Trudeau in Quebec: constitutional changes are a no-go

ST-JEROME, Que. – Justin Trudeau says he has no intention of getting bogged down in the kind of constitutional squabbling that consumed a generation of Canadian politicians in his father’s day.

The Liberal leadership candidate has been asked by journalists, during a tour of Quebec, about whether he would ever reopen the Constitution to recognize the province as a nation.

Not now, he says.

Trudeau says he doesn’t see any public appetite for such a discussion and, other than some journalists and politicians, he says the people he meets are more concerned with other questions like the economy and foreign policy.

“People are worried about their jobs, people are worried about where we’re going in the future, how we’re going to engage with the world, how we’re going to make sure that our kids have opportunities,” he told reporters Monday when asked about the topic during a tour north of Montreal.

“These are old, old fights that are still very important to a small fragment of this population that’s outraged that I said, ‘Can we please move to something else?’ Well, I’m going to repeat it: Can we please move on to something else?”

Such replies have prompted a muscular exchange with one interviewer. Trudeau’s musings earned him a scolding from interviewer Jean Lapierre during a weekend show.

An ex-politician, Lapierre belonged to a faction of the Liberal party that longed to update the constitutional deal struck in 1981 by Pierre Trudeau. During an interview on TVA, he asked Trudeau whether he found it acceptable for his province to feel excluded from the country’s most fundamental document. An incredulous Lapierre told Trudeau that prime ministers have a responsibility beyond discussing what’s popular.

The 1981 constitutional deal earned the endorsement of every provincial government except Quebec’s. Politicians in that province have since sought some form of recognition of its uniqueness which could eventually be used, for instance, to protect language laws in court battles.

But the last attempts to update the constitution failed spectacularly during the Mulroney era — with Trudeau leading the push against them. No politician has since dared to reopen the discussion.

Trudeau isn’t keen for it to start now.

The Liberal leadership front-runner says he isn’t closing the door forever. But he says he isn’t persuaded by the argument of nationalists that it’s a pressing priority.

He was asked Monday what it would take to get the discussion going.

“If a Quebec premier were to come to me and say, ‘I’d really like to officially express that Quebec agrees to the Constitution,’ and I can do it in such a way that isn’t divisive,” Trudeau replied Monday.

“What makes me laugh right now is the number of sovereigntists who are outraged with what I just said. I’m sorry, they never want Quebec to be in the Constitution. Why would they be outraged that I would say that I don’t think that this is a conversation that we have to have right now?

“It’s because their bread and butter is the politics of division and I’m not talking about that — I’m talking about the politics of bringing people together around the values and around the concerns that we’re living every single day.”