June 23
29th
Anniversary of Defeat of Meech Lake
Accord
Democratic Renewal Continues to Be an Urgent Need of the Times
Demonstration against Meech Lake Accord outside the
Manitoba
Legislature, June 21, 1990.
On June 23, 1990, the Meech Lake Accord was defeated. It
was a set of amendments to the Constitution of Canada negotiated
behind closed doors in 1987 by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and the
provincial
premiers. The failure of the Meech Lake
Accord marked a deepening of the constitutional crisis which has
now become an existential crisis due to Canada's all-sided
integration into the U.S. war economy and state arrangements.
 The Meech Lake Accord was
signed as a result of the crisis
which accompanied the 1980 Quebec Referendum on the place of
Quebec within Canada and the refusal of Quebec to sign onto the
Pierre Trudeau government's patriated Constitution of 1982.
Trudeau had promised that he would draft a new constitutional
agreement after the Quebec referendum was defeated. His promise
was realized in the form of the addition of the Charter of Rights
and Freedoms and an amending formula to the British North
America Act of 1867 (BNA Act 1867). Called the Canada
Act, it was passed by the British Parliament on March 29,
1982 and, on this basis, it was claimed that the Constitution was
"patriated." While the claim is made that this ended Canada's
formal dependence on Britain, the fact is that the Queen of
England remains Canada's Head of State.
Canada's Constitution Act (1982) was the
"Canadian
equivalent" of Britain's Canada Act and its text was
included in the Canada Act
along with an amending formula and the Charter
of
Rights
and
Freedoms. However, it did not
recognize Quebec's right to self-determination and Quebec refused
to sign it. This created a constitutional crisis which the
Mulroney government attempted to resolve by commencing
constitutional negotiations in 1985. These negotiations
culminated with the Meech Lake Accord two years later on June 23,
1987.
Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa said the Constitution
needed
five modifications for Quebec to sign. On this basis, the
following changes were laid out in the Accord:
- constitutional recognition
of Quebec as a distinct
society;
- a constitutional veto for Quebec over
constitutional change;
- a role for Quebec in the appointment
of judges to the Supreme Court of Canada;
- a constitutional
guarantee of increased powers in the field of immigration;
and
- a limitation of the federal spending power.
The causes of the constitutional crisis clearly require
attention. These include: the need to guarantee nation-to-nation
relations with the Indigenous peoples so as to end colonial
injustice and provide redress for all the wrongs committed
against them; the need to end all notions of rights based on
privilege and so-called reasonable limits; the need to vest
sovereignty in the people and not an artificial person of state,
let alone one who is a foreign monarch; and the need to enshrine
equal rights for all citizens and residents. Finally, it requires
recognizing the right of the people of Quebec to
self-determination, including secession if they so decide --
something the Meech Lake Accord refused to do.
Instead, the Meech Lake Accord sought to
maintain the status quo by declaring Quebec a "distinct society"
within Canada; it gave Quebec a constitutional veto; increased
provincial powers with respect to immigration; extended and
regulated the right to reasonable financial compensation for any
province that opted out of any future federal programs in areas
of exclusive provincial jurisdiction; and provided for provincial
input in appointing senators and Supreme Court judges.
Because the Meech Lake Accord would have changed the
Constitution's amending formula and modified the Supreme Court,
all provincial and federal legislatures had to consent to it
within three years. The 10 provincial premiers soon agreed but,
as the three-year deadline for consent of all legislatures drew
near, the consensus began to unravel. To try to save Meech, a
First Ministers' Conference was held 20 days before the signing
deadline, resulting in an agreement for further rounds of
constitutional negotiations. During that
conference, Newfoundland Premier Clyde Wells attacked the secrecy
of the whole process of decision-making. On June 23, 1990, the
deadline date, Elijah Harper, a First Nations Member of the
Manitoba Legislature, signaled his refusal to give approval by
holding up an eagle feather. This blocked the motion required for
the Manitoba Legislature to vote on the Accord. Wells then
cancelled a proposed vote in the Newfoundland Legislature and the
Meech Lake Accord was officially dead.
 A main feature of the Meech
Lake Accord was its failure to
clarify what was meant by "distinct society" when referring to
Quebec. When it stated that Quebec was a "distinct society" it
also declared that the role of the Legislature and Government of
Quebec was to "preserve and promote the distinct identity of
Quebec." The term "distinct society" remained undefined in the
documents and the "distinct" features of Quebec were not
enumerated, nor were any guidelines given by which these features
could be preserved and promoted. "Distinct society" was subject
to many interpretations, but the predominant one that emerged was
the old fiction that Quebec was distinct simply because the
people spoke French. By making language the only issue, the Meech
formulation of a "distinct society" denied that the Quebec people
comprise a nation that has historically evolved with a common
economy and territory, language, culture and psychology that have
the imprint of this development. Further, it denied the Quebec
people the right of self-determination. Telling the Quebec
Legislature what it was to do did also not go over well.
Another significant feature of Meech Lake was its
overall
promotion of national disunity and inequality. Defining a nation
by language alone leads to the theory that Canada is populated by
a large number of different "language-nations," all of which
should or could supposedly have independent status, but only two
of them -- the "English" and "French" -- are given pride of
place.
Meech Lake also created disunity by devolving federal
powers
to the provinces, suggesting the existence of 10 small nations
(the provinces) and one big one, the federal government. The two
territories (Nunavut did not yet exist) were not invited to Meech
(they participated by video conference) because Mulroney
considered they had insufficient power to affect any decisions.
This was seen to imply that the regions of Canada each had
different status. Meech also gave each province a veto to block
legislation and it was clear that each province would use its
veto to promote the narrow interests of its own regional economic
and political power-brokers rather than to advance an overall
national interest or aim.
A third main feature of Meech Lake was its failure to
affirm
or even address the hereditary rights of the First Nations, which
amounted to a suppression of those rights. The rights of the
Indigenous peoples are not a peripheral issue but should be
enshrined in the Constitution of Canada. They have a rightful
claim to the territories of their ancestors and to the
determination of what must be done with them. As sovereign
peoples they have the right to determine not only their affairs
but to participate in determining the affairs of Canada as a
whole. In the proposed modifications to the Constitution, the
Meech Lake Accord did not deal with any of this. Indigenous
leaders also raised two other issues. One was their exclusion
from the entire Meech proceedings. The other was the potential
transfer of federal services to the provinces implied by the
clause calling for compensation to provinces for opting out of
federal programs. This could have led to the dismantling of programs
very important to the well-being of the Indigenous peoples.
A fourth main feature of Meech Lake was the
anti-democratic
nature of the proceedings. All consultations were held behind the
backs of the people. In fact, people referred to the process as
11 white men in suits dealing with the future of the country
behind closed doors. Once the Meech agreement was reached in
secret, the 11 First Ministers then tried to impose it on the
people without any discussion or deliberation. There was no broad
consultation of the people at any time, the agenda was not set
according to what the people wanted, and the items discussed and
included in the Accord were only those that the First Ministers
wanted.
 The people's extreme
displeasure with the Meech proceedings
was captured by the 1990 Citizens' Forum on Canada's Future,
commonly referred to as the Spicer Commission. Mulroney, who was
forced to convene it just after Meech was defeated, claimed that
his government wanted to hear the opinions of Canadians. The
Spicer Commission published its findings in 1991 with many
Canadians expressing their acute awareness that something was
lacking in the Canadian political process, that politicians were
not to be trusted, and that mechanisms were required to empower
the people. Many called for the formation of a constituent
assembly which would enable the people to deliberate and decide
on their own constitution.
All of the proposals and recommendations of the Spicer
Commission were subsequently ignored by the Government of
Canada.
The significance of Meech Lake today is that in this era
the
people want to be the arbiters and decision-makers. It is the
work for democratic renewal which will open society's path to
progress, not reordering the status quo in the name of change,
modernization or making every vote count.
Meech Lake confirmed that a form of political power has
emerged in Canada with absolute power resting in the hands of the
financial oligarchs and their political representatives. The
suggestion that the Prime Minister and the 10 provincial premiers
should be the only ones to propose the Constitution, and that the
people should be excluded from the process was resoundingly
rejected because the times demand that power be transferred to
the people acting in their own interests. People want to take
politics out of the hands of the vested interests and place them
in the hands of those who would deal with the real problems that
the people face, such as the economic insecurity that is the
number one worry and the deepest concern of the people.
The failure of the Meech Lake Accord also led to the
eventual
demise of the parliamentary configuration of the Liberal and
Conservative "party-in-power" and "party-in-opposition," with the
virtual decimation of the Conservatives in 1993. This was
followed by the sorry state of the Liberals as a result of the
"sponsorship scandal" in 1995 which they used to concentrate
more and more power in fewer and fewer hands. Since then, the
political parties with seats in the House of Commons have formed
a cartel to keep the people disempowered and political parties
are all about getting elected on the basis of maintaining data
bases to micro-target voters while the divide between those who
govern and those who are governed widens with each passing day.
Today no government has the consent of the governed and the need
for democratic renewal is more urgent than ever.
This article was published in
Volume 49 Number 23 - June 22, 2019
Article Link:
June 23: Democratic Renewal Continues to Be an Urgent Need of the Times
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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