The Quebec Liberal Party’s new leader is asking the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government and all parties in the National Assembly to agree to abandon Bill 1, the government’s proposed constitution for the province.
“The current conditions are not conducive to uniting Quebecers around a project that requires their concrete and profound support,” Charles Milliard said in a letter last week addressed to Premier Francois Legault, the other party leaders, and the two people running to replace Legault as CAQ leader.
The letter comes after a consultation process that many saw as highly flawed, particularly for such a major piece of legislation.
Louis-Philippe Lampron, a law professor at Université Laval, is among those who appeared at National Assembly committee hearings into the bill, which ended in February.
“Yeah, that was a non-consultation process,” Lampron said.
He agrees with Milliard that the bill is untenable and should be abandoned, and hundreds of other groups are saying the same thing.
That, coupled with the fact that Legault announced he’s stepping down, has many wondering if the CAQ’s project will ever see the light of day.
“I’m still scratching my head. Why would a party as low as they are in the polls try to do something like that?” Lampron said.
The CAQ’s constitution plan was part of a series of pieces of legislation introduced by Legault last fall as he tried to relaunch his unpopular government.
It didn’t work, and Legault announced in January he would be stepping down as premier.
But his constitution project lives on, piloted by Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette, who wrote the law and presided over the consultations at the National Assembly.
From the start, Jolin-Barrette was criticized for drawing up the legislation before holding any formal consultations.
Laurence Guénette, spokesperson for the Ligue des droits et libertés (LDL), a non-profit civil and human rights advocacy group, said that’s not how things are done.
“How do you adopt a constitution? There are standards, international standards,” Guénette said.
“You should consult people before writing the legislation.”
Jolin-Barrette defended himself, saying he met privately with several groups before drafting the law.
Among other things, the CAQ’s constitution protects common values of the province, including the French language, secularism, and equality between men and women.
It also forbids any organization or institution that receives public funding from challenging provincial laws in court.
The National Assembly hearings on Bill 1 heard about 200 presentations from groups and individuals, in addition to receiving more than 300 written submissions.
When the consultations began, Jolin-Barrette said he hoped the process would bring people together and build support for the law.
That hasn’t happened. In fact, the hearings have often been confrontational.
During a tense presentation that got off on the wrong foot when First Nations leaders weren’t allowed to bring a ceremonial eagle staff with them into the hearing room, Indigenous leaders called the law colonialist and said the consultation process was woefully inadequate.
Despite saying he was willing to listen, Jolin-Barrette often sparred with presenters at the hearings.
When the head of the Quebec English School Boards Association, Joe Ortona, expressed concerns about the law, Jolin-Barrette ignored the concerns and instead interrogated Ortona about his personal views on equality between men and women and the supremacy of the French language.
France-Isabelle Langlois, the head of the francophone arm of Amnesty International Canada, had a similar experience, and accused Jolin-Barrette of putting words in her mouth and being a demagogue.
Sometimes, Jolin-Barrette didn’t listen at all, such as when Christian Lapointe, director of the Carte Blanche theatre company, made a presentation.
“I want to signal to people watching and listening that the minister of justice has left the room!” an exasperated Lapointe said during the hearing.
“He’s staging the whole thing, putting on a show of a consultation,” he said before being cut off by the committee chairman, who said the minister had to leave for “unforeseen reasons.”
“The consultations were not satisfying for most people who went there,” Guénette said.
Guillaume Rousseau, a law professor at the University of Sherbrooke who has worked closely with the CAQ and also made a presentation at the hearings supporting Bill 1, disagrees. He told CBC he thought the process was useful.
“Most of the consultations were constructive. There were really good presentations, even from those criticizing the bill,” Rousseau said.
Milliard’s letter to the other party leaders said the rocky consultations show the project should be scrapped.
“It is already very clear to us that there is no way to bring Quebecers together around this project, in its current form,” he said.
Milliard would still like Quebec to have its own constitution, just not this one.
“We propose that we present a united front to withdraw the current bill and that all the various political parties represented in the National Assembly commit to establishing a genuine consultative process,” he said in the letter.
A spokesperson for Milliard said the only party leader to respond so far is the Parti Québécois’s Paul St-Pierre Plamondon.
Milliard and St-Pierre Plamondon have posted their correspondence online, publicly jousting about whose constitutional proposals are better.
Québec Solidaire and the Conservative Party of Quebec have already said they don’t support Bill 1.
Quebec backtracks on plans to enshrine abortion rights in proposed constitution
Jolin-Barrette has insisted the bill will proceed, as have both CAQ leadership candidates – one of whom will be the next premier – Christine Fréchette and Bernard Drainville.
In a statement to CBC, the PQ said it would draft its own provisional constitution within a few months of being elected.
“We acknowledge that Charles Milliard wants Quebec to adopt its own constitution. This is an admission that Canada’s constitution does not work for Quebec, is not adapted to our reality, and does not serve our interests,” the statement said.
None of the other party leaders responded to CBC’s request for comment. Neither did Jolin-Barrette, Fréchette or Drainville.
Jolin-Barrette has already been forced to change his bill.
Initially it included a proposal to enshrine the right to an abortion in the constitution, despite widespread opposition from feminist and pro-choice groups.
Jolin-Barrette backed down after Fréchette publicly expressed concerns.
Legault’s departure and the limited time left in this legislative session have cast doubts on whether the CAQ will be able to pass the bill.
Lampron fears if the opposition tries to delay it, the CAQ, low in the polls and possibly soon to be routed in an election, might try to invoke closure and ram it through, as it has done with other major pieces of legislation.
