Simon Jolin-Barrette reminded us this week why he is the leader of the nationalist bias in the CAQ and the Council of Ministers.
In a seminal but oddly uncommented interview with the Journal de Montréal, he stated that Quebec must somehow break away from the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and refer primarily, if not exclusively, to the Quebec Charter.
In a way, it’s just common sense. Quebec is not a signatory to the 1982 Constitution, which was imposed on it without its consent.
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It therefore remains fundamentally illegitimate.
But for now, the Quebec government didn’t really take action, except when using the exception clause that was a holdover from the old constitutional order and prevented elected officials from being fully subordinate to judicial government. The judicial government is authoritarian and undemocratic.
But Simon Jolin-Barrette goes further.
By saying it almost like that, he affirms that Quebec’s democracy must break free from the 1982 constitution.
He recalls, and this is essential, that the two Charters are based on different logics. The first is part of a constitutional order that sanctifies multiculturalism. The second finds its origins in the National Assembly and bears, whatever can be said, the handwriting of the people of Quebec.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t idealize charters. I believe that the public liberties, which I know are vital and essential, did not need to be upheld.
These charters damage democracy by exposing it to the blackmail of all minorities who pass on their whims and demands for rights and even fundamental rights.
But as long as you submit to a charter, it might as well be ours and not Ottawa’s.
Moreover, to stay with the argument, it is precisely one of the great virtues of the Quebec Charter that it can be easily amended by the National Assembly. It overlooks elected officials less than the Ottawa Charter. Political power is in control. We have a democratic influence on it.
This is not a detail in our societies, which are more than ever bereft of popular sovereignty.
From this point of view, Simon Jolin-Barrette’s proposal is not only nationalist, but authentically democratic.
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And then we have to think about what happens next. For if the Quebec government accepts this logic and is not content to make it rhetorical, it will hasten the constitutional shock coming to Canada.
Because the difference between our two countries is getting deeper and deeper. We don’t speak the same language as Canadians. We don’t have the same culture. We don’t think about integration and secularism in the same way. Our ideas of democracy also differ.
Simon Jolin-Barrette’s bold step allows us to take another step in this direction.
