Musings about reopening Constitution stir a storm in Quebec

QUEBEC – Musings about reopening the Constitution from the new leader of Quebec’s Liberal party have provoked a flood of condemnation from his opponents.

The Parti Quebecois government is accusing Philippe Couillard of improvising on an important file.

It says any constitutional changes had better be put to a referendum, as happened with the ill-fated 1992 Charlottetown accord, and not adopted quickly by any future Liberal government as Couillard has suggested might be possible.

A pair of PQ cabinet ministers, Bernard Drainville and Alexandre Clouthier, said Couillard has to explain himself.

Couillard, who was picked Sunday to replace Jean Charest, says he would like to see Quebec endorse the Constitution by 2017 but has not gone into specifics on how that would happen.

He says that’s a debate that will first be held in his own party.

But the simple fact that he has expressed enthusiasm about the issue has been enough to create a stir. His predecessor, Charest, steered clear of the topic whenever it was raised and successive federal governments have, since 1992, avoided it.

Quebec was the lone holdout when nine other provinces, and the Trudeau federal government, created the 1982 Constitution. Later attempts to revise the document resulted in spectacular failure and nearly split the country apart.

Now Drainville and Clouthier want to know now what Couillard believes it will take to get Quebec’s approval of the Constitution.

They want to know if he’s going to address Quebec’s traditional demands or use the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords as a starting point.

The most famous provision in the Meech Lake accord would have recognized Quebec as a “distinct society,” and the ensuing controversy split the old Progressive Conservative party into various pieces — with the Reform party and Bloc Quebecois rising in the aftermath.