Honourable senators, I rise today to support Motion No. 410, which was originally moved by Senator Miville-Dechêne, and to oppose the amendment proposed by Senator Housakos.

I support the original motion because I strongly believe that fair treatment of francophones outside Quebec is a matter of national importance and a constitutional obligation. As a member of Quebec’s anglophone minority, I understand the tremendous importance of access to education and social services in our mother tongue and of retaining control of the institutions that are crucial to our community’s future. I know how important that is to anglophones in Quebec, and I know it is even more important to francophones outside Quebec.

Another reason I support the original motion is that it was something all senators were on board with, or so I thought. That is why I cannot support Senator Housakos’s amendment. The amendment would replace the reference to Canada’s two official languages by a reference to, quote, “the importance of the linguistic duality, French and English, given to us by our two founding peoples . . . .”

I don’t know what motivated Senator Housakos to propose this amendment after so many senators, including many of his Conservative caucus colleagues, spoke so passionately in favour of the original motion. I also don’t know why the text of his amendment was not shared with Senator Miville-Dechêne or any of the members of the Independent Senators Group until he presented it in the chamber last Thursday. What I do know is that it took us all by surprise.

In any event, I want to focus on the terms of his amendment and explain why I cannot support it.

Words count. As Senator Pratte indicated in his remarks in this chamber, every word of the original motion was carefully considered with a view to achieving consensus in this chamber. The text was shared with members of every parliamentary group in order to achieve that consensus, regardless of our political ideology, or our ethnic, religious or linguistic backgrounds.

If the speeches on the motion are any indication, it seems clear that these efforts ended up uniting us on this fundamental issue of national importance.

The motion went through many drafts. In its final version, it anchored itself on the fact that French and English are the two official languages of Canada. By reaffirming this incontrovertible legal fact, the motion connects us to our role as senators, summoned to this chamber to defend the Constitution and ensure respect for minority rights.

Senator Housakos believes that his amendment improves the motion. It does not. What it does is change from a motion that reaffirms an undisputable legal fact about Canada’s two official languages to one that asserts a claim of historical fact that Canada was created by “Our two founding peoples.”

Honourable senators, we are parliamentarians, not historians. If we’re going to act as historians, at least let’s get it right.

Like Senator Housakos, I was taught Canadian history in the public schools of Quebec. As Senator Housakos rightly stated, we were all taught that Canada was the product of two founding peoples, the French and the English. To be sure, our grade school history books did not completely ignore the presence of Indigenous peoples in the story of Canada, but they were incidental characters in the stories we were taught: traders at best, savages at worst, playing their bit part in the heroic adventures of les coureurs des bois, like Radisson and des Groseilliers.

But since those years, my understanding of our Canadian history has evolved and changed. I now read those childhood history books through adult eyes. I now understand much better, though still incompletely, how rich and diverse were the civilizations of the many nations who inhabited this land long before the Europeans arrived. I am still learning about how the Indigenous peoples of Canada were organized politically and how developed were their legal traditions and practices, I might add, that are very much a part of Canadian law by virtue of our Constitution.

The plain fact is that our country was not created by two founding peoples. Our country was here before the French and the English arrived. When they arrived, our country was shaped by their interaction with the First Nations who already occupied the land. That is the true story of Canada. The amendment proposed by Senator Housakos falsifies that story and takes us back to a time when we were either blind or indifferent to the real facts of Canada’s history.

This recognition of our true history does not detract from the importance of protecting and promoting the rights of French- and English-speaking minorities in Canada. On the contrary, the better we understand the complexity of our history and the challenges we all face in forging a Canadian identity that is inclusive and respectful of all of our differences, the more we will appreciate the fundamental role that French-speaking Canadians have played and continue to play in the evolution and development of our country.

The original motion introduced by Senator Miville-Dechêne was drafted to unite us in the Senate and unite us as Canadians. The amendment proposed by Senator Housakos divides us. And for what purpose?

Honourable senators, I will vote against this amendment. I urge you to do the same.