44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 10, 2022 10:00AM
- May/10/22 4:17:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak to the Bloc Québécois motion today. What I propose to do is to start by addressing certain arguments that I heard from both sides about the purpose of our motion.
I heard more attacks that got rather gratuitous than comments that were really about the subject at hand, but I still would like to respond. I will start with something I heard quite recently from the member for Kingston and the Islands, who wanted to know why we would change something that has always been part of our practices and habits.
I want to take a few minutes to talk about certain things that have always been part of our habits, and to show that this does not mean that they are not outdated. I want to refer to the Criminal Code, which contains several peculiarities.
I am going to talk specifically about a few sections, including section 365, which prohibits the fraudulent practice of witchcraft. It says:
Every one who fraudulently (a) pretends to exercise or to use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration, (b) undertakes, for a consideration, to tell fortunes, or (c) pretends from his skill in or knowledge of an occult or crafty science to discover where or in what manner anything that is supposed to have been stolen or lost may be found, is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.
Another example of something that is still in the Criminal Code is the offence of challenging someone to a duel. Section 71 provides as follows:
Every one who (a) challenges or attempts by any means to provoke another person to fight a duel, (b) attempts to provoke a person to challenge another person to fight a duel, or (c) accepts a challenge to fight a duel, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.
A final example is the section that makes the theft of oysters a specific offence. The Criminal Code already has fairly broad offences concerning theft, but it has a specific section that makes it illegal to steal oysters. This goes back to a time when fishers had their gear and shellfish stolen fairly regularly by people trying to steal the pearls, but this is not something that happens anymore.
The reason that I bring this up is simply to illustrate that some sections were much more relevant at one time, but that time is past and they no longer appear to be warranted these days. That is the main difference with what we are talking about today.
In the opinion of the Bloc Québécois, prayer is from another era. However, unlike those sections of the Criminal Code that are no longer used, except in very rare cases, the Bloc is calling for an amendment to a section of our internal code of procedure that is used every day. What we want to change today is part of something that is also much broader, namely the central principle of the separation of church and state.
We could unanimously agree to drop the sections of the Criminal Code I just mentioned, since they are not problematic and no one is using them.
However, what we are trying to do today seems to be causing a lot of friction. We are talking about the articulation of the principle of religious neutrality of the state.
One of the arguments we heard was that people do not bring this up to members when they run into them on the street. However, it is important to remember that the prayer is not broadcast on CPAC. No one knows about it, in fact, and it is quite curious that it is not broadcast.
When I talk about it with my constituents who ask me how I found my first day in the House of Commons—
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- May/10/22 4:22:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I was saying that when people ask what my impressions were when I came to the House of Commons, I tell them that one of the things that surprised me the most is that there is a prayer every morning. I will not hide the fact that my constituents were surprised. This is not a personal attack on someone because they are religious. This is about the fact that the state and the church are bound together for all to see, and this enduring religious element that is cemented in our primary democratic institution is simply reinforcing that.
I would also say that when I hear my colleagues, particularly those from English Canada, say that people are not interested in this issue, I feel that perhaps they do not truly understand the reality in Quebec. Indeed, the Quiet Revolution demonstrates that our history was significantly marked by this particular desire to ensure that the government and religion are no longer bound together, as they were during Quebec's dark ages. Perhaps that is not a tangible reality for our colleagues. To me, that demonstrates that our reality is somewhat misunderstood.
We were also told earlier that it might not be relevant to debate the substance of our motion. Why devote one of our two opposition days to removing prayer from the House?
What I have surmised from these questions we are being asked is that no one has explained to us why they want to keep or not keep prayer in the House. We are also being lectured by a party that only yesterday used a gag order to force us to quickly discuss a bill that is over 500 pages long. So when we hear about good or poor management of the House's time, I think that, given the circumstances, we should hardly be lectured.
We have also been told that, for our opposition day, we could have talked about seniors, health care or the environment. I just want to point out that we already had an opposition day about seniors. We also had an opposition day on health transfers. As for the environment, we recently inundated the government with questions about Bay du Nord. We introduced a bill to manage climate change and the role of the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, a bill that the government voted against and that the NDP ripped apart in committee.
Basically, they are telling us to talk about important things but that they will ignore us anyway. They are telling us to talk to the hand. The government says we should manage our time wisely even though it does not really matter because it will not listen to us anyway. The message they are sending, and this is such shame, is that they could not care less about 300 years of study of Enlightenment thinking about things like secularism and the separation of church and state. They think none of that is important. Why are we spending an opposition day on this subject? Even though this is an issue that the greatest philosophers debated for years, they are dismissing it as irrelevant and certainly not a priority.
I think it is important to deal with this issue on an opposition day, considering that it is a proposal that we have already tried to have adopted in another way, particularly through a motion by my colleague, the hon. member for Manicouagan. Her motion, which required unanimous consent, was not adopted. It would indeed have been much simpler to take a different approach, as Nova Scotia did recently with proposals from both the government and the official opposition before unanimous consent was finally obtained. That is obviously something that will not happen here. It is therefore appropriate to have this debate.
Our goal today is to ensure that we finish the job of separating church and state with a view to being inclusive. I commend the work of my colleagues, who have been very positive and very thoughtful in their approach to the motion. They pointed out, for example, that leading the prayer every day can be a hindrance to someone who would like to occupy the position you hold today, Madam Speaker, but who is of a faith other than the Christian faith.
It is worth asking how inclusive it is to have a Christian and Catholic daily prayer, considering we may one day like to have a Sikh, Muslim or Jewish Speaker occupying the chair and leading the prayer.
The Bloc Québécois believes that the best way for the government to ensure religious neutrality is not to introduce every possible form of belief into these institutions. The best way is to keep each person's religious convictions private and not to broadcast them ostentatiously in public institutions such as the House of Commons.
Those complaining that today was a wasted debate day are likely those who wasted the most time, since they did not debate the substance of the issue. Today, we could have had an intelligent debate and voted, and the matter would have been closed. Instead we were criticized for using an opposition day for this.
The surprising thing is not the topic of the Bloc Québécois motion. It is the fact that the prayer has not yet been replaced with a moment of reflection, which would be much more inclusive. The surprising thing is how reluctant our colleagues are to have this debate at all. The other thing that is surprising is that we are being criticized for having this debate here, when we are the first ones to feel the impact of this prayer. We are being criticized for having this debate when the Supreme Court took time, probably more than one day, to examine this issue with respect to a prayer at a municipal council. If members are accusing the Bloc Québécois of wasting time, then in a way, they are accusing the Supreme Court of wasting time too. I would suggest that those on the opposition benches wasted the most time today.
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- May/10/22 4:30:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would say that the motion before us today is much more specifically about the separation of state and religion than it is about a holiday that people can celebrate as they wish at home, on a statutory holiday that we have all become accustomed to over time and that may affect people differently depending on how they decide to spend that day, which would have a much broader effect. If we were to really explore this, it would have to be done in a much broader sense, because statutory holidays affect a lot more people than just the 338 members of the House.
The separation of state and religion can hardly be more graphically illustrated than by a prayer in the very heart of what represents democracy. This is what our motion today is all about.
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- May/10/22 4:33:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, first, I would be quite surprised if it was confirmed that a concept developed during the Enlightenment in Europe was actually a typical American construct.
When the concept of separation of church and state was first introduced 300 years ago, I do not believe that the goal was to protect the church, because it did not really need protection, just as it did not when this work began during the Quiet Revolution in Quebec. The goal was the exact opposite.
Coming back to the many other points that the member raised about the national anthem and Quebec's desire for independence, that is all politics. We are not asking for the separation of state and politics, we are asking for the separation of state and religion. I believe that is what we must focus on when asking questions today.
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- May/10/22 4:35:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have too little time left to speak about that.
As I just mentioned, this issue may be much more political than what we are trying to do, which is to separate church and state. I believe that these two issues are different enough to be treated separately. This does not make my colleague's proposal devoid of interest. On the contrary, I believe that it deserves to be debated, so I invite my colleague's party to bring it forward on an opposition day. In short, the concepts are different enough that I believe we are justified in debating them separately.
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