MPs will begin voting on Stephen Harper’s “Quebec motion” shortly after 8 pm Monday night. Today on CTV’s Question Period, Bloc Quebecois Gilles Duceppe explained why his party will vote in favour:
BQ Leader GILLES DUCEPPE: The most important thing, I’ve been in Ottawa for quite a few years and I've been fighting in Ottawa to have the House of Commons recognize that Quebecers form a nation. For the first time in history, now the House of Commons is recognizing that … Canada is the first country to recognize the Quebec nation, that Quebecers form a nation and in the near future other countries will do so.
Question Period host CRAIG OLIVER: It has no impact in law, in jurisdiction or anything else. It's
just an opinion of the House of Commons. I mean you're trying to make it
far more than it really is, are you not?DUCEPPE: I mean now we will ask questions to the government? Will they respond to those demands? If not, then they're proving that means nothing. Quebeckers will take note that they tried to fool them with just a word without any consequences. That will be part of the debate. They have the burden of the proof now to say, well, we recognize that Quebecers form a nation, and that because of that, we're answering that to that demand.
OLIVER: So what are you going to do now? I know what you're going to do. You're going to make, as usual, demands which will be unacceptable to federalists and then you'll be able to say Canada failed us again because you're going to say put this in the constitution, are you not?
DUCEPPE: Not in the constitution, but why Quebec shouldn't have the right to speak at Nairobi last week instead of speaking in the corridor?
We have as a nation the right to speak and to say, taking 45 seconds, is that too much for someone representing a nation? We'll have a debate on that. And we'll have debates on many demands made unanimously by the national assembly in Quebec. And the other countries, when we were
talking about distinct society, I remember having a debate in Toronto back in 1992. I said Quebec is not a distinct society, it's a distinct nation. The other countries, they don't know what distinct society was, what that means, but nation they know pretty well.