quoting at length: If we may step outside the circle for a moment and present our own opinions, the Charter is a well-intentioned document. And there is absolutely no doubt that women have suffered from appalling treatment, in the past at the hands of the federal government, in the present as victims of rapes, domestic violence and discrimination. But the Charter is no answer to women’s problems, for three reasons. First, [it is true that] a woman can go to court to force her council to award her membership, a house on reserve, and similar rights. But the Charter cannot protect a woman from violence; it cannot force her leaders to listen to her problems or help her; it cannot get her a job. The problems that the Charter is designed to overcome are not, on the whole, the day-to-day problems that Aboriginal women confront. Job discrimination and pay inequity are low priority when there are no jobs at all. Second, traditional Aboriginal society has no need of feminism, for the simple reason that women held the real power in it....Grandmother makes the rules; Grandfather enforces them. If traditional values are re-established, Aboriginal women will have more power, more status, more respect than their feminist white sisters—who, since the passage of Bill C-31, have shown little interest in Aboriginal women’s problems. But the Charter could easily stand in the way of, or even prevent, the re-establishment of traditional values. Fundamentally, Eurocanadian culture values individualism; Aboriginal culture values the collective. Certainly individual rights must be protected, and past injustice must be ended. But if the right of the individual conflicts with the right of the group, our tradition is clear. The Charter is not an Aboriginal document. Third, applying the Charter means, in effect, that women would be asking the Canadian government to look after their interests, probably through litigation....Not only is litigation a non-Aboriginal way of solving disputes, but Canadian courts may or may not give these women what they want. In any event, real membership in the community cannot be litigated; it can only be earned, and insisting on “my rights” is neither an Aboriginal custom nor a good way of winning a welcome from the community.91

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In view of this statement, it is not difficult to see why NWAC took little comfort from the AFN’s position. Certainly, the Charter is not designed to deal with the problems of inadequate resources and inter-personal violence to which the Commissioners refer. However, it is designed to deal with equity of access and non-discrimination on the basis of gender in the provision of services. Secondly, it is not at all clear that Aboriginal women would have more power, status and respect than “their feminist white sisters” under traditional governments. The problem here is what is to be defined as “traditional”? Are “traditional values” those prevalent in Aboriginal societies prior to contact with Europeans? If so, it must be noted that not all pre-contact Aboriginal societies were matriarchal or matrilineal. Furthermore, equality in most of those societies meant “equal but different.”92 In other words, women and men had different socially constructed roles and responsibilities, and these did not cover the range of possibilities in modern life. This could mean that Aboriginal women’s right to engage in certain occupations would be prescribed by “traditional” roles. Moreover, several hundred years of European occupation has resulted in cultural cross-fertilization, so that the patriarchy imported into Aboriginal communities by church and state over the centuries since contact may now be considered “traditional” and hence impregnable to gender equality claims. The Commissioners’ unequivocal statement that, in the event of a conflict between individual and collective rights, the latter are to prevail means that, in effect, Aboriginal women are to have fewer rights of Canadian citizenship than their non-Aboriginal counterparts. Instead, Aboriginal women’s rights are to be defined by their membership in enclave ethnic governments. Here, litigation is not to be an available option. Therefore, once a collective decision is taken, the individual is to have no recourse to external authorities even if the decision violates civil rights. The Commissioners’ answer to the problem of balancing individual and collective rights was “to return to our tradition of respect for women, to heal the sources of the violence, and to educate the men who have adopted white attitudes towards women.”93 However, this will be neither an easy nor a swift process, and in the meantime, gender equality (and other civil and political) rights are subject to suspension under Aboriginal governments. As a result of NWAC’s publicity campaign, the court challenges, and the support of groups such as the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, the final legal text of the Charlottetown Accord was amended to include the kind of guarantee that NWAC had been demanding. Section 35.7 (replacing the old s. 35[4]) provided that “Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, the rights of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada referred to in this part are guaranteed equally to male and female persons.” Although it still did not specify that gender equality would apply to the legislative actions of Aboriginal governments, many of the provincial native women’s organizations began to formally endorse the Accord after the legal text was released. Thus, s. 35.7 represented a partial victory for NWAC, without whose efforts it would not have been included. Although the Charlottetown Accord is now an historical artifact, it is possible that constitutional amendments to recognize the inherent right to self- government will proceed separately. In this event, the problems of individual versus collective rights, and particularly gender equality, will resurface. Meanwhile, the tension between collective rights to self-government

250 Inherency, Three Nations and Collective Rights: the Evolution of Aboriginal Constitutional Discourse according to Aboriginal customs and values and individual rights to equal treatment in modern society has yet to be resolved in Aboriginal political discourse.

Conclusion The foregoing discussion has demonstrated that Aboriginal constitutional discourse has made substantial strides over the past decade. Although all the elements of the discourse examined in this paper were present in the early 1980s, they only came to fruition in the constitutional reform process which culminated in the Charlottetown Accord. This was produced by the combined factors of Aboriginal peoples’ increased political influence following their pivotal role in derailing the Meech Lake Accord in 1990 and escalating militancy in the slip-stream of the Oka crisis. It was also a result of broader forces in Canadian society (and internationally) which together have induced an expansion of rights conceptions to legitimize notions of collective rights. The renewed Aboriginal constitutional discourse has had a number of far- reaching effects. First, even though the Charlottetown Accord floundered, Aboriginal organizations’ participation in all facets of the negotiations has changed Canadian constitutional discourse irreversibly. Political elites and a large proportion of the citizenry have been willing to acknowledge an inherent right to self-government. This is tantamount to an acceptance of Aboriginal sovereignty claims (albeit within the federation). Secondly, the “two nations” doctrine has been dealt a mortal wound. We can no longer conceive of Canada as consisting of two founding nations and cultures. This is bad news for Quebec, which has banked on the two nations idea as the basis of its claims for distinct society status. Nor can Aboriginal interests be excluded from future attempts at constitutional reform. Aboriginal organizations are almost guaranteed representation at future talks. They cannot now be ignored with impunity. Thirdly, Aboriginal peoples have succeeded in legitimating their claims to collective rights as between themselves and other governments, though they have not yet resolved the problem of balancing them against individual rights within Aboriginal communities. The challenge posed by the Native Women’s Association exposed a serious weakness in the discourse. Although it is impossible to estimate how many of the 56% of Canadians who voted against the package were swayed by NWAC’s and NAC’s arguments on gender equality, they doubtless had some impact. By flagging these issues in public, NWAC may well have contributed to the Accord’s downfall. Hence, considerable refinement of the discourse is required if the issues of gender equality and Charter rights are not to derail future constitutional deals. Nevertheless, the ante has been upped so that the inherent collective right and the other provisions of the Charlottetown Accord will become the minimal demands made in the next round of bargaining. It must be noted that there was dissent among Aboriginal peoples over the terms of the Charlottetown Accord, particularly within the AFN’s ranks. Treaty groups were concerned about the potential effects on treaty rights, while non-treaty groups were anxious about the “no new land” provision. In the end, on the advice of the Mohawks, Elijah Harper, and others who felt that Aboriginal people had not been given enough time to study the proposals, many Aboriginal people boycotted the referendum. But the most serious source of dissent were sovereigntist groups such as the Mohawks, who argued

251 IJCS/RIÉC that they did not need their rights recognized in the constitution of another country.94 We can expect to see this sort of position adopted by many other groups in the coming years if increased militancy is the by-product of Charlottetown’s ruin. Now that the Charlottetown Accord is dead, Aboriginal leaders such as Ron George and Ovide Mercredi have warned of the possibility of more Okas, more direct action, and more activity at the international level. The point will be to gain recognition by the international community of rights Aboriginal people have not been able to convert into constitutional trumps at home. Hence we can probably expect more assertions of sovereignty in the international sense by Canadian Aboriginal groups. Since the referendum, and in response to Aboriginal leaders’ profound disappointment, various non-Aboriginal leaders have suggested that the self- government agenda can proceed separately. However, this is unlikely to happen in the immediate future for three reasons: first, many Aboriginal people have taken the fall of the Accord as yet another rejection of Aboriginal people’s legitimate aspirations; second, only a constitutional amendment on the inherent right will do, but it is doubtful whether Quebec will agree to constitutional reform for Aboriginal peoples when its own agenda has also been rejected again; and third, even if all the provinces were willing to agree to substantially the same package, it is not clear that any major constitutional reform can now be legitimated without the stamp of public approval. If a referendum solely on Aboriginal rights had to be held, the risk would be that the Canadian public would say “no.” In that event, there could be no doubt that voters were rejecting the Aboriginal package, unbuckled as it would be from the many other issues in the Charlottetown Accord which could have explained its undoing. In conclusion, therefore, although it seems that Aboriginal constitutional discourse has established a new floor of minimal requirements for constitutional reform, the possibilities of constitutional change will depend on many factors. These include the outcome of the next federal election and the swerve of events in Quebec. Given the shifting sands of constitutional discourse in the aftermath of the Charlottetown Accord, the prospects for the near future look less than promising. However, it is to be hoped that the Aboriginal peoples of the northern part of North America at least will be governing themselves well before the six hundredth anniversary of Columbus’ arrival. Mercifully, even in Canada, the pace of change is not that slow.

Notes * I would like to thank Daiva Stasiulis and Sharon Sutherland for their thoughtful commentaries on an earlier draft of this paper. Thanks are also due to the anonymous reviewers and the Editorial Board of this journal. 1. Unfortunately, no figures are available for the Métis and non-status population, since Elections Canada was only able to collect specific data from reserve-based polling units. 2. In this paper, the term “Aboriginal peoples” refers to the Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada. In current usage, the term “First Nations” denotes the 633 Aboriginal societies whose members are defined as “Indians” under the Indian Act. Some 311,000 status Indians reside on reserves and are politically represented at the national level by the Assembly of First Nations. Some 36,000 Inuit are represented by the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, while the Native Council of Canada claims to represent the interests of approximately 750,000 non- status Indians and Métis (those who are not registered under the Indian Act and do not qualify

252 Inherency, Three Nations and Collective Rights: the Evolution of Aboriginal Constitutional Discourse

for its benefits). The Métis National Council represents the Métis of the Prairie provinces, who number around 5,000. 3. For an Aboriginal response to the “termination” policy, see H. Cardinal, The Unjust Society: the Tragedy of Canada’s Indians (M.G. Hurtig, Edmonton, 1969). For an analysis of the policy and its rationales, see S. Weaver, Making Canadian Indian Policy: the Hidden Agenda, 1968-70 (University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1981). 4. R. Gibbins, “Canadian Indian Policy: the Constitutional Trap,” Canadian Journal of Native Studies, Vol. IV, No. 1, 1984, p. 4. 5. For example, a national Angus Reid poll of 1670 Canadian adults conducted between May 26 and June 3, 1992, found “an evident reservoir of public goodwill...towards Aboriginal peoples.” See Canadians and Aboriginal Peoples 1992: A Syndicated National Public Opinion Research Study (Angus Reid Group, 1992) p .9. Sixty percent of Canadians polled adhered to the view, either that “Aboriginal peoples in Canada have a ‘historic, existing, inherent right to self-government,’ or that ‘the federal and provincial governments should allow Aboriginal peoples to govern themselves’ (p. 15). Moreover, the study concluded that “residents of Canada are fully twice as likely to support than oppose the entrenchment of Aboriginal self-government in the Canadian constitution [65% to 31%]” (p. 16). 6. Shaping Canada’s Future Together: Proposals, (Ottawa, Supply and Services Canada, 1991). 7. Report of the Special Joint Committee on a Renewed Canada, (Queen’s Printer for Canada, Ottawa, February 28, 1992). 8. “The Charlottetown Accord”, Draft Legal Text, October 9, 1992, p. 37. 9. Ibid., p. 1. 10. Ibid., pp. 37-38. 11. For an analysis of the Aboriginal self-government provisions of the Charlottetown Accord, see R. Jhappan, “Aboriginal Self-Government,” in Canadian Forum, Vol. LXXI, No. 813, October 1992, pp. 15-16. 12. See J.R. Ponting, “Public Opinion on Aboriginal Peoples’ Issues in Canada,” Canadian Social Trends, No.11, Winter 1988, p. 9. Ponting’s data suggested that a core of 30% of adult non-native Canadians was supportive of special constitutional rights for Aboriginal peoples, though Canadians in general did not know or care much about natives and native issues. 13. Canada, Indian Self-Government in Canada: Report of the Special Committee on Indian Self-Government, (the Penner Report), (Queen’s Printer, Ottawa, 1983), p. 44. 14. Frances Abele, “Oddly Incongruent Cases: The Constitutional Prospects of First Nations and Quebec,” (paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the Political Science Association, Charlottetown, May 31, 1992), p. 7. 15. To the Source: First Nations Circle on the Constitution, Commissioners’ Report, (Assembly of First Nations, Ottawa, 1992), p. 74. 16. Sparrow v. the Queen, SCC 20311, May 31st, 1990, at p. 3. 17. Ibid., at p. 4. 18. Ibid. 19. Paul Chartrand, “The Claims of the Aboriginal Peoples in Canada: A Challenge to the Idea of Two Founding Nations,” (paper presented to a Conference on Federalism and the Nation State, Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, June 5, 1992), p. 2. 20. Menno Boldt, “Indian Leaders in Canada: Attitudes Towards Equality, Identity, and Political Status,” (Ph.D thesis, Yale University, New Haven, 1973), p. 10. 21. Dene Declaration, reprinted in full in Mel Watkins, The Dene Nation: the Colony Within, (University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1977), pp. 3-4. 22. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was Canada’s first constitutional document. It was primarily designed to lay down a policy for treating with Indians, and declared that Indian lands could only be alienated to the Crown under specified conditions. It also reserved unceded territories to the exclusive use of the Indians. 23. Fred Plain of the Nishnawbe-Aski Nation outlined the claim to nationhood in international terms: “The criteria for recognition as a nation are as follows: that the people have a permanent population...a defined territory...a government...[and] the ability to enter into relations with other states. We can assure Canada and the international community that...we can define ourselves as a nation....The Royal Proclamation of 1763 refers to our sovereignty; and the government of Canada approached us as a nation to enter into treaty with them.” See

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Fred Plain, “A Treatise on the Rights of the Aboriginal Peoples of the Continent of North America,” in M. Boldt and J.A. Long, The Quest for Justice, (University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1985), p. 31. 24. Chartrand, op. cit., p. 21. 25. John E. Moss, “Native Proposals for Constitutional Reform”, Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 15, No. 4, Winter 1980-81, pp. 86-87. 26. Ibid., pp. 87-88. 27. Ibid., p. 87. 28. To the Source: The First Nations Circle on the Constitution, Commissioners Report, op. cit., pp. 13-15. 29. Constitutional Position Paper—Inuit in Canada: Striving for Equality, (Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, Ottawa, February 6, 1992), p. 6. 30. In 1959, the Six Nations reserve near Brantford, Ontario, “ceded” from Canada and sent a Declaration of Independence to the Queen, the Prime Minister, the President of the United States and the United Nations. In 1969, the Six Nations responded to the White Paper, which proposed to terminate the Indian Act and special status for Indians, by declaring the reserve a sovereign state. 31. First Ministers Conference on Aboriginal Matters, March 8-9, 1984, unofficial verbatim transcript, pp. 256-257. 32. Chartrand, op. cit., pp. 36-37. 33. Andre Picard, “Mercredi warns of native independence,” Globe and Mail, October 22, 1991, p. A2. 34. To the Source: The First Nations Circle on the Constitution, Commissioners Report, op. cit., pp. 15-16. 35. Constitutional Position Paper—Inuit in Canada: Striving for Equality, op. cit., p. 3. 36. The First Peoples Constitutional Congress: Parallel Process on the Constitution Report, 0(Native Council of Canada, Ottawa, June 1992), p. 33. 37. Assembly of First Nations, Native Council of Canada, Metis National Council, Inuit Committee on National Issues, “Joint Aboriginal Proposal for Self-Government,” First Ministers’ Conferences on Aboriginal Constitutional Matters, Ottawa, March 27, 1987, CICS Document 800-23/030. 38. Quoted in Rudy Platiel, “Inherent sovereignty, unity process linked”, Globe and Mail, October 22, 1991, p. A7. 39. Ibid. 40. Aboriginal peoples’ international lobbying efforts at the United Nations, the European Community, the Organization of American States and other bodies are analyzed in R. Jhappan, “A Global Community?: Supranational Strategies of Canada’s Aboriginal Peoples,” Journal of Indigenous Studies, Spring 1993, forthcoming. 41. The Constitutional Chronicles: First Peoples Constitutional Congress, March 27-30, 1992, (Native Council of Canada, Ottawa, 1992), p. 4. 42. Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, The Right of Aboriginal Self-Government and the Constitution: A Commentary, (February 13, 1992), p. 23. 43. See Rudy Platiel, “Native rights inherent, panel says,” Globe and Mail, February 14, 1992, p. A5. 44. Report of the Special Joint Committee on a Renewed Canada, (Supply and Services Canada, Ottawa, February 28, 1992), p. 29. 45. Chartrand, op. cit., p. 33. 46. Statement by the NIB, quoted in The Task Force on Canadian Unity, A Time to Speak: the Views of the Public, (Ottawa, Supply and Services, 1979), p. 30. 47. Inuit in Canada: Striving for Equality, (Constitutional Position Paper, Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, Ottawa, February 6, 1992), p. 3. 48. Russell Roundpoint of Akwesasne, quoted in To the Source: First Nations Circle on the Constitution, Commissioners’ Report, (Assembly of First Nations, Ottawa, 1992), p. 27. 49. Backgrounder: Executive Task Force on the Constitution of Canada, (Native Council of Canada, January 28, 1992), p. 5. 50. To the Source: First Nations Circle on the Constitution, op. cit., p. 74. 51. Ibid., p.4.

254 Inherency, Three Nations and Collective Rights: the Evolution of Aboriginal Constitutional Discourse

52. Paul Chartrand, “The Claims of the Aboriginal Peoples in Canada: A Challenge to the Idea of Two Founding Nations,” (paper presented to a Conference on “Federalism and the Nation State,” Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, June 5, 1992), p. 24. 53. For example, Moss cites ITC and NCC claims that they are not just elements of Canada’s ethnic minorities, but rather are “distinct national groups.” See John E. Moss, “Native Proposals for Constitutional Reform,” Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 15, No. 4, Winter 1980-81, p. 86. 54. Jack Aubry, “Mercredi shows consistency in distinct society campaign,” Ottawa Citizen, February 13, 1992, p. A3. 55. To the Source: First Nations Circle on the Constitution, op. cit., pp. 37-38. 56. Quoted in Susan Delacourt, “Natives want own distinct society,” Globe and Mail, February 11, 1992, p. A6. 57. Inuit in Canada: Striving for Equality, op. cit., pp. 6-7. 58. The First Peoples Constitutional Congress: Parallel Process on the Constitution Report, (Native Council of Canada, Ottawa, June 1992), p. 18. 59. Backgrounder: Executive Task Force on the Constitution of Canada, op. cit., p. 5. 60. See Roy MacGregor, “Natives demand meeting: First Nations Chief takes off gloves at Toronto conference,” Ottawa Citizen, February 10, 1992, pp. A1-A2. 61. Quoted in Rheal Seguin, “Quebec right to self-rule disputed by Mercredi”, The Globe and Mail, February 12, 1992, p. A4. 62. Ibid. 63. See Joan Bryden, “Quebec urged back to table”, The Ottawa Citizen, March 16, 1992, p.A 1. 64. Mary Ellen Turpel, “Aboriginal Peoples and the Canadian Charter: Interpretive Monopolies, Cultural Differences,” in R. Devlin, Ed., Canadian Perspectives on Legal Theory, (Emond Montgomery Publications, Toronto, 1991), p. 507 65. Ibid., pp. 517-520, passim. 66. Canada, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, 1969, (Queen’s Printer, Ottawa, 1969), p. 5. 67. See, for example, Andrews v. Law Society of British Columbia, [1989] 1 SCR 143. 68. Quoted in Turpel, op. cit., p. 524. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid., pp. 524-525. 71. There is some dispute about this. Gail Stacey-Moore of NWAC claimed that the AFN had decided to set aside $228,000 for a women’s conference as part of the parallel process, but that the money was never received and the conference never held. See NWAC v. the Queen, op. cit., Exhibit F, Affidavit of Gail Stacey-Moore, September 16, 1992, at p. 22. 72. NWAC v. the Queen , Federal Court of Appeal, Reasons for Judgement, August 20, 1992, at p. 4. 73. Ibid., at p. 2. 74. Ibid., at p. 9. 75. Ibid., at p. 15. 76. IN RE the Referendum Act: NWAC v. the Queen, the Right Honourable Brian Mulroney and the Right Honourable Joe Clark, Statement of Claim, Federal Court of Canada, September 15, 1992, at pp. 9-10. 77. “Judge delays attempt by native women to halt referendum,” Globe and Mail, September 23, 1992, p. A8. 78. For discussions of the consequences of what Chartrand has called “outside-naming,” see To the Source: First Nations Circle on the Constitution, op. cit., pp. 21, 35, 36, and 52; and various NCC documents, including Parallel Process on the Constitution Report, (NCC, Ottawa, June 1992), pp. 25-28; Backgrounder: Executive Task Force on the Constitution of Canada, op. cit., pp. 17-18; Ron George, Becoming Visible: Urban Self-Government in the 1990’s, (NCC, Ottawa, July 1992); and Jill Wherrett and Douglas Brown, Self-Government for Aboriginal Peoples Living in Urban Areas: A Discussion Paper Prepared for the Native Council of Canada, (Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, Queen’s University, Kingston, April 1992). 79. Ron George, interviewed in Ottawa, February 10, 1993. Treaty Indians and band council leaders were apparently concerned about a further influx of non-status Indians to the reserves if the latter were granted equal access.

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80. NWAC v. the Queen, op. cit., Exhibit F, Affidavit of Gail Stacey-Moore, September 16, 1992, at p. 6. Kathleen Jamieson traces the development of gender-biased legislation and Aboriginal women’s struggle against it in “Sex Discrimination and the Indian Act,” in J.R. Ponting, Ed., Arduous Journey: Canadian Indians and Decolonization, (McClelland and Stewart, Toronto, 1986), pp.112-136. 81. This term was used by Justice Laskin in a dissenting opinion in Lavell v. A.G. Canada, [1974] S.C.R. 1349, at p. 1386. 82. “Memorandum to Premiers, Government Leaders of NWT and Yukon Re Gender Equality,” (NWAC, Ottawa, September 14, 1992), p. 2. 83. “Statement on the Canada Package,” (NWAC, Ottawa, 1991), pp. 7-8. 84. Ibid., pp. 10-11. 85. Teressa Nahanee, “Native Women and the Charlottetown Package: Plain Language Version,” (prepared for the NWAC Board Meeting, Ottawa, Sept. 12-13, 1992), p. 2. 86. Ibid., p. 4. 87. “Statement on the Canada Package,” op. cit., p. 12. 88. The Constitutional Chronicles, op. cit. p. 5. 89. Parallel Process on the Constitution Report, op. cit., p. 41. 90. Discussion Paper on the Constitution, Draft # 2, (ITC, Ottawa, May 6, 1992), p. 5. 91. To the Source: First Nations Circle on the Constitution, op. cit., pp. 62-63. 92. Ibid., p. 59. 93. Ibid., p. 64. 94. Rheal Seguin, “Quebec chiefs suspicious of accord,” Globe and Mail, September 26, 1992, p. A5.

Bibliography Abele, Frances. “Oddly Incongruent Cases: The Constitutional Prospects of First Nations and Quebec.” Paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the Political Science Association, Charlottetown, May 31, 1992. Angus Reid Group. Canadians and Aboriginal Peoples 1992: A Syndicated National Public Opinion Research Study. Vancouver: 1992. Assembly of First Nations. To the Source: First Nations Circle on the Constitution, Commissioners’ Report. Ottawa: 1992. _____Native Council of Canada, Metis National Council, Inuit Committee on National Issues. “Joint Aboriginal Proposal for Self-Government.” Ottawa: First Ministers’ Conferences on Aboriginal Constitutional Matters, March 27, 1987, CICS Document 800-23/030. Boldt, Menno. “Indian Leaders in Canada: Attitudes Towards Equality, Identity, and Political Status.” Ph.D thesis. New Haven: Yale University, 1973. Canada. The Charlottetown Accord: Draft Legal Text. Ottawa: October 9, 1992. _____Shaping Canada’s Future Together: Proposals. Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1991. _____Report of the Special Joint Committee on a Renewed Canada. Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, February 28, 1992. _____First Ministers Conference on Aboriginal Matters: unofficial verbatim transcript. Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, March 8-9, 1984. _____Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, The Right of Aboriginal Self-Government and the Constitution: A Commentary. Ottawa: February 13, 1992. _____Report of the Special Joint Committee on a Renewed Canada. Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, February 28, 1992. _____Indian Self-Government in Canada: Report of the Special Committee on Indian Self- Government, (the Penner Report). Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1983. _____The Task Force on Canadian Unity, A Time to Speak: the Views of the Public. Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1979. _____Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, 1969. Ottawa: Queen’s Printer,1969. Cardinal, Harold. The Unjust Society: the Tragedy of Canada’s Indians. Edmonton: M.G. Hurtig,1969. Chartrand, Paul. “The Claims of the Aboriginal Peoples in Canada: A Challenge to the Idea of Two Founding Nations.” Paper presented to a Conference on Federalism and the Nation State, Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, June 5, 1992. Gibbins, Roger. “Canadian Indian Policy: the Constitutional Trap.” Canadian Journal of Native Studies IV, 1, 1984:1-9.

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Inuit Tapirisat of Canada. Constitutional Position Paper—Inuit in Canada: Striving for Equality. Ottawa: February 6, 1992. Discussion Paper on the Constitution, Draft # 2. Ottawa: May 6, 1992. Jamieson, Kathleen. “Sex Discrimination and the Indian Act.” In Arduous Journey: Canadian Indians and Decolonization, pp. 112-136. Edited by J.R. Ponting. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986. Jhappan, R. “A Global Community?: Supranational Strategies of Canada’s Aboriginal Peoples.” Journal of Indigenous Studies. April 1993, forthcoming. “Aboriginal Self-Government.” Canadian Forum, LXXI, 813, October 1992, pp. 15-16. Moss, John E. “Native Proposals for Constitutional Reform.” Journal ofCanadian Studies. 15, 4, Winter 1980-81: 85-92. Native Council of Canada. Backgrounder: Executive Task Force on the Constitution of Canada. Ottawa: January 28, 1992. _____Becoming Visible: Urban Self-Government in the 1990’s. By Ron George. Ottawa: July 1992. _____The Constitutional Chronicles: First Peoples Constitutional Congress, March 27-30, 1992. Ottawa: 1992. _____The First Peoples Constitutional Congress: Parallel Process on the Constitution Report. Ottawa: June 1992. Native Women’s Association of Canada. “Memorandum to Premiers, Government Leaders of NWT and Yukon Re Gender Equality.” Ottawa: September 14, 1992. _____“Native Women and the Charlottetown Package: Plain Language Version.” Prepared by Teressa Nahanee for the NWAC Board Meeting, Ottawa, Sept. 12-13, 1992. _____“Statement on the Canada Package”. Ottawa: 1991. Plain, Fred. “A Treatise on the Rights of the Aboriginal Peoples of the Continent of North America.” In The Quest for Justice, pp. 31-40. Edited by M. Boldt and J.A. Long. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985. Ponting, J.R. “Public Opinion on Aboriginal Peoples’ Issues in Canada.” Canadian Social Trends. 11, Winter 1988: 9-17. Turpel, Mary Ellen. “Aboriginal Peoples and the Canadian Charter: Interpretive Monopolies, Cultural Differences.” In Canadian Perspectives on Legal Theory, pp. 503-538. Edited by R. Devlin. Toronto: Emond Montgomery Publications, 1991. Watkins, Mel. The Dene Nation: the Colony Within. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977. Weaver, Sally. Making Canadian Indian Policy: the Hidden Agenda, 1968-70. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,1981. Wherrett, Jill, and Brown, Douglas. “Self-Government for Aboriginal Peoples Living in Urban Areas: A Discussion Paper Prepared for the Native Council of Canada.” Kingston: Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, Queen’s University, April 1992. Legal Cases Cited Andrews v. Law Society of British Columbia, [1989] 1 SCR 143. IN RE the Referendum Act: NWAC v. the Queen, the Right Honourable Brian Mulroney and the Right Honourable Joe Clark, Statement of Claim, Federal Court of Canada, September 15, 1992. Lavell v. A.G. Canada , [1974] S.C.R. 1349 NWAC v. the Queen , Federal Court of Appeal, Reasons for Judgement, August 20, 1992. Sparrow v. the Queen, SCC 20311, May 31st, 1990.

257 Jill Vickers

The Canadian Women’s Movement And a Changing Constitutional Order1

Abstract In this paper, I examine a decade of women’s constitutional activism focusing on debates about the Charter, the Boyer Committee on Equality Rights, and the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords. I provide a typology of a women’s movement composed of two majoritarian elements (English- Canadian and Quebec francophone) and a number of minority elements, including francophone women outside of Quebec, First Nations women, racial minority women and others, such as lesbians and women with disabilities, who sought to present distinct constitutional views. The paper explores the constitutional concerns Canadian women had in common and the different and sometimes conflicting concerns they had because of their majority/minority cultural locations. In general, I offer tools of gender analysis to help observers understand women’s new and often disruptive and surprising entrance into Canadian constitutional politics as women.

Résumé Axé sur les délibérations concernant la Charte, le Comité Boyer sur l’égalité, l’Accord du lac Meech et l’Accord de Charlottetown, cet article examine les dix dernières années de militantisme effectué par les femmes eu égard à la Constitution canadienne. Il fournit également une typologie du mouvement des femmes : deux éléments majoritaires (les Canadiennes anglaises et les Québécoises francophones) et quelques éléments minoritaires (les Francophones hors Québec, les femmes des Premières nations, les femmes provenant des minorités ethniques, les lesbiennes et les handicapées).Les membres de ces éléments ont essayé de présenter une vision de la Constitution qui leur étaient propres. L’auteure explore les questions constitutionnelles qu’ont en commun les Canadiennes ainsi que les questions divergentes voire contradictoires dues à leur emplacement culturel de majoritaires/ minoritaires.Cet article servira d’outil à une analyse féministe et aidera le lecteur ou la lectrice à comprendre l’entrée nouvelle, surprenante et, parfois, perturbatrice des femmes en tant que femmes dans la politique constitutionnelle canadienne.

In 1993, the Canadian women’s movement marks a century of continuous organization. Yet it is only in the past decade that Canadian women, acting through more than 3,000 groups organized to advance women’s status and condition, have engaged in constitutional politics. Initially, many women, especially in English Canada, approached constitutional politics with reluctance. That reluctance overcome, women have created a collective presence in the constitutional arena, acknowledged by the (mostly male)

International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 7-8, Spring-Fall/Printemps-automne 1993 IJCS / RIÉC politicians, academics and media gurus who consider constitutional change their purview. Progressive women have insisted on their right to be heard as women who need autonomous voices in the process because women may be differently affected than men by constitutional change. And yet, women have not always agreed on the substance of the constitutional arrangements desired despite frequent agreement on the nature of the changes needed to improve women’s status and condition. It is this puzzle I will address in this paper. This process of women relating to the constitutional order as women;as citizens differentiated from men by their sex/gender characteristics, is little understood. In liberal theory, it is assumed that the constitutional citizen is an undifferentiated abstraction.2 In Canadian practice, the constitutional citizen is characterized by language, religion and place of residence. Only with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was the process begun of recognizing other identities and the interests organized around them. My study of a decade of women’s constitutional activism shows that women were drawn into constitutional politics because their “unique reproductive roles created a significantly different relationship between women and the state than...between men and the state,” (Vickers, 1992b: 19; Young, 1989, 1990; Pateman; 1988). This led women to create a widely shared agenda for change. Also widely shared, was a belief in the appropriateness of state action in achieving this agenda (Vickers, 1992a; Vickers, Rankin and Appelle, 1993). Thus, women’s increased involvement in constitutional politics came partly from an evolving awareness that changes in the constitutional order, including in the division of powers, mattered to them as women. Despite the shared agenda, however, and a common pro-statism, the various elements of the women’s movement often have differed sharply on strategic issues such as which level of government should be charged with achieving particular changes for women. In this text, I will not explore in any detail my underlying assumption that constitutional politics matters to women because they are differently related to the Canadian state than their menfolk. In this assertion, I follow analyses offered by Carol Pateman (1986; 1988), Susan Okin (1978; 1986), Linda Lange (1979) and Iris Marion Young (1990). As Young notes, however, the ideal of impartiality, whether in the constitutional relationship of citizens to states or in our theories of justice, denies the political significance of difference (ch. 4). It is not my view, however, that difference always has political or constitutional implications in some eternal, essential sense, although this is an issue on which feminists often disagree. The historically situated organization of sex/gender, however, underlies the conflict among the different parts of the women’s movement as they engage in constitutional politics (Vickers, 1993). While the women’s movement is not monolithic, there actually have been few major differences in the agendas for change of its two majoritarian strands,3 the English-Canadian and Quebec francophone strands. Issues related to reproduction, sexuality, health care, childcare, economic well-being and participation in decision making have dominated both agendas (Dumont, 1991; 1992; Vickers, Rankin and Appelle, 1993). Minority elements within the movement, including ethnic and racial minorities, aboriginal women, women with disabilities, lesbians and immigrant women, however, have challenged some aspects of these majoritarian agendas. Although these differences are important (indeed, they are the very stuff of “politics as if

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women mattered”), in this text I will focus on the differences of strategy and philosophy which underlie women’s positions in constitutional politics. Elements of the Canadian women’s movement have differed fundamentally on the relative importance of individual and collective rights and on the value of a centralized or decentralized federal system for the achievement of feminist goals. (Indeed, some Quebec and First Nations women reject federalism completely.) They have also differed about the value of a strategy of legal and constitutional protection. In exploring these positions, I will outline how women, who are differently situated as part of a majority or minority culture, for example, could be affected differently by and, hence, have different views on constitutional change than women with whom they shared identical views on the substance of the feminist agenda. In summary, then, my framework involves three basic assumptions: 1. The constitutional citizen must be viewed as a sexed and gendered citizen, and women understood as differently related to the state(s) the constitution regulates; 2. Women may differ on the substance of the changes desired because they are differently situated, especially as members of majority or minority cultures; 3. Women who hold identical views on the substance of the movement’s agenda for change may nonetheless hold different philosophical and strategic views concerning how the agenda can best be realized. It is this third proposition on which I will focus in this paper. In preparing this text, I have based my analysis primarily on the feminist literature about constitutional politics.4 This literature consists of three parts: the popular feminist press, briefs submitted by women’s groups to committees and commissions and writings by feminist lawyers and academics. I have also relied on my own experiences as an observing participant in the process.5 The text which follows is divided into three sections: first, I outline the two majoritarian elements of the movement and the racial, ethnic and other minority elements which operate in relation to them. In the second section, I outline the issues which have motivated Canadian women’s constitutional politics. In the third section, I explore these issues as they evolved over the decade from the patriation crisis to the defeat of the Charlottetown Accord. Finally, I offer some conclusions and my prognosis for women’s involvement in constitutional politics in the future.

The Women’s Movement in Canada — A Brief Overview The typology I will use to characterize the Canadian women’s movement does not rely on the usual ideological differences within feminism. Instead, I begin with the proposition that there are two dominant elements—the English- Canadian movement, which relates primarily to the federal state, and the largely Francophone movement, which relates primarily to the Quebec state. Each is a majority position in relation to “its” state and has more power than the minority elements with which it interacts. Majoritarian elements represent women of cultures which are dominant within their state, although Quebec Francophones are in a minority relationship vis-à-vis the Anglo-Canadian element, and English- Canadian feminists feel dominated by the U.S. movement, while Francophone feminists in Quebec are more comfortable with U.S. influences (Vickers, 1991b; Dumont, 1992).

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The majoritarian movements have similar agendas, although they differ in organization and constitutional strategies. Diane Lamoureux (1990) and Sylvia Bashevkin (1985), in strikingly similar analyses, identify in each movement a fundamental tension between a desire for integration, evidenced by work within the existing system, and a desire for autonomy expressed by the use of non-traditional tactics in independent movement organizations. Lamoureux (1990) believes that this tension explains the oscillation of Quebec feminism between modernity (women’s rights) and post-modernity (women’s liberation). Vickers, Rankin and Appelle (1993) similarly identify a number of forces within English-Canadian movement organizations, such as the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC). Micheline de Sève argues that “the history of the Canadian and Quebec women’s movements is interwoven with complex relationships between equally feminist tendencies, reflecting the diverse and composite identities of the women’s groups at various times” (1992: 137). The similarities in these two majoritarian elements continue in their relationships with the minorities with whom they interact. Both, in the past, have “included” some aboriginal women and their projects but, more recently, the relationships have become more complex as aboriginal women create their own movements centred primarily on the issues raised by aboriginal self- government. Immigrant, ethnic and racial minority women perceive themselves to have been marginalized by the two majoritarian elements, and both English-Canadian and Quebec feminists have had to respond to these perceptions (Basseletti and Méhu, 1991; Day, 1991). Similarly, lesbian women and women with disabilities, while not part of minority cultures in the same sense, have nonetheless experienced marginalization and have expressed constitutional positions they feared would otherwise be unrepresented. For the purposes of this paper, then, I will characterize the Canadian women’s movement as composed of four major elements. The first three “elements”— the Anglo-Canadian, the Quebec Francophone and the aboriginal—have internal dynamics of their own and each could be analyzed as a movement in its own right. Each also interacts with the others, however, especially in the context of constitutional politics. The fourth “element” is more artificial, including francophones outside of Quebec, immigrant and racial minority women, lesbians and women with disabilities, all characterized by their marginalization from the dynamics of the other three. Each of these four “elements” and each of the groups within the fourth element has developed a conscious identity in relation to the constitutional order. These fragments are reflected in something as simple as when Canadian women got the right to vote. The “official” answer is 1918, when white women got the federal franchise. Quebec women might answer 1940, when they won the Quebec franchise after a long struggle. Some racial minority (Asian) women suffered exclusion along with their menfolk, and aboriginal women who retained their government-assigned “status” under the Indian Act were denied the vote until 1960, first exercising it in 1961. Hence, Mohawk poet Lee Maracle declared recently: “So women got the vote in 1961 and not a second before. I want every single person to put it that way and never again (to) erase any woman in this country” (1991: 67). This fragmentation and the limited (elite) interaction among the different fragments in the past led women to assume their experiences were common to all. With a decade of involvement in constitutional politics, however, knowledge of other women’s experiences

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has grown and there is now greater awareness that the relative power of the different elements is not the same. My accounts of these identities will be sketchy but should illuminate both the movement’s complexity and its success in developing stable movement institutions within which dialogue can occur. The Aboriginal Element Aboriginal women have experienced the most profound oppression both because of gender and because of the expropriation, cultural disruption, racism, poverty and marginalization which resulted from conquest and colonization. In 1928, shortly after white women received the federal franchise, the aboriginal women and men called “Indian” by the Europeans were denied the right to organize politically (Maracle, 1991: 67). Aboriginal women’s responses to damage they suffered from colonial and post-colonial racism and oppression has differed. Patricia Monture-Okanne, for example, argues: Aboriginal persons cannot be healed until the truth is told about the history of this country. Until this is possible, I cannot do the woman- specific healing that is also necessary to my well-being. This is so because my woman’s identity flows from my racial and cultural identity. (1991: 30) Monture-Okanne’s view is that “rights”6 for individual women can only result from securing their nation’s collective right to self-government (indeed, for Monture-Okanne, its sovereignty). Only an autonomous nation could develop an appropriate understanding of “rights.” Other women seek a balance between individual and collective rights and between traditional and modern understandings of “rights.” A third position has been advanced primarily by women who were denied “Indian rights” under the Indian Act. Having successfully employed the power of a constitutional regime protecting individual “rights” to regain their Indian “status,” they fear the possible effects of any exemption of First Nations from the Charter. The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC), for example, while supporting recognition of aboriginal people’s inherent right to self-government, also argued for protecting aboriginal women’s “sexual equality rights” which, it believed, would not be respected if governments “simply choose to recognize the patriarchal forms which now exist in our communities” (Stacey-Moore, 1991: 5). Many aboriginal leaders, however, argue that “to place aboriginal groups under the higher authority of the Charter...would sabotage the fundamental principle that the Aboriginal governments drew their authority from the inherent rights of Aboriginal people” (Hall, 1992: 42). These positions have not always been easy for the majoritarian movements to understand. Anglo-Canadian feminists have been supportive of the position advanced by NWAC with organizations like NAC providing moral and tangible support. The aboriginal element, however, involves women along a continuum. While most support some kind of self-government, many also want some kind of protection for their rights as women. Francophone women in Quebec have also been faced with accommodating the aboriginal fact. The Fédération des femmes du Québec (FFQ)’s 1992 forum “Un Québec féminin pluriel : pour un projet féministe de société,” included plans for a pluralist, feminist Quebec which would “respect” First Nations while still asserting the rights of the Francophone majority in the territory of Quebec. The FFQ’s

265 IJCS / RIÉC recognition of aboriginal women as subject to double discrimination, like NAC’s support for the NWAC, however, was not based on an understanding of the full range of positions among aboriginal women from acceptance of full integration within a sovereign Quebec to demands for complete sovereignty. Aboriginal women, eight of ten of whom are survivors of abusive relationships, often reject majoritarian feminist “solutions” for these problems, preferring a community healing approach, which keeps abusers out of white jails. This difference in philosophy has limited the practical interaction between aboriginal women and most majority feminists. In general, the stance of the majoritarian movements has been to “integrate” (incorporate) aboriginal women and their projects. Many aboriginal women have resisted this trend, especially in the last decade. As the most disadvantaged women in Canada, it is not surprising that the constitutional views of aboriginal women were rarely unanimous. Aboriginal women have not enjoyed the opportunity or the financial support necessary to build parliamentary umbrella organizations like NAC and the FFQ within which a common strategy could have been attempted. Both the NWAC and Métis women, for example, were denied access as groups of women to the federal funding provided to aboriginal associations for preparing and presenting constitutional positions and to the constitutional bargaining table. The Federal Court of Appeal ruled on August 20, 1992, that the NWAC’s Charter freedom of expression had been violated. The court also held that the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), the Inuit Tapirasat, the Métis National Council and the Native Council of Canada “do not speak for the women of the First Nations” (Bayevsky, 1992:1). Other aboriginal women, however, did not agree with this position. The President of the Metis National Council stated that Métis women “do not feel that the Native Women’s Association (NWAC) speaks for them,” (Genaille, 1992). Similarly, Rosemarie Kuptana and Mary Simon represented the Inuit Tapirasat at the bargaining table in the Charlottetown “round” of constitutional talks and supported the Accord, indicating that there is significant division among aboriginal women both on how they ought to be represented and on matters of constitutional substance. The Quebec Element In Quebec, the largely Francophone movement grew to maturity in symbiosis with Quebec’s drive to modernization. As Micheline Dumont argues: “The truth is that feminism in Quebec was stimulated and nurtured by the powerful nationalist movements which swept Quebec between 1963 and 1990” (1992:89). The movement’s major institution is the FFQ, founded in 1966 (Clio Collective, 1987). The FFQ has become more inclusive and multi-ethnic with many more members, although most leftist and radical feminist groups remain outside (Maroney, 1988). In 1987, it included 58 associations and 45,000 individual members (FFQ, 1987). Most elements of the Quebec movement favour the decentralization of the federal system; that is, most Quebec feminists, whether federalists or separatists, support the devolution of more power to Quebec. Ethnic and racial minority women in Quebec along with Anglophone and many aboriginal women, are less accepting of this devolution of power. Most Francophone feminists are nationalists because they are feminists not in spite of it. Their feminist “project of the state” involves making feminism fully institutionalized within the Quebec state and society (Clio Collective, 1987;

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FFQ, 1992). For Dumont, “the slogan ‘No women’s liberation without Quebec liberation. No Quebec liberation without women’s liberation’” is at the heart of Quebec feminism (1992:76). Nonetheless, Francophone feminists in Quebec are divided on how to complete “the project of the state.” As Ginette Busque notes, “Canadian women outside of Quebec do not have to choose between federalism and sovereignty, while Quebec women find it difficult to decide on their future as women without taking into account the status of the province,” (1991:15). The FFQ, however, while remaining neutral in the first sovereignty referendum, now advances a sovereigntist position. Whether federalist or sovereigntist, Francophone feminists trust the Quebec state more than the federal state. Writing about women’s groups outside of Quebec, an FFQ brief in 1987 noted, “these groups are usually much more distrustful of the provincial authorities than we are,” (26). Many in Quebec believe that “...it is probably easier to initiate changes at the provincial level than at the federal level,” (Maillé, 1991:80). Some, like Chantal Maillé, believe that women are best served by the government closest to them having the powers critical to their lives as women. Thus, Francophone feminists in Quebec operate as a majoritarian movement vis-à-vis aboriginal and minority women within Quebec society. Claire Bonenfant argues that continuing as part of Canada would preclude the development in Quebec of the feminist “projet de société” which could meet the needs of women because of the inefficiencies and duplication she views as inherent in Canadian federalism. This rejection of federalism began with Quebec feminists’ inability get divorce transferred to the Quebec jurisdiction where other aspects of family law reside (Bonenfant, 1991). This frustration with their inability to create a coherent policy on the family has marked the views of the Francophone majority in Quebec from the late 1970s to the present. No women in Canada have undergone changes in their beliefs and behaviour as profound as Francophone women in Quebec since the 1960s, making Quebec society Canada’s most progressive jurisdiction on many issues (Lipset, 1990). Not all Francophone feminists in Quebec, however, fully share this view of Quebec as a jurisdiction so advanced as to gain nothing from, for example, an entrenched federal Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In a September, 1987 brief, apparently written in reaction to accusations made against “les féministes anglophones” by well-known Québécois feminist Lysianne Gagnon, the Réseau d’Action et d’Information pour les Femmes (RAIF) argued that Quebec feminists should have joined with their Anglophone colleagues seeking to strengthen gender equality in the context of a constitutional recognition of Quebec as a “distinct society.” In fact, RAIF believed that, from 1981 on, Quebec feminists should have joined the campaign to gain the best possible legal protection from a dual jurisdictional constitution. The RAIF brief identified a number of areas in which RAIF believed Quebec law was severely lacking in terms of women’s rights, especially in economic areas. RAIF expressed fear that a clash of loyalties could weaken or subordinate women’s rights under a distinct society regime by elevating collective over individual rights (RAIF, 1987). Anglophone feminists have had mixed views about the “projet de société.” Historically, left-wing feminists in English Canada tended to sympathize with Quebec’s desire for self-determination. More recently, especially since Quebec’s embracing of Mulroney conservatism and free trade, this support has

267 IJCS / RIÉC weakened. Nonetheless, current support in NAC, for example, for a “three nations” position reflects a growing awareness of the position put by Micheline de Sève that national identity rather than always hostile to feminism is “a potential tool for creating adequate space of all kinds of individual and group self-awareness,” (1992:135). The Anglo-Canadian Element The Anglo-Canadian movement has a history of continuous organization since 1892, with the many organizations founded during the early period of mobilization being revitalized by the cross-country hearing of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women (Begin, 1992) so that most came to support feminist causes. Hence the older women’s organizations, which played a key role in establishing the Canadian welfare state (Andrew, 1984), were not alienated from the movement as it was reshaped by the women’s liberation movement and by left feminism. Consequently, in English Canada, ideologically diverse groups, instead of being organized into separate “wings,” share institutions such as NAC and co-operate in alliances to achieve common goals (Vickers, Rankin and Appelle, 1993). Anglo-Canadian feminists have been deeply distrustful of their provincial governments, looking instead to the federal government. Albertan Ann McLellan argues that many women “have viewed provincial governments as less tolerant and receptive to their claims for equality than the national government” (1991:10). By contrast to Chantal Maillé’s logic, McLellan argues for the greater practicality and efficiency in women’s groups directing their lobbying to one (federal) government instead of ten (provincial) ones, concluding that “once the federal government is convinced of the need of a program or initiative, it can ensure its availability on a national basis,” (1991:10). These conclusions reflect the quite different experiences of the two movements. The Quebec movement, made optimistic by two decades of substantial progress for women under different Quebec governments, has experienced frustrations with federal governments which they see as less progressive and inclined to intervene in Quebec in ways harmful to women.7 Anglo-Canadian feminists are part of a movement which has been a client of and, until recently, significantly funded by the federal government. Shelagh Day, currently Chair of the NAC constitution committee reveals the roots of this pro-federalism when she argues “...as a woman from B.C., a province which has suffered government by car dealer for all but four of the past forty years...I fear...powers being devolved to my province,” (1991:98). Moreover, some recent research suggests that in most of English Canada (Alberta is an exception) regionalism, that is political loyalty to a province or region, is more characteristic of men than of women in contemporary Canada at least on issues such as free trade (O’Neill, 1992; Gidengil, 1992). Indeed, gender would appear to be a more salient political force among Anglophone women who can reach a “national” approach on major issues more easily than Anglophone men for whom regionalism is a more potent force. The English-Canadian movement, then, is composed of women who often see their views as Canadian views to be defined in opposition to male-stream views or U.S. views. It is also clearly a majoritarian element vis-à-vis minority and marginalized women.

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The Fourth Element: Minorities and Marginalized Voices Until the 1980s, the Canadian movement was largely bi-national in character with the two majoritarian movements dominating the agenda and debate (De Sève, 1992:111). In the past decade, this dominance was challenged by waves of women marginalized because of race, ethnic minority status, disability or sexual orientation. Because racial and immigrant minority communities have often chosen to operate in English, these pressures have been especially evident in NAC (Vickers, Rankin and Appelle, 1993). Nonetheless, as the FFQ became increasingly multi-ethnic, it also experienced these pressures (Basseletti and Méhu, 1991; FFQ, 1991; 1992). The women who make up what I have called the “fourth element” have created networks of their organizations through which they advocate for change. The struggle for the institutions of the two majoritarian movements has been to “become a voice for all women...(so) that we articulate the many issues of women, not only those of white middle-class women” so as to foster “the politics of inclusion,” (Day, 1991:96). A genuine acceptance of difference, however, may challenge what were previously thought of as “bottom-line” feminist positions, as when women with disabilities challenge the view that a fetus which will result in a child with a disability ought routinely to be aborted. Canadian feminists have insisted that equality between men and women does not necessarily result from same treatment (Vickers, 1984). Using this principle, as a way of understanding the needs and views of minority and marginalized women has not always been so easy. In NAC, women representing groups of minority and otherwise marginalized women now constitute almost half of the executive and hold several major leadership positions representing a major change over the past decade. This has resulted in NAC policies being more supportive of positions advanced by minority and marginalized women. In particular, women in this category have tended to feel especially dependent on the protection of the Charter and on the federal government’s provision of programs of support. While minority and marginalized women tend to share these constitutional positions, nonetheless, there are important differences among them. In Quebec, some minority women have integrated their concerns into the “projet de société” and, indeed, Quebec explicitly protects the rights of gays and lesbians at a much higher level than the federal Charter. Francophone women outside of Quebec represented by the Fédération nationale des femmes canadiennes-françaises (FNFCF), have had a unique perspective on the issues raised in a decade of constitutional debate and bargaining. Founded in 1914, the Fédération includes forty women’s groups and is a member of NAC. In a 1990 brief, the FNFCF, while not taking a stand on the possibility of independence for Quebec, stressed its members’ desire to weave alliances, especially with Quebec women’s groups. In a 1992 brief, while supporting NAC’s constitutional positions, the FNFCF expressed its own ten principles regarding constitutional renewal. It stressed such things as linguistic duality in Canada and in the Senate, and the protection (with no over- ride) of the rights of minority linguistic communities. In general, it supported a vision of an asymmetrical federation supporting the transfer of many powers to Quebec but not to the other provinces. In this, it influenced NAC’s development of the asymmetrical federalism position.

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Issues in Common and Issues in Conflict: What Makes the Women’s Movement “Tick” Constitutionally? A common thread in all feminist commentary is a profound sense of exclusion from the process of constitution-making. Until 1992, when Inuit Tapirasat leaders Rosemarie Kuptana and Mary Simon, and Northwest Territories government leader Nellie Cournoyea took their hard-won places at the First Ministers’ bargaining table, Ginette Busque’s declaration that “our country has had many ‘fathers’ but no ‘mothers,’” (Busque, 1991:13) held true. Intellectually, most feminists still feel it is true. At least half of Canada’s population, women have been forced to lobby from outside the process, described as a “special interest” by the constitutional gurus and media alike. Distrustful of political parties, many have no great trust in women of the political class. In my survey of feminist writings on the Constitution, I identified four basic sets of issues: (1) the process of constitution making; (2) federal/provincial powers and the issue of decentralization/ sovereignty; (3) women’s representation in political institutions; (4) the entrenchment of legal rights in the Constitution and the legal approach to equality-seeking it entails. Women tended to advance common positions on the nature of the constitutional process and on the issue of women’s representation. By contrast, there were significant differences expressed on the issues of federalism and decentralization and on a legal approach to equality-seeking. In this text, I will pay rather more attention to the three substantive issues dealing only briefly with the matter of process.8 Federalism, the Division of Powers and Decentralization Women’s original interest in constitutional matters stemmed from questions concerning the division of powers. Quebec women supported their government’s request to have divorce transferred to the provincial jurisdiction to permit an integrated approach to family law.9 English-Canadian women mobilized in opposition when the federal government proposed to transfer the regulation of divorce to the provinces in 1978. Throughout the decade, this divide is evident with Quebec women supporting greater decentralization (many of their groups favour sovereignty) while English-Canadian and most minority women support the use of the federal spending power and shared jurisdictions to achieve a greater standardization of programs across Canada. Given that there is little difference in terms of the substance of their agendas, why do they disagree about how these goals should be achieved? The divorce issue illustrates one reason for the difference quite clearly, and shows the kind of analysis we must develop to understand the others. To women outside of Quebec, transferring responsibility for divorce to the provinces would have created a patchwork quilt with different grounds and waiting periods from province to province. For Francophone feminists this does not cause concern if they anticipate living all of their lives in Quebec. Other women, however, face the possibility of being moved from province to

270 The Canadian Women’s Movement and a Changing Constitutional Order province while married and of being marooned in a province without a divorce law or with one which is not helpful to women.10 This central difference reflects the fact that English-Canadian and minority women feel they must be concerned with conditions anywhere in Canada because they may find themselves living there. Quebec women, who must accept less physical mobility if they wish to live in French, wish to get the best possible system there (Vickers, 1991a; Dumont, 1991). Ann McLellan has argued that the inclusion of an enforceable social charter would make women outside of Quebec less fearful of decentralization, provided they could use it to ensure some comparability of benefits, legal conditions and support programs wherever they might end up living (McLellan, 1991:11). This point of view is also apparent in the FNFCF analysis (1992). This analysis points to women’s recognition that at this point in our history they are more likely to be dependent on the state than men for programs of support. Indeed, the FNFCF brief argued this explicitly (1992:18-19). Canadian women, however, also have been concerned with the obstacles that the division of powers has put in the way of women’s political objectives such as the “federalism foxtrot” in which governments compete in not invading one another’s jurisdiction by not doing what women need or want all the while saying “my hands are tied.” English-Canadian and most minority women, while frustrated by the “federalism foxtrot,” nonetheless see shared jurisdictions as providing leverage for federal influence on reluctant provinces in achieving desired goals. By contrast, Quebec feminists see “une irresponsabilité partagée” (Lamoureux, 1991:60) as something to be eliminated (FFQ, 1990; 1992; Bonenfant, 1991). The debate about federalism has not yet developed a philosophical dimension among feminists. The position of Lord Acton (which is associated in Canada with P.E. Trudeau) that concentrated power permits the abuse of power more easily than a federal system in which power is deliberately divided, is not advanced or refuted by feminists of any ethnicity or ideology. Philosophically, Francophone feminists in Quebec appear to favour the concentration of all (or most) powers in Quebec to allow for greater participation by women in decentralizing decision making, for example, to the local state (FFQ, 1992: Fiche 9, e.g.; Begin, Marine, 1991; Dumont, 1991; Lajoie; 1991; Lamoureux, 1991). Most Francophone feminists believe the success of their agenda in Quebec has depended on the decentralization of powers in areas where this has been possible. Chantal Maillé concludes, for example, that “...it has been possible for the women’s health movement to obtain positive results...because the claims were negotiated with a provincial government which had already negotiated a maximum amount of autonomy in the definition of policies and programs,” (1991:79). While the decentralized and non-bureaucratic administration of programs is consistent with women-centred philosophies, most Anglophone and most minority women believe “national standards” and coast-to-coast programs are also important to their well-being. Representation in Political Institutions Within the movement, there is wide agreement with the demand for the more equitable representation for women in Canada’s political institutions and the reform of its electoral system. In 1981, Mary O’Brien argued that the movement should demand proportional representation “to erode the

271 IJCS / RIÉC monolithic substance of the state” (O’Brien, 1981:7).11 The movement seeks equitable political representation12 and has identified the structural barriers which inhibit this. Quebec women have also recognized their exclusion as women. Ginette Busque notes, for example: ...women exerted pressure to be represented as a group on the Bélanger-Campeau Commission...which was not granted. They were told that ‘women’ had already been named...[but] [n]o significance was attached to the fact that these women had no mandate to represent the interests of women. (1991:13) She concludes, “this probably denotes a fundamental refusal to believe that women, as a group, have special interests” (1991:13) or that most men believe women’s interests can be represented by male leaders or that any woman can “represent” the interests and views of all women.13 Aboriginal women agreed that women should be equitably represented. But they differed significantly among themselves and with the majoritarian movements concerning what that meant. In 1992, Wendy Moss, lead constitutional advisor to the Inuit Tapirasat, wrote: “if one of the goals of the organized struggle of women is to ensure that women participate in governments and have a real voice, why have NAC and NWAC so discounted the role and the voice of the aboriginal women who were at the table on behalf of the Inuit nation, namely, Mary Simon and Rosemarie Kuptana?” (2). NWAC, denied a seat at the constitutional “table” in 1992 on the grounds that the male-led organizations could represent them, could not accept assurances that their concerns were being represented by Kuptana and others at the table. Sharon McIvor of NWAC argued “We want a seat at the table and recognition as a separate group...” (Hill, 1992:3). One court eventually established NWAC’s right but only after the event. NAC’s demand for a constituent assembly and its support for the NWAC position reflects the view that women need to articulate their diverse constitutional views directly and not through the voices of men or of women of other nations. Of course, this also reflects NAC’s view that it should have been “at the table” (presumably along with the FFQ) to represent majoritarian women’s specific interests, as women. The Entrenchment of Rights and Equality-Seeking as a Legal Enterprise The majoritarian women’s movements in Canada have tended to see equality- seeking as a sociopolitical and economic process (Vickers, 1986). Pursuing legal equality goals, therefore, was controversial. As Chaviva Hosek notes, “...the drive for legal rights did not spring spontaneously from within the women’s movement. Rather it developed in response to the determination of the federal government to entrench a Charter of Rights and Freedoms during the patriation process,” (1983:283). If there was to be a Charter, most feminists agreed it must not become an obstacle to the broader, substantive equality- seeking process. The legal strategy created a cadre of prominent feminist lawyers. Over the decade, they have played a central role in educating Canadian women about legal and constitutional matters affecting women’s rights. Through the work of organizations like the Legal, Education and Action Fund (LEAF), most Anglophone and minority feminists came to see some value in the legal option. Despite this pragmatic acceptance of the legal equality project, others opposed the enterprise. Most Francophone feminists in Quebec were hostile because of

272 The Canadian Women’s Movement and a Changing Constitutional Order the overall alienation of Quebec from the patriation process. They also believed that the Quebec “Charter” passed in 1976, while not entrenched, made the protection offered by the federal Charter unnecessary. RAIF later disagreed, arguing that, in the case of human rights, too much protection is better than not enough (1987). Few Anglophone feminists even comprehended that their Quebec Francophone sisters were absent from the constitutional debates or why. Francophones from outside Quebec were present and most supported the Anglophone position on the Charter. To this day, many Anglophone feminists believe the struggle for women’s Charter rights is a great victory in which all feminists share equal pride. Other philosophical positions are expressed in opposition to the legal approach to equality. As labour lawyer Sheila Greckol has argued: “I do not believe in the legal system and the law as a vehicle for achieving social justice for women,” (1991:103). Similar, Donna Greschner argues that “constitutional politics...historically have submerged the concerns and experiences of women,” (1991:55). Sherene Razack, speaking from the perspective of minority women, argues that the very nature of the law and the legal system “tended to characterize femaleness in ways that reflect the experiences of...the kind of women likely to be working in law—a white middle-class woman,” (1991:39). Megan Ellis concluded that the judiciary is not capable of acting to advance substantive equality for women because of its use of gender-neutral terms like sexual assault which harm women by hiding the fundamentally gendered nature of sexual violence (1986:17). Finally, many grass-roots feminists are resentful of the extent to which pursuit of the legal strategy has involved the dominance of movement strategy by lawyers and academics and siphoned off money previously available for services. The government strategy of incorporating women’s equality-seeking under the Constitution threatened the stability of coalitions within and between movement organizations. Although the movement has largely recovered from those conflicts, the problems raised by the legal equality approach continue to threaten its effectiveness.

The Canadian Women’s Movement and Constitutional Politics Historically, Canadian constitutional politics have been so dominated by the issues of dualism and regionalism that, “...the concerns of women...[were] simply not visible against the two parameters of Canadian cleavage...” (Ayim, 1980:218). Given this constitutional invisibility and the reluctance of English- Canadian feminists to enter into constitutional politics, how did movement leaders find a point of entry around which they could mobilize support?14 Once Prime Minister Trudeau proposed to patriate the BNA Act along with a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the mobilizing event for English-Canadian women was the resignation of Doris Anderson, then the President of the government-appointed Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women (CACSW), in January 1981, charging that government interference had resulted in the cancellation of a Women’s Constitutional Conference. The timing was crucial; the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House was still deliberating but the government had brought a revised Charter into the House. A later conference would not do. The Council, moreover, like most autonomous women’s groups, was critical of the equality guarantees in the proposed Charter (Hosek, 1983:288). Anderson’s resignation meant that:

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The women’s movement suddenly had a heroine, a villain and an event, all of which symbolized its exclusion from the constitutional process. The media had a field day. The complex issues involved were reduced to a dramatic fight between a woman and a man (Lloyd Axworthy, the minister responsible for the status of women). (Hosek, 1983:289) Not all feminists, however, rallied round. A majority of the executive and council of the CACSW declined to support Anderson and endorsed cancelling the conference. NAC was “sidelined” by internal conflict, part of which was resistance by left-wing members of the executive to a legal strategy (Vickers, Rankin and Appelle, 1993). Progressive Conservative feminists resisted unilateral patriation and were also divided on the value of an entrenched Charter. As late as the fall of 1981, Saskatchewan women’s groups opposed entrenching the sex equality guarantee (Section 28) as did the Saskatchewan NDP government on the grounds that, by shifting decisions about equality to the courts, progressive governments would be limited in advancing women’s equality (Hosek, 1983:289). The briefs presented to the Joint Committee, show that women wanted any constitutional guarantees of equality for women to go beyond equality in the administration of justice to equal benefit and effect of the law. They also wanted sexual orientation, marital status and political beliefs added to the grounds on which discrimination would be prohibited. They wanted no possibility that the proposed Charter could be interpreted as conferring rights on a fetus. They wanted affirmative action programs protected against possible charges of reverse discrimination and the proposed Charter to confer what they called “Indian rights” on non-status Indian women. They also wanted women to be fairly represented on the Supreme Court which would play an enlarged role under a Charter regime. A Women’s Constitutional Conference of over a thousand women, held on February 14, expanded women’s demands to include guarantees of reproductive freedom and equitable representation throughout the political system. After the conference, the process was directed by the largely Toronto- based Ad Hoc group of “experts” in law and lobbying15 which was revived to play a role in the Meech Lake debates and the referendum on the Charlottetown Accord. The Ad Hoc group drew heavily on NAC networks. The lobbying which followed the Constitutional Conference focused on getting legally effective texts for the equality rights sections (15 and 28) and ensuring that Section 28 was not subject to governmental override. The experts marshalled thousands of women, now enraged at the intransigence of male politicians who sought to deny them the legal equality they thought they had always had in what became widely viewed as an “icon of feminist effectiveness” (Black, 1992:104). Few English-Canadian feminists understood the resistance to the new constitutional regime by most of Quebec’s Francophone feminists. The misconception that in their resistance Quebec feminists were acting more as nationalists than as feminists developed. Majoritarian feminists also had difficulty understanding the views of many aboriginal women. Hastings and Lawrence, for example, in reporting on the Women’s Constitutional Conference, concluded “native women constituted a strong presence, although their presentation requesting a supportive resolution could not be considered because it asked for support of their plea for independent nationhood rather

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than anything to do with issues of specific concern to native women themselves,” (my emphasis;1981:4). Few white feminists understood why some aboriginal women could believe that the rights of individual women couldn’t be secured until the collective rights of their nations were secured, while many non-status aboriginal women sought “status” through an individual rights regime. Many racial and ethnic minority women were mobilized into movement organizations like NAC, as were women with disabilities, by these high profile campaigns for equality rights. Other minority women, however, became involved in constitutional politics when they were mobilized to fight against the Meech Lake Accord.16 The Road to Meech Lake From 1982 to 1987 was a period of great activity and expansion for all parts of the Canadian women’s movement with the rapid mobilization of minority and marginalized women in particular. There was also an extension of services in small towns, rural areas, ethnic and some aboriginal communities for women encountering rape and battering. Groups were created to fight Charter cases. Women’s unionization increased significantly as did the presence of women leaders in unions. Women in traditional occupations, especially nurses, were radicalized and fought a series of long, tough and successful strikes which gained wide support. In this period, English-Canadian society also became more ideologically polarized with the development of anti-feminist groups which rapidly mobilized right-wing women. The new Progressive Conservative government issued a Discussion Paper on Equality Issues in Federal Law (Sessional Paper No. 331-416) on January 31, 1985. When the Charter was enacted, the equality sections were suspended until 1985 to allow governments to conduct statute audits. Instead, the Discussion Paper argued “that if there is something in the present law then this indicates that it is acceptable social practice and therefore should be immune from Charter challenge” (Proceedings 16:115). The Committee to which it was referred reflected the government’s huge majority—five Conservatives, one Liberal and one New Democrat. The Committee Chair, Toronto MP Patrick Boyer, however, was a progressive on rights issues and determined to hold national hearings. NAC established an Equality Rights project to support its members in attending hearings and preparing briefs, which seventy NAC affiliates did (Feminist Action, December, 1985:11). NAC’s strategy was to discredit the “acceptable social practice” approach to equality rights and to “fill” the concept of equality with content about women’s lives during the hearings so that an “equality equals same treatment” formulation would not be endorsed by Parliament. Anti-feminist groups, which had not had time to organize during the Charter debate, now argued that the very existence of constitutional equality guarantees were a “total attack on the foundation of a good stable country—the family,” (Proceedings 17:113). But they were too late. Traditional women’s groups supported the equality sections advancing an equality of results approach similar to that advanced by NAC’s affiliates. The out-pouring of experiences from gay and lesbian groups seeking the explicit protection of the Charter was perhaps the most moving aspect of the Committee’s hearings, leading the Committee to endorse explicit protection.

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To the surprise of many, the Committee produced a unanimous report in under a year. Forty-one of its eighty-five recommendations involved changes in government legislation, policy or practice related to sexual equality guarantees. It also supported positive action such as contract compliance to achieve equality of results and rejected the view that this was “reverse discrimination.” While the government refused to act on many of the Committee’s recommendations and dragged its feet on others, the body of arguments developed was important in creating a discourse which focused on substantive instead of formal equality. Many grass-roots feminists, however, were disappointed that the Committee made no recommendations concerning abortion rights or pornography and declined to see denial of family status to same-sex couples as discrimination (Eliot, 1986:5). The Charter also provided leverage to achieve changes in the Indian Act, allowing many Indian women to regain their “status” under the Act. Although majoritarian feminists saw this as the righting of an injustice imposed by a racist and patriarchal government, many aboriginal women and men, who were demanding self-government for their nations, saw it as another attempt by white society to define citizenship in their nations, adding population without adding the resources needed to actually re-integrate women into their bands. Quebec’s continuing alienation from the constitutional order led the new Prime Minister to negotiate the Meech Lake Accord, which recognized Quebec’s conditions for accepting the new Constitution. Many women were concerned about the recognition of Quebec as a distinct society, fearing that their hard-won equality rights could somehow be “trumped” by the “distinct society” provision which some feminist lawyers warned would create a hierarchy of rights. The limitation to be placed on the federal spending power also caused concern. The national shared-cost programs women had hoped to gain, such as childcare, now seemed impossible if the federal spending power were to be constrained as the Accord proposed. As Ginette Busque notes: “What Quebec women eventually began to realize...was that, maybe more than distinct society, it was the structuring of shared-cost programs which caused profound apprehension,” (1991:16). Ginette Busque notes that “Quebec women would have remained relatively remote from the issue had they not been deeply offended by the interpretations placed by some groups on the distinct society clause and the impact it could eventually have on women both inside and outside Québec,” (1991:15). As Diane Lamoureux points out, “Ces groupes considèrent que l’expérience sociale des femmes fait également partie de la société distincte québécoise,” (1991:60). Quebec women “...repudiated... [a] vision of a small-minded Quebec where a distinct society could be promoted to the detriment of women and minorities.” As Ginette Busque concluded, in any event, “We also felt perfectly able to defend ourselves on our own ground, if need be,” (1991:15). Resentment of Quebec’s claims for special treatment, felt especially by some western, aboriginal and minority women, would perhaps have been softened if they had known these views. The revived Ad Hoc group, with LEAF and other feminist legal groups, directed the campaign. When the Prime Minister called Anglophone feminists “racists” in the House, Christie Jefferson, executive director of LEAF, replied that “Most women’s organizations have predicated all critiques of the...Accord with a statement saying we favour Quebec’s status as a unique

276 The Canadian Women’s Movement and a Changing Constitutional Order society...” (quoted Broadside, November 1987:3). Indeed, most of the briefs from the non-Quebec organizations to the Joint Committee on the 1987 Accord did support distinct or unique society status for Quebec, but few showed any deep understanding of how this might create a different relationship to the constitutional order for the Quebec movement. On Section 28 and the “distinct society” issue, however, NAC and the FFQ managed to develop a joint position on the protection of women’s equality guarantees (Roberts, 1988:14,15). This moved NAC closer to the “three nations” position it currently holds in support of asymmetrical federalism. Aboriginal and minority women were especially concerned about the Accord, although for different reasons. Most aboriginal women rejected the accord because of the possible impact of recognizing Quebec as a “distinct society” on their nations’ claims to land and self-government. Marginalized women, especially those with disabilities, wanted to strengthen not weaken federal power. As Shelagh Day has argued: The desire of the equality-seeking groups is not to see the federal spending power dismantled through decentralization of responsibilities to the provinces. On the contrary, their desire is to ensure that the federal responsibility is enhanced by requiring the federal government to ensure that every dollar that goes to other levels of government is spent in a way that complies with constitutional guarantees. (1991:98) In addition to these substantive concerns, many feminists also opposed the Meech Lake Accord because of the process used by the eleven white men whose constitutional “baby” it was. Grass-roots feminists in English Canada again had clear enemies and viewed the process through jaundiced eyes and, although the Meech Lake Accord was supported by the majority of women’s groups in Quebec, the closed processes of executive federalism caused offense there as well. Moreover, as NAC and the FFQ struggled to develop a compromise position on the Accord, some minority and marginalized women objected to their exclusion from this process of elite accommodation within organized feminism as well. These controversies were an important learning opportunity in which the two majoritarian elements, came to understand one anothers’ positions on constitutional issues far more clearly as a result. In January 1988, moreover, the efficacy of the legal strategy became more apparent as the Supreme Court, relying on the Charter, removed the legal impediments to abortion in Canada. Quebec women, however, were shocked in 1989 when the Quebec Superior Court upheld an injunction granted to an ex-boyfriend preventing Chantal Daigle from having an abortion. Although the Supreme Court overturned the injunction and made such third-party interventions impossible in the future, most Quebec feminists remained unpersuaded of the value of an entrenched Charter or of a federal court system. Indeed, as the presentations of prominent Francophone feminists and women’s groups to the Bélanger-Campeau Commission made clear, by the 1990s the Quebec francophone movement was largely, if not universally, supportive of a sovereigntist position. The Charlottetown Accord The threat of another referendum on sovereignty in Quebec and the civil disturbances surrounding aboriginal land claims led to renewed efforts to

277 IJCS / RIÉC reform the constitutional order in what has been called the “Canada round” of negotiations leading up to the Charlottetown Accord. To the surprise of many, most elements of the women’s movement united in opposition to the Charlottetown Accord, although most women of the political class supported it. NAC organized another, smaller women’s constitutional conference, in which fifty major groups took part, including the FFQ, the FNFCF, the National Organization of Immigrant and Visible Minority Women, the Business and Professional Women’s organizations and the NWAC (NAC, 1991). Opposition to the Accord was directed at both process and substance. One demand was for a “full seat at the constitutional table for aboriginal women, including NWAC and the National Métis Women’s Association (NWMA),” (NAC, 1991:2). Substantive changes demanded included “full protection of equality rights for aboriginal women”; “racially representative gender equality in the Senate”; a “political accord” to establish “proportional representation in the House of Commons” within two years; proper protection from diminution for equality and language rights; and a regime of asymmetrical federalism which would require the federal government “to spend on social programs outside Quebec” and would prevent opt-outs from new social programs or the “devolution of labour market training, immigration and culture” to the provinces, except for Quebec. (NAC, 1991:2) Although women of the political class and the media attempted to discredit NAC’s opposition (Vienneau, 1992; Laframboise, 1992), it quickly became apparent that most women’s groups had too many concerns about the possible impact of the Accord to vote “yes.” The extensive decentralization envisioned in the Accord posed problems for women outside of Quebec for reasons which I have already outlined. A justiciable social charter, which could have allayed some of the fears of women about a more decentralized federation, was watered down into an unenforceable statement of intent. NAC’s decision to oppose the Accord reflected the concerns of its most vulnerable members, minority, marginalized and non-status aboriginal women in particular, who feared the dilution of their Charter rights and loss of strong programs of support guaranteed by the federal government wherever they might live. And it was feared that decentralization would mean that federal funding of movement groups would be withdrawn even further and would not be replaced by provincial funding in most cases. Some women of the political class were particularly offended by opposition to the Accord and NAC’s support for the NWAC position. The Inuit Women’s Association (Pauktuutit) was represented on the Inuit “Yes” Committee and Inuit believed their women leaders had acted to protect women’s constitutional rights (Moss, 1992:2,3). Political women of all parties urged women’s groups to be “realistic” and to accept the accord in a spirit of compromise. But they were no more persuasive than their male colleagues. In the referendum debate, the Canadian women’s movement came to be recognized as a significant player in Canadian constitutional politics. Although women’s concerns were still often treated dismissively, it was now clear after a decade of effort that there were distinctive women’s concerns. There were also substantial gains made in this process for the women’s movement. English-Canadian feminists, in developing their new “three nations” constitutional vision, came to understand collective rights better. Indeed, feminists of both majority cultures came to understand the hurts of racism, ablism and homophobia more clearly. Many bridges were built,

278 The Canadian Women’s Movement and a Changing Constitutional Order

reducing the fragmentation of the movement which, in 1993, is stronger than it has ever been.

Conclusions The outcome of this decade of women’s involvement in constitutional politics remains unclear as I write. It is possible that women in Quebec and the First Nations will both seek and achieve greater autonomy, even sovereignty, in the future. But it is also clear, as Linda Trimble argues, that “women, and especially marginalized women, need power to make their interests interesting” (1991:90). And it is clear to all elements of the Canadian movement that we have more power when we can co-operate in one another’s projects. Constitutional politics was not an arena women chose to enter, at least in part because of its potential for conflict within the movement. While feminist leaders and lawyers (especially of the majoritarian cultures) have gained more profile, it is not clear that ordinary women have yet gained enough power to make their interests “interesting” enough to keep them “on the table” when the final round of constitutional bargaining comes around again. Nor have women yet gained the clout to enforce on elites a more open process in which women can participate effectively. Francophone feminists in Quebec with their project of a society in which women’s powers and vision are fully integrated have set us on the path of constitutional transformation, rather than just reform. Aboriginal women with their often conflicting views challenge us to think of rights regimes which can encompass both individual and collective rights. Majoritarian feminists are learning to hear and respond to the constitutional needs of minority and marginalized women. The past decade of engagement by progressive Canadian women in constitutional politics was possible because of the movement’s strength, flexibility and energy. It is also true, however, that involvement in constitutional politics has strengthened and energized the movement further and has been the catalyst for a quantum leap in the movement’s intellectual flexibility.

Notes 1. The author wishes to acknowledge the financial support of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council which permitted the conduct of this research. 2. See for example, Kenneth Karst, “Paths to Belonging: The Constitution and Cultural Identity.” North Carolina Law Review, 64 (January, 198 ): 303-77. The ideal of the disembodied constitutional citizen, however, is relatively new with modern liberalism. Certainly Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hegel and others knew women could not be citizens because of their sex/gender characteristics. 3. I introduce this distinction between majoritarian and minority feminists in “Notes Toward a Political Theory of Sex and Power” (forthcoming 1993). In it, I theorize that women and men of secure, dominant cultures who have access to state instruments (i.e., media, schools) to protect their community identity understand reproduction and its links to political power differently than members of threatened, minority communities. 4. The newspapers surveyed were Broadside, Cayenne, Herizons, La Vie En Rose, The Emily, The Womanist, NAC Memo,Status and Feminist Action. My thanks to Marcella Munro for her assistance in this survey. For the views in Quebec, I relied more heavily on the views of feminist scholars. With the assistance of such scholars as Micheline Dumont and Micheline de Sève, and the staff of the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW), FFQ publications and briefs were located. My thanks to Dorine Chalifoux who undertook this research and precised translations.

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5. I was parliamentarian for NAC (an umbrella organization of 500-600 women’s groups) during the 1980s. I also attended women’s Constitutional conferences and meetings and was invited to present briefs as an “expert” before the Boyer Committee. 6. Many First Nations traditionalists and sovereigntists reject altogether a rights-based understanding of the relationship between individual and collectivity. I use the term “rights” here only to aid understanding. 7. For example, the Quebec government eventually stopped enforcing the old criminal code sections concerning abortion. The federal government jailed Dr. Henry Morgentaler after Quebec juries acquitted him. To Anglo-Canadian feminists, this was evidence that governments are patriarchal. To Francophone feminists in Quebec, it was evidence that the federal government had over-ruled a more progressive Quebec government. Eventually, the law was struck down under the Charter and Canada currently has no criminal law concerning abortion. 8. Throughout the decade, NAC demanded longer hearings, constitutional conferences, constituent assemblies and the official representation of women as women at the constitutional table. NAC opposed the national referendum process because of the absence of strict spending limits based on the experience of the free trade election in 1988, in which the business lobby, unregulated by the electoral spending limits because of a court decision, poured huge sums of money into a last minute media blitz. 9. This mattered to Quebec feminists in part because the federal government had rejected “le principe du divorce à l’amiable” while the provincial government was not opposed (Lamoureux, 1991). 10. Women’s dependent mobility when in relationships, while no longer having the force of law, is re-inforced by the fact that women earn only two-thirds of men’s wages on average. Hence even an egalitarian family often can’t choose to follow the wife’s work. 11. Geographically organized electoral systems disadvantage “interests” and groups which are geographically dispersed and reward those which are geographically concentrated. 12. Women are now about 14% of both the elected House and the appointed Senate. They are represented at slightly higher rates in provinces like Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and P.E.I. Two of the nine members of the Supreme Court are currently women. Nowhere do they constitute a critical mass, which is usually viewed as 35-40%, except in the Ontario cabinet. 13. The lack of legitimacy of political parties, the well-documented gender gap on many issues and the demonstrated differences among women which are, nonetheless, not the same as the differences among men (regionalism, e.g.) all challenge these views. 14. Aboriginal leaders faced similar problems as they attempted to insert the issues of self- government and race into a discourse entirely organized around the dualism of “the founding nations.” 15. The original Ad Hoc group also included a number of “ordinary” women in Ottawa who put together the original conference. Strategy decisions, however, were taken by the Toronto- based group and the parliament hill “politicos.” 16. Only these women are usefully described as “Charter Canadians”; a concept has been used to described all women by some constitutional commentators, following Alan Cairns (1988, e.g.).

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Brodsy, Gwen and Shelagh Day. 1989 La Charte canadienne et les droits des femmes : progrès ou recul? Ottawa, CCCSF. Busque, Ginette and Gingras, Anne-Marie. 1987 “Extraits d’une lettre au Premier ministre Brian Mulroney sur Le Lac Meech et les femmes,” La petite presse, Newsletter of the Fédération des femmes québécoise, June. Conseil du statut de la femme. 1990. Les femmes, ça compte. Québec. CSN. 1990 Mémoire soumis à la Commission sur l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec. November. Dumont, Micheline. 1991 L’Expérience historique des femmes dans le présent débat constitutionel. Text presented to the Bélanger-Campeau Commission. January. Fédération des femmes du Québec. 1987 Presentation of the FFQ to the Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons on the Constitutional Accord of 1987. (transl.) Feminist perspectives féministes No. 12a. CRIAW, Ottawa. ——-. 1990 Mémoire présenté à la Commission sur l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec. November. ——-. 1991 Le féminisme en revue : Colloque 1991 — L’Avenir des femmes dans un Québec en devenir. Vol. 4, No. 2. ——-. 1992 Pour un Québec féminin pluriel : Dossier de consultation. March. Fédération nationale des femmes canadiennes-françaises. 1990 La Commission sur l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec. November. ——-. 1992 The Voice of Francophone Women Living in Minority Situations in the Constitutional Debate: An Analysis of the Federal Proposals — Shaping Canada’s Future Together. January. Genaille, Sheila D. 1992 “Métis women endorse agreement.” Letter to the editor, Globe and Mail, 30 September. Gingras, Anne-Marie. 1987 “La petite histoire politique du lac Meech,” La petite presse. Newsletter of the Fédération des femmes du Québec, September. Kuptana, Rosemarie. 1992 “Outstanding Inuit Issues re: Charlottetown Accord and Gender Equality under the Charter,” memo to Inuit Tapirasat of Canada Board of Directors. October. Laframboise, Donna. 1992 “National group no longer speaks for women,” Toronto Star.D,21 September. Lajoie, Andrée. 1991 Réponses aux questionx posées par la Commission sur l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec. Text presented to the Bélanger-Campeau Commission. January. Lamoureux, Diane. 1991b Réponses aux questions posées par la Commission sur l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec. Text presented to the Bélanger-Campeau Commission. January. Legault, Ginette. 1991 “Le projet de société féministe et l’option souverainiste : un débat à poursuivre,” Le féminisme en revue, Vol. 4, No. 2. Moss, Wendy. 1992 “The Role of Inuit Women in Negotiating the Charlottetown Accord.” Undated release. NAC. 1991 Response to Federal Constitutional Proposals, 25 October. ——-. 1991 A Draft Women’s Charter, 4 November. ——-. 1992. Conclusions of Women’s Constitutional Conference. 25 August. Réseau d’Action et d’Information pour les Femmes (RAIF). 1987 L’Entente constitutionnelle de 1987 et les femmes. September. Roberts, Barbara. 1988 “Smooth Sailing or Storm Warning? Canadian and Québec Women’s Groups and the Meech Lake Accord,” Feminist Perspectives, 12a CRIAW. Stacey-Moore, Gail. 1991 “Aboriginal Women, Self Government, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the 1991 Canada Package on the Constitution.” Text for an Address to the Canadian Labour Congress, Ottawa, 31 December. Vienneau, David. 1992 “Many Women just saying no to No” Toronto Star, O1F, 16, 10 October. Secondary Sources Andrew, Carolyn. 1984 “Women and the Welfare State”, Canadian Journal of Political Science 17, no. 4. Ayim, Maryann. 1980 “Review of the Report of the Taskforce of National Unity,” Atlantis 5:2 Bashevkin, Sylvia. 1985 Toeing the Lines. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Begin, Monique. 1992 “The Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada: Twenty Years Later,” in Constance Backhouse and David Flaherty (eds.) Challenging Times: The Women’s Movement in Canada and the United States, McGill-Queen’s Press. Black, Naomi. 1992 “Ripples in the Second Wave: Comparing the Contemporary Movement in Canada and the United States,” in Backhouse and Flaherty. Busque, Ginette. 1991 “Why Women Should Care About Constitutional Reform,” in David Schneiderman (ed.), Conversations Among Friends/Entre Amis: Proceedings of an Interdisciplinary Conference on Women and Constitutional Reform, University of Alberta Centre for Constitutional Studies.

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Cairns, Alan. 1988 “The Limited Constitutional Vision of Meech Lake,” in K.E. Swinton and C.J. Rogerson (eds.) Competing Constitutional Visions: The Meech Lake Accord. Carswell. Clark, Lorenne. 1991 “Reconceptualizing the Agenda for Reform,” in Schneiderman. Clio Collective. 1987 Québec Women: A History, transl. Roger Gannon and Rosalind Gill, the Women’s Press. Cole, Susan. 1987 “Meech Lake: Troubled Waters,” Broadside, Vol. 9, No. 2, November. Collin, Françoise. 1986 “Introduction,” Cahiers du GRIF 33. Day, Shelagh. 1991 “Constitutional Reform: Canada’s Equality Crisis,” in Schneiderman. Delphy, Christine. 1977 “Nos amis et nous,” Questions féministes 1. De Sève, Micheline. 1991 “The Perspectives of Québec Feminists,” in Backhouse and Flaherty. Dumont, Micheline. 1992 “The Origins of the Women’s Movement in Québec,” in Backhouse and Flaherty. Ellis, Megan. 1986 “New Charter, Same Old Story,” Kinesis, November. Ellis and Findlay. 1986 “Hey It’s 1986! Aren’t We Equal Yet?” Kinesis, November. Eliot, Sarah. 1986 “Competing for Equality,” Broadside, Vol. 7, No. 6, April. Gidengil, Elisabeth. 1992 “A Different Voice? Gender and Political Behavior,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Charlottetown, P.E.I., June. Greckol, Sheila. 1991 “The Pursuit of Equality for Women,” in Schneiderman. Greshner, Donna. 1991 “Conversations: A Talking Circle,” in Schneiderman. Hall, Tony. 1992 “Theoretical Discourse in Native Studies,” ACS Newsletter, Vol. 14, No. 1, Spring. Hastings and Lawrence. 1981 “Valentines Day Revenge,” Broadside, March. Hosek, Chaviva. 1983 “Women and the Constitutional Process,” in Keith Banting and Richard Simeon, And No One Cheered: Federalism, Democracy and the Constitution Act, Methuen. Lamoureux, Diane. 1991a “Une majorité encore oubliée,” in Schneiderman. ——-. 1990 “Le mouvement des femmes : entre l’intégration et l’autonomie,” Canadian Issues, Themes canadiens 12. ——-. 1989 Citoyennes ? Femmes, droit de vote et démocratie. Éditions du remue-ménage. Lange, Lynda. “Rousseau: Women and the General Will,” in Lynda Lange and Loreern M.G. Clark, eds. The Sexism of Social and Political Theory. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1990 Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada. Routledge. Maillé, Chantal. 1991a “The Women’s Health Movement in Québec Society: An Analysis for the Purpose of Constitutional Debate,” in Schneiderman. ——-. 1991b “Femmes et politique: et pourquoi pas une constitution enchâssant notre droit à la représentation politique?” Le féminisme en revue, Vol. 4, No. 2. ——-. 1991c “La FFQ peut-elle prendre position sur l’avenir politique du Québec sans tomber dans la partisanerie?” Le féminisme en revue, Vol. 4, No. 2. Maracle, Lee. 1991 “Conversations: A Talking Circle,” in Schneiderman. McLellan, Anne. 1991 “Women and the Process of Constitution Making,” in Schneiderman. Monture-Okanee, Patricia. 1992 “The Violence We Women Do: A First Nations View,” in Backhouse and Flaherty. ——-. 1991 “Seeking My Reflection: A Comment on Constitutional Renovation,” in Schneiderman. O’Brien, Mary. 1981 “The Constitution in Context,” Broadside, Vol. 2, No. 4, February. O’Leary, Véronique et Louise Toupin. 1982 Québécoises debouttes! Montreal: Tome I. Éditions du remue-ménage. O’Neill, Brenda. 1992 “Gender Gaps in Opinion: The Canadian Situation,” paper presented at the Annual General Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, P.E.I., June. Okin, Susan. 1978 Women in Western Political Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ——-. 1986 “Are Our Theories of Justice Gender-Neutral?,” in Robert Fullinwider and Claudia Mills, eds. The Civil Rights. Totowa, N.J: Rowman and Littlefield. Pateman, Carole. 1989 The Disorder of Women. Cambridge: Polity/Basil Blackwell. ——-. 1988 The Sexual Contract. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Payette, Lise. 1982 Le pouvoir? Connais pas! Québec-Amérique. Paquerot, Sylvie. 1991 “Vision féministe de la société québécoise,” Le féminisme en revue, Vol. 4, No. 2. Razack, Sherene. 1991 “Issues of Difference in Constitutional Reform: Say Goodbye to the Universal Woman,” in Schneiderman. Roberts, Barbara. 1989 Beau fixe ou nuages à l’horizon? L’Accord du lac Meech jugé par les féministes du Québec et du Canada. Ottawa, ICREF/CRIAW, Collection “Perspectives féministes.” Tardy, Évelyne. “Autour du débat constitutionnel : quelques aspects économiques,” Le féminisme en revue, Vol. 4, No. 2. ——-. “Parlons stratégies,” Le féminisme en revue, Vol. 4, No. 2.

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283 Max Nemni

La Commission Bélanger-Campeau et la construction de l’idée de sécession au Québec1

Résumé Depuis près d’un quart de siècle, l’idée de la sécession du Québec fait partie du paysage politique canadien. Pour expliquer ce phénomène il est essentiel d’identifier les effets de l’utilisation du nationalisme à des fins politiques.

C’est dans cet esprit que cette étude analyse la démarche et les travaux d’une commission mise sur pied par le gouvernement québécois de Robert Bourassa. Née au lendemain de « l’échec du lac Meech », cette commission fut créée notamment pour instaurer un rapport de force plus favorable au Québec vis-à- vis du reste du Canada.

On verra que bien que cette commission n’ait pas contribué à accroître les pouvoirs de négociation du Québec, elle permit au gouvernement Bourassa de sortir du cul-de-sac politique dans lequel « Meech » l’avait placé. On verra surtout qu’un des effets les plus marquants de tout ce processus fut le renforcement de l’idée de sécession au Québec.

Abstract For almost a quarter of a century, the idea of Quebec’s secession has been an integral part of the Canadian political landscape. In order to understand this phenomenon it is essential to assess the use of nationalism for political purposes.

This study focuses on the social and political impact of an organism created by the Quebec government of Robert Bourassa. Born as a result of the failed Meech Lake Accord, the political function of this body was to bolster Quebec’s negotiating position vis-à-vis the rest of Canada.

The findings of this study are that while this organism did not strengthen Quebec’s position, it did allow Bourassa’s government to come out of the political impasse created by Meech. More importantly, the fundamental effect of this entire process was to bolster the idea of secession in Quebec.

La menace de la sécession du Québec hante l’univers politique canadien depuis plus d’un quart de siècle. Or, selon un classement des Nations Unies, le Canada offre la meilleure qualité de vie du monde. S’il est possible de comprendre l’émergence de féodalités ethniques quand s’est brisé le joug de l’ancienne U.R.S.S., on s’explique plus difficilement les déchirements internes que subit le Canada2.

International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 7-8, Spring-Fall/Printemps-automne 1993 IJCS/RIÉC

Après le référendum de mai 1980, où les Québécois dirent « non » à l’option sécessionniste que leur offrait le Parti québécois, voilà que douze ans plus tard, en octobre 1992, la question de la place du Québec au sein de la fédération canadienne a forcé le Canada tout entier à jouer son avenir sur un nouveau référendum. Mais avec, cette fois, une différence importante. Alors que jusque-là, le reste du Canada se demandait, avec un candide étonnement, « What does Quebec want? », c’était maintenant un Québec plein d’assurance qui lançait un double défi au reste du Canada. Premièrement, sous le titre frondeur Un Québec libre de ses choix, le Rapport « Allaire » traçait les grandes lignes de la politique constitutionnelle du Parti libéral du Québec, dirigé par Robert Bourassa. Du fédéralisme, ce rapport ne retenait guère que le nom en exigeant le transfert massif de presque tous les pouvoirs du gouvernement central. Ce premier défi au reste du Canada fut lancé en mars 1991, lors du congrès annuel de ce Parti. Le deuxième ne tarda pas à venir. Quelques mois après le 23 juin 1990, date de l’échec de la ronde de négociations contitutionnelles dite du lac Meech, fut instituée, sous l’autorité de l’Assemblée nationale du Québec, la Commission sur l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec. Dotée du vaste mandat « d’étudier et d’analyser le statut politique et constitutionnel du Québec et de formuler à cet égard des recommandations », son rapport ne se fit pas attendre. En moins de six mois, la Commission « Bélanger-Campeau » fit le tour de la question qui divise le Canada depuis ses premiers jours. Non seulement elle identifia les problèmes, mais elle édicta un diagnostic radical. Le 27 mars 1991, la Commission recommanda à l’Assemblée nationale d’adopter une loi prévoyant la tenue d’un référendum sur la souveraineté du Québec à une date bien précise (entre le 8 et le 22 juin 1992 ou entre le 12 et le 26 octobre 1992). Advenant la victoire du « oui », cette loi prévoyait, avec la même précision, une date d’accession du Québec à l’indépendance, soit un an jour pour jour après la tenue du référendum. Le deuxième défi était lancé. Cependant, entre août et octobre 1992, le Parti libéral de Bourassa changea radicalement de cap. Reniant sa propre conception de la place du Québec au sein du Canada, définie dans le Rapport Allaire devenu la politique officielle du Parti, ainsi que la loi 150 qu’il avait fait adopter par l’Assemblée nationale à la suite du rapport de la Commission Bélanger-Campeau (qu’on appellera ici la « Commission »), le gouvernement Bourassa fit voter presque unanimement par ses membres, lors du congrès annuel d’août 1992, une résolution dictant la tenue d’un référendum sur un renouvellement relativement mineur du cadre fédéral existant, et non plus sur la souveraineté comme l’exigeait la loi 150. La preuve semblait ainsi faite que la sécession n’était qu’une menace, qu’un élément stratégique de négociation du gouvernement Bourassa. Cette stratégie, dite du « couteau sur la gorge », avait d’ailleurs été promue par de grandes personnalités québécoises, dont Léon Dion. C’est en effet lui qui, lors de la présentation de son mémoire à la Commission le 12 décembre 1990, affirmait qu’il n’y avait qu’une façon de faire bouger le « Canada anglais » : « Il ne cèdera — et cela même n’est pas assuré — que s’il a le couperet sur la gorge3.» Onze mois plus tard, après avoir pris connaissance du texte de l’entente constitutionnelle négociée à Charlottetown, Léon Dion exprima son étonnement devant l’échec de la stratégie qu’il avait promue :

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Ici plane un mystère qu’il faudra dissiper un jour... Les Québécois avaient procuré à leur premier ministre un rapport de force à triple ressort en 1991 — la Commission Bélanger-Campeau, la loi 150 et le programme du PLQ (Rapport Allaire).... Cette force qui était entre ses mains, pourquoi l’a-t-il laissée s’échapper4 ? Ce qui stupéfie cet éminent spécialiste, c’est, à première vue, le fait que le gouvernement Bourassa ait si mal utilisé un rapport de force qui semblait le favoriser. Mais au-delà de cet aspect stratégique, ce qui explique cet étonnement, partagé d’ailleurs par la plupart des spécialistes québécois à tendance nationaliste, ce fut la minceur des réformes acceptées par le gouvernement Bourassa eu égard à l’ampleur des demandes « minimales » du Québec. L’étude de Guy Laforest, présentée quelques mois avant le dépôt du rapport de la Commission, illustre bien ces attentes. Ce spécialiste, représentatif d’un point de vue prédominant alors dans les milieux intellectuels et politiques du Québec, affirmait en effet que « le régime fédéral canadien de 1867, partiellement rénové en 1982, a fait faillitte au Québec et ne peut être regénéré. » Le problème était d’autant plus profond, à ses yeux, que « l’idée de fédéralisme avait été détruite à tout jamais au Québec depuis l’échec de Meech5. » C’est ce qui amenait Laforest à prévoir que le rapport de la Commission exclurait l’option fédéraliste et exigerait « soit un réaménagement de type confédéral, soit une forme d’association entre États souverains6. » Ainsi, non seulement la réforme du fédéralisme canadien était considérée comme hautement illusoire, mais la notion même de « fédéralisme » avait, affirmait-on fréquemment, perdu toute crédibilité au Québec. Tout comme Laforest, de nombreux experts québécois à tendance nationaliste percevaient la Commission à la fois comme l’étape ultime vers la restructuration radicale de l’espace géopolitique canadien et comme un instrument stratégique en vue d’atteindre cet objectif. On comprend donc leur déception et leur étonnement lorsque Bourassa accepta avec enthousiasme l’entente de Charlottetown qu’ils percevaient au mieux comme un réaménagement mineur du cadre fédéral existant. D’où le « mystère » évoqué par Dion. Peut-on élucider ce mystère ou, plus modestement, peut-on soulever quelque peu le voile qui l’entoure ? Pour y parvenir, on analysera la démarche ainsi que les travaux de la Commission Bélanger-Campeau qui était au coeur des négociations constitutionnelles canadiennes. Ces travaux nous permettront de pénétrer dans un univers complexe où s’entrecroisent passion et raison. Car pour remplir son mandat qui lui dictait de se prononcer sur « l’avenir constitutionnel du Québec », cette Commission fonctionna sur deux registres. D’une part, elle prit le pouls des Québécois et, d’autre part, elle étudia systématiquement plusieurs aspects fondamentaux des rapports entre le Québec et le reste du Canada. Ainsi, elle était à la fois une commission d’étude et un forum qui permit à de nombreux Québécois d’exprimer leurs doléances. Mais avant d’aborder l’analyse des travaux de cette Commission, il est nécessaire de décrire brièvement les nombreux documents qu’ils ont engendrés. On y distingue nettement trois catégories de matériaux. Premièrement, le rapport final. Il s’agit là d’un texte de 180 pages, signé par tous les membres de la Commission ainsi que par le premier ministre, Robert Bourassa, et par le chef de l’opposition officielle, Jacques Parizeau. C’est à ce document

287 IJCS/RIÉC ambivalent, recommandant soit le référendum sur la souveraineté, soit le renouvellement en profondeur du cadre fédéral, que sera consacrée la première partie de ce travail intitulée : « Le rapport Bélanger-Campeau et la stratégie du gouvernement Bourassa ». Une deuxième catégorie de matériaux comprend les mémoires, soumis à titre privé tant par des particuliers que par des associations de tous genres. Ces quelque 600 documents, qui totalisent environ 15 000 pages, représentent le produit final de la vaste consultation populaire mise en branle par le gouvernement Bourassa. Bien qu’exprimant les intérêts de leurs auteurs et que l’option fédéraliste y soit parfois préconisée, c’est dans ces mémoires qu’on trouve généralement l’expression des sentiments sur lesquels s’appuie le projet sécessionniste. Nous les étudierons dans la deuxième partie de ce travail intitulée : « La voix des citoyens ». Finalement, la troisième catégorie de matériaux qu’a fait naître la Commission comprend exclusivement des documents soumis par des experts. C’est généralement là qu’on trouve des analyses approfondies de diverses questions relatives aux rapports entre le Québec et ses voisins advenant l’accession à l’indépendance ou tout autre statut constitutionnel. Nous procédérons à l’étude de ces matériaux dans la troisième et dernière partie de ce travail intitulée:«La voix des experts ». Cette examen en trois temps des travaux de la Commission tente de mieux cerner l’interaction complexe des facteurs émotifs et rationnels autour desquels se construit et se déconstruit depuis le 23 juin 1990, date de l’échec de la ronde constitutionnelle du lac Meech7, l’idée de sécession du Québec. Penchons- nous d’abord sur l’aspect stratégique de la démarche de la Commission en analysant brièvement son rapport final.

Le rapport Bélanger-Campeau et la stratégie du gouvernement Bourassa En tant qu’instrument stratégique de négociation, le rapport final étonne par ses ambiguïtés et ses contradictions. Mais avant de l’analyser, décrivons-le brièvement. À part la liste des recommandations et les annexes incluant divers addenda des commissionnaires exprimant leurs réserves, ce rapport comprend en tout sept chapitres. De ceux-là, un présente les membres, un autre énonce le mandat de la Commission et deux autres sont consacrés à l’introduction et à la conclusion. Les éléments de fond se trouvent donc tous dans les chapitres 4, 5 et 6, soit une cinquantaine de pages en tout, en gros caractères et à double interligne. Que disent ces trois chapitres ? Le chapitre 4, « Le Québec : une société moderne, une identité propre », brosse un tableau presque idyllique du dynamisme de la société québécoise contemporaine. L’idée maîtresse de ce chapitre est que, lorsqu’il l’a voulu, le Québec a réussi à devenir une société prospère, moderne et cultivée. On lit, en effet, qu’à partir des années soixante, les Québécois « marquent un tournant dans la prise en main de leur développement8 » et qu’en conséquence, « le Québec a donné le coup de barre nécessaire à l’émergence d’une société moderne, complète et ouverte sur le monde9. » On souligne de plus que « la place du français dans les communications, le travail, le commerce et les affaires est ainsi réaffermie et élargie10. »

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Ce chapitre étonne. On se serait attendu à ce qu’un rapport recommandant un référendum sur la sécession du Québec mette en relief les insuffisances du système politique actuel. Mais au lieu d’un constat d’échec, on y trouve une image reluisante des exploits du Québec sur tous les plans, allant de l’économie jusqu’à la langue et la culture en passant par le rôle bénéfique du gouvernement provincial. Ce chapitre surprend d’autant plus qu’au-delà de ce beau portrait du Québec et de ses institutions, on y trouve également un éloge, plus modéréré il est vrai, du cadre institutionnel actuel considéré dans sa globalité. Contrairement à ce qu’on lit à la page 12 de l’introduction de ce rapport, l’acte confédératif de 1867 n’est pas présenté ici selon la perspective nationaliste usuelle d’un « pacte entre deux peuples », mais plutôt à la manière « fédéraliste », c’est-à-dire comme un acte visant la création d’un « espace économique qui devait consolider les liens entre les quatre anciennes colonies11. » Quelques lignes plus loin, on reconnaît même la nécessité de la centralisation à Ottawa de certains pouvoirs, idée franchement anti- nationaliste. On lit, en effet, que « cet espace initial et son développement ultérieur... on les doit aussi au fait que la Constitution de 1867 accorda au Parlement fédéral de larges pouvoirs...12 » L’étonnement grandit quand on voit quelques paragraphes plus loin la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés recevoir sa part de louanges. Comme on le sait, cette Charte constitue une des pièces maîtresses de la Constitution de 1982, rapatriée sans le consentement du Québec. C’est d’ailleurs pourquoi elle est souvent décriée, y compris dans ce rapport, comme étant « dépourvue de légitimité politique faute d’avoir jamais reçu la pleine et libre adhésion du Québec13. » Pourtant, à la page 25, on lui reconnaît certains effets heureux, notamment quant à la transférabilité du droit aux programmes sociaux fédéraux et à la liberté de circulation des citoyens. On trouve bien dans ce chapitre quelques critiques du cadre fédéral actuel, mais dans l’ensemble, on y fait surtout un éloge implicite, et parfois même explicite, de ce cadre si bien que le message central qui s’en dégage est que le Québec contemporain se porte très bien. Le lecteur est donc mal préparé à la mise en accusation du fédéralisme à laquelle se livre le chapitre 5 titré « L’évolution vers l’impasse ». Après avoir identifié comme origine de « l’impasse » l’échec de l’accord du lac Meech, le chapitre 5 lance une affirmation déconcertante. On y lit en effet que « les réformes majeures mises en oeuvre au Québec pendant les années 1960 ont démontré combien était essentielle la révision du partage des compétences, rendu problématique par l’évolution du régime fédéral14. » Or, aucune démonstration n’accompagne cette affirmation. Au contraire, comme on vient de le voir, le chapitre 4 met en relief le fait que le Québec a parfaitement réussi son passage à la modernité. Loin de faire la « démonstration » de la nécessité d’un nouveau partage de pouvoirs, ce chapitre brosse une large fresque des transformations constitutionnelles récentes et, surtout, à la page 33, présente une liste assez brève des effets perçus comme négatifs de ces modifications. On y souligne deux points. D’abord, la réduction de la compétence du Québec dans la langue d’enseignement (sans noter la protection correspondante du français à travers le Canada ni la portée de la clause dérogatoire de la Charte fréquemment utilisée par le gouvernement québécois). On y relève ensuite la perte du droit de veto du Québec sur les modifications constitutionnelles (sans noter que ce

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« veto », purement conventionnel, n’avait pas été « perdu » mais plutôt « cédé » par le gouvernement Lévesque avant le rapatriement de la Constitution en 1982 dans une manoeuvre politique qui arrangeait son Parti). Essentiellement, ce chapitre insiste bien plus sur la série de blocages dans les rondes de négociations subséquentes au rapatriement de la Constitution en 1982 que sur la justification d’un nouveau partage de pouvoirs. Le chapitre 6, dernier des trois chapitres de fond, intitulé « Les voies de solution », trace dans un premier temps les grandes lignes des exigences constitutionnelles dites « minimales » pour que le Québec demeure au sein du Canada. De cette première partie se dégage l’impression très nette que ces « exigences minimales » sont tellement élevées qu’il est improbable qu’elles soient acceptées par le reste du Canada. La conciliation des attentes du Québec et des intérêts des autres provinces dans le cadre fédéral actuel « nécessiterait, affirme-t-on, des efforts considérables de la part des membres de la fédération15. » Cette idée est soulignée en conclusion où il est noté que « les attentes de la population sont élevées : elle veut voir le Québec récupérer des compétences dans tous les secteurs, qu’ils soient du domaine économique, social ou culturel16. » Une fois cela établi — la légitimité des nombreuses revendications du Québec et l’improbabilité de leur acceptation par le reste du Canada —, émerge tout naturellement la deuxième voie de solution:«La démarche du Québec vers la souveraineté... qui devrait se fonder sur une volonté populaire incontestable et clairement exprimée17.» L’ambiguïté ne cesse de grandir. Le chapitre 4 montre que le Québec se porte très bien dans le cadre actuel. Le chapitre 5 affirme, sans aucune démonstration, que le Québec ne contrôle pas dans le cadre fédéral canadien les pouvoirs essentiels à son développement. Le chapitre 6 d’un côté brandit la menace de la sécession et de l’autre, il se ravise en évoquant la possibilité d’une refonte du cadre fédéral actuel. C’est sur ces bases que repose la conclusion du rapport présentée au chapitre 7. Conclusion qui, comme on peut s’y attendre, s’avère tout aussi ambivalente que le raisonnement sur lequel elle s’appuie. En effet, la Commission affirme que : « deux voies seulement s’offrent au Québec : d’une part, une nouvelle et ultime tentative de redéfinir son statut au sein du régime fédéral et, d’autre part, l’accession à la souveraineté. » Ainsi, derrière l’idée maîtresse, et ambivalente, des « deux voies ultimes » se dessine en filigrane l’idée du renforcement du pouvoir de négociation du Québec. Étonnamment, le rapport trahit sa propre fonction stratégique dans un passage en conclusion où l’on affirme que, tout en se préparant pour la sécession, le Québec devrait mettre « à profit le temps dont il dispose et les arrangements en vigueur pour étayer son dossier tout en renforçant son pouvoir de négociation19. » Il est important de noter ici que ces recommandations furent explicitement endossées par le premier ministre lui-même et par son ministre délégué aux Affaires intergouvernementales canadiennes, Gil Rémillard. Dans une lettre intégrée au premier des deux addenda accompagnant le rapport, MM. Bourassa et Rémillard affirmaient qu’à « la croisée des chemins », le Québec était « non seulement... libre de ses choix mais... maintenant plus en mesure de les apprécier et de les arrêter grâce au rapport que nous recevons aujourd’hui. » Ces choix étaient d’après eux bien clairs:«Cerapport nous confirme que deux avenues doivent être considérées... : un réaménagement en profondeur du système fédéral actuel ou la souveraineté du Québec. Les autres solutions ne

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sauraient répondre aux besoins et aux aspirations de la société québécoise20.»

Cette notion des « deux voies»—leréaménagement en profondeur du cadre fédéral ou la sécession du Québec — fut reprise dans le cadre de la loi 150 adoptée par l’Assemblée nationale selon la recommandation de la Commission. En effet, cette loi recommandait d’une part un référendum sur la souveraineté, suivi de l’accession proprement dite au statut d’Etat indépendant, et d’autre part l’institution d’une commission parlementaire spéciale « ayant pour mandat d’apprécier toute offre de nouveau partenariat de nature constitutionnelle faite par le gouvernement du Canada21. » Ainsi, le rapport de la Commission, tout comme l’interprétation qu’en faisaient Bourassa et Rémillard tout comme la loi 150 qui en découlait étaient marqués d’une double ambiguïté. Premièrement, on présentait une image contradictoire de la place du Québec au sein du Canada. En effet, alors qu’on affirmait que le cadre institutionnel actuel convenait parfaitement au Québec, on affirmait en même temps qu’il était nécessaire de s’en défaire. Deuxièmement, les « voies de solution » reflétaient cette même contradiction. Tout en semblant s’engager résolument sur la voie de la sécession, le Québec offrait au reste du Canada une dernière et « ultime tentative » de renouvellement du cadre fédéral. Comment expliquer ces ambiguïtés qui ne pouvaient passer inaperçues et qui risquaient d’affaiblir la position du Québec ? Comment expliquer que ce « couperet » que le Québec s’apprêtait à placer sur la gorge du reste du Canada était si mal emmanché ? Comme nous tenterons de le montrer, l’ambiguïté de ce rapport reflète l’ambivalence plus profonde qui imprègne l’ensemble des documents que cette Commission a engendrés. D’une part, le processus de consultation populaire, qui constituait l’une des deux assises des travaux de la Commission, déclencha des revendications de toutes sortes que seule la sécession pourrait satisfaire, disait-on généralement. D’autre part, la plupart des expertises soumises à la Commission tendaient à freiner ces élans sécessionnistes. Les deux prochaines sections de ce texte examinent ces tendances. La première scrutera la voix des citoyens et la deuxième, celle des experts.

La voix des citoyens La Commission déclencha un vaste processus de consultation populaire. Elle se déplaça à travers la province pour écouter un grand nombre d’individus et de groupes lors d’audiences publiques, souvent télédiffusées. Pendant plusieurs mois, tout le Québec et, dans une certaine mesure, le reste du Canada étaient à l’écoute de Bélanger-Campeau. Cette tribune connut un succès retentissant et plus de 600 mémoires, représentant un large éventail de revendications, furent reçus. Très souvent, la question du « statut constitutionnel du Québec » ne servait que de toile de fond à l’expression de doléances diverses. Il n’est donc pas étonnant que ces quelque 15 000 pages de texte furent résumées en un document officiel de 27 pages, inodores et sans vie, intitulé Les préoccupations et les perceptions se dégageant de la consultation populaire et catégorisé Document de travail numéro 3. S’il est en effet impossible de « résumer » ces centaines de mémoires, on peut néanmoins y trouver l’expression de diverses émotions sur lesquelles peut s’appuyer le projet sécessionniste. Cette section tentera de définir ces sentiments.

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Notons d’emblée un fait intéressant. Alors que durant l’épisode « Meech », le sentiment dominant dans l’univers symbolique du Québéc était « l’humiliation », mal attribué à « l’exclusion » du Québec de la Constitution de 198222, dans le nouvel épisode lancé par Bourassa en juin 1990, ce traumatisme semble avoir été exorcisé. Les nouveaux sentiments s’expriment généralement sur un régistre plus combatif. Dans une étude récente sur le nationalisme québécois, Stéphane Dion met en lumière deux sentiments en apparence contradictoires qui favorisent, selon lui, la montée du sécessionnisme : Any secessionist movement is rooted in two antithetical feelings: fear and confidence. The fear is of being weakened or even disappearing as a distinct people...; the confidence is that it can perform as well, or even better, on its own23. En effet, ces deux sentiments de confiance en soi et de peur de disparaître marquent profondément l’univers symbolique de la vague récente du sécessionnisme au Québec. Cependant, la lecture des travaux de la Commission revèle également la force d’au moins deux autres sentiments : la foi en un Québec souverain et le dénigrement du Canada et de son cadre fédéral. Examinons de plus près la manifestation de ces sentiments dans les mémoires soumis à la Commission. Le mémoire du Conseil du patronat du Québec, une des rares voix profédéralistes, fait le point sur les progrès accomplis par les élites francophones. Rédigé par André Raynauld, qui a minutieusement décrit dans les années cinquante le contrôle anglophone et étranger de l’économie québécoise, ce mémoire met en relief un revirement absolument spectaculaire. Par exemple, alors qu’en 1961, les francophones ne contrôlaient que 47,1 p. 100 de l’économie québécoise, ce contrôle passait à 61,6 p. 100 en 1987. Ces données, et de nombreuses autres, l’amènent à affirmer que « les francophones ont investi le monde de l’entreprise comme ils avaient investi l’agriculture autrefois. Sans attendre la souveraineté, ils sont devenus une collectivité normale dans un univers normal24. » Ce sont des constatations analogues que l’on retrouve souvent dans les analyses de l’économie québécoise25 et qui illustrent un aspect clé du modèle de développement appelé communément « Québec Inc. ». Il s’agit là de la montée d’une élite économique qui, dans les termes de Raynauld, est devenue « normale » en faisant la démonstration, surtout envers elle-même, que le monde des affaires n’avait rien de sorcier. Enivrée par l’expansion économique des années 1983 à 1987, alliée au gouvernement provincial dans sa conquête du monde des affaires, cette élite pensait, tant que l’expansion des années quatre-vingts durait, que rien ne pouvait l’arrêter. D’ailleurs, le rapport final, dans ses multiples louanges de la vitalité du Québec contemporain, souligne notamment le fait que « la vigueur économique du Québec repose aujourd’hui sur la compétitivité des entreprises du secteur privé26. » Ce thème revient très fréquemment dans de nombreux mémoires. La Chambre de commerce de Québec, par exemple, relève fièrement la réputation acquise par cette nouvelle élite :

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L’orientation récente de la politique économique au Québec lui confère déjà une solide crédibilité en matière de libertés économiques, d’appui à l’économie privée et de recherche de compétitivité législative et fiscale27. À ce sentiment de confiance en soi et de progrès, qui alimente l’idée d’indépendance, s’allie le sentiment que le Canada, lui, régresse. C’est ainsi que le mémoire de la Chambre de commerce, comme d’ailleurs de nombreux autres, établit un parallélisme hâtif entre l’essor du Québec et « l’échec » du Canada : Il est important que les changements constitutionnels proposés par le Québec contribuent à corriger les vices du système fédéral qui ont pu entraîner le gouvernement central dans la débâcle financière actuelle28. Ces mots « vices » et « débâcle », lourds de sens, font allusion, bien sûr, à l’énorme déficit du Canada, mais aussi au fait que le gouvernement fédéral aurait, selon la Chambre de commerce, « perdu le contrôle sur ses dépenses » et favorisé « d’une manière tout à fait disproportionnée des taux d’intérêt élevés. » Ce mémoire critique par ailleurs le principe même du fédéralisme qui favorise « un coûteux chevauchement des compétences législatives » et donc le grossissement des structures administratives. D’où l’accusation fracassante et conforme aux discours nationalistes de l’heure : « Le fédéralisme pratiqué au Canada est un échec économique. » Mais ce n’est pas seulement sur le plan économique que « l’échec » du fédéralisme est dénoncé. Nombreux sont les mémoires qui présentent le gouvernement central comme une grosse bureaucratie assoiffée de pouvoir. La Société nationale des Québécois (section Richelieu- Yamaska), par exemple, présente l’histoire du Canada, de 1759 à 1990, sous l’angle de la lutte éternelle du Québec contre les empiètements injustifiés du « Canada anglais » : Le gouvernement fédéral n’a jamais cessé de prendre de plus en plus de place et de s’approprier des pouvoirs qui étaient pourtant réservés au Québec31. Cette idée apparaît à maintes reprises et de diverses manières tout au long du texte. Ainsi, loin d’en rappeler la « grande noirceur », on reconnaît au régime Duplessis le mérite d’avoir vaillamment résistéà«lasoif de centralisation du fédéral32. » Cette vision d’un Québec, véritable Sisyphe, qui lutte éternellement et futilement contre les ingérences d’Ottawa est très fréquente. On la retrouve, par exemple, dans les mémoires des trois centrales syndicales les plus influentes : la CEQ, la CSN et la FTQ. Rejetant « le carcan fédéral » la CSN affirme même que : L’idée d’un Canada incluant le Québec n’a toujours été qu’une illusion... implantée de force qui n’a jamais vraiment su s’incarner et répondre aux aspirations de la minorité francophone33. Pareillement, la C.E.Q. reproche au Canada d’être un régime quasi fédéral étouffant pour le Québec34.

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Sans s’encombrer de preuves, de nombreux mémoires présentent si fréquemment cette image d’un Québec résistant héroïquement à l’ingérence néfaste du pouvoir central qu’il serait fastidieux d’en énumérer ici les nombreuses variantes. Contentons-nous d’en signaler deux autres : l’une provenant d’un mouvement de jeunes et l’autre, du milieu universitaire. Selon le Conseil permanent de la jeunesse, la souveraineté du Québec s’impose parce que les jeunes Québécois souhaitent se développer dans une société qui « agit pour une plus grande équité et une plus grande justice sociale... qui priorise... la qualité de l’environnement... [la lutte contre le chômage et la pauvreté... et qui donne] aux gens des régions les pouvoirs nécessaires à leur plein épanouissement... » Or, affirment sans aucune démonstration les auteurs de ce mémoire, ceci ne peut se réaliser dans le cadre actuel parce que : L’histoire démontre clairement que le fédéralisme canadien, tel qu’on le connaît, ne peut répondre aux aspirations du Québec et que les multiples tentatives de modifier les choses... se sont soldées par des échecs35. L’Université du Québec, l’une des universités québécoises les plus importantes pour ce qui est de la population étudiante, semble partager cette opinion. En effet, d’après elle, en dépit de la résistance acharnée du Québec, le gouvernement central:«amalgré tout réussi à instituer les modes d’intervention qui perturbent le développement des universités québécoises36. » D’ailleurs, ajoute-t-elle sans plus de démonstration, le « Canada anglais » n’a jamais rien compris au Québec : Le Québec constitue une société distincte. C’est là un fait avéré, que seules les instances politiques du Canada anglais s’obstinent à ne pas reconnaître37. On voit donc comment trois notions reviennent fréquemment pour rejeter et dénigrer tout ce qui a trait au Canada, au système fédéral et au gouvernement central : le Canada est une idée « imposée de force » aux francophones; le régime fédéral est essentiellement l’histoire d’un « échec » qui « étouffe » le Québec; le gouvernement central ne cherche qu’à « s’ingérer » dans ce qui ne le regarde pas et, en dépit de toute la vigilance des Québécois, ses interventions sont toujours « perturbantes. » D’un point de vue stratégique, ce type de discours peut aisément renforcer la voie sécessionniste préconisée par la Commission. Il est cependant important de noter que Léon Dion lui-même, qui préconisait la stratégie du « couteau sur la gorge », sentit le besoin de rappeler que : « contrairement à l’opinion reçue au Québec, le Canada est une fédération fortement décentralisée... » Il souligna également que le Québec avait bénéficié de son appartenance au Canada : Il ne faudrait pas oublier que les liens qui unissent le Québec au Canada lui ont été bénéfiques au cours de la décennie 1940 et de celles qui ont suivi38. Cette insistance sur la distanciation entre le Québec et le reste du Canada, qui semble au coeur du sentiment sécessionniste, se retrouve tant dans le mémoire de l’Université du Québec que dans ceux des centrales syndicales, des

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Chambres de commerce, du Mouvement des Caisses Desjardins, de l’Union des producteurs agricoles, des groupes de femmes des groupes de jeunes. Ces mémoires « oublient » régulièrement que c’est au sein du Canada que l’épanouissement du Québec s’est réalisé. De plus, souvent les intervenants sont tellement pris par leur propres problèmes qu’ils accordent peu ou pas de place à la question de l’heure, c’est- à-dire au statut constitutionnel du Québec. Professant leur foi en un Québec souverain, ils espèrent que celui-ci résoudra les problèmes qui leur tiennent à coeur. À titre d’exemple, le mémoire d’un groupe de centres de femmes affirme, sans aucune forme de démonstration, « qu’il ne fait aucun doute qu’un Québec indépendant est la solution à la sauvegarde de la langue et la culture39. » Cette confiance débordante ne les empêche pas cependant, deux pages plus loin de l’assortir de conditions : « Oui à un Québec souverain si... » Suit une très longue liste de revendications qui constitue l’essentiel du mémoire. Par exemple : UN QUÉBEC SOUVERAIN SI : Il met en place des mesures sociales adéquates favorisant la place des femmes dans la société... 40 Les auteures de ce mémoire imaginent un Québec indépendant doté d’un meilleur système de sécurité sociale. Dans un même élan de confiance, le Mouvement Desjardins imagine, lui, un Québec indépendant tout à fait en contradiction avec cette dernière vision. En effet, soutient-il, non seulement le Canada freine le Québec par sa rigidité et son incapacité de s’adapter au nouvel environnement international mais, en plus, ses programmes de sécurité sociale constituent un fardeau trop lourd à porter. Reconnaissant la générosité envers le Québec des programmes fédéraux dans ces domaines, le mémoire déplore cependant l’utilisation de sommes considérables à des fins si peu productives : Il faut souligner que ces dépenses ne font que soutenir le pouvoir d’achat de personnes démunies, de façon temporaire ou permanente, mais qu’elles sont loin d’être aussi productives, sur le plan économique, que des engagements consacrés à la recherche...41. Critiquant ainsi certains programmes d’assistance sociale, contrastant cette forme d’intervention du gouvernement central avec celle du gouvernement québécois, comme s’il s’agissait de deux pays distincts, le mémoire affirme que c’est l’encouragement des initiatives privées qui fut la source de l’expansion économique du Québec. Ce faisant, le Mouvement Desjardins passe sous silence deux aspects importants de cette question. Premièrement, s’il était souverain, c’est le Québec qui aurait eu à financer son système de sécurité sociale. Deuxièmement, la péréquation n’existant plus, ce système pourrait coûter plus cher au Québec surtout s’il décidait, par exemple, de répondre aux revendications du mémoire du groupe de femmes cité plus haut. Mémoire après mémoire, groupe après groupe, on retrouve cette même conviction qu’un Québec souverain solutionnerait ses propres problèmes.

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Pour les femmes, un Québec souverain aurait des programmes de sécurité sociale plus généreux; pour le Mouvement Desjardins, il élaguerait l’État- Providence. Pour la Chambre de Commerce, il encouragerait davantage la liberté des échanges; pour les associations syndicales, il ferait le contraire. Ce qui étonne, c’est non la divergence des solutions proposées, mais la convergence fréquente dans l’identification de la source des problèmes. Autant on attribue à la structure fédérale actuelle la cause de tous les maux, sans que les intervenants n’en ressentent une responsabilité quelconque, autant on proclame sa foi dans la dynamique sociale positive qui prévaudrait dans cet hypothétique État indépendant. D’autre part, comme on l’a noté plus haut, un autre sentiment alimente aussi les poussées sécessionnistes : la crainte de « disparaître ». On sait que sur le plan démographique, le Québec subit les effets négatifs conjugués de deux phénomènes : la dénatalité et l’émigration. Dans le passé, la « revanche des berceaux », encouragée par le clergé, a donné au Québec un des plus hauts taux de natalité de l’Occident. Mais comme le constate le démographe Henripin, les moeurs ont changé avec une rapidité foudroyante et les Québécois et les Québécoises se sont... lancés avec une rare hardiesse dans le recours à la méthode la plus destructrice de la nature : la stérilisation42. Mais peu importe la méthode, le fait est que le taux de fécondité du Québec est tombé de 3,78 en 1951 à 1,43 en 1986, soit un des taux de fertilité les plus bas du monde43. Bien que ce taux soit récemment remonté à 1,7, il se situe encore bien en dessous du taux minimal de 2,1 requis pour maintenir la population à son niveau actuel. C’est ce qui explique qu’une étude commanditée par le Conseil de la langue française prévoit que la part du Québec dans la population totale du Canada passera de 26,5 p. 100 en 1981 à 24,1 p. 100 en 202144. Il n’est pas étonnant que ces projections inquiètent les Québécois, et surtout les Québécois francophones. La décroissance démographique du Québec peut signifier une diminution de son poids politique et donc, possiblement, la perte de la vitalité du français en Amérique. Telle est la leçon que tirent, presque immanquablement, de nombreux organismes nationalistes. Le mémoire du Mouvement national des Québécois (section de Montréal) en est une frappante illustration. Près des deux tiers sont consacrés à ce problème qui, aux yeux de ce Mouvement, présente un double danger : d’abord sur le plan des relations externes du Québec avec ses voisins anglophones; danger également sur le plan interne, puisqu’un Québec vieillissant et stagnant serait moins productif et plus coûteux. S’appuyant sur des sources scientifiques fiables, les auteurs écrivent : Tous les signes apparaissent d’un rapide déclin démographique aux conséquences désastreuses.... [il faut] regarder en face le problème le plus troublant de notre histoire collective : celui de notre survie45. Notant la baisse du taux de natalité, les pertes du Québec en terme de migrations interprovinciales et le faible apport de l’immigration internationale, le mémoire ne camoufle pas le problème: Bref l’immigration est nécessaire mais pas suffisante. La natalité est nécessaire mais peu assurée.

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À ce problème bien réel, et fort complexe, analysé avec lucidité, les auteurs n’offrent comme solution que leur foi dans l’indépendance du Québec : Le Québec n’a pas le choix. S’il veut maîtriser son avenir, il lui faut rapidement disposer de tous les moyens d’un pays complet pour agir sur l’évolution de la population46. Ici, comme dans de nombreux autres mémoires, le lien entre le problème (par exemple, la crainte de disparaître), et la solution envisagée (la sécession), est affirmé plutôt qu’établi. Pour résumer cette première partie, rappelons qu’une diversité de sentiments sous-tendent les velléités sécessionnistes du Québec. D’une part, conscients de la fragilité du fait français et des progrès notoires du Québec francophone contemporain, nombreux sont les mémoires qui expriment simultanément la crainte des Québécois de disparaître et leur confiance en leur capacité de faire face à l’avenir tout seuls. D’autre part, le poids de la dette nationale, les déchirements internes autour de négociations constitutionnelles qui semblent sans issue et les nombreux autres problèmes auquels le Canada fait face légitiment la vieille habitude d’accuser « Ottawa » de tous les maux. On constate ainsi, dans la plupart des mémoires, une absence presque totale de référence aux bienfaits dérivés du Canada ainsi que du poids considérable dont jouit le Québec au sein de la fédération. Par exemple, le fait que, depuis plus d’un quart de siècle, le Premier ministre du Canada ait été québécois et que le Québec ait constitué l’axe central de la base électorale du parti au pouvoir n’occupe aucune place dans les analyses présentées. Au delà des faits, c’est la convergence de ces sentiments, et de beaucoup d’autres, qui accentue l’identification de nombreux Québécois à la « nation » québécoise et affaiblit le sentiment d’appartenance au Canada. Perçu, sinon comme un pays étranger, du moins comme une « super-structure politique » — dans les termes du premier ministre Bourassa —, le Canada doit ainsi faire tous les jours la preuve qu’il mérite de survivre. Alors que les sentiments affectifs sont canalisés vers le Québec, les calculs utilitaristes portent sur le Canada et son cadre fédéral. Il convient donc de voir si, aux yeux des experts consultés par la Commission, cette « super-structure » répond encore aux besoins et intérêts du Québec.

La voix des experts Examinons maintenant le point de vue des spécialistes consultés par la Commission Bélanger-Campeau. Ce sont les « documents de travail » numéro 1 et numéro 2 que nous privilégierons, car c’est surtout là que l’on trouve des analyses approfondies des questions touchant l’accession à l’indépendance. Le premier traite des questions économiques et le second, des questions juridiques, institutionnelles et démographiques. Nous examinerons d’abord les aspects « démolinguistiques » de la question, puis ses aspects économiques et, enfin, ceux d’ordre « juridique » et « institutionnel ». Les aspects démolinguistiques Comme nous l’avons vu, la « peur de disparaître » est étroitement liée au déclin de la population du Québec. Par contre, la solution préconisée, comme l’illustre le mémoire du Mouvement national des Québécois, est, elle, moins concrète et consiste souvent en un simple acte de foi dans l’indépendance du

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Québec. Comment les spécialistes consultés par la Commission analysent-ils cette question ? Cette tâche fut confiée à Marc Termote, démographe bien connu à l’INRS. Celui-ci confirme la possibilité très réelle du déclin démographique : Tous les auteurs de perspectives récentes semblent donc arriver à un consensus : si le « cours des choses » ne se modifie pas rapidement et drastiquement, les effectifs de la population québécoise (et montréalaise) devraient commencer à décroître au cours du prochain demi-siècle47. Poursuivant son analyse, il examine les trois principales sources d’accroissement de la population — la fécondité, l’immigration internationale et les flux migratoires inter-provinciaux — afin d’évaluer les effets de la baisse de population sur les divers groupes linguistiques du Québec. Concernant le taux de fécondité, Termote confirme qu’en dépit d’une légère hausse, celui-ci reste nettement inférieur au niveau requis pour assurer le maintien de la population. De ce fait, dit-il, « le groupe français du Québec a perdu ce qui représentait son seul atout démographique par rapport au groupe anglais48. » Du point de vue de l’immigration internationale, l’auteur note que celle-ci apporte peu au groupe francophone : environ 20 000 en cinq ans (en 1981- 1986)49. Quant aux flux migratoires interprovinciaux, trois facteurs importants affectent négativement l’évolution démographique du Québec. D’abord, le groupe anglophone ne cesse de décliner tant relativement qu’absolument. Ce déclin, amorcé depuis les années 1930, s’est grandement accentué entre 1976 et 1986, soit depuis l’arrivée au pouvoir du gouvernement sécessionniste du Parti québécois (de 12,8 p. 100 de la population en 1976 à 10,3 p. 100 en 198650). D’autre part, étant donné que ce sont les personnes âgées de 20 à 39 ans qui quittent le Québec, le groupe anglophone décline et veillit51. Enfin, l’apport, même faible, des immigrants se combine à un solde migratoire net en faveur des autres provinces. Termote ajoute un fait peu connu et bien surprenant : Les immigrants en provenance des pays francophones ne manifestent pas une propension plus élevée à rester au Québec, au contraire52. Non seulement le Québec n’attire pas assez d’immigrants, mais il n’arrive pas à les retenir, peu importe leur langue maternelle. Par ailleurs, Termote relève la très faible mobilité des francophones originaires du Québec contrairement à la grande mobilité des anglophones : Le Québec apparaît vraiment déconnecté du reste du Canada, sauf en ce qui concerne les anglophones (et encore est-ce pour en sortir...)53 Projetant toutes ces données vers l’avenir, il conclut : Selon toute probabilité, on parlera de plus en plus le français au Québec... Mais ce sont des Québécois de moins en moins nombreux qui le parleront54.

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Ainsi, l’analyse de Termote revèle que le vrai problème du Québec ne réside pas dans son « anglicisation », mais dans sa dépopulation. À ce grave problème, Termote n’offre pas de solution tranchée. Il se contente plutôt de suggérer quelques hypothèses qui pourraient faciliter la recherche de solutions. Premièrement, dit-il, même si le taux de fécondité remontait à des niveaux élevés et, hypothèse peu probable, s’y maintenait, « cela ne ferait que retarder de dix ans (2016) le début de la décroissance55. » Deuxièmement, même si l’immigration atteignait 42 000 personnes par an et qu’elle se maintenait à ce niveau, l’année 2016 marquerait toujours le début de la décroissance56. Selon Termote, le chiffre de 42 000 semble fort improbable, puisqu’il n’a été atteint que très rarement et seulement dans des périodes de forte expansion économique. L’étude scientifique rigoureuse de cet expert met en relief la complexité du problème qui se prête mal à une solution tranchée, comme celle que préconise la Société nationale des Québécois. C’est pourquoi Termote suggère qu’avant d’envisager des mesures draconiennes, le Québec devrait essayer, très sérieusement, d’enrayer l’exode de ses résidents : Un afflux majeur d’immigrants internationaux serait d’ailleurs moins nécessaire si l’on parvenait à au moins garder ceux que l’on a57. Alors que la voix des citoyens dictait un changement radical appuyé sur la foi en un Québec indépendant, la voix des experts évoque plutôt des réformes pondérées dans un climat social favorisant la tranquilité et la sécurité. La sécession favorise-t-elle la réalisation d’un tel climat social ? Pour répondre à cette question, tournons-nous de nouveau vers les spécialistes consultés par la Commission. Nous examinerons d’abord les questions d’ordre économique, puis celles d’ordre « juridique » et « institutionnel ». Les aspects économiques On évalue souvent les conséquences économiques de la sécession du Québec en répondant à deux types de questions : le Canada est-il « rentable»?un Québec souverain serait-il « viable » ? Ces questions lancent les débats sur de mauvaises pistes. En effet, l’une renvoie à une guerre de chiffres et donc à des interprétations inévitablement très élastiques de données très complexes. L’autre présuppose qu’il suffit d’avoir démontré la « viabilité » de la souveraineté pour avoir démontré sa nécessité. Or, de toute évidence, un Québec souverain serait viable. Nombreux sont les pays souverains qui disposent de ressources matérielles et humaines bien inférieures à celles du Québec. D’ailleurs, et fort justement, la question qui se posait à la Commission n’était pas de savoir si un Québec souverain serait viable, mais si l’on vivrait mieux ou moins bien dans un Québec souverain que dans le Québec actuel. Quel est son verdict ? Les analyses des spécialistes consultés par la Commission permettent d’entrevoir une réalité autre que celle qu’on trouve dans les mémoires mentionnés plus haut. L’étude de Pierre Fortin, un des chapitres clés du Document de travail numéro 1 sur l’économie, en est une bonne illustration. Examinons-le.

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Analysant le problème du chômage, Fortin note que même dans une bonne année, comme 1988, « le taux de chômage au Québec est demeuré parmi les plus élevés du continent (9,4 p. 100)58. » Il note également que la situation s’aggrave et que, de 1966 à 1989, la hausse du chômage était « deux fois plus importante que la dérive qu’a connue l’Ontario59. » Fortin cerne systématiquement les sources de l’accroissement du chômage, dont certaines, selon lui, pourraient être indirectement attribuables au cadre fédéral. C’est ainsi qu’il déplore, par exemple, l’accès plus facile aux prestations d’assurance-chômage résultant de la refonte, en 1971, de la loi fédérale : Cette loi a considérablement allégé les conditions d’accès aux indemnités-chômage et fait augmenté... la fréquence et la durée du chômage... 60 Fortin déplore également une autre source de chômage sous contrôle fédéral : « la persistance du chômage engendrée par la lutte incessante contre l’inflation61. » Cependant, parmi les nombreuses autres causes qu’il signale, certaines, selon lui, ne sont attribuables qu’au Québec, notamment l’effet « locomotive » de la hausse du salaire minimum, « la poussée des salaires de 1970 à 1980 dans les conventions collectives du secteur public62, » ainsi que l’exode de l’élite anglophone de Montréal qui aurait « accentué les difficultés de la métropole63. » Le portrait complexe et subtil qui se dégage de cette étude ne ressemble guère à celui des nombreux mémoires qui, comme on l’a vu, attribuent automatiquement tous les maux québécois au fédéralisme canadien à moins, bien sûr, que l’on ne suppose qu’un Québec indépendant s’en tirerait en réduisant les prestations d’assurance-chômage et en abandonnant la lutte contre l’inflation. On trouve ces solutions simplistes dans certains mémoires (la première émanant souvent des milieux d’affaires, la deuxième, du monde syndical et des groupes populaires). Au contraire, Fortin présente une analyse rigoureuse et équilibrée. Tout au long du texte, Fortin met en relief le poids de ce qu’il appelle les « causes structurelles » du chômage. Selon lui, un Québec souverain, même s’il gérait d’une manière autonome sa politique monétaire et son taux de change, ne parviendrait pas « à maintenir le plein emploi de ses travailleurs dans le contexte inflationniste contemporain, puisque le chômage québécois est en partie élevé pour des raisons structurelles importantes64. » Toute l’analyse de fond du texte, développée dans les deux parties centrales du document, l’une intitulée « La photo » et l’autre « Le film », soit cinquante des soixante-quatorze pages, est consacrée à l’étude de ces causes structurelles. Ainsi, l’image qui se dégage de la lecture de ce document, c’est que la sécession ne constitue pas la solution au problème du chômage, puisque ces « causes structurelles » perdureraient. De plus, advenant la sécession, Fortin souligne, à plusieurs reprises, la nécessité pour le Québec d’établir des relations étroites avec le Canada et les États-Unis « en raison de sa forte intégration financière et commerciale au continent65. » En conclusion de cette analyse, Pierre Fortin note en passant que : « Bien que le fait soit encore peu connu, nous avons vécu depuis 1982 au Québec une forme spontanée d’action directe sur les salaires et les prix66. » Au Québec, affirme-t-

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il, sans avoir au préalable développé cette idée dans les sections analytiques, les syndicats et les entreprises ont déjà fait preuve d’esprit de modération et de conciliation. De plus, ajoute-t-il, toujours sans autre forme de preuve, l’esprit communautaire des Québécois s’épanouira encore plus dans un Québec indépendant et leur permettra de résoudre leurs problèmes mieux que le reste du Canada : Il n’est pas évident que la dynamique socio-politique canadienne se prêterait facilement à ce type de pratique. Mais l’esprit communautaire qui caractérise le Québec augmenterait certainement les chances de réussite d’une telle démarche chez nous67. Après un diagnostic très rigoureux du problème, Fortin évoque comme remède « l’esprit communautaire » des Québécois. Ce contraste entre la grande rigueur de l’analyse et la solution souhaitée est d’autant plus surprenant qu’il affirme, par ailleurs, que la politique canadienne des années soixante-dix du contrôle des prix et des salaires « a produit de bons résultats en permettant au taux d’inflation de baisser68. » Ainsi, selon Fortin lui-même, « l’esprit communautaire » a déjà fait ses preuves dans l’ensemble du Canada et ne distingue donc pas le Québec du reste du Canada. Par ailleurs, Pierre Fortin affirmait : Mon mémoire à la Commission vise précisément à démontrer... que la menace de souveraineté politique brandie par nos concitoyens est parfaitement crédible sur le plan économique et qu’il faut la prendre au sérieux69. Mais, comme on l’a vu, la « crédibilité économique » de la sécession n’a pas vraiment été établie dans la cinquantaine de pages d’analyse, elle a plutôt été évoquée en quelques lignes en conclusion. Pierre Fortin a peut-être contribué à rendre « la menace » plus crédible. Il est impossible d’examiner ici tout le Document de travail numéro 1 sur l’économie. Soulignons cependant que bien que la « viabilité » d’un Québec indépendant ne soit jamais mise en doute, immanquablement tous les auteurs soulignent la nécessité absolue du maintien de liens très étroits avec le reste du Canada. Par exemple, dans le chapitre 2, produit par le secrétariat de la Commission, on lit que l’espace économique canadien dans lequel le Québec est fortement ancré sert bien les intérêts des Québécois. Les auteurs rappellent, par exemple, le fait bien connu que l’industrie laitière du Québec, un des piliers de son économie, bénéficie grandement du cadre politique canadien70. Le secrétariat ajoute en outre que le Québec « est la province dont les industries manufacturières sont les plus protégées par la politique commerciale canadienne71. » On apprend d’ailleurs que l’intégration du Québec aux marchés canadien et américain est si profonde que celui-ci aurait tout intérêt, advenant sa sécession, à calquer sa politique monétaire sur celle du Canada. Autrement, « il verrait rapidement sa monnaie se déprécier, son inflation et ses taux d’intérêts augmenter72. » En fait, le secrétariat n’hésite pas à recommander tout simplement que le Québec « poursui[ve] l’utilisation d’une monnaie commune73. » Ces faits, parmi bien d’autres, l’amènent à recommander avec vigueur le maintien de liens très étroits entre le Québec et ses voisins :

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Le maintien de l’accès [aux marchés du Canada et des États-Unis] est une condition essentielle à la prospérité économique du Québec, et ce, quel que soit son statut politique et constitutionnel74. Dans un autre texte analysant « Les options monétaires d’un Québec souverain », l’auteur, Bernard Fortin, montre que l’adoption d’une monnaie québécoise produirait des coûts « non négligeables » qui, précise-t-il, « auraient tendance à s’accroître avec le degré d’indépendance monétaire du Québec vis-à-vis le Canada75. » Ainsi, plus le Québec s’éloigne du Canada plus les coûts augmentent. C’est ce qui amène l’auteur à recommander une union monétaire avec le Canada76. Daniel Racette reprend cette même idée dans un autre chapitre, mais cette fois sous l’angle de l’accès aux marchés financiers. Notant la grande mobilité des capitaux dans le monde contemporain, ainsi que la concurrence intense des divers marchés financiers, l’auteur insiste sur la nécessité pour le Québec de s’entendre avec le reste du Canada. Un nouvel État québécois aurait tout avantage, affirme-t-il, à adhérer [à une entente avec le reste du Canada] pour bénéficier dès le départ de la crédibilité que cette entente permettra77. Texte après texte toutes les recommandations vont dans le même sens. Le Québec devrait s’employer à maintenir le marché commun avec le Canada. Il devrait adopter sa monnaie, sa politique monétaire, sa politique financière, et ainsi de suite. On s’aperçoit même que, advenant la sécession, le traité de libre- échange avec les États-Unis et le Mexique, si souvent perçu comme essentiel au développement économique du Québec, ne s’appliquerait pas automatiquement ni dans les mêmes conditions. C’est ce que le secrétariat concède dans un style assez hermétique : Il y a donc tout lieu de croire qu’en l’absence d’un accord entre les États-Unis et le Canada pour modifier l’Accord de libre-échange existant en vue d’y intégrer le Québec, il ne saurait être question, pour ce dernier, d’une succession d’États de plein droit. Il n’est pas impossible cependant que l’Accord devienne applicable au Québec...78 Et c’est ainsi que texte après texte, on retrouve les mêmes mises en garde : advenant la souveraineté du Québec, la première tâche de ce nouvel État devrait être... de rétablir des liens très étroits avec le Canada ! Ou d’assumer des « coûts de transition » élevés. Pierre Fortin traite de cette dernière « option » avec humour dans un texte moins spécialisé intitulé « Le passage à la souveraineté et le déficit budgétaire du Québec ». Examinant les effets du partage de la dette fédérale advenant la sécession du Québec, Fortin évalueà7p.100duPIBledéficit budgétaire du nouvel État, déficit qui serait « le plus élevé des grands pays industriels avancés, à l’exception de l’Italie79; » ce qui l’amène à adresser des mises en garde très sévères aux gestionnaires des fonds publics. Il recommande en particulier, un « vigoureux programme de rationalisation budgétaire » et des réductions des dépenses de l’ordre de trois milliards de dollars. « L’État québécois devrait être maigre et souple, le plus rapidement possible », souligne-t-il :

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Bref, le « party de l’indépendance » devrait être limité à une seule nuit et il faudrait avoir, au préalable, envoyé en détention préventive les politiciens patriotards portés à la dépense somptuaire80. Vu la propension de la fonction publique québécoise, comme peut-être celle de tout État, de grossir allègrement, et vu les promesses du Parti québécois d’absorber les quelque dizaines de milliers de fonctionnaires fédéraux québécois advenant la sécession cette remarque laisse perplexe. Comme nous venons de le voir, le Document de travail numéro 1, qui tente de déterminer si l’économie québécoise serait mieux gérée et plus prospère advenant la sécession, n’aboutit certainement pas à une conclusion tranchée en faveur de cette option. En fait, ce document établit plutôt que cette option, qui impliquerait des « coûts de transition » probablement élevés, serait possible. Néanmoins, tous les experts consultés soulignent la nécessité, advenant la sécession, du maintien de relations très harmonieuses et très serrées avec le Canada. Le maintien de telles relations est tenu pour acquis dans les milieux nationalistes québécois. L’idée que le Québec ne rencontrerait pas d’obstacles dans l’établissement de rapports sereins avec le Canada et ses autres voisins repose sur le postulat dit de la « rationalité économique ». Autrement dit, pour protéger leurs propres intérêts, les partenaires économiques traditionnels du Québec, devenus des États frontaliers, ne refuseraient pas une telle collaboration. Est-ce un modèle valable ? « Non », affirme l’ASDEQ, l’Association des économistes québécois dans son mémoire à la Commission : Cette définition d’un comportement « rationnel » en situation de choix interdépendant constitue une grossière simplification. Tous ceux qui sont familiers avec la théorie des jeux en percevront immédiatement les faiblesses81. Pour ces économistes, advenant la sécession, il n’est pas du tout « rationnel » de penser qu’un climat idyllique de coopération prévaudrait. Évoquant toute la série de désaccords qui ont marqué l’histoire récente du Canada, ils affirment que rien dans cette histoire ne prédispose à la coopération : « Tout, au contraire, suggère des stratégies d’affrontement82. » Or, pour eux, l’existence d’un climat favorable à la coopération constitue la condition si ne qua non du bien- être des Québécois. C’est ce qui amène ces économistes, triés sur le volet, à affirmer qu’advenant la sécession du Québec, « le rôle des considérations non économiques doit donc être — et sera — déterminant83. » Car à leurs yeux, « l’essentiel tient à la présence ou l’absence d’un climat de coopération, de confiance mutuelle au moment où les choix stratégiques sont effectués84. » Pour évaluer « la présence ou l’absence d’un climat de coopération » advenant la sécession du Québec, tournons-nous, une dernière fois, vers les spécialistes consultés par la Commission. Les aspects juridiques et institutionnels Le chapitre 1 du Document de travail numéro 2 (plus de 100 page rédigées par José Woerhling) analyse très soigneusement toute une série de questions relatives à la nature du climat qui prévaudrait advenant la sécession du Québec. L’auteur présente deux scénarios possibles : accession à l’indépendance avec

303 IJCS/RIÉC l’approbation et la collaboration du Canada; sécession sans l’accord du Canada. On pourrait croire que la première option pose si peu de problèmes qu’elle ne mérite pas notre attention, mais tel n’est pas le cas. L’auteur note, tout d’abord, qu’en cas de sécession, : la situation du Québec serait véritablement unique, puisqu’il s’agirait du seul cas contemporain de sécession d’un État membre d’une fédération faisant partie des démocraties libérales et des pays développés et riches85. C’est, comme on l’a vu plus haut, ce qui étonnait Francis Fukuyama. De plus, nous apprenons que cette situation serait non seulement unique mais illégale, puisqu’aucune disposition constitutionnelle canadienne ne prévoit la sécession d’une province. Il faudrait donc qu’au préalable la Constitution du Canada soit amendée de manière à reconnaître le principe de la sécession. Selon l’auteur, dans la meilleure hypothèse, une telle modification pourrait se faire en vertu de l’article 38 de la loi constitutionnelle de 1982 n’exigeant qu’une majorité des deux tiers des provinces. Aucune démarche propre au Québec, y compris un référendum, ne peut contourner cette barrière : Le fait qu’un gouvernement provincial sécessionniste obtienne l’appui de la population provinciale lors d’un référendum ne changerait rien aux données juridiques du problème86. Nous apprenons ainsi que le référendum sur la sécession recommandé par la Commission n’aurait aucun poids légal. Mais nous apprenons aussi qu’une sécession légale du Québec exigerait qu’au préalable le gouvernement fédéral ainsi que sept des dix provinces canadiennes acceptent d’amender la Constitution. Considérant, comme le souligne très justement l’auteur, « l’extraordinaire complexité et la très grande rigidité de la procédure de modification de la Constitution du Canada », le défi serait de taille. Comme d’autre part une telle modification introduirait au sein de la Constitution un mécanisme désintégratif autorisant la sécession de toute autre province, cette première barrière semble, à toutes fins pratiques, infranchissable. Mais on se rend vite compte que là n’est pas le seul problème. En effet, dit l’auteur, même dans l’hypothèse d’une sécession « approuvée par le Canada anglais et réalisée en respectant la Constitution canadienne... les questions à résoudre resteront nombreuses et complexes87. » C’est à l’analyse de ces questions, que l’auteur se consacre. Selon Woerhling, l’un des problèmes les plus épineux a trait aux droits des peuples autochtones qui « soulèveraient sûrement des difficultés particulières88. » En effet, non seulement le Québec devrait-il respecter leurs droits, y compris leurs droits territoriaux, mais de plus il devrait s’adapter au fait que ces peuples autochtones voudront, très probablement, maintenir des liens avec le gouvernement fédéral. Le Québec ne pouvant s’y opposer, la coopération entre le Québec et le Canada devient essentielle. C’est pourquoi l’auteur suggère « un accord Québec-Canada confiant à un organisme mixte... le soin d’entendre et de trancher les litiges89. » Ainsi, pour les affaires autochtones, un Québec indépendant devrait très vite partager sa souveraineté avec le Canada.

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En fait, plus on avance dans la lecture de ce texte, plus on se rend compte de l’extrême complexité du processus d’accession à l’indépendance et plus augmente le nombre de sphères dans lesquelles le Québec devrait partager sa souveraineté avec le Canada. Par exemple, contrairement à ce qu’on pourrait croire, un Québec indépendant ne pourrait pas, à sa guise, abandonner toute la législation relevant du gouvernement fédéral qui s’appliquait à son territoire en tant que province. Toutes les causes en cours dans les tribunaux d’obédience fédérale exigeraient une étroite collaboration entre les deux États. Ce n’est qu’ainsi qu’on éviterait le recours à « des principes complexes tirés du droit international90. » De plus, prévient l’auteur, un vide juridique dans des champs aussi importants que le droit criminel et le système bancaire, présentement de compétence fédérale, pourrait engendrer une situation chaotique. Pour l’éviter, l’auteur propose bien plus qu’une simple collaboration avec le Canada, puisqu’il suggère que le Québec garde les lois fédérales qui lui sont utiles : Il faudrait donc que l’Assemblée nationale adopte, dès l’accession à la souveraineté, une loi stipulant que... les lois fédérales existantes continueraient de s’appliquer au Québec91. Mais là ne s’arrête pas l’étroite collaboration entre les deux nouveaux États. Abordant la question délicate et très complexe de la citoyenneté, l’auteur note le fait bien évident que tous les citoyens canadiens domiciliés au Québec devraient recevoir la citoyenneté québécoise. Mais il laisse entendre, en plus, que les Québécois pourraient conserver la citoyenneté canadienne : Il serait préférable que le Québec et le Canada s’entendent... quant à la citoyenneté et à un éventuel droit d’option des personnes affectées par le changement de souveraineté92. Que les Québécois veuillent le meilleur des deux mondes, on le comprend. Mais pourquoi le Canada accorderait-il aux Québécois le droit de demeurer des Canadiens et donc de bénéficier des avantages politiques, institutionnels et sociaux que confère la citoyenneté du pays qu’ils auraient rejeté ? L’auteur, probablement conscient de l’improbalitié de cette option, se contente d’ailleurs de dire qu’une telle entente serait « préférable ». Woehrling identifie, en outre, toute une série de problèmes de divers ordres requérant une très étroite collaboration entre le Québec et le Canada, tels le sort des fonctionnaires fédéraux en poste au Québec, le sort des députés québécois au Parlement canadien, la disposition des biens fédéraux situés au Québec, la répartition des dettes, la succession aux traités, l’admission dans les organismes internationaux, et ainsi de suite. Pour résoudre ces problèmes : Dans tous les cas, il vaut évidemment mieux que la situation soit réglée par des accords bilatéraux de succession, afin d’éviter le plus possible les litiges après l’indépendance93. Mais en plus de cette étroite collaboration sur le plan interne, l’aide du Canada serait également requise sur le plan des relations internationales. En effet, l’auteur nous rappelle que le Québec ne serait pas automatiquement admis au sein des organisations internationales auxquelles appartient le Canada :

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La règle générale est que tout État nouveau doit demander son admission et se soumettre aux procédures habituelles d’acceptation de sa candidature94. Le même principe régirait l’admissibilité du Québec aux traités internationaux négociés par le Canada. Ainsi, par exemple, les termes du traité de libre- échange nord-américain devraient être renégociés avec les États-Unis et le Mexique. Comme nous l’avons vu plus haut, Woerhling confirme de la sorte ce que le secrétariat de la Commission avait déjà établi à ce sujet. Or, il convient de rappeler que ce traité était fort apprécié par la plupart des élites québécoises. Woerhling note qu’un nouveau traité désavantagerait probablement le Québec, entre autres, parce que sa négociation inclurait de nouveaux intervenants : Le Canada et le Québec pourraient signer un accord de dévolution... Cependant, un tel accord ne pourrait pas être imposé aux États tiers sans leur consentement95. C’est pour toutes ces raisons que Woerhling souligne que la collaboration du Canada serait essentielle pour aider le Québec à se faire une place au soleil international : Les autorités fédérales pourraient assister grandement le Québec dans son entrée sur la scène internationale96. Reprenons, en conclusion, l’analyse du scénario 1 de Woerhling, laquelle suppose une collaboration des plus harmonieuses entre le Canada et le Québec tant avant qu’après la sécession. Le premier geste requis du Canada serait l’amendement de sa constitution de façon à accorder au Québec, et à toute autre province, le droit à la sécession. Une fois la Constitution modifiée, le Canada devrait aider le Québec à régler la question autochtone et à tempérer les revendications territoriales qui s’y rattachent. Cela fait, le Canada devrait permettre au Québec de conserver, à sa guise, toutes les lois fédérales et pour aussi longtemps qu’il le voudrait. Le Canada devrait également collaborer avec le Québec pour éviter un vide juridique et le chaos qui peut en découler. Cette étroite collaboration devrait s’étendre également au partage de la dette, à la répartition des biens publics, à la réintégration des fonctionnaires fédéraux travaillant au Québec, à la renégociation des traités internationaux, à l’admission du Québec aux organismes internationaux... Et, pour finir, le Canada devrait accorder aux nouveaux Québécois qui auraient rejeté leur pays le droit de rester Canadiens avec les privilèges qui s’y rattachent. Nous voyons donc que même selon le scénario d’une collaboration étroite du Canada — cas plutôt rare dans l’histoire récente des relations entre le Québec et le reste du Canada — la situation du nouvel État demeurerait fragile. Il est donc inutile de considérer ici le deuxième scénario de Woerhling, pourtant nettement plus probable, d’une sécession sans l’accord du Canada. L’analyse de Woerhling constitue un complément indispensable à celle des questions d’ordre économique présentée plus haut et, notamment, à la mise en garde servie dans le mémoire de l’ASDEQ. Rappelons que selon ce groupe d’économistes québécois de renom, incluant Pierre Fortin et André Raynauld, la faisabilité de la sécession dépend en dernière analyse de considérations non économiques. « L’essentiel, affirmaient-ils, tient à la présence ou l’absence

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d’un climat de coopération, de confiance mutuelle97. » Woerhling a montré l’improbabilité d’une telle occurrence. On peut donc conclure que les analyses des experts ne justifient pas les risques d’une sécession.

Stratégie et politique : les lendemains d’une Commission On a vu que la recommandation à « deux voies » de la Commission — la transformation « en profondeur » du fédéralisme canadien ou un référendum sur la sécession — ne constituait en réalité qu’une stratégie de négociation. Cette dimension proprement politique de la mission de la Commission Bélanger-Campeau est soigneusement notée par Woerhling lui-même dans la présentation de son rapport où il met en relief deux éléments. Premièrement, comme Fortin, il affirme qu’une des principales, sinon l’unique fonction, de la Commission consiste à renforcer la main du Québec dans ses négociations avec le reste du Canada : La Commission sur l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec a été créée notamment pour rechercher les moyens d’instaurer un nouveau rapport de force entre le Québec et le Canada anglais, afin de dénouer l’impasse créée par l’échec de l’Accord du lac Meech98. Deuxièmement, il souligne, à plusieurs reprises, la prépondérance des facteurs politiques. Pour utiliser sa terminologie, la « légitimité des positions en présence » prend le pas sur leur stricte « légalité », puisque, selon lui, pour les institutions démocratiques la « volonté populaire constitue leur justification et le véritable moteur de leur fonctionnement99. » Parallèlement, dit-il, « cette même réalité se constate dans l’application du droit international qui est fondé sur le principe de l’efficacité vaut titre100. » Ainsi, pour que la démarche sécessionniste réussisse, tant sur le plan interne que sur le plan externe, il faut, selon Woerhling, qu’essentiellement deux conditions « politiques » soient satisfaites. Premièrement, il faut que tous les changements au statut politique du Québec «soient endossés par une majorité suffisante de la population québécoise, de préférence à l’occasion d’un référendum » et, deuxièmement, il faut que le Québec s’assure de la collaboration du reste du Canada, tant avant qu’après la réalisation de ce changement. En dernier ressort, la « faisabilité » de la sécession, ou de tout autre changement de statut constitutionnel, relève de considérations d’ordre « politique ». Très clairement, Woerhling relance la balle dans le camp des politiciens : Il convient de souligner au départ que la mise en oeuvre du droit constitutionnel et du droit international est fortement conditionnée par des facteurs politiques tenant à la primauté des faits, aux rapports de force et à la légitimité des positions en présence101. On comprend donc l’échec de la stratégie de négociations axée sur la Commission Bélanger-Campeau : le gouvernement prit la balle au bond. En effet, plus avançait la date du référendum, plus il devenait clair que le premier ministre Bourassa, qui avait certainement scruté attentivement les travaux de la Commission et qui connaissait fort bien les enjeux, ne voulait à aucun prix faire la sécession. De plus, il devenait également clair que la majorité des Québécois n’auraient pas dit « Oui»àlasécession102. Coincé par sa stratégie du « couteau sur la gorge », le gouvernement Bourassa en était

307 IJCS/RIÉC réduit à chercher une entente à tout prix. Selon le célèbre dossier publié par L’Actualité,leler novembre 1992, Bourassa aurait dit lui-même au premier ministre Mulroney : Je suis coincé... Ou je reporte le référendum, et je me fais accuser de ne pas respecter ma parole et de tricher avec l’histoire, ou je fais un référendum auquel les Québécois ne sont pas prêts...103 Là se trouve la réponse au « mystère » évoqué par Léon Dion qui s’étonnait que Bourassa ait laissé s’échapper « le triple rapport de force qu’il avait entre les mains ». Bourassa savait que cette stratégie s’était retournée contre lui. Si la Commission Bélanger-Campeau a échoué sur le plan stratégique, elle a toutefois réussi à renforcer l’idée même de sécession au Québec. En effet, lorsque pendant des mois, se déplaçant à travers la province, elle a prêté l’oreille à tous ceux qui avaient matière à se plaindre, elle a canalisé leurs revendications dans le sens de la sécession. Après tout, la souveraineté du Québec, présentée comme souhaitable et imminente, devenait la réponse à tous les problèmes. En favorisant ainsi l’expression de tels sentiments, pour les utiliser à des fins stratégiques, le Parti libéral du Québec a réussi à légitimer la raison d’être de son adversaire : le Parti québécois. D’ailleurs, ce Parti, voué à la sécession, entend utiliser à ses propres fins la dynamique déclenchée par la Commission. En effet, comme on peut le lire dans un document distribué aux médias, ce Parti se promet d’utiliser toutes les occasions pour reconstruire « le formidable consensus établi dans la société québécoise au cours des travaux de la commission Bélanger-Campeau. » Ce « formidable consensus », c’est le gouvernement fédéraliste de Robert Bourassa qui l’a offert au Parti québécois; sur un plateau d’argent. Et c’est ainsi que, par le biais de la Commission « Bélanger-Campeau » s’unirent, dans un même élan, la stratégie d’un parti fédéraliste et les visées d’un parti indépendantiste pour ajouter une pierre de plus à la construction de l’idée de sécession au Québec.

Notes 1. C’est dans le cadre d’un séminaire sur le nationalisme, à Laval, que les thèmes analysés ici ont germé. Comme toujours, je dois donc beaucoup à mes étudiants. Je tiens également à remercier Jean-Pierre Derriennic, Stéphane Dion et William Johnson pour leurs commentaires sur une première version de ce texte. Merci également aux rédacteurs ainsi qu’aux évaluateurs anonymes de cette revue. Merci enfin, et surtout, à Monique, sans qui ce texte n’aurait pas vu le jour. 2. La situation canadienne constituant un cas d’espèce, elle étonne de nombreux observateurs. Francis Fukuyama, par exemple, y voit même une sorte de test des valeurs démocratiques et libérales face aux pressions du nationalisme ethno-culturel : The best test case of this in the world right now is Quebec... This is because Quebec is a subdivision within a prosperous and stable liberal democratic country... The breakup of Canada along national lines would be an interesting piece of evidence concerning the adequacy of modern liberal democracy. (Journal of Democracy, octobre 1992, p. 28) 3. « Pour sortir de l’impasse constitutionnelle » Document de travail, numéro 4. Les avis des spécialistes invités à répondre aux huit questions posées par la Commission, Québec, 1991, p. 279. 4. La Presse, ler octobre 1992, p. B3.

308 La Commission Bélanger-Campeau et la construction de l’idée de sécession au Québec

5. « Quebec Beyond the Federal Regime of 1867-1982: From Distinct Society to National Community » dans R. Watts et D. Brown, éd. Options for a New Canada, University of Toronto Press, 1991, p. 103. 6. Ibid., p. 105. 7. Presque tous les sondages montrent que la période de juin à octobre 1990, immédiatement « après Meech », marque le faîte de la vague sécessionniste. Les sondages Angus-Reid du 20 juillet, par exemple, ou de Léger-Léger de la fin octobre 1990 ou encore l’étude d’Édouard Cloutier et de ses collaborateurs, Le virage, (Québec/Amérique, 1992) indiquent tous la même tendance. Selon la formulation de la question, entre 50 et 64 % des Québécois favorisaient la sécession. 8. Rapport de la Commission sur l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec, Québec, mars 1991, p. 17. 9. Ibid., p. 18. 10. Ibid., p. 20. 11. Ibid., p. 24. 12. Ibid., p. 24 13. Ibid., p. 35 14. Ibid., p. 31. C’est moi qui souligne. 15. Ibid., p. 58. 16. Ibid., p. 84. 17. Ibid., p. 60. 18. Ibid., p. 81. 19. Ibid., p. 83. C’est moi qui souligne. 20. Ibid., p. 96. 21. Ibid., p. 92 22. Cet épisode et ce sentiment ont été longuement analysés dans M. Nemni, « Le ‘dés’accord du Lac Meech et la construction de l’imaginaire symbolique des Québécois », paru dans L. Balthazar, G. Laforest, V. Lemieux, Le Québec et la restructuration du Canada, 1980- 1992 : enjeux et perspectives, Québec, Septentrion, pp. 167-197. Une étude plus succincte de cette même question a paru dans le Queen’s Quarterly, vol. 99, no 1, printemps, 1992. 23. « Explaining Quebec Nationalism » dans R. Kent Weaver The Collapse of Canada ?, Washington, D .C., The Brookings Institution, 1992, p. 78. 24. « Les enjeux économiques de la souveraineté, » octobre 1990, pp. 37-38. 25. On retrouve ces données non seulement dans les documents de la Commission mais aussi dans les statistiques gouvernementales. Voir, par exemple, Le Québec statistique,59e édition, Gouvernement du Québec, 1989. 26. Rapport de la Commission sur l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec, Québec, mars 1991, pp. 18-19. 27. L’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec : sa dimension économique, Montréal, 1er novembre 1990, p. 9 28. Ibid., p. 13. 29. Ibid., p. 11. 30. Ibid., p. 2. 31. Moins de discours, plus d’action, 2 novembre 1990, p. 4. 32. Ibid., p. 5. 33. Un choix clair pour la CSN : L’indépendance du Québec, novembre 1990, p. 14. 34. Centrale de l’enseignement du Québec (CEQ), Indépendance nationale et souveraineté populaire, novembre 1990, p. 37. 35. Les jeunes et l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec, novembre 1990, p. 25. 36. Ibid. 37. Mémoire de l’Université du Québec à la Commission parlementaire sur l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec, 31 octobre 1990, p .2. 38. « Pourquoi je voterai Non », dans La Presse, 1er octobre 1992, p. B3. 39. Centres de femmes du Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean-Chibougamau, Mémoire soumis à la Commission sur l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec, octobre 1990, p. 3. 40. Ibid., p. 5. 41. Ibid., p. 19. 42. Naître ou ne pas être, Québec, Institut québécois de recherche sur la culture, 1989, p. 78.

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43. Ibid., p. 73. 44. Marc Termote et Danielle Gauvreau, La situation démolinguistique du Québec, Éditeur officiel du Québec, 1988, p. 253. 45. Sans les moyens d’un pays complet, le Québec français ne fera bientôt plus le poids, novembre 1990, pp 23-24. Rappelons que cette question fit une entrée très remarquée dans l’univers médiatique, en hiver 1989, lorsque parut le documentaire Disparaître de l’Office national du film. Mme Lise Payette, ex-ministre au sein du gouvernement Lévesque, présentait la dénalité comme la principale menace au fait français, et l’immigration comme un mal nécessaire vu la difficulté « d’assimiler » ces nouveaux arrivants. 46. Ibid., p. 47. 47. « L’évolution démolinguistique du Québec et du Canada », Éléments d’analyse institutionnelle, juridique et démolinguistique pertinents à la révision du statut politique et constitutionnel du Québec, Document de travail numéro 2, Québec, 1991, p. 270. 48. Ibid., p. 256. 49. Ibid., p. 254. 50. Ibid., p. 239. 51. Ibid., p. 247. 52. Ibid., p. 273. 53. Ibid., p. 253. 54. Ibid., p. 276. 55. Ibid., p. 271. 56. Ibid., p. 270. 57. Ibid., p. 273. 58. « La question de l’emploi au Québec : la photo et le film », chapitre 4, Éléments d’analyse économique pertinents à la révision du statut politique et constitutionnel du Québec, Document de travail numéro 1, Québec, 1991, p. 167. 59. Ibid., p. 169. 60. Ibid., p. 231. 61. Ibid., p. 170. 62. Ibid., p. 172. 63. Ibid., p. 231. 64. Ibid., p. 176. 65. Ibid., p. 176. 66. Ibid., p. 234. 67. Ibid., p. 237. 68. Ibid., p. 235. 69. « Le choix forcé du Québec : aspects économiques et stratégiques » Document de travail numéro 4, p. 342. 70. Secrétariat de la Commission sur l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec, « L’accès du Québec aux marchés extérieurs et à l’espace économique canadien », Document de travail numéro 1, p. 45. 71. Ibid., p. 45. 72. Ibid., p. 40. 73. Ibid., p. 41. 74. Ibid., p. 50. 75. Ibid., Bernard Fortin, p. 287. 76. Ibid., p. 299. 77. « Intégration financière internationale et interdépendances des politiques macro- économiques nationales » dans ibid., p. 273. 78. Op. cit., p. 35, mes italiques. Notons, que la Commission admet là ce que de nombreux spécialistes, surtout anglophones, ont maintes fois répété. Voir, par exemple, les travaux du John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy et, notamment, Robin W. Boadway et al., éd., Economic Dimensions of Constitutional Change, deux volumes, Kingston (Ont.), Queens’s University Press, 1991. Voir également The Gazette du 1er octobre 1992, qui cite de hautes autorités américaines confirmant ce fait. 79. Dans Alain-G. Gagnon et François Rocher, Répliques aux détracteurs de la souveraineté du Québec, Montréal, VLB éditeur, 1992, p. 457. 80. Ibid., p. 458.

310 La Commission Bélanger-Campeau et la construction de l’idée de sécession au Québec

81. ASDEQ, Mémoire à la Commission sur l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec, novembre 1990, p. 40. Ce mémoire, approuvé par l’association, est le fruit des délibérations de sept économistes issus de divers milieux québécois. Parmi les auteurs, notons la participation de Pierre Fortin et d’André Raynauld. 82. Ibid., p. 41. 83. Ibid., p. 39. 84. Ibid., p. 41. 85. « Les aspects juridiques de la redéfinition du statut politique et constitutionnel du Québec », Le rapport de la Commission sur l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec, Éléments d’analyse institutionnelle, juridique et démolinguistique pertinents à la révision du statut politique et constitutionnel du Québec. Document de travail numéro 2, Québec, ler trimestre 1991, p. 81. 86. Ibid., p. 57. 87. Ibid., p. 60. 88. Ibid., p. 64. 89. Ibid., p. 64. 90. Ibid., p. 69. 91. Ibid., p. 68. 92. Ibid., p. 70. 93. Ibid., p. 74. 94. Ibid., p. 78. 95. Ibid., p. 77. 96. Ibid., p. 80. 97. Op. cit., p. 40. 98. Op. cit., p .2. 99. Ibid., p. 1 100. Ibid., p. 2. 101. Ibid., p. 1. 102. Un sondage très fiable du Centre de recherches sur l’opinion publique, effectué pour La Presse et le réseau TVA, établit une chute considérable de l’option souverainiste (dans sa version « molle ») de 64 % en novembre 1990 à 40 % en octobre 1992. 103. L’Actualité,ler novembre 1992, p. 71. Ce dossier, basé sur des documents secrets obtenus par ce périodique, parut quelques jours avant le référendum du 26 octobre 1992. Il contribua, très probablement, à la défaite du camp du « Oui » de Bourassa ainsi qu’à la chute de sa cote personnelle de popularité. 104. La Presse, 15 janvier 1993, p. A8.

311 Review Essays Essais critiques Michael Oliver

The Impact of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism on Constitutional Thought and Practice in Canada

Abstract The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism had an immediate impact on the status and use of the two official languages of Canada, especially at the federal level of administration. The federal Official Languages Act, in particular, followed its recommendations very closely. Nevertheless, the key concept of the Commission,—equal partnership—had much less influence. Although accepted at the time of the Commission’s creation, it faded in influence and popularity during the 1970s and 1980s. It is argued that the Charlottetown agreement of the Canadian provinces in August 1992 may be seen as a return to an altered and expanded version of the concept of equal partnership.

Résumé La Commission royale d’enquête sur le bilinguisme et le biculturalisme a eu une influence immédiate sur le statut et l’utilisation des deux langues officielles du Canada, en particulier au sein de l’appareil fédéral. La Loi sur les langues officielles, notamment, respectait scrupuleusement ses recommandations. Toutefois, la notion clé qui fondait la position de la Commission — l’égalité des deux partenaires — a eu une portée beaucoup plus limitée. Bien qu’admise au moment de la création de la Commission, sa popularité et son crédit n’ont cessé de diminuer au cours des années 1970 et 1980. L’auteur estime que l’accord intervenu entre les provinces à Charlottetown en 1992 constitue une version modifiée et élargie de cette notion d’égalité entre les partenaires.

Accomplishments The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (henceforth B & B Commission) began its work in 1963 and completed publication of its reports in 1970. The Preliminary Report of early 1965 and the General Introduction and Book I on the Official Languages, published together in October 1967, carried the main themes of the Commission’s findings. Although subsequent reports were far from unnoticed, they did not attract the same attention. The regional meetings which formed the basis of the Preliminary Report and the formal public hearings of 1966 commanded at least as much media notice as the Commission’s publications, and much of the importance of the Commission on public consciousness—on the way people defined and debated French-English and other cultural and linguistic problems—came from these meetings and media reports on them. When their

International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 7-8, Spring-Fall/Printemps-automne 1993 IJCS / RIÉC workwascompleted,theCommissionerscouldseetheirideastranslatedinto public policy in many different ways. TheOfficialLanguagesActof1969embodiesthesubstanceofwhattheB&B Commissionhadrecommendedas“thekeystoneofanygeneralprogrammeof bilingualisminCanada”(RCBBI1967:138).Itlaidouttherulesforlanguage servicesandforlanguageuse.ItestablishedtheCommissionerofOfficial LanguagesandgavethatofficeramandatethatfollowedcloselytheB&B Commission’sideas.TransformingamassivelyEnglish-languagefederal publicserviceintoareasonablyeffectivebilingualonechangedthecharacter andtheimageoftheCanadiangovernmentprofoundly.Todismissthis achievement,asQuebecseparatists(andevensomenon-separatists[Guindon 1978])arewonttodo,assomethingQuebecdidnotreallywant,isnonsense.It wasnotallthatFrench-CanadiansandespeciallyFrancophoneQuebecers wanted;butitwaswanted,andstronglydemandedasbriefafterbrieftothe Commissionattested.Becauseafederalbilingualregimeisnotasufficient conditionforthesurvivalofCanadadoesnotmeanthatitisnotanecessary condition. ThedecisionofNewBrunswicktoturnitselfintoanofficiallybilingual provinceisagainaclearimplementationofaB&BCommission recommendation.Ontario’srefusaltodothesamewasequallyclearlya rejectionoftheCommission’srecommendationandhadquiteadifferent qualitythanthetraditionalsweepingofthequestionundertheprovincialrug. Radioandtelevisionweremadeavailableinbothofficiallanguagesunderthe auspicesoftheCanadianRadioandTelevisionCommission(CRTC),abody thatwasfullycognizantoftheB&BCommission’srecommendationsand acceptedthem.Inbothfederalandsomeprovincialbodies,thelanguage prescriptions of the Commission were a recognized guide (Frith 1978). Inalesspreciseway,theCommission’sreporthadanenormousinfluenceon thepatternoflanguagelearninginthecountry.Thevastprogramoflanguage instructionundertakenbythefederalgovernmentfolloweddirectlyfromthe OfficialLanguagesAct.ButthefloweringofFrenchimmersioncourses acrossthecountryandthewidespreadimprovementintheteachingofFrench asasecondlanguagedeservetobecountedasindirectproductsofthe Commissionanditswork,ifnotalwaystheconsciousimplementationofits recommendations in the Book on education (RCBB II 1968). TheB&BCommissionpioneeredtheuseoftheterms“Anglophone”and “Francophone”1 whichhavesincebecomestandardintheCanadian constitutionalvocabulary.Theuseofthesetermsmadeiteasiertoconcentrate onlanguageratherthanethnicity,avitalshiftofemphasisthattheCommission promotedtodifferentiatebetweenthepositionsofthe“twofoundingraces” specifiedinitsmandateand“otherethnicgroups.”Itactivelydiscouragedthe useoftheterm“race,”anexpressionthatoccurredonlyintheEnglish- languagewordsofitsmandate.TheFrenchversion,inamuchmoreacceptable way, spoke of “peuples.”

The Mainspring of the Commission WheretheCommission’sperceptionofCanadahadmostdifficultyimprinting itselfonthepoliticsandthepoliticalthoughtofthecountrywasintheconcept of“equalpartnership.”IntheworkingpaperthattheCommissionpreparedto guidethosewhointendedtosubmitbriefsfortheCommission,“Equal

316 The Impact of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism on Constitutional Though and Practice partnershipbetweenthetwofoundingraces”wasdescribedasthe“mainspring (idée-force)”ofthetermsofreference,andconsequentlyoftheCommission. Yettheconceptofequalpartnershipfadedfromviewaftertheendofthe1960s inmostEnglish-languagecommentaries.Itremainedinsomepro-federalist discourseintheFrenchlanguage;butintherhetoricofmanyFrancophone exponentsoffederalism,itreceivedlittleattention.Liberalswhofollowedthe intellectualleadofPierre-ElliottTrudeauwereparticularlycharyofitfor reasons that will become apparent.

Equal Partnership in the 1960s Thetermequalpartnershipwasverywidelyacceptedintheearly1960swhen theestablishmentoftheCommissionanditstermsofreferencewere announced.ThePrimeMinisterwrotetoeachoftheprovincialPremiers elicitingcommentontheenterpriseandreceivedrepliesthat,withtheone exceptionofPremierManningofAlberta(RCBB1965:App.III),variedfrom welcomingtoaccepting.Whatdidequalpartnershipmeantothosewhowere usingithappilyinthe1960s?AndhowdidtheCommission’sown amplificationofthetermfitinwiththeunderstandingsofthosewhowrote about equal partnership? Inseekingrepliestothesequestions,itisusefultoturntothelateDonald Smiley,oneofthemostprolificandinfluentialwritersontheCanadian Constitution.Hebeganhiscontributionstotheconstitutionaldebateinthe 1960sanditispossibletofollowtheevolutionofhisideas(andhisuseof variousterms)throughtohisdeathin1990.Hisendorsementoftheconceptof equalpartnershipin1967wasstrong:“WhateverthesubstanceoftheNew NationalPolicyandunderwhateverpartyauspicesitisundertaken,itmust,to besuccessful,bepursuedthrough‘equalpartnership’betweenEnglish-and French-speakingCanadians”(Smiley1967:110-111).Heimmediatelywent ontocontrastindividualrightsandtheclaimsofcollectivitiesandmadeitclear thatthepartnershehadinmindwereaggregationsofpersonswhohadmadean individualchoiceandhadnomore“collective”claimtorecognitionthan,say, theAscot-tiewearersofthecountry.Thishighlyindividualisticpositionisone heneverexplicitlymodified,butitprovedadifficultonetoarticulatewithout strayingintocollectivistterminology.Whileinsistingthatlanguagegroupsare simplyaggregationsofindividualchoosers(andtheirpresumablyminor children),Smileyalsotalkedoftwo“cultures”andof“culturalcommunities” as part of the partnership. Despiteoccasionalslips,theequalpartnershipoftheearlySmileywas unflinchinglyindividualist.Partnershipbasedonequalitybetweencultures hadtoberejectedbecauseitunderminedmajoritariandemocracy:“Ifthe relevantequalityasdefinedisbetweenculturesoranyotherkindofgrouping, and,asisalmostalwaysthecase,thenumbersofindividualsinthesegroupings areunequal,theprincipleofindividualequalityanditsmajoritariancorollary mustperforcebesacrificed”(Smiley1967:112).The“relevantequality”for SmileywasbetweenEnglish-speakersandFrench-speakersanddidnot threatenmajoritarianism.Theproperkindofpartnershipconferredrightson individualsto“practice”theirlanguage,muchinthewaythatanindividual mightpracticereligion.Buttherewasanimportantdifferenceintheobligation thatlanguagerightsimposedonthestate.Religiousfreedomsimplymeant tolerance,exceptinthestillcontroversialfieldofdenominationaleducation wherestatesubsidy(butnotstateprovision)mightbeneeded.Language rights,asSmileyenvisagedthem,requiredthatfederal,provincialandlocal

317 IJCS / RIÉC publicservicesbeprovidedineitherlanguage.Thisnewpublicresponsibility requiredbilingualisminalargeproportionofpublicservants.Thepercentage wouldincreaseifFrenchandEnglishwererecognizednotonlyforserviceto the public but for internal communication. Smileydidnotwinceatanyofthis.Forthepredominantlyunilingual Anglophonepublicservants,thetransformationrequiredofthemwouldbe immense;butSmileyassumedtheywouldandshouldbearthesocialcosts. Whenitcametoproposalsthatgaverecognitiontoaculturally-based collectivity—aFrench-CanadianorQuébécoisnation—hisreactionwas totallydifferent.Heasked:“underwhatconceivablesetofcircumstances couldEnglish-speakingCanadabeexpectedtofindsuchreformsacceptable?” (Smiley1967:118).HisanswerwasaquotationfromEugeneForsey:“Some French-Canadiansseemtobelievethattherestofusaresoenamouredofthem, orsoconvincedwecannotgetonwithoutthem,thatwewillpayalmostany pricetopreserveeventhemosttenuousconnectionwiththem.Thisisa dangerous delusion” (Forsey 1962:486). TomanyFrancophoneQuébécoisinthe1960s,equalpartnershipmeantjust whatSmileyandthosewhothoughtlikehimrejectedoutofhand.Quebec shouldberecognizedinanewly-conceivedConfederationastheprimary socialunittowhichFrancophonesbelonged,anditsgovernmentshouldhave vestedinitthepowersnecessaryfortherealizationofcollectiveprojects.The rightsofFrancophoneminoritiesoutsideQuebecwereofsecondaryconcern. ItwasutopiantothinkthatpartnershipinCanadaasawholecouldbe“equal” forFrancophones.Theywouldconstituteapermanentminorityandthebest theycouldhopeforwasareasonablesetofminorityrights.Anequal relationshipcouldonlybeachievedifQuébécoishadtheirownmajority communityarmedwithadequatepowers.Thesepowerswouldlogicallybe muchmoreextensivethatthoseofanyotherCanadianprovince,forthe citizensofthoseotherprovincesalreadyhad,inCanadaasawhole,astateand agovernmentinwhichtheywereamajority.Theessenceofequalpartnership wasthustheprovisionofnewpowersforQuebec,eitherasanassociatestate or as a province with a “special status” (Morin 1965).

Equal Partnership and the Commission ItwasnotsurprisingthattheB&BCommission,handedamandatethat requireditto“recommendwhatstepsshouldbetakentodeveloptheCanadian Confederationonthebasisofanequalpartnershipbetweenthetwofounding races,”shouldtakesometimetodecidewhatequalpartnershipmeant.Itwas fullyawareofthechangesbeingrungonthethemeofequalpartnershipin academic,politicalandmediacirclesandfullyconsciousofthemutually exclusivecharacterofindividually-basedandcommunity-baseddiscussions oftheterm.Thedefinitionitworkedoutoveritsfirstmonthsofmeetingswasa blendofindividualisticandcommunitarianfeatures.Itcannotbeclaimedthat itwastotallyconsistentinitsuseofwordslike“society”orthatitreconciled collectiveandindividualperspectivesinafullysatisfactoryway.Butinits initialplanofwork,itlaidoutawayofdefiningandrealizingequalpartnership that,haditbeenabletocompleteitswork,mighthavegivengreaterstrength and longevity to the concept of equal partnership. TheCommissionersbelievedthatdevelopingequalpartnershipcouldonlybe achievedbycombiningatransformationinthelanguageusepatternsof CanadaasawholewithafullerrecognitionofthecrucialroleofQuebecin

318 The Impact of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism on Constitutional Though and Practice

sustainingFrenchCanada.ItrefusedtoseeactioninQuebecaloneasthe remedytobilingualandbiculturalimbalanceinthecountry.Withequal fervour,itstronglyrejectedtheideathatofficiallanguagerecognitionwasall thatwasneeded.Whatitsaidwassomethinglikethis:whatcannotreasonably bechangedatthecountry-widelevel,andinthecompositionandlanguage practicesofthenationalgovernment,tomakeFrancophonestheequalpartners ofAnglophonesmustbeattainedthroughanenlargedroleforQuebecandits government.Ifequalpartnershipmeantroughlybalancingthecostsand benefitsofbeingCanadianbetweenFrancophonesandAnglophones,andif,at thenationallevel,costswouldalwaysbehigherandbenefitslessfor Francophones,thencompensatingactionhadtobetakeninQuebectoensure thatbenefitstoFrancophoneslivingtherewerehighenoughandcostslow enough to get the overall balance right, or as nearly right as possible. ThesearenottheCommission’swords.Nonetheless,acarefulreadingofthe “bluepages”thatintroducedthefinalreport(RCBBI1967:xi-lii)bringsout the“balancingofcostsandbenefits”approachquiteunmistakably.Those pagesembodyparticularlytheconceptionofajustCanadaheldbyAndré LaurendeauwhowrotemostofthispartoftheCommission’sreport.They documenthisconvictionthattheworkoftheCommissioncouldnotbe completeifitdidnottacklethequestionoftheroleofQuebecinthebilingual- biculturalbalanceofCanada.Thecommitmenttolookintotheconstitutional divisionofpowersbetweenQuebecandOttawa,andtherelationshipbetween Quebec and the other provinces of Canada, is laid out in these terms: ...assoonas...[a]...minority[suchasCanada’sFrancophones]is awareofitscollectivelifeasawhole,itmayverywellaspiretothe masteryofitsownexistenceandbegintolookbeyondcultural liberties.Itraisesthequestionofitspoliticalstatus.Itfeelsthatits futureandtheprogressofitsculturearenotentirelysecure,thatthey areperhapslimited,withinapoliticalstructuredominatedbya majoritycomposedoftheothergroup.Consequently,itmovesinthe directionofgreaterconstitutionalautonomy.Ideally,theminority desiresthesameautonomyforthewholeofthecommunitytowhich itbelongs;butwhereitcannotattainthisobjective,itmaydecideto concentrateonthemorelimitedpoliticalunitinwhichitis incontestably the majority group. Thisviewpoint,sohotlyopposedbysome,isdeeplyentrenchedin Quebec.Ithasevenbeen,inrecentyears,attherootofsomeofthe mostspectacular,ifnotthemostserious,manifestationsofthecrisis inCanada.ToignoreitinthisReportwouldnotonlyconstitutean error;itwouldverylikelymeanthatQuebecwouldrefusetolistento us,andthatEnglish-speakingCanadawouldbedeprivedofthe chancetobecomeawareofanespeciallygraveelementinthepresent situation. (RCBB I 1967: xlvii -xlviii) Infact,theB&BCommissiondidignorethedivisionofpowersbetween QuebecandOttawaandtheextenttowhichequalpartnershipdemanded greaterautonomyforQuebec.ThedeathofAndréLaurendeauwasacrucial factorinthetruncationoftheCommission’sreport,butotherfactors,including divisionandfatigueamongsttheCommissioners,tooktheirtoll,(Lacoste 1990[1]and[2]).2 Thefullconceptofequalpartnershipanditsimplications forCanadianfederalismwerethereforeneverfullydeveloped.Onecanbe

319 IJCS / RIÉC reasonablycertainwhereLaurendeauhimselfwouldhavewantedthe Commissiontogo,forClaudeRyanhasreportedthatLaurendeautoldhim: “J’ail’impressionqu’éventuellement,nosrecherchesactuellespourraient débouchersuruneformuleintermédiaireentrelestatutparticulieretl’État associé”(Ryan1990).ButcarryingtheCommissionwithhimwouldhave been another matter.

Distinct Societies and Other Ethnic Groups TheCommissioncouldhavebaseditsjustificationoftheconceptofequal partnershipbetweenFrancophonesandAnglophonessimplyonthehistorical groundsthattheywerethe“founding”peoplesofCanada.Theychoseinstead todifferentiatebetweenthe“partners”andotherethnicgroupsinsociological terms.ThereasonwhyFrancophoneswerequitedifferentfromanyother languageandculturalgroupinCanada(exceptAnglophones)isthat Francophonesconstituteda“society”.Theword“society”designateda complexoforganizationsandinstitutionssufficientlyrichtopermitpeopleto leadafulllifeintheirownlanguage.InQuebec,Francophonescouldfindsuch a“distinct”society:asubstantialFrench-speakingpopulation(aboutfour million),withitsownlegalsystem,theCivilCode;itsowneducationsystem; hospitals,tradeunionsandanetworkofvoluntaryorganizations;and,insome part,itsowneconomicinstitutions.German-,Ukrainian-,orItalian-speaking Canadiansmighthavealanguageoftheirown,asenseofgroupidentity,a sharedhistory,commoncustoms,commonculturalexpressioninliterature, danceormusic;butonlyEnglish-andFrench-languagegroupshad“distinct societies,”completeornearlycompletesocieties.OnlyEnglishandFrench Canadacouldthereforeberequiredtogiverecognitiontooneanotheras “equal partners” in Canada. Citizenswhocamefromotherlanguageandculturalgroupswerenotthereby excludedfromthepartnership,norrelegated,assomegroupswereclaiming,to thestatusofsecond-classcitizens.Thiswasbecauseeachofthetwo “societies”ofCanadawasanopensociety.“Whatweareaimingfor,then,is theequalpartnershipofallwhospeakeitherlanguageandparticipateineither culture,whatevertheirethnicorigin”(RCBBI1967:xxxix).Membershipin the“foundingpeoples”wasbasedonlearnable,choosableattributes:language andtheculturecarriedbythatlanguage.Itdidnotdependonbirth,on unchangeable,unsheddablecharacteristicslikeethnicoriginorcolour;noron attributesthatmightbechangeablebutweredeemedirrelevant,likereligion. FortheCommission,thepeoplesofthepartnershipandthesocietiesthey constitutedwerethusfundamentallydifferentfromthebasketsofindividual atomsthatSmileyandForseybelievedmustbethesoleobjectsofpublic “partnership”policy.Thereweresomecircumstances,notablythatof immigrantsforwhomneitherFrenchnorEnglishwasmothertongue,whenthe choiceofanew“languagegroup”andnewculturemightbeacooldecision basedonacalculusofself-interest.ButatthecoreofbothEnglish-speaking CanadaandFrench-speakingCanadawerepeopleforwhomlanguage,andthe cultureassociatedwiththatlanguage,weregiven,notchosen.Theanalysisof theCommissionclearlyimpliedthattocreatepolicyforthe“partnership”by pretendingthatFrancophonesandAnglophonewerechoice-basedaggregations riskedfailureandfrustration.

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The Decline of Equal Partnership ShortlyaftertheCommissionhadreported,theconceptofequalpartnership wentintoasteepdecline.Atthescholarlylevel,thepost-B&BCommission discussionsofFrench-Englishrelationstookastrangeturn.English-language writersonthewholewerefavourabletolanguagechangeandespeciallytothe effortstomaketheFrench-languagecapabilityofthefederalpublicservice muchgreater.TheconceptofabilingualCanadawonmanyconverts,someof whomwentfarbeyondthecarefullydemarcatedofficialbilingualismofthe CommissionandcalledforpersonalbilingualismforallCanadians (BercovitzandLogan1978:253).French-languagewriters,fascinatedbythe successofthePartiQuébécoisandtherevivalofseparatistthought, concentratedonproblemsofhowmuchjurisdictionaQuebecgovernment shouldhave.Theconceptofequalpartnership,withitsrootsinFrench- CanadianspokesmenlikeHenriBourassaandintheQuebecliteratureona “compactbetweennations,”(Anglophonehistoriansviewedanyformofthe compacttheorywithscepticismandsuspicion),wasnowbeinghesitantlyand increasinglyrarelyenunciated—andonlyinits“linguisticparity”form—by Anglophonesandbythosefederally-orientedFrancophoneswhoclustered aroundPierreTrudeau.Equalpartnershipasaframefortheanalysisof QuebecorCanadianpoliticswaslargelyignoredbythehistoryandpolitical science departments of Quebec’s French-language universities. WhywasthepossibilityofexaminingQuebec’sclaimsforautonomyandfor enhancedpowerswithintheframeworkofequalpartnershipsorarely exploited?Inlargepart,onemayconjecture,becauseofthefailureoftheB& BCommissiontoelaboratethatframeworkasithadpromisedtodo.A literaturecouldhavedeveloped,onemayspeculateinretrospect,aroundthe trade-offsbetweenpowerandrecognitionforFrancophonesacrossCanada andpowerandrecognitionforQuebec.InEnglishCanada,comparisonscould havebeenmadebetweenthecostsandbenefitsofrecognizingQuebecasa distinctsociety,apttogoitsownway,andthecostsandbenefitsofincreased effortstomakethepublicservicefullyrepresentativeofFrenchCanadaandto strengthentheinstitutionsoftheFrench-languageminoritiesoutsideQuebec. InFrenchCanada,andespeciallyinQuebec,therisksofbreakingthe partnershipwithEnglishCanadaratherthanattemptingtoimproveitcould havebeenassessednotonlyineconomists’costs(theineffable“bottomline”) butintermsofthatrarestudyofChristianDufour,whichgraspsthe interpenetrationofFrenchandEnglishCanadaandtakesintoaccountsocial andpolitical(andindeedcultural)coststhatabreakinthepartnershipwould probably entail (Dufour 1990). Whateverthereasonsmayhavebeen,thefactoftheneardisappearanceofthe conceptofequalpartnershipbythelate1980scanreadilybedocumented. Smileyhimself,inthefewyearsthatseparatehisenthusiasticespousalof “individualistic”equalpartnership(1967)andthepublicationofhisstudyon CanadianfederalismfortheB&BCommission(1970)concentratedon categoriesofanalysisthatrequiredonlyacasualmention,inquotationmarks, of“twofoundingraces”(Smiley1970:119).Hisfearthatastatutparticulier forQuebecwasbecomingthemainthrustofFrancophonedemandsonthe Constitution,apossibilitythathehadrecognizedandflatlyopposedin1967, perhapsinducedafearthatcontinuedsupportforanyconceptofequal partnershipmightreinforcethattrend.Thenceforth,“equalpartnership” disappears from Smiley’s political lexicon.

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Wherediditsurvive?WecanfindreferencetoitinJohnMeisel’scontribution totheUniversityofToronto’s“Options”conferencein1977,wherehe describedtheresultsofasurveywhichshowedthatbetween80and90percent ofAnglophonesinCanada“tacitlyrejectthenotionthatthiscountryisbased onacompactbetweenthetwofoundingpeoples”(Meisel1977:16).Itis resoundinglyre-endorsedbyDavidsonDunton,oneoftheB&B Commission’sCo-Chairmen,whenhecalledfor“atruemutualsenseof equalityandpartnership”(Dunton1978).Butwhenoneturnstocompilations onCanada’sconstitutionalproblemsinthe1980sandthefirstyearsofthe 1990s,oneishardputtofind“equalpartnership”inanyotherformthana quotationfromtheB&BCommission’smandate,ontherareoccasionswhen that Commission is still referred to.3 ThedisappearanceoftheB&BCommission’s“mainspring”phrasefrom scholarlydiscussionsofCanadianpolitics,especiallyintheEnglishlanguage, isprobablybestaccountedfor,however,byreasonsrelatingonlyremotelyto theincompletenessoftheCommission’sfinalreport.Thefollowingfactors weretelling:1)oppositionfromanewLiberalPrimeMinisterofCanada, Pierre-ElliottTrudeau;2)theriseofmulti-culturalism,especiallyinitsinitial formasa“thirdforce”;3)theincreasedstrengthofWesternregionalism;4) Quebec’srepudiationofbilingualismfortheprovince(andnotjustbyParti Québécoisindépendentistes);5)thethrustofclaimsfromindigenouspeoples; and6)theemergenceof“Charter”Canadianswithanewsenseofcitizenship.

Prime Minister Trudeau Trudeau’sthoughtontheCanadianConstitutioncoincideswiththatoftheB& BCommissiononthemeaningofbilingualismandonitsfundamental importance.Whenitcomestoequalpartnership,asdefinedbythe Commission,heismilesaway.Hesummedupthedifferencesuccinctlyin 1988.“Bilingualismunitespeople;dualismdividesthem.Bilingualismmeans thatyoucanspeaktotheother;dualitymeansyoucanliveinonelanguageand therestofCanadawillliveinanotherlanguage...”(Senate1988).TheB&B Commissioninsistedthateffectivepublicrecognitionoftwolanguagesmust becoupledwithrecognitionofaFrenchsocietyinQuebec,thuspermittinga dualitybasedonanequilibriumofcontextsinwhichtwopeoplesare alternatelymajorityandminority.Trudeau’smodelisquitedifferentanda sharedbeliefinbilingualismasanationalpolicyshouldnotbepermittedto cover up the contrasts between the two.

Multiculturalism Canadianswhodidnotcomefromthe“twofoundingraces”chokedonthe conceptofequalpartnership.TheCommissionmadeastrongefforttoexplain thatitrepudiatedtheword“race”;itsequalpartnershipwasbetweenlanguages groupsintowhichtherewasfreeentryand,therefore,everycitizenwas potentiallyincludedinthepartnership.Itsbiculturalismwasalsobasedonan opensetofcategories,forbyadoptingoneorotherofthetwoofficial languagesonecouldenterintothecultureforwhichthatlanguagewasthe majorvehicle.Finally,theCommissionproposedwaysbywhichtheother culturalgroupsmightmaintaintheirvitalityandcontributetoCanadian enrichment.Indoingso,itwascarefulnottogivecredencetotheideathatby addingtogetherallthe“other”ethnicgroupsinCanada,onecouldidentifya “thirdforce,”non-French,non-English,thatrivalledthefoundingpeoplesin significance.AndréLaurendeauwasparticularlyunconvincedbyan

322 The Impact of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism on Constitutional Though and Practice arithmeticthataddedChinese,Italian,CaribbeanandSlavicCanadians togethertocreateasummedsocialentityequivalenttoFrenchCanada.TheB &BCommissionconcludedthat:“Alltheavailableevidenceindicatesthat thoseofotherlanguagesandculturesaremoreorlessintegratedwiththe FrancophoneandAnglophonecommunities,wheretheyshouldfind opportunitiesforself-fulfilmentandequalityofstatus.Itiswithinthesetwo societiesthattheirculturaldistinctivenessshouldfindaclimateofrespectand encouragement to survive” (RCBB IV 1970:10). Noneofthisflattenedthewaveofresentmentagainstequalpartnershipthat camefromthepoliticiansandassociationsthatspokeforthecitizensand descendantsofcitizenswhocamefromnon-Anglophone,non-Francophone countries.ShortlyafterTrudeaubecamePrimeMinister,multiculturalism replacedbiculturalismasofficialpolicyandinofficialrhetoric.Thatelement of“equalpartnership”thatcamefromarecognitionof“founding”cultures— thosewhogavetheoriginalshapeandcharactertothestatethatwascreatedin 1867andintheyearsbefore—wasthusundermined,andusingtheterm“equal partnership”becamemoretouchy.AspokesmanforUkrainianCanadianswas usinglanguagequiteacceptabletomanyethnoculturalminorityassociations whenhereferredto“theoutdatedanddiscreditedconceptoftwofounding nations” (Special Joint Committee 1987 [2]).

Western Assertions Oftentheterm“regionalism”isusedtodescribethecampaignforgreater recognitionthatbecameafixed(thoughbynomeansnovel)partofwestern Canadianpoliticsduringthe70s,80sand90s.Butthoughechoesofprotest againstcentralCanadiandominancecamefromtheAtlanticandtheNorth,the constitutionalpositionthatregionalequilibriumwasjustasimportantas French-EnglishequilibriumgaineditsgreateststrengthintheWest.Smileyis undoubtedlycorrectwhenheinterpretsthe1979Pepin-RobartsReport’sup- gradingof“regionalcleavage”toalmostthesamelevelastheFrench-English cleavageastheconsequenceofprimarilyWesternpressures(TaskForceon CanadianUnity1979).ItisnottemptingtobaseanalysisofCanadian constitutionalproblemsprimarilyon“equalpartnership”between Francophones and Anglophones if regionalism is almost as important.

Quebec’s Dilution of Quebec Bilingualism AmongEnglish-speakingCanadians,“equalpartnership”meantputtingthe FrenchlanguageonthesameplaneasEnglishforfederalgovernment operationsacrossCanada,andincreasedrecognitionofFrenchbyprovincial governmentswithsignificantFrancophonepopulations.Bilingualismas publicpolicywas“equalpartnership.”ForaQuebecgovernmenttoreducethe extenttowhichitgaverecognitiontobilingualismthusmeantthat“equal partnership”wasunderminedinaradicalfashion.Whatevertemptationone mighthavehadtomakeuseoftheconceptseemedtoevaporateifthatwasnot afterallwhatQuebecreallywanted.ThataseparatistpartyinpowerinQuebec passedalanguagelaw(Bill101)thatreducedAnglophone’srightsand privilegesmightbeunderstandable:theseparatistPartiQuébécoishadno interestin“equalpartnership”withintheCanadianfederalsystem.Butfora LiberalpartygovernmenttooverridetheSupremeCourtandpassanonly slightlylessrestrictivelaw(Bill178)seemedtomakenonsenseofequal- partnership-as-bilingualism.

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Claims from Indigenous Peoples TheB&BCommissionwasquiteconsciousthatinclusionofCanada’snative peoplesinthefundamentalpartnershipcouldnotbeaccomplishedinexactly thesamewayastheyhaddeemedappropriatefor“allophones.”Theynoted thattheywere“lessintegratedinthelifeoftheCanadiancommunitythanany othergroupandwouldthusrequirespecialstudy”(RCBB1965:22).InBookI ofthefinalreport,the“BluePages”referagainto“verycomplexproblems”of integrationandurgethat“helpbegiventothenativepopulationstopreserve theirculturalheritage”andthatnecessarystepsbetakentoassurethesurvival oftheEskimolanguageand“themostcommonIndiandialects”(RCBB1967: xxvi-xxvii).Howthespecialcharacteristicsofindigenousculturesfitthe conceptofpartnershipisleftunexamined,althoughtheuseof“integration” seemstoprejudgethatquestion,anditisnotsurprisingthatthosewhospeak forthenativepeopleshavehad,sincethen,littletimeorsympathyfor“equal partnershipbetweenthetwofoundingraces.”RecognitionintheMeechLake AccordthattheexistenceofEnglish-speakingandFrench-speaking Canadians“constitutesafundamentalcharacteristicofCanada”andthatitis theroleoftheParliamentofCanadaandtheprovinciallegislaturestopreserve thisfundamentalcharacteristic(ConstitutionAct,1987.1.2.(1)(a)and1.2) provokedangeranddismayintheleadersofindigenousgroupsandademand forconstitutionalrecognitionofaboriginalpeoplesasdistinctsocietiesthat constituteafundamentalcharacteristicofCanada(SpecialJointCommittee 1987[2}).

“Charter” Canadians ThereisacertainironyinthefactthatthelateJohnPorterusedtolabel English-andFrench-Canadiansasthetwo“Charter”groupsinCanadian society(Porter1964).Bythe1990s,referencestothe“Charter”meantthe CharterofRightsandFreedoms,andProfessorCairnshadlaunchedtheideaof CharterCanadians“whoseethemselvesascitizensofanationalcommunity” (Cairns1989:118).Cairnsidentifiesan“implicitandexplicitassumptionof groupsandinterestsdefinedbygender,byethnicity,byaboriginal background,bysocialpolicyconcerns,andbybasicconceptionsofanational communityofrightsbearersthattheCanadianconstitutionofthelateeighties withitsCharterofRightsisacitizens’constitution”(117).Forthem,theidea ofequalpartnershipisfarfromthebasisoftheCanadianstate;itiscloseto beingtheantithesisofwhattheybelieveCanadashouldbe.Cairnssuggests thattheybegantodefinethemselvesthroughthebattlestheyfoughtagainstthe B&BCommission’sconceptionofequalpartnership.Thegroupswhose membersaretheCharterCanadians“havetheirseparatehistoriesof triumphs—memories of when biculturalism was replaced with multiculturalism,whentheywonS28[women’srights],whentheiraboriginal rightsreceivedconstitutionalrecognition”(118).Inshort,memoriesofwhen theyerodedtheconceptofanequalpartnershipbetweenthetwofounding peoples. Withfaultyinterpretation,academicrejection(oratleastneglect)anda complexofpoliticalforcessuchasthosedescribedabovearrayedagainstit,it wouldnotbesurprisingiftheconceptofequalpartnershipwasdeemedto meritpermanentinterment.Iamgoingtoargueagainstburial.Forwithallits faultsequalpartnershipprovidesastartingpoint,initsB&BCommission version,foratheoreticaljustificationoftheseeminglyincoherent compromises in the Charlottetown Agreement of August 1992.

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The Charlottetown Agreement TheCharlottetownAgreementcanbeseenasacombinationofjustthose elementsthattheB&BCommissioninsistedwouldhavetogointoanequal partnership.Indeed,theAgreementcanbeseenasamoreextensive embodimentofthoseprinciplesthanweretherecommendationsofthe Commission itself. ThecostsofbeingFrancophoneinCanadaasawholehavebeencontrolled andafloorhasbeenputunderthem.EachCanadiangovernmenthasthe obligationtoprotectboththeEnglishandFrenchlanguages;therepresentation ofQuebeccannotfallbelow25percentintheHouseofCommons;anddouble majoritiesinthenewSenateareneededforthepassageofbillsonlanguage questions.Quebecisrecognizedasconstitutingadistinctsocietywithin Canada.Quebec’srighttonamethethreeCivilLawjudgeswhositonthe Supreme Court of Canada is spelled out. Forindépendentistes,theAgreementisdisastrous.ItknitsQuebecand FrancophoneCanadiansasawholemorecloselyintothefabricofthe Canadianstatethaneverbefore.ButtheAgreementisalsoworrisomeforthose Quebecerswhoarenotquiteseparatist.ThosewhowantQuebecuntilthelast possiblemomenttobeunencumberedwithagreed-upontiesandinterlinkages withCanada,sothatQuebeccankeeponaddingtoitslevelofautonomy,keep movingeverclosertosovereignindependencewithouthavingtopaythefinal costofgettingthere—thoseQuebecnationaliststoohavegreetedthe Agreementwithdismay.LiseBissonnetteofLeDevoir,inherremarkable editorial“LeMur”calledtheAgreementa“triomphedel’espritminoritaire” (LeDevoir,24August1992).And,inonesense,indeeditwas.Francophones whoareandwillbeaminorityinCanadaasawholeforaslongasitpersists havegainedabroadersetofminorityrightsthantheyhaveeverenjoyed before.Nothinghasbeenlostfromthefirstgreatpushtowardsreducingthe costsofbeingFrancophoneinCanada—markedbythefederalOfficial LanguagesAct,byNewBrunswickbecominganofficiallybilingualprovince, andbygainsineducationandinthecourts—andagreatdealhasbeenadded. Ifthatwereall,thentheAgreementcouldfinditsplaceinthetime-honoured categoryofminorityrights,andtheconceptofequalpartnershipcouldremain tuckedawayintheatticofoutmodedconstitutionalfashions.Butitisnotall. TheCharlottetownAgreementpreservesalltheelementsofcommunity recognitionforQuebec’sdistinctsocietythatwereintheMeechLakeaccord andembedstheminacomplexofothercommunityrecognitions.The communitiesofnativepeopleshavetheirinherentrighttoself-government acknowledged;provincialcommunitiesreceive“partnership”recognitionin theequalSenate,andintheprocess,awesterncommunityviewpointis validated.Canadabecomesa“communityofcommunities”inaformalsense. TheimportofQuebecbeingrecognizedasadistinctsocietyisnotdiminished bythenewrecognitionsofcommunity.Butthecontextualchangealtersits significance.First,itbecomesimpossibleforAnglophonestodismissthe Agreementonadistinctsocietyasjustasanother“concessiontotheFrench,” forabroadlysimilar“concession”hasbeenmadetonativepeoples.Secondly, theAgreementunderlinestheobligationforQuebecaswellastherestof Canadatoaskitselfwhatapartnershipwithself-governingnativepeopleswill mean,andchallengesQuebectofindwaysofreconcilingtheargumentsthatit hasusedfordemandingpowersforitselfwiththosethatwillbepresented,in only slightly modified form, by indigenous peoples.

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ThecrucialinsightoftheB&BCommissionwasthatastablebaseforFrench- EnglishcooperationcannotbeachievedjustbyincreasingFrenchminority rightsinCanadaasawhole(seenasasinglecommunity)butmustalsoinvolve theexerciseofasetofpowers,adequateforcommunitydevelopment,bya communityjurisdiction(Quebec)inwhichthecountry-wideminority (Francophones)isamajority.Thisinsight,thesensegivenbytheCommission totheconceptofequalpartnership,hasnowbeenembodiedinnew,complex, butultimatelycompatibleways,intheCharlottetownAccord.Indeed,its approachtopartnershiphasbeenextendedtoothercommunities—ethnic communities,provincialcommunities—andthechallengeofworkingoutthe terms of different kinds of partnerships is thrust inexorably upon Canadians. HadtheCharlottetownAgreement,byreferendumandbylegislative enactment,becomethenewbaseforCanada’sConstitution,manypeople wouldhaveexplainedthisfactastheacceptanceofahodgepodgeof compromisesbyapopulationsufferingfromConstitution-fatigue.Ifthat attitudepersists,thepossibilityofanystablenewarrangementsforthefuture, basedinsomemeasureontheAgreement,willbejeopardized,foreventually mostofuswanttofindcoherenceinourbehaviour.Anynewconstitution shouldresideina“houseoftheory.”4 Arethearchitects’drawingsforthat house available? Perhaps not, but preliminary sketches can be found.

Individuals and Communities Recognitionofcommunityrightsstillarousesdeepdisquietamongmany, especiallyEnglishCanadians,whobelievethatcommunityrightsnecessarily jeopardizeindividualrights.Thisdisquietemanatesfromtheclassicalliberal- individualistpositionandithasatleasttwoaspects.First,itisarguedthatthe stateshouldnotsubsidizeparticularobjectivesofparticulargroupswithfunds thatcomefromcitizensmostofwhomdonotshare,andmayindeedbehostile to,theseobjectives.Foracountrywherepublicsubsidizationof denominationalschoolsisacommonplace,thispositionmayseemstrange;yet itsstrengthisundeniable.RecognitionofadistinctQuebecsocietyandofthe inherentrightofaboriginalsocietiestoself-government,itissaid,willleadto publicresourcesbeingdivertedtoparticulargroupstowhichmostcitizens cannot,ordonotwantto,belong.Secondly,itismaintainedthatrecognizing rightsforsomecommunitiesandnotothersdividescitizensintofirst-classand second-classcategories.IfFrancophonesinQuebecaretoberecognizedasa distinctsociety,whynotUkrainiansinManitoba?Ifaboriginalshavean inherent right to self-government, why not Japanese Canadians? Justifyingrightstocommunitiesmeansrecognizingthatdiversity,more profoundthanthedifferencestakenintoaccountinpluralisttheory, characterizestheCanadianstate.CharlesTaylorarguescogentlythat Canadiansmustthinkthroughtheimplicationsof“deepdiversity”muchmore thoroughlythantheyhavedoneinthepast(Taylor1991).Historically, Anglophonesespeciallywerereluctanttodosobecausetheyhopedthat eventuallyallcitizenswouldseethemselvesintheirrelationtothestatein roughlythesameway.Industrialism,secularism,andurbanizationwereall supposedtoreducethespecificityinself-definitionofQuebec’sFrancophones andtomakeitpossibletotreatthemasindividualslikealltheotherindividuals inCanada.ButQuebecnationalismbecamestrongernotweaker;thehopefora homogeneity of outlook became more and more illusory.

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Liberal Theory and Equal Partnership ThereisawayoflookingatCanada’senduringdualism,awayofreconciling oneselftoarecognitionofQuebec’sdistinctness,thatdoesnotoffendliberal theory.Thisissobecauseliberaltheorycannotspecifythe“right”bodyof citizenstoconstituteastate.Ifsomepartofthecitizenryofastatedecides to—andisableto—constituteanewstateinwhichthefreedomofallisfully protectedandindividualrightsaremeticulouslyrespected,liberaltheory cannotprovideareasonwhythisnewstateisinferiortotheonefromwhichit brokeaway.Indeed,mostliberaltheorysimplyassumesthatanexistingstate istheframeworkinwhichindividualsasserttheirrights,includingtherightto haveallkeypublicinstitutionsrunintheirownlanguageandaccordingtotheir culturalnormsandstyle.IfliberalscouldprovethatCanadaincludingQuebec wastheunique“right”stateforallindividualswithinittorealizetheirrights, thenthecaseforsubsidizingthepeculiarlanguagepreferencesandahighlevel ofautonomyforsomelargesubsetofindividualswouldindeedbedifficultto bringundertheliberaltheoreticalumbrella.Sincenosuchproofisavailable andthepossibilityofaseparate(stillliberal)Quebecstateisfarfrombeinga chimera,thentheproblemsofFrancophone-Anglophonerelationscanquite properlybedealtwithbythemostlibertarianofliberalsasaproblemofthe termsofpartnership.BecauseFrancophoneQuébécoisdoconstituteadistinct society,capableofformingastateoftheirown,theycommandrecognitionas suchin a way no other linguistic or cultural group does. Thecaseforspecialrecognitionofthecommunitiesofindigenouspeoples cannotbemadeinthisway,butWillKymlickahasshownhowit,too,isquite reconcilablewithliberalism(Kymlicka1989and1991).Hisargumentsalso applytootherculturalgroups.Hebeginsbysummarizingtheorthodoxliberal positionthatasystemofuniversalindividualrightsisallthatisneededto protectculturaldifferences.Freedomofassociationiseveryone’srightandit enablesaculturalgroupthatwantstopreserveitsdistinctnesstodoso,aslong asitcancompeteinthe“culturalmarketplace.”“Onthisview,givingpolitical recognitionorsupporttoparticularculturalpracticesorassociationsis unnecessaryandunfair.Itisunnecessary,becauseavaluablewayoflifewill havenodifficultyattractingadherents.Anditisunfair,becauseitsubsidizes somepeople’schoicesattheexpenseofothers.”Kymlickathenshowsthat somegroupsareunfairlydisadvantagedintheculturalmarketplace.Minority culturesareunderconstantpressurefromthemajoritythatsurroundsthem. Theyhavetostruggletosurvive,andtheydososince“languageandculture providethecontextwithinwhichwemakeourchoices.Lossofcultural membership,therefore,isaprofoundharmthatreducesone’sveryabilityto makemeaningfulchoices.Hencespecialrightscompensateforunequal circumstanceswhichputthemembersofminorityculturesatasystematic disadvantageintheculturalmarketplace,regardlessoftheirpersonalchoices in life (Kymlicka forthcoming). Ifclaimsforcommunityaremadeineitherofthewaysoutlined,thecasefor constitutionalrecognitionofQuebec’sdistinctsocietyandthecaseforself- governmentforaboriginalpeoplescanbemadewithoutdoingviolenceto liberaltheory.Bothinstancesexemplifythefundamentalpremisethatequal partnershipamongcommunities,achievedbychangingthebalanceofcostand benefits,isagoalthatcanbereconciledwiththegoalofpersonalequality amongst citizens and equal respect for the choices that persons make.

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Aboriginal Communities and Multiculturalism Towhatextentcanthe“equalopportunity”argumentthatjustifiesaboriginal communityclaims—thedifficultyforaboriginalpeopleofgainingaccessto thesamerangeofpersonalchoicesavailabletomembersofthemajority culture—alsobeusedtoadvanceclaimsforspecialculturalrecognitionby membersofimmigrantculturalgroups?Undeniably,immigrantswouldfindit easiertoleadfulllivesinCanadaiftheyretainedtheculturalsupportsthatuse oftheirlanguageandafamiliarculturalenvironmentprovide.Inthenameof consistency,shouldsomemeasureofcommunityself-governmentbemade availabletootherethnicgroups?Kymlickasuggeststhatthefactthat immigrantschosetocometoCanadameansthatthey“therebyrelinquished someoftheirrightstoculturalprotectionthattheywouldhavehadintheir originalhomeland.”(Kymlicka1991).Thisdistinctionisnotfullysatisfactory sincethe“choice”madebyatleastoneclassofimmigrants,refugees,isfar fromfree.Testsof“practicability”(isthereapopulationconcentrationthat permitsalargemeasureofcommunityself-determination?)andwill(how muchculturalisolation,theconcomitantofcommunalparticularism,is desired?)maybepreferable.TheB&BCommission’sdecisiontoconfineits discussionsofpartnershiptoFrancophone/Anglophonerelationsandtobe satisfiedwithminority/majorityrelationsforotherethnicgroupsisnohelpasa guidetoamoresatisfyingposition.TheCharlottetownAccordmadeno advanceoverSection27oftheCharterofRightsandFreedoms,whichstates: “ThisChartershallbeinterpretedinamannerconsistentwiththepreservation andenhancementofthemulticulturalheritageofCanadians.”Thehouseof theory,quitesturdywhereitcoversa“distinctsociety”forQuebecandself- governmentforaboriginals,hasaramshacklemulticulturalwing. Strengtheningitprobablyinvolvesacontinuingdialecticbetweenconceptsof cultural partnership and equal personal rights.

A Complex of Equalities TheCharlottetownAgreementnotonlydemandsthatliberalindividualismbe reconciledwithaculturalcollectiveperspective,italsorequiresabridging withothercollectivities.ThemainthrustoftheCharterofRightsand Freedomsisundoubtedlythatofindividualrights,butindividualismhastolive withfederalismandwiththepluralismthathasbecomesointegralapartofthe liberal-democraticstate.Eventhemostferventadvocateofequalindividual rightsdoesnotquestiontherestrictiononthefreedomofaSaskatchewancar driverwhomightwanttodisplayaNewBrunswicklicenceplateorobjectto oneprovince’ssalestaxbeinghigherthananother.Federalismmeansthat Canadians’rightsvaryaccordingtotheprovincialorterritorialcollectivitiesto whichtheybelong.TheChartersimplymakes“fundamental”rightsidentical throughoutCanada.Similarly,tradeunions,professionalassociations,clubs andsocietiesbestowspecialrightsandresponsibilitiesontheirmembers,and aslongasthesecollectivitiescanbeenteredandleftwithoutunreasonable barriershavingtobecrossed,wenotonlyacceptdifferentialrightsbeing bestowedontheirmembers,butvaluethedifferences.Fewliberal-democrats todayshareRousseau’sworrythatpluralismcreatesparticularwillsthat threaten the general good. AlanCairns’contentionthatCharterCanadianssawtheirrightstrampledon bygovernmentswhomettogetherinsecretatMeechLaketoredistribute rights,describesapositionheldbymanyCanadians.Theextensivehearings acrossCanadathatprecededthenegotiationsleadingthe1992Charlottetown

328 The Impact of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism on Constitutional Though and Practice

Agreementwereaneededresponsetothewidespreadfeelingthatthe proceduresofexecutivefederalismweresadlylacking.Butifthecontrast between“people”and“governments”ispushedasfarasCairnsdoesin CharterversusFederalism(Cairns1992),itunderestimatesthestrong attachmenttoprovince,andthesensethattheprovincialgovernmentistheir government,thatmanyCanadiansdisplayandthatisgivennewsalienceinthe equalSenaterepresentationoftheCharlottetownAgreement.Thestrengthof demandsformoredirectdemocracycanbetakenintoaccountwithoutan inferencethatrepresentativedemocracyattheprovinciallevelhasbeen discredited.CharterCanadiansgiveprimacytothesinglecommunityofall Canadians.TheCharlottetownAgreement,andtheproceduresleadingtoit, grantmuchtotheCharterCanadianposition,buttheAccordinsistsonrespect forthosemanyotherCanadianswhomayseeothercommunities,otherforms ofcollectiveidentity—whetherdistinguishedbylanguage,province,region, religionorassociation—asvaluedframeworksfortheirself-realization.Inter- communitypartnershipmodelsmayseemmuchmoreappropriate,even thoughagreementsunderthemmustbeworkedoutbyindirect,representative, democraticforms,thanthedirectdemocracyofidentical-rights-bearing Canadians. Cairns,ofcourse,isfullyawarethatfederalism,withitsstressonprovinces andtheirgovernments,issomethingthateventhemostardentCharter Canadiansmustanddoaccept.HeidentifiesasthechallengeforCanadian constitutionalrenewal—achallengethatwasmetforbetterorworsein CharlottetowninAugust1992—thesimultaneousrealizationofthree equalities:ofcitizens,ofprovincesandoftwonations(Cairns1991:77). Whethertheseareexactlytheright,andtheonlyright,kindsofequalitythat Canadamustseektoachieveismuchlessimportantthanthere-appearancein scholarlywritingoftheconceptofequalpartnerships.Onecanhopethatit heraldsadecisivedeparturefromthediscourseofmajority-minorityrelations, andofasingle,standardizedrelationshipbetweeneachcitizenandthestate, thatsoinhibitsthesearchfor“newequalities.”Canada’sfirststepawayfrom thesinglecommunitymodelexemplifiedinparliamentarydemocracycamein 1867withitsadoptionoffederalism.Federalismmeansco-ordinatepowers ratherthanahierarchyofdecentralization,andrecognizesthevalidityof communities,basedongeography,withinapolity.Takingthenextstep,and recognizingFrancophone-Anglophonedualism;andthentakinganotherstep andrecognizingtheinherentrighttoself-governmentofcommunitiesof indigenouspeople;andthentakingyetanotherstepandworkingoutthe complexitiesofmulticulturalism;anddoingallthiswithoutdestroyingthe integrityofthecommunityofallCanadians,exemplifiedbytheCharter— thesearethechallengeswhichwereacceptedatCharlottetown.Itwillbe fascinatingtoseewhetherthe“houseoftheory”thatcanaccommodatethe various partnerships and their various equalities can be built.

Conclusion Thisessaywaswrittenbeforetherejectionbyreferendumofthe CharlottetownAgreementandhasbeenrevisedonlyverylightly.Itistoo earlytopredictwhenandpreciselyhowtheconstitutionalfoundationsof Canadawillagainheadthepolicyagenda.TheproblemstheAgreementwas intendedtoanswerhavenotdisappeared,however,andthetaskoffindinga satisfactorytheoreticbasisfortheCanadianpolityremains.Aconcerted intellectualefforttoreframetheelementsoftheCharlottetownAgreementso

329 IJCS / RIÉC thatitcannotbedismissedasanassemblageofincompatiblecompromisesis stillachallengetoCanadianscholars.TheequalpartnershipdiscourseoftheB &BCommission,inspiteofitsincompleteness,meritsrediscoveryinthe search for a new coherence.

Notes 1. ThetermswerenotusedinthePreliminaryReport.TheyappearfirstintheGeneral Introduction, p. xxxiv. 2. LacostegivesafairaccountoftheCommission’sdecisionnottopublishthefinalvolume. 3. Fortheperiodupto1989,theSelectedBibliographyinBehiels1989isuseful.For1990- 1992,eachissueoftheNewsletteroftheNetworkontheConstitution,1991TheNetwork, Ottawa: University of Ottawa, publishes a full listing of publications on the constitution. 4. I borrow this phrase from the 1950s and Iris Murdoch.

Bibliography Bercowitz, S.D. and Logan, R.K. (eds), 1978.Canada’s Third Option.Toronto: Macmillan. Cairns,AlanC.,1989.“CitizensandTheirCharter:Democratizingtheprocessofconstitutional reform”inMichaelD.Behiels(ed.),TheMeechLakePrimer.Ottawa:UniversityofOttawa Press. (pp 109-124) p. 118. _____,1991.“ConstitutionalChangeandtheThreeEqualities”inWattsandBrown(eds.), Options for a New Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. _____,1992.CharterversusFederalism.MontrealandKingston:McGill-Queen’sUniversity Press. Dufour,Christian,1990.ACanadianChallenge/Ledéfiquébécois.HalifaxandLantzville,B.C.: Oolichan Books and the Institute for Research on Public Policy. Dunton,Davidson,1978.“MajorityMustBendtoQuebec”(originallyalectureatMcGill University entitled “Equal Partnership”) in S.D. Bercowitz and R.K.Logan. Forsey,Eugene,1962.“Canada:TwoNationsorOne?”28CanadianJournalofEconomicsand Political Science, November. Frith,Royce,1978.“LanguageRightsandPrograms”inS.D.BercowitzandRobertK.Logan, Canada’s Third Option. Toronto: Macmillan. Guindon,Hubert,1978.“TheModernizationofQuebecandtheLegitimacyoftheCanadianState” inGlenday,GuindonandTurowetz,ModernizationandtheCanadianState.Toronto: Macmillan. Kymlicka, Will, 1989.Liberty, Community, and Culture.Oxford: Oxford University Press. _____,1991.“LiberalismandthePoliticizationofEthnicity,”CanadianJournalofLawand Jurisprudence,Vol 4/2. _____,(forthcoming).“IndividualandCommunityRights”inJudithBaker(ed.)GroupRights. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Lacoste,Paul,1990(1).“AndréLaurendeauetlaCommissionsurlebilinguismeetle biculturalisme”inComeau,RobertandBeaudry,Lucille(eds.),AndréLaurendeau:un intellectuel d’ici. Québec: Presses de l’université du Québec . _____,1990(2).“AndréLaurendeauetlaCommissionroyaled’enquêtesurlebilinguismeetle biculturalisme,” an introduction to Laurendeau, André,Journal. Montréal: VLB éditeur. Le Devoir, 24 August 1992. Montreal. Morin,Jacques-Yvan,1965.“Versunnouveléquilibreconstitutionnel”inCrépeau,P.-A.and Macpherson,C.B.(eds.)TheFutureofCanadianFederalism/l’Avenirdufédéralisme canadien.TorontoandMontreal:UniversityofTorontoPressandLesPressesde l’Université de Montréal. Porter, John, 1964.The Vertical Mosaic. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. RCBB,1965.APreliminaryReportoftheRoyalCommissiononBilingualismandBiculturalism. Ottawa, Appendix III. _____,1967.ReportoftheRoyalCommissiononBilingualismandBiculturalism.BookIGeneral Introduction and The Official Languages _____,1968.Book II, Education _____,1970. Book IV,The Cultural Contribution of the Other Ethnic Groups. Ryan,Claude,1990.“Ilasoulevélesvraiesquestionsetréfutélesréponsestoutesfaites”in Comeau and Beaudry. Senate, 1988.Debates of the Senate,vol. 132, March 20. Smiley, Donald V., 1967.The Canadian Political Nationality. Toronto: Methuen. _____,1970.ConstitutionalAdaptationandCanadianFederalismSince1945,Documentsofthe Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, #4. Ottawa: Queen’s Printer.

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_____, 1987.The Federal Condition in Canada. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson. SpecialJointCommitteeoftheSenateandtheHouseofCommonsonthe1987Constitutional Accord,1987(1).MinutesofProceedingsandEvidence.TestimonyofInuitCommitteeon National Issues, Métis National Council and Native Council of Canada, August 5. _____,1987(2).BriefoftheUkrainianCanadianCommitteetotheSpecialJointCommittee,No. 7, August 13. (Presented by Thor Broda). TaskForceonCanadianUnity,1979.AFutureTogether.Ottawa:MinisterofSupplyand Services Canada. Cited in Smiley 1987: 125. Taylor,Charles,1991.“SharedandDivergentValues”inWatts,R.L.andBrownD.M.(eds). Options for a New Canada.Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

331 David R. Cameron

Not Spicer and Not the B & B: Reflections of an Insider on the Workings of the Pepin-Robarts Task Force on Canadian Unity*

Abstract The Task Force on Canadian Unity, contrary to the preferences of the Government of Canada, acted both as a mid-wife to a process of public discussion of national unity in the late seventies and as a source of independent policy ideas and recommendations. In developing its ideas, it drew synthetically on what it learned from the public hearings and from its own research and analysis, and produced a Final Report which stood as the most coherent federalist alternative to the anti-nationalist individualism of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Political events subsequent to the release of the Task Force's Report reduced its immediate impact, but its concepts of duality and regionalism and its frank acknowledgment of the communitarian foundation of much of Canadian life have been significant factors in the country's national-unity debate since that time and have been reflected in both Meech Lake and the Charlottetown Accord.

Résumé En dépit des préférences du gouvernement, le Groupe de travail sur l'unité canadienne a donné naissance à un vaste débat public sur l'unité nationale et à une manne d'idées et de recommandations indépendantes en matière d'orientations. Ses idées se sont développées à partir de ce qu'il a entendu lors des audiences publiques et dans la foulée de ses propres recherches et analyses. Son rapport final constituait la solution de rechange fédéraliste la plus cohérente à l'anti-nationalisme individualiste de Pierre Elliott Trudeau. La conjoncture politique entourant la publication du rapport du Groupe de travail en a restreint l'influence immédiate, mais ses concepts de dualité et de régionalisme et sa franche reconnaissance des assises communautaires de la vie des Canadiens ont depuis lors constitué des aspects importants du débat sur l'unité nationale; que l'on songe à l'entente du lac Meech ou à l'Accord de Charlottetown.

A commission is chiefly remembered for its final report. The untold story, normally, is how the commission produced the thing for which it is remembered. My focus in these reflections is principally on the how, not the what—on the inner workings of the Task Force on Canadian Unity rather than the analysis and policy recommendations contained in the final report.

International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 7-8, Spring-Fall/Printemps-automne 1993 IJCS / RIÉC

A New Kind of Commission? Relations Between the Government and the Task Force The Task Force on Canadian Unity was established on 5 July 1977 in the wake of the October 1976 election of the Parti Québécois. The Commission was set up by Prime Minister Trudeau to allow the public to air its views on national unity and the government to buy some time.1 The government wanted to proceed cautiously in light of the PQ victory, to reassure the Canadian public that it was not on the edge of a precipice and to give the impression that the national-unity issue was being prudently managed. Although set up under the Inquiries Act, it was called a “task force,” not a commission, presumably to indicate that it was a horse of a different colour from the run-of-the-mill commission. I remember John Robarts, who was keen on the expression, saying early on in the life of the Commission that “task force” was a word used in World War II to designate a small number of ships given a limited, very specific mission. At the time of this remark, it was still perhaps possible to believe that the Commissioners would restrict themselves to the mission the government had assigned them. In the beginning, there was the belief that the Task Force would probably not make a final report in the conventional sense. The fact that it was initially given a one-year timetable within which to do its work reflected this view. It would hold hearings across Canada, allow Canadians to speak their minds and give an account of what it had heard. The medium would be the message. It would not do research, develop policy or offer substantive proposals about the means by which the crisis of Confederation might be resolved. The Prime Minister had a clear view of the challenge coming from Quebec and of the national policies appropriate to addressing it; his government would not welcome the articulation of an alternative approach by a federally established commission. Indeed, the Trudeau government's own constitutional proposals—The Constitutional Amendment Bill (Bill C-60)—were released in June 1978 and must have been in preparation well before the Task Force completed its hearings in April of that year. So the Pepin-Robarts Task Force—for those who gave it life—was supposed to be rather like what the Spicer Commission became more than a dozen years later: a national exercise in public consultation reporting on public opinion but offering little or nothing in the way of policy proposals. This was not to be. Instead, the Task Force produced three publications at the end of its life, one of which was a substantial report with an analysis and a set of recommendations far from congenial to the Trudeau government. What happened? I think one factor was the sheer force of tradition: a commission's work conventionally includes a final report and recommendations. How could this one do otherwise? A second factor was the predisposition of the Commissioners and some of the staff. It is difficult to imagine a Gerald Beaudoin, a Solange Chaput-Rolland or—after John Evans’ early resignation—a Ron Watts on a commission and not expect a substantive report. Jean-Luc Pepin, as co-chair, was a man with vital intellectual and public-policy interests who was unlikely to be satisfied with simply reporting, largely unmediated by analysis, what other people said. Most of the key Commission staff were recruited from the academic, public service and professional world and assumed that the job of the Task Force was to produce a

334 Reflections of an Insider on the Workings of the Pepin- Robarts Task Force on Canadian Unity substantive report with recommendations. Lastly, the Task Force was held in low regard by the public at the beginning of its life and confronted a good deal of scepticism; committing itself to the production of a first-class report was one way of coping with these pressures. There is another dimension here worthy of remark. While the government, as we shall see, found ways of making its views of the Task Force's approach quite clear, the Prime Minister and the government of Canada scrupulously respected the tradition of independence in which Canadian royal commissions have functioned. It established the Commission, gave it its mandate, named the Commissioners, and then stepped back and allowed the Task Force to operate freely as it saw fit. Indeed, Jean-Luc Pepin, the full-time co-chair and former Liberal cabinet minister, did not even talk to Prime Minister Trudeau during the life of the Commission between 1977 and 1979, even to discuss his own future political career plans. That the government got more than it bargained for from the Task Force is not surprising. When a government launches an enquiry into a large and ill- defined field such as national unity, the degree to which it can shape the commission's work by the definition of its mandate is small. Resourceful minds and strong wills can find ample room to manoeuvre within even the most cleverly constituted mandate. In the mandate which the government assigned to the Task Force, no mention was made of a final report; the conventional phrase “to inquire into and report upon” was notably absent. However, the injunctions “to contribute ... the initiatives and views of the Commissioners” and to “be a source of advice to the government” were more than sufficient foundation to permit the Commissioners to do as they wished. As with other commissions, so with Pepin-Robarts: the personalities of commissioners, the unfolding of events during the life of a commission and the impact on a commission of the data, people and organizations with which it comes in contact, all proved to be potent forces in shaping what it would do and how it would do it. As a kind of declaration of independence, the Task Force, at the end of its first full meeting, released a statement declaring that it saw its job as finding a “third way,” presumably between the status quo and sovereignty-association:

It is our intention to assemble concepts and policies which could constitute some of the elements of a third option for Canada. The Members of the Task Force do not feel bound by existing legislation or practices nor are they committed to views of any federal or provincial political party....[we are] aware that our autonomy is essential to our credibility and usefulness.2

This was controversial, both because it evinced an intention to move beyond public consultation and into substance and because the policy direction and implicit strategy it blocked out, however tentatively— “a third option”—were antithetic to the direction in which the federal government appeared to wish to move. There were clear indications that autumn that the Privy Council Office was increasingly worried about the Task Force getting out of control, and Prime Minister Trudeau rapped the Commission's knuckles in a statement in the House of Commons on 19 October 1977 in which he said:

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...I submit respectfully to everybody, including members of my own party and of the Pepin-Robarts Commission, that this third option business is a trap we should not fall into.

Given the choice between maintaining comfortable relations with the federal government and charting its own course, the Task Force chose the latter.

The Culture of a Commission Commissions are temporary, project-driven organizations.3 By its very nature, a commission is set up to do a specific job—to fulfill its mandate, to tackle a project. This project is clearly finite, even if the duration of some commissions suggests otherwise. (TheB&BCommission, for example, was brought to a halt, not having completed its work after 7 years of existence.) Once the project is completed, the commission disappears; it “goes out of commission.” The Task Force held its first full commission meeting on 31 August 1977 and released its final report less than 18 months later, on 25 January 1979. It formally went out of commission a couple of months later. The temporary, project-focussed nature of commission work in large measure defines the unique culture of a commission. People come from somewhere else to do a temporary job. Some are involved in a particular aspect of the commission's work, such as the organization of hearings, and leave once that work is done; others—the commissioners, commission executives and support staff—have tasks that keep them there throughout. That their tenure at the commission is temporary is known from the very beginning. Everyone leaves when the commission winds up. As the life of the commission moves to its conclusion, commissioners and staff increasingly turn their attention to what they are going back to or where they are going—or hoping to go—next. If the experience of the Pepin-Robarts Task Force is any indication, the intensity of the work is fierce: long hours, unpredictible schedules; uncertainties which vein almost every working day; searing conflicts about the largest issues and the smallest slights; moments of giddy exhilaration and matchless camaraderie. All of this occurs in a small but bubbling cauldron of experience, some of it very much in the public eye, but much of it confined within the walls of the commission itself. Few people who have given themselves up to this curious form of professional existence leave unaffected.4 Yet, if it is temporary, and if it is project driven, a commission is also an organization. It has a budget and a bureaucracy; it establishes positions; there are financial and personnel management problems; records must be kept, hearings organized, travel schedules and meetings arranged. Most, if not all, of these administrative and executive functions a commission holds in common with other organizations. The chief difference, however, is that a commission literally starts from scratch; all of it has to be established and most of it, it seems, simultaneously. High policy and mundane bureaucratic procedures both have to be determined at once, and there is a sense that everything enjoys the same priority; such matters as the recruitment of key staff, the establishment of a budget and a practical means of paying the bills and the organization of meetings get almost equal consideration as the mandate, the organization of a public hearings process and the development of a research agenda.

336 Reflections of an Insider on the Workings of the Pepin- Robarts Task Force on Canadian Unity

Having watched the chaos flower at the Task Force and then subside as professional administrative staff were brought in to reduce the day-to-day life of the commission to routines and more or less normal management practices, I have to conclude that these difficulties must arise in every commission, that they are not in their nature politically charged or policy laden, and that the skills and experience necessary to address them are eminently transferrable. Given that there are royal commissions in operation in Ottawa all the time, it seems to me a good case can be made for the establishment of a generic unit within the federal government which would provide the basic administrative and financial support necessary to allow the commission to get up and running faster and to do so with far less angst and roiling about in the early days than is currently the case. Federal officials from this unit could be seconded to a new commission to establish the necessary support functions and to recruit the staff with the skills required to carry the system on. One might learn from the experience of Parliament which has developed staff with omnibus administrative skills charged with supporting the various legislative committees which are regularly being set up. It seems to me that the provision of neutral, professional infrastructure support would significantly improve the efficient conduct of national public inquiries, particularly in the start-up period, and could be arranged to do so without compromising the necessary independence of these enterprises.

The Hearings Process and the Research Function Some commissions are identified almost as much by their research and research publications as by their final report and its recommendations. The Macdonald Commission and theB&BCommission seem to me to fall into that category. TheB&BReport itself contained a substantial array of data and research findings, and the research studies provided a significant range of more specialized analyses. The experience of working at theB&Bmarked a whole generation of Anglophone and Francophone social scientists with consequences that were felt over the next 15 to 20 years. Likewise, the 1900 pages of the Macdonald Report are packed with data, and the 72 volumes of research reports give an extraordinarily comprehensive picture of Canadian academic thinking about the issues that the Commission was addressing. It was quite otherwise with the Task Force on Canadian Unity. The Task Force, in many ways, is its final report. Indeed, while there was discussion within the Commission about the possible release of some of the internal studies that had been carried out, that was never done. The Task Force, in fact, released only three documents in reverse order from what one would expect:

A Future Together: Observations and Recommendations, published on 25 January 1979, the report proper, containing the Commission's analysis of the plight the country found itself in and offering a comprehensive set of proposals for addressing it.

Coming To Terms: The Words of the Debate, published on 4 February 1979, a glossary of key political terms and concepts, produced as a labour of love by several of the Commissioners and still used as a reference work in university classrooms.

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A Time to Speak: The Views of the Public, published in March 1979, a report on what the people who appeared before the Task Force had to say about their country and the issues confronting it.

The fact that no working papers or studies were released does not mean that none was done. In fact, mountains of paper were produced over the short life of the Task Force, and the fate of some of this material was not decided until very near the end. In the event, its chief function was simply to support the Commissioners in their work. In this sense, research and the hearings processes performed parallel functions. Both provided input to the Commissioners which was ultimately synthesized in the final report. The research function was not a matter of doing original work nor, for the most part, contracting specialized projects out to scholars and experts; it was rather to collect and display relevant information, synthesize and represent significant findings and expert opinion in key areas, arrange for direct consultation with key people and present coherent policy alternatives to the Commissioners. Executing this mandate brought the research staff into fairly close contact with the hearings process. Indeed, the hearings themselves regularly included appearances before the Task Force of people with real expertise and a substantial record of achievement in the matters being discussed. During the eight-month formal hearings period from September 1977 to April 1978, the Task Force held full sessions in fifteen cities. The normal pattern called for public sessions in the evenings and consultations with groups and specialists during the day. In addition, there were numerous private sessions with political figures and experts along the way. In addition, the Commission engaged the services of “the three wise men”— Léon Dion of Laval, Edward MacWhinney of Simon Fraser and John Meisel of Queen's. They met with the Commissioners periodically to offer general counsel on the Task Force's work, to review draft material and to reassure the Commissioners about the validity of the information and advice they were receiving from the research staff. During the summer of 1978, after the public hearings were completed, there came what amounted to a private hearings process—an intensive round of consultations with a wide range of specialists designed to advance and enrich the thinking of the Commission. The research staff was intimately involved in this process which one of the academic Commissioners described as “the best seminar on Canada” anywhere. While it is true that the public hearings and the research enterprise were distinguishable streams of activity in the work of the Commission, and depended on different sets of staff, there was a good deal of overlap at certain points, and it is undeniable that the former helped support the latter.

Fasten Your Seatbelts: The Preparation of the Final Report Given the initial one-year mandate, combined with the Commissioners’ decision to prepare a conventional final report, discussion of the shape of the Task Force analysis and the nature of its recommendations became a recurrent issue during the winter months of 1977-78. Consideration was given to the possibility of producing an interim report, but it was fairly soon recognized

338 Reflections of an Insider on the Workings of the Pepin- Robarts Task Force on Canadian Unity that some extension of the mandate would be required and that the Task Force should concentrate its efforts on producing a good final report. With the completion of the public hearings in the spring of 1978 and the wind- up of the specialist consultations that summer, the Task Force turned its attention in earnest to the production of its final report. A great deal of effort was spent during the next four months, both attempting to settle on policy conclusions and recommendations and physically preparing a working draft of the final report. The territory to be covered was so vast and ill- defined, it was difficult to give it shape and focus. For a number of the Commissioners and staff, the moment of truth was approaching. A final decision on recommendations, for example, concerning national language policy and the constitutional status of Quebec in Confederation could not be avoided much longer, and it was clear that conflicting views would have to be worked out. Constitutional matters were the rock on which theB&BCommission had foundered a decade before, or at least were left unresolved by the Commission when it folded in 1970, to the evident satisfaction of the then recently arrived Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau. Pepin-Robarts Commissioners were acutely aware of what would and would not please Prime Minister Trudeau, now in office for ten years, but nevertheless were developing a diagnosis and approach materially different from his. Although some progress was made in the autumn of 1978, both on the preparation of the report and the recommendations, it did not feel much like progress at the time. The research staff produced fat, black, three-ring binders filled with draft chapters of the report which seemed to the staff, and I am sure to the Commissioners as well, ponderous and unwieldly. An experienced editor, brought in from Toronto expressed something close to horror at the unmanageable bulk of the chapter drafts. Another writer/editor, who had had extensive experience in shaping copy for Reader's Digest, was recruited and hacked manfully at the accumulation of words, much to the consternation of their writers. Nothing seemed to be working; neither the recommendations nor the text seemed to be coming into focus, and we were finding it hard to coherently express the integrating principles of regionalism, duality and powersharing that the Task Force had fashioned for itself in the course of the previous twelve months. We were also finding it difficult to settle on a set of recommendations that adequately reflected those principles. Our salvation came from outside. In June, 1978 the government of Canada released proposals for constitutional change in the form of draft legislation (Bill C-60). The existence of that document, and provincial reaction to it and to a federal schedule for 12 constitutional discussions, led the Prime Minister to convene a Constitutional Conference for 30 October to 1 November 1978. This was the beginning of another attempt at comprehensive constitutional reform seven years after the aborted Victoria Charter of 1971. Discussion at the October Conference appeared to disclose sufficient grounds to establish a ministerial Constitutional Committee to prepare specific proposals for a second First Ministers' Conference on the Constitution, to be held on 5 to 6 February 1979. These events led members of the Task Force to believe that the February meeting was likely to be of critical importance to the country and to the

339 IJCS / RIÉC resolution of the constitutional issue; there was a sense that the Task Force, if it did not speak prior to that event, might very well miss the boat and its work be made largely irrelevant. In the event, this was far from true, as some of the Task Force members privately realized. While Prime Minister Trudeau appeared to be willing to consider proposals that were more generous to the provinces than had been the case in the past, political considerations on the part of the provincial participants, given the prospect of a federal election in a few weeks or months, meant that the chances of reaching an agreement were slim. In addition, the Parti Québécois government of Quebec was committed to sovereignty- association—a non-starter in English-speaking Canada—and the PQ had yet to test the acceptability of its ideas among its own electorate in a referendum. Nevertheless, the notion that a significant constitutional agreement might be possible in February was an extraordinarily helpful “activating fiction” that galvanized Commissioners and staff. At a meeting before Christmas, the Commissioners committed themselves to the preparation and release of their final report including recommendations prior to the Vancouver constitutional meeting. For this reason, three volumes the Task Force produced came out in reverse order from what might have been expected. Setting a real deadline, credible to themselves and authoritative so far as the staff were concerned, was probably the most critical single decision the Commissioners made with respect to the final report. All other matters for resolution became consequential on that prior commitment. Recommendations had to be decided; a satisfactory draft of the final report, reflecting the philosophy of the Commissioners, had to be produced. All of this—not to mention the editing, translation, printing and distribution—had to be completed within a space of seven weeks. The psychological impact on Commissioners and staff alike was dramatic; as one researcher said:

The Commissioners have fastened their seat belts and returned their chairs to the upright position. They're getting ready to land.

At a stroke, the Commission members began to focus on essentials, not details. Setting a deadline helped the Task Force unburden itself of the unwieldly drafts of the final report produced in autumn, and to use them simply as resource material to be drawn on as needed. The responsibility for preparing a draft of an entirely new version of the report was entrusted to one Commissioner and one member of the research staff; they agreed between themselves on the general areas each would be responsible for, and the Commission broke for Christmas. The first sentences of what was to become the final report were written on Boxing Day. A Future Together: Observations and Recommendations, the Final Report of the Task Force on Canadian Unity, was released in both official languages one month later. This must surely set a record for the rapid production of a royal-commission report. Recently, one of my colleagues, currently laboring on another royal commission, observed wearily:

340 Reflections of an Insider on the Workings of the Pepin- Robarts Task Force on Canadian Unity

Oh. commissions....Commissions are a lot like elephants. They’re big and slow moving and they tend to sit down and squash things. The only difference is they don't have memories.

It is true that the pace set by many commissions has been painfully slow, but that certainly cannot be said of the final days of the Pepin-Robarts Task Force, nor, I think, of its existence in general, given that its active life was less than a year and a half in total. The Commission reconvened at the beginning of January to review and improve the draft, to finalize the recommendations and to oversee the translation. Fortunately, the draft that the authors had prepared was generally to the liking of the Commissioners and, by then, the pressure of the looming deadline forced a consensus in even the most divisive areas in which they intended to make recommendations. These areas were many: decentralization, the Senate, the Supreme Court and other contentious issues. But by far the most difficult matter was federal language policy, and the Commissioners—particularly an active core group from Ontario and Quebec—spent hours during the days and nights of early January in an ultimately successful struggle to reach agreement on a set of language-policy recommendations. These were among the most controversial when the Report was publicly released. The role of John Robarts was important here. He was neither troubled by nor terribly interested in the detailed recommendations with which several of the other Commissioners were wrestling. However, he did care passionately about one thing: he thought his country was in very serious trouble and it needed to get fixed, and quickly. Robarts used to say, when confronted with yet another set of arcane policy proposals, that dealing with these national-unity issues was like “shovelling fog.” He would also say that Canada need to “reach finality” on these issues, that is to say, to settle the matter once and for all, get it over and done with, and stop talking about it. These views, I think, allowed him to accept quite “comfortably” (a favourite Robarts' word) what must have been, for him, a fairly radical set of recommendations. They also explain his insistence during the final discussions that the report be unanimous; if the Task Force’s recommendations were to be credible and authoritative, there could be no minority report. And there was none.

The Impact of the Task Force The Task Force’s Final Report was given to the government a couple of days before its public release, and several of the Commissioners went to Prime Minister Trudeau's office to discuss it with him and Marc Lalonde. Trudeau and Lalonde had had very little time to review the Report. It came as no surprise to any of us that neither of them liked it much, but what I found interesting was the way that each, given the limited time available, approached the Report. Marc Lalonde had flipped to the back and read through the recommendations; he then proceeded to render his judgment of the document on that basis. Trudeau, for his part, had started at the beginning of the Report and read his way as far as he could into the substance of the argument; he then discussed with the Commissioners their substantive approach and line of reasoning. While I thought it a pity—though not surprising—that the Prime Minister did

341 IJCS / RIÉC not care for the Report's analysis and intellectual framework, it pleased me as a citizen and an academic that the Prime Minister of my country had a cast of mind that drove him to tackle arguments, not just recommendations. The government of Canada received the Task Force's Report publicly with restraint and circumspection. When Prime Minister Trudeau tabled it in the House he stated carefully that the government of Canada “accepts the broad lines of the Task Force’s analysis of the problem and endorses the basic principles which it believes should underlie the renewal of the Canadian federation.” The opposition leaders, Joe Clark and Ed Broadbent, were more outspoken in their support. It was in the days which followed that the Prime Minister began to make it clear that the government had considerable reservations about the Report. There was much in the Report to which he took exception, not least its positive emphasis on duality and regionalism, its support for some decentralization of social and cultural policy (although combined with some centralization in the economic field) and, in particular, its position on federal language policy. The Report was made public just two weeks before the Vancouver Constitutional Conference. As such, it became a central topic of conversation in Vancouver, but its release so close to the meeting meant that it did not have a structural impact on the agenda or the substantive discussions that took place. Some interest was expressed in the approach of Pepin-Robarts by several provinces, and it appeared that the Parti Québécois government of Quebec was startled by the Report's forthright recognition of Quebec's distinct character and its willingness to give that distinctiveness some significant constitutional expression. Claude Morin, then the Quebec minister responsible for intergovernmental affairs, was reported to have said, apropos of the Pepin- Robarts approach: “We’re not in the same boat, but we're sailing down the same river.” Probably the most concrete example of the effect the Report had in some quarters is the Beige Paper, the constitutional document put together by the Quebec Liberal Party under the leadership of Claude Ryan. It drew heavily on the Task Force approach. However, the defeat of Ryan and the re-election of the PQ after the referendum meant that that stream of influence was effectively blocked off. Despite some internal advice to the contrary, the Trudeau government dealt with the Pepin-Robarts Report by ignoring it. This strategy was largely successful in reducing its immediate, practical impact, in part because no provincial government or governments took Pepin-Robarts up seriously as a cause célèbre and in part because the country was embarking on a tumultuous 18 months in its history which saw the defeat of the Liberals in June 1979, the nine-month reign of the Clark Conservative Government, the re-election of Trudeau and the Liberal Party in February 1980 and the Quebec referendum in May 1980. The Clark government, during its brief term of office, showed some interest in the Report, and the work that Arthur Tremblay, appointed to the Senate by Prime Minister Clark, had begun, made use of the Pepin-Robarts Report as a significant policy resource. The Report of the Task Force on Canadian Unity came, then, at the beginning of a series of national events that followed fast on the heels of one another and which transformed the context in which Canadian unity and constitutional

342 Reflections of an Insider on the Workings of the Pepin- Robarts Task Force on Canadian Unity reform were addressed. With the utterly unexpected re-election of a majority Liberal Government under a rejuvenated Pierre Trudeau followed by the defeat of the Quebec referendum on sovereignty-association, the philosophy and proposals espoused by the Task Force were definitively set aside. From 1980 to 1984, the Trudeau approach to national unity, constitutional reform and the management of the federation held complete sway.

Eloquent evidence of this reality is to be found in the fate of Jean-Luc Pepin, co-chairman of the Task Force, who was re-elected as a Liberal in the 18 February 1980 federal election which brought Trudeau back to power. The Prime Minister made Pepin Minister of Transport, at that time an active and very heavy portfolio which was far removed from the referendum and constitutional action, and he was allowed to have no significant role in the federal government's conduct of these matters. What of the Task Force's general influence—its “atmospheric” impact—in the fourteen years since it folded its tent? Any response to that question must be highly speculative. However, I have the impression that the Pepin-Robarts Task Force accomplished in substantial measure what it had announced it intended to do at the beginning of its work, namely, to present a third option for Canada. In the event, it offered an approach which was different from both the sovereignty-association proposal of the Parti Québécois government and the Trudeau view of national unity and federalism. It constituted the most coherent, standing federalist alternative to the political ideas of Pierre Trudeau. His anti-nationalist individualism led him to foster the recognition of individually-based language rights and to stoutly resist any expanded recognition of the community-based reality of the French fact in North America. While clearly a believer in federalism, his experience in government created in him a strong resistance to any strengthening of the provinces in Confederation. The Pepin-Robarts Report recognized, accepted and sought to accommodate the very forces in Canadian life and politics that Trudeau was combatting. It accepted and celebrated diversity, and in its development of the concepts of duality and regionalism, the Task Force fashioned a view of Canada and Confederation that comfortably acknowledged the communitarian foundation of much of what was most valuable and most strongly cherished in our national existence. What is more, the Report frankly accepted the structural role of the Province of Quebec as the “foyer” of the Francophone community in North America and the role of the other provinces in expressing the regional loyalties of Canadians in other parts of the country. It was, I think, the first public body to advance this conception of Canada with such clarity and vigour. The Task Force was explicit in acknowledging that, politically, regions were best understood as provinces and that, with respect to duality, the key issue was the status of Quebec in Confederation. There is no doubt that the Task Force was correct in designating these as the two central forces in the country which required mutual accommodation. The failure to reconcile regionalism—transmuted into the principle of the equality of the provinces—and duality—understood as the need to recognize Quebec as a distinct society—has, in the fourteen years since the Task Force published its Report, exposed the country to greater risk than any other single issue in our national life.

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Conclusion The Task Force’s conception of Canada; its frank acceptance of the central principles of duality and regionalism and the determination to knit them more creatively into the fabric of our national life, rather than to deny them; the recognition of Quebec as a distinct society; the willingness to tackle the assignment of power between the two orders of government and to accept a degree of decentralization—all of these bespeak an approach materially different from that which dominated our national life until 1984. The pressure to give them some degree of constitutional accommodation, however, appears not to have diminished with time, although we have not so far been successful in addressing this matter, nor have we succeeded in giving constitutional expression to the aspirations of Canada's aboriginal peoples. Both Meech Lake and the Charlottetown Accord attempted to establish greater constitutional space for the communitarian realities of Canadian life; in this they were at one with the central direction of the Pepin-Robarts Report. With the establishment of the constitutional Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, we have given powerful expression to the voice of individualism to which Pierre Trudeau was so strongly committed and which unquestionably forms part of the very foundation of Canadian life. This is not the place for a review of the unhappy fortunes of Meech and Charlottetown, but it does seem to me that there is another voice—as thoroughly Canadian as that to which the 1982 Constitution gives expression—which is still calling for recognition.

Notes * I am indebted to Ralph Heintzman, Ken McRoberts, Jean-Luc Pepin and Ron Watts who commented on an earlier draft of this paper. 1. See Jean-Luc Pepin's comments on this subject in his delightful appreciation of John Robarts, given as the closing address of York University's May 1984 inaugural ceremonies for the establishment of the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, p. 111. 2. The Role of the Task Force, 1 September 1977. Reproduced in the Task Force's final report, A Future Together: Observations and Recommendations, pp. 139-43. 3. Alan Cairns has spoken of this commission culture in ‘Reflections on Commission Research’, Commissions of Inquiry, ed. Paul Pross et al. (Toronto: Carswell, 1990), pp.91-3. 4. Alan Cairns speaks of the atmosphere of the Macdonald Commission in ‘Reflection’, p. 93.

344 Allan Tupper

English-Canadian Scholars and the Meech Lake Accord*

Michael D. Behiels (ed.). The Meech Lake Primer : Conflicting Views of the 1987 Constitutional Accord. Ottawa : The University of Ottawa Press, 1987. Alan C. Cairns. Disruptions : Constitutional Struggles, from the Charter to Meech Lake, edited by Douglas E. Williams. Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 1991. Roger Gibbins (ed.) with Howard Palmer, Brian Rusted and David Taras. Meech Lake and Canada : Perspectives from the West. Edmonton : Academic Printing and Publishing, 1988. The Meech Lake Accord. Canadian Public Policy. Supplement (1988) XIV. Patrick J. Monahan. Meech Lake : The Inside Story. Toronto and Buffalo : University of Toronto Press, 1991. David E. Smith, Peter MacKinnon and John C. Courtney (eds.). After Meech Lake : Lessons for the Future. Saskatoon : Fifth House Publishers, 1991. K.E. Swinton and C.J. Rogerson (eds.). Competing Constitutional Visions : The Meech Lake Accord. Agincourt, Ontario : The Carswell Co. Ltd., 1988.

This essay critically evaluates the English-language literature on the Meech Lake Accord. Several caveats are necessary. First, the literature’s boundaries are imprecise. Scholarship abounds in journal articles and books. Such works are enriched by an array of commissioned works, briefs to governments and transcripts of public hearings to cite just a few sources. Second, the formal literature is itself diverse. Several important volumes were written soon after the Accord’s birth while others are post mortems. Some contributions are designed to influence events and others are motivated by the conventional scholarly goals of explanation and education. Third, as a political scientist, I will stress, but not restrict myself to, my discipline’s extensive contributions. Finally, I appreciate the varying needs of my diverse audience. My strategy is the bold one of trying to say things that will interest most of my readers. In this essay, I say a little about many different ideas with the full understanding that I am plumbing a substantial literature, that there are exceptions to my generalizations and that several arguments require elaboration. My conclusions are critical. Social scientists are active participants in Canadian constitutional life. We counsel governments and interest groups, actively express our views about proposed changes and passionately advocate reforms. But social scientists have remained close to the policy makers’ agenda, have failed to provide new prisms through which to interpret the Constitution and have undertaken little research which links constitutional politics with other important Canadian issues. I also believe that

International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 7-8, Spring-Fall/Printemps-automne 1993 IJCS / RIÉC

Canadian political scientists are too generous in their public assessments of each others’ work to the detriment of its quality. Political scientists are consistently demanding, often intemperate, when evaluating the constitutional performance of public officials. My essay comprises three sections. First, I highlight the English-Canadian literature’s strengths and weaknesses. I then examine the contributions of Alan C. Cairns and Patrick J. Monahan. In distinguished essays, Cairns fashions a powerful, yet incomplete, picture of our recent constitutional life. Monahan’s book, Meech Lake : The Inside Story, presents an iconoclastic, but apologetic, assessment of Meech Lake. I conclude with some thoughts about scholars’ roles in constitutional controversies.

Themes, Strengths and Weaknesses The literature is competent and intelligent. It is sometimes creative and occasionally rouses such powerful emotions as anger, despair and genuine concern about an unsettled national future. Canadian scholars adeptly capture, describe and analyze the visions of Canada that Meech Lake either reflected or ignored. In this vein, the Accord was criticized by many scholars as an imprecise, irrelevant or wrong characterization of the contemporary Canadian condition (Gibbins 1988 ; Whyte 1988). For critics, Meech’s agenda was too rooted in the notion that Canadian politics still revolved around questions of Quebec’s position, federal-provincial relations and the status of two founding peoples. How could constitution makers ignore the needs and aspirations of aboriginals, women and Canadians whose ancestry was neither British nor French? Meech’s advocates, both governmental and academic, reacted defensively to such criticism. They often admitted the critique’s validity but argued that other constitutional questions could be better tackled after Quebec’s status had been settled (Simeon 1988). Scholars also contributed substantially to the often passionate debate about the possible impact of the distinct society clause on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Several careful essays plumb this complex topic (MacKay 1988; Smith 1988). Meech Lake’s impact on the balance of power within federalism was widely discussed, a hardly surprising fact given the continuing importance of federal issues for governments, citizens and political scientists. Some hyperbole was employed, notably by Pierre Trudeau, by those who worried that Meech would further restrain Ottawa’s capacity to act (Trudeau 1988). On balance, scholars concluded that Meech was “decentralizing” through its provisions on Senate reform, appointments to the Supreme Court, immigration policy and the spending power (Cairns 1991 : 148-61 ; Johnson 1988). The literature captures the “provincializing” thrust of a federal constitutional strategy based on offering to all provinces that which was necessary to accommodate Quebec. Scholars dispatched the myth of Meech Lake as a “Quebec round” and captured its reality as a “provincial round.” The literature highlights Canadians’ serious complaints about the democratic quality of the processes employed to formulate, to conclude and to legitimate the Meech Lake Accord. “Executive federalism” is almost universally decried as an unacceptable forum for the development of major constitutional reforms, although critics attacked it on different grounds (Cairns 1992 : 102-8). An excess of secrecy, a failure to provide clear arguments in support of the Accord and efforts to limit public debate are among the offending features. Ottawa’s particular insistence that the Accord could be discussed, but not changed, was

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seen as a singular affront to a democratic people. Scholars noted how some Canadians also questioned the representativeness of political elites and challenged their capacity to speak for the country. The unflattering description of the First Ministers as “eleven, able bodied white males” was incessantly echoed. Critical assessments of the process are numerous and convincing but not hegemonic. Scattered through the Meech Lake literature and centrepiece in Patrick J. Monahan’s book are defences of, and explanations for, the processes and strategies employed (Simeon 1989 : 128). Meech’s supporters argued that critics of the process employed procedural arguments as smoke screens to cover opposition to the Accord’s content. While self-interested, this point raises broad issues about the interplay between democratic procedures and the content of major constitutional reforms. Are Meech’s defenders correct when they assert that procedural arguments, while important, cannot be allowed to trump substantive ones? Tradeoffs between proper procedure and desirable substance are not troubling for ardent supporters or passionate critics. They are probably deeply worrisome for Canadians who are receptive to the content of proposed changes but appalled by the processes employed. A virtue of the Meech Lake literature, one perhaps so obvious that it is forgotten, is that it reveals the range of opinions and passions about the Accord and the principal arguments in its defence and opposition. Its record of these views and emotions will become more important as time passes and as our memories fade and become more selective. The reader interested in recapturing the arguments must delve into the literature as no author provides a panorama. The edited volumes are particularly helpful in this task especially Michael Behiels’s tome which collects the positions of some interest groups, several important statements by public officials and scholars’ views (Behiels 1989). Alan Cairns has noted some substantial omissions in Canadian constitutional scholarship including its failure to think dispassionately about “Canada without Quebec” or the dynamics of aboriginal self-government (Cairns 1991: 207-14). Many other important issues are ignored or dealt with unsatisfactorily. Rather ironically given the debate about the Charlottetown Accord, Senate reform is not prominently discussed in the Meech Lake literature (Meekison 1988). Those concerned with the underlying philosophy, logic and effectiveness of alternative reforms must look elsewhere. The constitutional politics of Canada’s provinces and territories are not probed exhaustively.1 Observers are content to view provincial government behaviours as a function of such general forces as dominant personalities and partisan calculations, perennial provincial interests as shaped by their economic bases and social structures and Ottawa’s strategy of making a “Quebec round” a de facto “provincial round.” We get little sense of the range of intraprovincial opinions, the precise constraints imposed upon provincial leaders or the genesis of such provincial ideologies as “equality of the provinces.” The territorial governments are either ignored or mentioned in passing as irate bystanders to a constitutional renewal whose content and politics they opposed. The English-Canadian literature on Meech Lake says little about Quebec’s internal politics, a topic which if better explained might permit non-Quebecers to appreciate the province’s complexity and hence the broad contours of its constitutional positions. Despite the perennial and continuing centrality of governments in Canadian constitutional politics and

349 IJCS / RIÉC scholarship, the literature provides few convincing theoretical and empirical accounts of their behaviour. In light of these flaws, a careful inventory of the literature’s assertions about governments’ behaviour, a critical assessment of their validity and a clear research agenda would be valuable contributions to future scholarship. Canadian scholars seldom discuss the impact of constitutional reform on the substance of public policy, a noteworthy exception being Keith Banting’s assessment of Meech’s implications for the welfare state (Banting 1988). Meech’s alterations to the constitutional basis of immigration policy, a politically contentious topic, was, except for a single substantive article, ignored or mentioned merely as the constitutional entrenchment of the political and administrative status quo (Kruhlak 1988). Meech’s provision for annual First Ministers’ conferences on the economy—a proposal with obvious, albeit indirect, policy consequences —was also given short shrift. The failure to link constitutional change with the activities of governments reflects Canadian political science’s failure to embrace policy studies as an integral part of its undertakings. This disciplinary weakness has direct consequences for constitutional studies by removing policy effectiveness as an important criterion for the evaluation of democratic constitutions. When the policy consequences of constitutional reform are ignored or downplayed, other more accessible yardsticks, like the impact on the federal balance of power, assume unwarranted prominence. As a major contribution, the literature highlights the advent and proliferation of non governmental constitutional actors. In particular, Alan Cairns has documented the roles of aboriginal peoples and their organizations, women’s groups and spokespersons for Canada’s visible minorities (Cairns 1991). Much more work is required before we understand their constitutional views and roles. In this vein, we might consider studying the emergent non- governmental forces as interest groups per se. Such a perspective acknowledges the elemental point that the organizations in question perform many roles besides their explicitly political, let alone constitutional, ones. They have personalities, internal dynamics and little understood histories that shape their constitutional personae but also reflect their continuing performance of other important undertakings. Their policy making, their funding, their links with governments and their decisions about constitutional strategy all require investigation. Political scientists can undertake such studies armed with a set of propositions about constitutional behaviour and a substantial literature on interest groups. The range of non-governmental constitutional actors must be expanded to include research organizations like the Canada West Foundation, trade unions, business organizations and the diverse groups that arise during the constitutional deliberations and then fade from prominence. Their roles, their strategies and their influence must be probed if we are to understand the “new politics” of constitutional reform. Such inquiries might bring new life to constitutional studies by injecting the views of scholars who have abstained from participation and by providing dispassionate analysis of the roles of non-governmental actors. A fuller grasp of the patterns of influence at work might also challenge the literature’s still strong assumption that constitution making is an area of considerable governmental autonomy from societal pressures. The Meech Lake literature often notes the impact of the mass media on constitutional events. Yet only David Taras, his debaters and a few others deal explicitly with the topic (Alboim 1988; Meisel 1991; Raboy 1991; Taras 1988

350 English-Canadian Scholars and the Meech Lake Accord

and 1991). Taras employs modern communications theories to argue that television, while influential, is a poor medium for serious constitutional analysis. While media are assumed to be influential, their role will not become central in Canadian constitutional studies. Few social scientists, let alone constitutional lawyers, are familiar with the complex literature that must underpin a serious discussion of media influence. The Meech Lake literature is dominated by the contributions of law and political science. Other disciplines, especially economics, anthropology, philosophy and sociology, are little represented. Nor has much genuinely interdisciplinary work emerged, although political scientists and lawyers often share insights. Whether a growing fusion between these two disciplines is desirable is an open question in both fields. Economists’ abstinence from constitutional debates is regrettable.2 Their greater engagement would probably lessen the concern with democratic processes and heighten concern with policy effectiveness as a criterion for assessing constitutional change. Philosophers are not regular contributors to the detriment of the literature and the debates.3 Few thinkers coherently probe the Constitution through the lens of classical or modern political thought. As noted earlier, a strong suit of the Meech Lake literature is its ability to capture the visions of Canada that underpin public debate. But, revealingly, the scholarship says little systematically or theoretically about visions of Canada as a political democracy. A fuller philosophical engagement will not magically guarantee a more satisfying constitutional life and scholarship. It might result in a deeper attention to the principles that should guide democratic constitutional reform, in a heavier emphasis on criteria for judging proposed changes and in a richer assessment of such questions as the tensions between individual and collective rights. A stronger philosophical strand, by posing questions differently, might also shift debate away from the agenda as defined by the protagonists. The Canadian left is a bystander in the Meech Lake debates and its attendant scholarship, although this assertion raises complex questions of definition and measurement of influence. The social democratic left has generally defended a strong federal government and championed constitutionally recognized social and economic rights. But these views are neither distinctively social democratic nor perceived to be such. They are articulated by other constitutional actors who do not necessarily define themselves as part of the left, some women’s groups for example, and other partisans, some federal Liberals for example. The federal New Democratic Party’s support of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords mutes its impact on constitutional events as does the left’s continuing suspicion of constitutional debates as mere distractions in the face of a dreary economic landscape. In the event, Meech Lake was seldom probed from the perspectives of class relations or theories of political power. This neglect is unfortunate as a constitutional reordering of immigration power and the federal spending authority within the context of a “provincializing” credo are important topics for those outside the ideological mainstream. The Meech Lake debate was conducted within the grasp of implicit and unchallenged assumptions about the character and power structure of Canadian society. The dominance of political science and law, the neglect of certain topics and ideological homogeneity are easily demonstrated. Another essential characteristic of the Meech Lake literature is more elusive. That is, the

351 IJCS / RIÉC literature is better characterized as sophisticated public affairs analysis rather than scholarly research as conventionally understood. It rests on commentaries about, and evaluations of, governments’ constitutional proposals. Such are principally derived from authors’ general knowledge of Canadian government and society and their strong views about our national future. Their scholarship is not rooted in the definition of precise research problems or the articulation and implementation of research designs. To the degree that controversy occurs, it concerns the conclusions drawn and/or the prescriptions offered. Support for these observations is best drawn from the remarkable absence in the scholarship of controversy about how the Constitution should be studied with emphasis on questions of evidence, assumptions and the suitability of dominant questions. Such debates, even if too sporadic or tame for some of our tastes, are found in most mature areas of scholarship where dominant methodologies, topics and conclusions are invariably challenged. In the Meech Lake debate, English-Canadian scholars sparred with each other as committed citizens.

Meech Lake : Some General Interpretations A highlight of the Meech Lake literature is the wide-ranging scholarship of Alan C. Cairns who coherently interprets the constitutional experience. His rich scholarship cannot be easily or satisfactorily summarized. It must be read. He captures a new Canadian constitutional culture, one characterized by the mobilization of many non-governmental actors who see formal constitutional change as a principal arena for the pursuit of their political visions. Inspired by the powerful impact of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms on Canadian society, Cairns demonstrates the treacherous course of a constitutional order now defined by two, often conflicting, agendas. During Meech Lake, governments stressed a traditional agenda which emphasized federal- provincial questions and Quebec’s position in Canada. New actors, the “rights bearers,” were driven by a concern with individual and group rights. Through this prism, Cairns explains the debates about the process, about the interplay between the distinct society clause and the Charter and about the Accord’s failure. Cairns’ work should be acknowledged as excellent but not worshipped. His provocative portrait is incomplete. As perhaps driven by his methodological focus on the public statements of constitutional actors, he sees the modern constitutional order as shaped by a multiplicity of competing elites. He pays little explicit attention to the broader patterns of public opinion that shape, reflect and restrain elite opinions in little understood ways. Moreover, Cairns generally sees constitutional affairs as operating in isolation from other pressing political matters. He has not yet linked constitutional controversies with debates about the changing economic role of the state. His work could profitably be extended to employ the Canadian case as a springboard for thinking about the essence of constitutional orders in modern democracies. Patrick J. Monahan’s Meech Lake : The Inside Story is an ambitious book. It is literate, often provocative and sometimes stimulating. It is also incomplete, imprecise and confusing in important aspects. The book’s subtitle is misleading for several reasons. First, Monahan explicitly criticizes accounts that stress personalities; he writes as an insider but also as an intellectual driven by a desire to rise above the everyday clash of political emotion and personalities. Seen in this light, Andrew Cohen’s accessible and intelligent

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account of Meech’s politics, as based on interviews with key actors, is recommended for insight into the personalities and the bargaining (Cohen 1990). Second, Monahan says little about the anxieties and role conflicts that might befall a legal scholar and professor—an “outsider” in one sense—who temporarily occupies a senior advisory position to a key actor, in this case the Premier of Ontario. The neglect of this aspect of “insider” status is unfortunate as academics, who are thought to be influential in such roles, seldom write about their experiences. Third, Monahan’s core arguments—about the process, about the Accord’s symbolism and about leaders as prisoners of past agreements—could have been constructed by a non-participant. Their articulation does not require “insider” status. Monahan wants to destroy the idea that Meech Lake was merely a failure of Canadian political leadership, a “total bungle” as Pierre Trudeau called it (Monahan 1991 : 8-9). This argument is surely a straw man as no serious or influential academic, political or journalistic observers subscribed to it.4 In his zeal to undercut the “total bungle” thesis, Monahan fashions a deterministic counter thesis—that Meech’s architects were prisoners of the 1982 constitutional settlement. Taken to its extreme, this line of reasoning is an obstacle to, and conservative substitute for, serious constitutional analysis. Finally, Monahan does not transcend the personality-centered accounts he claims to abhor. The dissenting Premiers of Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Manitoba—Clyde Wells, Frank Mckenna and Gary Filmon respectively— are consistently criticized while the errors and sins of the Prime Minister and the “on side” Premiers are ignored or downplayed. Wells, for example, is vilified as an opponent of democracy for failing to bring a Meech resolution before the Newfoundland legislature. Prime Minister Mulroney’s abdication of his responsibility to educate Canadians about Meech Lake is satisfactory to Monahan because the agreement raised conflicting expectations in different parts of the country and was thus difficult to communicate. An elemental feature of drama—the construction of a story through the creation of heroes and villains—is central to Monahan’s analysis. Contrary to many interpretations, Monahan portrays the Meech Lake Accord as a substantial intergovernmental compromise in which all the players, including Quebec, gave ground. Ottawa capitulated to no one—the federal government was not the provinces’ “head waiter.” To this end, Monahan provides an excellent synthesis and evaluation of the complex intergovernmental constitutional negotiations between 1982 and 1987. But his analysis is more compelling and valuable than the political case that flows from it. Perhaps Meech Lake was a wise compromise. But how were citizens supposed to discern their leaders’ wisdom when Meech’s underlying compromises and philosophy were not shared with them? Monahan bravely confronts the battalions of critics who attacked the Meech process as unacceptable in a democracy. His counterattack is more spirited than persuasive. For one thing, Monahan’s defence of the process is sidetracked into arguments about secrecy. His case also rests on three weakly related propositions. First, he implies that Meech’s excessive secrecy was a function of the process itself and the “political inheritance of 1982” (Monahan 1991: 9). But Cairns’ case—that the Meech process flowed from conscious political choice not immutable technical or legal requirements—is more powerful (Cairns 1991 : 259). Second, Monahan moves from seeing secrecy as an unpleasant necessity to justifying it as requisite to effectiveness in most human endeavours, not only politics. But to be convincing, Monahan must

353 IJCS / RIÉC demonstrate why and when information should be withheld from citizens. What must we know? He ignores the harder question of whether democratic constitution making by its very nature demands extraordinary openness. In short, we require a careful democratic theory of information not assertions about decision making which merely justify an excess of secrecy. Finally, Monahan argues that Meech critics employed process arguments to mask substantive disagreements. To a degree, this assertion raises empirical questions about the constitutional strategies employed. Perhaps Monahan’s “smoke screen” thesis is correct. But is the Meech Lake process democratically acceptable simply because several antagonists strategically blurred democratic critiques with substantive ones? By what criteria should we measure constitutional processes? To return to an earlier question, how should citizens respond when they worry about the process but concur with the substance of reform? Compelling answers to these questions must flow from explicit democratic arguments. Monahan disappoints in this important task. Monahan’s volume reflects the competing, perhaps irreconcilable, pressures on scholars who try to be simultaneously relevant, iconoclastic, analytical and prescriptive. He submits to the dictates of too many demanding taskmasters.

Scholars and the Constitution What roles should professors play in national constitutional debates? Should they be “activists” as variously defined or is their primary duty to the pursuit of knowledge? How close should scholars be to governments and interest groups? Such questions irritate those colleagues for whom answers are self- evident, for whom “activism” is necessary and desirable and for whom “activism” and effective scholarship are complementary not competitive pursuits. My view is that answers to such questions are neither obvious nor easily arrived at. A serious dialogue is warranted. We need a serious research project on scholars as Canadian constitutional actors. Such a study, whose details cannot be explored here, would stress the range of roles assumed and the extent of scholarly involvement. What links exist between academics, governments, political parties, research institutes, the mass media and interest groups? Second, what is the range of scholarly views and how are they shaped? Do certain disciplines “favour” particular constitutional solutions? Finally, how do professors and other actors perceive their influence? The arguments in favour of scholarly activism are ascendant if not necessarily correct. In a troubled world, a monastic, self-directed and generally well-paid scholarly life can sometimes seem self-indulgent, wasteful and irrelevant even to its dedicated devotees. As Canadians, indeed North Americans, we are incessantly reminded that our society prizes action over introspection (Payne 1981: 187). Second, the sociology and traditions of disciplines may propel their practitioners to action. My guess is that many political scientists, as practitioners of a diverse and ill-defined discipline, feel “impractical” when compared to a profession like law or to a “hard” social science like economics. Such a view lingers even in light of our discipline’s extensive contributions to important royal commissions, to debates about federal and provincial electoral boundaries and of course to constitutional controversies to cite a few telling examples. Viewed in this light, the Canadian political science community can arguably be seen as part of the state not an independent observer of it. Finally, although seldom studied, the modern university itself

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pressures its members towards social activism. The demonstration of the “relevance” of scholarly research is a preoccupation of modern universities. Social science and humanities research creates problems as its influence is difficult to demonstrate. Viewed from this angle, a stable of visible, committed and influential constitutional advisors is a prized university possession which merits nurture and encouragement. Finally, we must not presume that activism necessarily yields greater influence on events than more detached and reflective scholarship. Over the long haul, independent scholarship may shift the agenda and reorient thought as new ideas are slowly transmitted to society and new generations.

Conclusions As I write in early 1993, Canadians are in an eerie constitutional no man’s land. We face a long list of unresolved constitutional business which now emits no siren call. The constitutional agenda is apparently on hold pending the results of important elections in Canada and Quebec. Or will an unforeseen event spark a constitutional blaze and arouse us from our state of alleged constitutional fatigue? The future of constitutional studies is likewise uncertain. The lull means that the moving constitutional target is momentarily stationary. Scholars can catch their breath, focus their energies and put complex events in context. The national referendum on the Charlottetown Accord adds more ground to an already complex research terrain. Yet we cannot even gauge the breadth and depth of scholarly commitment to Canadian constitutional studies. Will even a short-term decline in political interest lead to a scholarly exodus as other problems compete for scarce research time and commitment? Will a tiny contingent of constitutional stalwarts face the daunting task of interpreting a decade of constitutional turmoil? Will their dedication be enough to generate the iconoclastic and theoretical scholarship that their task demands?

Notes * I would like to thank Professor Kenneth McRoberts and the journal’s Editorial Board for their constructive criticisms. 1. Some noteworthy exceptions are Donald W. Stevenson’s valuable essay “Ontario and Confederation : A Reassessment” in R. Watts and D. Brown, eds., Canada : The State of the Federation (Kingston, Ontario: Institute of Intergovernmental Relations,1989), 53-74 and Gerald Friesen,“Manitoba and the Meech Lake Accord” in R. Gibbins, ed., Meech Lake and Canada : Perspectives from the West, 51-62. For a stimulating discussion of the inadequate scholarship on the constitutional positions of Atlantic Canadian governments, see David Milne,“Challenging Constitutional Dependency : A Revisionist View of Atlantic Canada” in J. McCrorie and M. MacDonald, eds., The Constitutional Future of the Prairie and Atlantic Regions of Canada (Regina : Canadian Plains Research Center, 1992), 308-17. In lamenting the inadequate study of provincial and territorial governments, I am not arguing that the federal government’s constitutional policy making is satisfactorily understood or studied. 2. The obvious exception to this argument is the creative scholarship of Thomas J. Courchene. See, for example, “Meech Lake and Socio-Economic Policy,” Canadian Public Policy,14 supplement (September 1988), 63-80. See also R. Boadway, J. Mintz and D. Purvis, “The Economic Policy Implications of the Meech Lake Accord” in K. Swinton and C. Rogerson, eds., Competing Constitutional Visions : The Meech Lake Accord, 225-238. 3. An exception is Charles Taylor’s work. See, for example, his “Shared and Divergent Values” in R. Watts and D. Brown eds., Options for Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,1991), 53-76.

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4. If Andrew Cohen’s book is the principal object of Monahan’s displeasure, his ire is misplaced. Cohen’s book rests on a clear political grasp of Canadian constitutional life. See Andrew Cohen, A Deal Undone: The Making and Breaking of the Meech Lake Accord (Vancouver : Douglas and McIntyre, 1990).

Bibliography Alboim, E. “Inside the News Story : Meech Lake as Viewed by an Ottawa Bureau Chief” in R. Gibbins, ed., Meech Lake and Canada, 235-46. Behiels, Michael D., ed. The Meech Lake Primer. Cairns, Alan C., edited by Williams, Douglas, E. Disruptions. Cairns, Alan C. Charter versus Federalism : The Dilemmas of Constitutional Reform. Montreal and Kingston : McGill Queen’s University Press, 1992. Cohen, Andrew. A Deal Undone : The Making and Breaking of the Meech Lake Accord Vancouver and Toronto : Douglas and McIntyre, 1990. Gibbins, R. “A Sense of Unease: The Meech Lake Accord and Constitution-making in Canada” in Gibbins, ed., Meech Lake and Canada, 121-30. Johnson, A.W. “The Meech Lake Accord and the Bonds of Nationhood” in Swinton and Rogerson, eds., Competing Consitutional Visions, 145-54. Kruhlak, O. “Constitutional Reform and Immigration” in Gibbins, ed., Meech Lake and Canada, 201-14. MacKay, W. “Linguistic Duality and Distinct Society in Quebec : Declarations of Sociological Fact or Legal Limits on Constitutional Interpretation?” in Swinton and Rogerson, eds., Competing Constitutional Visions, 65-80. Meekison, J. Peter. “Meech Lake and the Future of Senate Reform” in Swinton and Rogerson, eds., Competing Constitutional Visions, 113-20. Meisel, J. “Mirror? Searchlight? Interloper? : The Media and Meech” in Smith, MacKinnon and Courtney, eds., After Meech Lake, 147-68. Monahan, Patrick J. Meech Lake : The Inside Story. Payne, B. “Devices and Desires : Corruption and Ethical Seriousness” in Fleishman, J. et al eds., Public Duties: The Moral Obligations of Government Officials. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1981, 175-203. Raboy, M. “Canadian Broadcasting, Canadian Nationhood : Two Concepts, Two Solitudes, and Great Expectations” in Smith, MacKinnon and Courtney, eds., After Meech Lake, 181-98. Simeon, R. “Meech Lake and Visions of Canada” in Swinton and Rogerson, eds., Competing Constitutional Visions, 295-306. Simeon, R. “Political Pragmatism Takes Precedence Over Democratic Process” in Behiels, ed., The Meech Lake Primer, 119-31. Smith, Lynn. “The Distinct Society Clause in the Meech Lake Accord : Could it Affect Equality Rights for Women?” in Swinton and Rogerson, eds., Competing Constitutional Visions, 35- 54. Taras, D. “Meech Lake and Television News” in Gibbins, ed., Meech Lake and Canada, 219-34. Taras, D. “How Television Transformed the Meech Lake Negotiations” in Smith, MacKinnon and Courtney, eds., After Meech Lake, 169-80. Trudeau, Pierre Elliott. “Say Goodbye to the Dream of One Canada” in Gibbins, ed., Meech Lake and Canada, 65-72. Whyte, J. “The 1987 Constitutional Accord and Ethnic Accommodation” in Swinton and Rogerson, eds., Competing Constitutional Visions, 263-70.

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