Only Quebec can decide its future, PQ tells Harper
Decision to support legal challenge to Bill 99 ‘underhanded’ attack on province
QUEBEC Prime Minister Stephen Harper came under attack Sunday from both separatist and federalist opponents for his decision to fight a Quebec law that outlines the province’s right to secede unilaterally.
The federal government’s decision to lend its support to a legal challenge of Bill 99 is “underhanded and a direct attack” on Quebec, said Alexandre Cloutier, the Parti Québécois intergovernmental affairs minister, during a rare morning news conference Sunday.
Cloutier only learned Friday night that the federal government had quietly added its support Wednesday to the challenge filed years ago by English-rights activist Keith Henderson.
Henderson, former leader of the defunct Equality Party, is asking the court to declare Bill 99, which says that a referendum vote that gets 50 per cent plus one in favour of independence should be considered enough to separate from Canada, unconstitutional. For years, the federal government’s strategy appears to have been to delay the court case. But with a trial date to be set this December in Quebec superior court, it decided to enter the fray.
“It is also an underhanded attack the same day that in the throne speech, the recognition of the Quebec nation was reiterated,” Cloutier told reporters. “By the night, they decided to proceed on the sly without even informing the Quebec government.”
In joining the Henderson case, the attorney general of Canada said: “Secession, to be lawful, would require a constitutional amendment.”
Bill 99 was adopted in 2000 in response to the Clarity Act, which affirmed the House of Commons had the right to decide whether a Quebec referendum question was clear and whether the outcome represented a clear majority.
Cloutier said Quebec government lawyers in his department and the provincial justice department were working through the weekend on their response.
Cloutier said the three opposition parties represented in the Quebec National Assembly — the Quebec Liberals, Coalition Avenir Québec and Québec solidaire — support the PQ position that a referendum approved by 50-per-cent-plus-one vote would be valid. Brent Tyler, the Montreal lawyer who represents Henderson in his challenge, said in a telephone interview he is not surprised that all parties in the assembly oppose the challenge.
Tyler says Quebec parties use the “knife to the throat” to extract concessions from the rest of Canada.
If his challenge succeeds, it will show “the knife is made of rubber,” Tyler said.
On Sunday, NDP leader Tom Mulcair said his party agrees with the 50-per-cent-plus-one rule and suggested the move is an unnecessary provocation that plays into the separatist government’s hands.
“It’s for nostalgics to go back to this,” Mulcair said in an interview, noting the court case has been “floating around in the miasma” for over a decade.
“There’s no question that this is a lifebuoy, a life saver for the sovereigntists who see this as a great way to start an old battle with Ottawa and there’s not much to be gained by it.”
As a member of the Quebec Liberal caucus, Mulcair voted with his party in opposition to Bill 99 when it was adopted Dec. 7, 2000.
Then-Liberal leader Jean Charest said his party agreed it was up to the National Assembly to decide the referendum question and that it would be decided by an “absolute majority,” 50 per cent plus one.
But the Liberals voted against Bill 99, with Charest suggesting the PQ government “hopes the dispositions of the law will eventually be declared unconstitutional by the courts,” saying the PQ wanted such an outcome “to try to stir up nationalist fervour.”
Current Liberal leader Philippe Couillard recalled Charest’s warning and said that while he agrees that a vote of 50 per cent plus one would represent a clear majority, he would also want the question to be clear. He suggested if Quebec does have a third referendum, it should follow the example of Scotland, which is holding a referendum next year on the question, “Should Scotland become an independent country? That’s it. Yes or no.”
Asked why, with no referendum on the horizon, the federal government would want to do this now, Cloutier said: “Well, obviously, they want to make sure that we are never going to get our country.”
A statement from federal intergovernmental affairs minister Denis Lebel dismissed Cloutier’s comments and said the Conservative government has no intention of reopening the constitutional debate.
“Bear in mind that the federal government did not initiate the proceedings,” Lebel said in the statement.
“We are involved because it is a question of Canadian unity. It is completely normal for the federal government to defend Canadian laws.”
Mulcair suggested that Bill 99 is effectively meaningless since it can’t override the Supreme Court of Canada’s ruling on secession.
The top court ruled in 1998 that Quebec could not legally secede unilaterally. However, it also ruled that if a clear majority of Quebecers voted to secede in a referendum based on a clear question, that would trigger an obligation by the rest of Canada to enter into negotiations, although it also noted that the outcome of those negotiations was not pre-determined.
Stéphane Dion, who crafted the Clarity Act based on the top court’s advice, said the Conservative government had to intervene in the Bill 99 court fight “because it is its duty to protect the rights of Quebecers” to a clear legal process for determining whether the province remains part of Canada.
He said the PQ is deliberately trying to confuse the issue, arguing publicly that Quebec has the right to unilaterally secede while arguing in court that Bill 99 is simply a statement of principles.
“This double talk should be denounced by everyone,” Dion said.