'The federal government has spent 50 years tiptoeing about, surrendering powers and money to one province or another ... and the provinces are more aggrieved, more determined to wring whatever life remains out of it, than ever.' -via acoyne
In the latest outbreak of provincial lawlessness, the government of Quebec has introduced a bill purporting to single-handedly amend the Constitution of Canada. Or rather, another bill.
Leave aside whether members of the country’s legislatures should be required to swear to uphold the country’s system of government, rather than to destroy it. What is unarguable is that a provision that applies to every province may not be unilaterally amended by one province. What should the federal government do about Bill 21, which prohibits the hiring of members of observant religious minorities in much of the Quebec public sector? It should do nothing. What should it do about Bill 96, and its deliberate flouting of the Constitution – to say nothing of the extraordinary prohibitions on the use of English, even in private conversations, backed by even more extraordinary powers of enforcement, including warrantless searches? Exactly: say nothing. Do nothing.
But Bill 96? If anything it is colluding in it: In response to Bill 96′s assertion of a provincial power to regulate the language of work in federally regulated workplaces, the Trudeau government hastened to produce Bill C-13, which would subject them to provincial language law.
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