Trudeau gets warm welcome
From provincial opposition leaders, but Marois turns down meeting.
QUEBEC — Parti Québécois ministers expressed irritation Thursday when Justin Trudeau visited the provincial capital hoping to meet with Premier Pauline Marois.
The new leader of the Liberal Party of Canada had to settle for Philippe Couillard, newly elected leader of the Quebec Liberal Party, and Coalition Avenir Québec Leader François Legault.
International Relations Minister Jean-François Lisée, by far the most glib member of the Marois cabinet, referred to Trudeau as “the young prince down from Ottawa to see his subjects,” saying the federal leader was treating Quebecers like “vassals.”
Marois said she would like to meet Trudeau when both their schedules allow it.
The non-meeting happened two days after the Quebec National Assembly adopted a unanimous resolution, proposed by Marois, calling on Ottawa to open its archives related to the 1981 events leading to the patriation of Canada’s Constitution from Britain’s parliament.
Trudeau dismissed the motion Tuesday as an attempt by the Parti Québécois to “create a new myth” and provoke new quarrels with Ottawa.
Marois’s motion was in response to revelations in La bataille de Londres, a book by Dawson College historian Frédéric Bastien. The book quotes British Foreign Office documents from 1981 confirming that then Supreme Court of Canada chief justice Bora Laskin spoke to Canadian and British officials.
Bastien has said the Canadian government only provided him with redacted copies of its documents for that period.
Marois said that by speaking to Canadian and British officials at the time, Laskin was in violation of the principle of the separation of powers between the government and the judiciary.
Bastien recounts that Laskin discussed the timing of the patriation process with Michael Pitfield, then clerk of the Privy Council, Canada’s top civil servant, and with British ministers, including Sir Michael Havers, who was attorney general in the Thatcher government, desig- nated to answer questions in the House of Commons on patriation of the Canadian Constitution.
On Thursday, PQ Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Alexandre Cloutier gave reporters copies of a July 2, 1981, telegram about the Havers-Laskin meeting obtained by Bastien. Marked “secret,” the telegram from then British foreign secretary Lord Carrington cautions that “it
“I share the concern about the separation of powers … and when the National Assembly votes a unanimous resolution, it has to be taken seriously.”
FEDERAL LIBERAL LEADER JUSTIN TRUDEAU
might be most embarrassing for the chief justice if the Canadian government heard that he had been speaking in this manner in the U.K.”
Cloutier said he would be “more than happy” to meet with Trudeau, while taking him to task for minimizing the importance of Laskin’s apparent indiscretions.
Trudeau’s father and prime minister at the time, Pierre Trudeau, along with nine provinces other than Quebec, reached an agreement on the night of Nov. 4-5, 1981, to bring back Canada’s Constitution, including a new Charter of Rights and Freedoms that no Quebec government has ever accepted.
The younger Trudeau told reporters Thursday he would have liked to meet with Marois, but understands that “she has a little bit more on her plate than I do these days.”
“I share the concern about the separation of powers between the judiciary and the executive, and when the National Assembly votes a unanimous resolution, it has to be taken absolutely seriously,” he said.
Trudeau did meet with Legault and Couillard, and said both leaders brought up the unanimous resolution, as well as other issues including federal cuts in employment insurance, a new federal skills-training initiative to which all Quebec parties object, and Ottawa’s plan to end its 15 per cent tax credit for investments in funds sponsored by Quebec’s two main labour federations.
Couillard told reporters after his meeting with Trudeau it is unfortunate Marois did not meet the new federal Liberal leader, saying this is a way for Quebec to build alliances. But he also stressed the importance of the unanimous motion.
“The fact that Quebec did not sign up in 1982 is not trivial, or something that should be forgotten,” said Couillard, who proposed during his leadership bid that Quebec should aim to sign the Canadian Constitution.