2000-2001 Budget / Budget Speech |
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Conclusion
In the epilogue of René Lévesque's book An option for Québec, the great film-maker Pierre Perreault, who died earlier this year wrote, "Québec is a growing word". That is the impression given more and more by our recent success. In a context of renewed growth and sound public finances, all our national realities and values, both tangible and intangible, are expanding.
Allow me in ending to leave the material considerations typical of a budget aside and broach a few issues that are crucial to our life in Québec. It is becoming increasingly clear to everyone that the Canadian political system is impossible to reform. It has reached the point where our existence as a nation has actually been denied. A federal minister, in a letter published in Le Monde, wrote recently that we were "only one minority among others". The system has hardened to the point where an anti-democratic law, that is a slur on Canada's honour at home and abroad, has been tabled in Parliament.
Yet we are far from a unanimous solution to the national issue, either among the people of Québec or in this Assembly.
Fortunately, we can identify, while we wait, a kind of common vision. Following the publication of the work of numerous intellectuals in Le Devoir last summer, a broad consensus was reached on Québec's existential reality. La Presse recently concurred with an increasingly self-evident truth: Québec is a nation, just like Ireland, Scotland, Slovenia, Israel and the Czech Republic. Our nation is actually one of the 20 leading economic powers in the world, ranking above all the nations I just named.
Mr. President, at this period in our history, I think the greater public interest demands that our land be proclaimed the nation it is -- in this Assembly and throughout the world -- and that its freedom to choose its destiny be constantly restated.
As the majority in this government, and with all due respect for divergent opinions, the way of the future is clear and perfectly adapted to our times: we wish to found a new Canada-Québec union, like the European Union, and build it along the same principles that guide that great assembly of sovereign countries: free movement of goods, services, capital and persons and the creation of supranational institutions that ensure harmonious relations between participating nations. Such a formula would finally and rapidly settle the painful question of Québec-Canada relations.
For our part, this quest for nationhood continues without a break, unfaltering and constant. As Gaston Miron said in l'Homme rapaillé: "I have never travelled toward another country but you, my country."
For us, the word country is the only one that can describe our land. We find it in a sentence full of hope written by the great writer Anne Hébert, who was born in Sainte-Catherine-de-la-Jacques-Cartier and returned this year to end her days there. She wrote, "Let it snow, our country is only a few days old". The time of snow is almost over, Mr. President, spring is at our door. I hope this Budget will be acclaimed as a celebration of a new season in our land.
Thank you, Mr. President.