Mandate extended for committee on constitutional issues, given 'magnitude of the task'

Photo: Getty Images iStockphoto The six experts on the committee will have until November 25 to submit their final report.

The advisory committee created in June by François Legault to seek new powers from Ottawa is bearing fruit, but it will need a little over an additional month to present the results of its reflections to the government.

According to what Le Devoirlearned this week that the work of the committee made up of six experts, including former Liberal minister Sébastien Proulx and law professor Guillaume Rousseau, has produced results on all of the mandates given to it by the government this spring.

Faced with an “extremely tight” deadline of approximately four months, according to a source familiar with the matter, the committee members have nevertheless requested a slight extension of their mandate, an extension that Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette granted them on Wednesday, “considering the magnitude of the task.” They will have until November 25 to submit their final report.

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According to our information, the drafting of the document is well underway. In the initial mandate submitted in June, Quebec had required the committee to examine “Quebec’s powers in matters of immigration,” “the encroachments [of the] federal government in Quebec’s areas of jurisdiction,” and “Quebec’s ability to make its own choices, […] in matters of language, secularism, and culture.”

Some ideas

However, a few surprises have emerged since the advisory committee began its discussions. In a brief submitted at the beginning of September, for example, constitutionalist Daniel Turp recommends “the institution of Quebec citizenship.”

“[This] would, in my opinion, help give all people who live in Quebec a sense of belonging to it, including immigrants who choose Quebec as their adopted home and wish to integrate harmoniously,” says the former PQ and Bloc Québécois MP. “Within the Canadian federation […], the new citizenship would be combined with Canadian citizenship.”

In another brief submitted to the committee, the Mouvement démocratie et citoyenne du Québec presents a project for a constituent assembly with the aim of creating a constitution for Quebec.

This initiative, conceived in particular by actor Sébastien Ricard and former deputy minister in the René Lévesque government André Larocque, is supported by some forty people. It would take the form of a random drawing of 25 citizens who would be responsible for consulting the Quebec population to write the said constitution and submit it to a popular referendum.

In total, more than 40 briefs were submitted to the committee, more than it expected.

In addition to Mr. Proulx and Mr. Rousseau, who act as co-chairs, the working group mandated by the CAQ government is counting on the contribution of law professor Amélie Binette, taxation professor Luc Godbout, political science professor Catherine Mathieu and former chief of staff to Premier Lévesque and public affairs consultant Martine Tremblay.