Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

50-plus-what?

by Aaron Wherry on Friday, November 4, 2011 9:30am - 3 Comments

Romeo Saganash questions his party’s position on secession.

The Cree MP, who represents a vast northern Quebec riding, is doubtful the 50-per-cent-plus-one threshold is consistent with the Supreme Court’s 1998 opinion on the matter. ”I don’t know to what extent is that the proper interpretation of the Supreme Court’s opinion,” Saganash said Thursday in a wide-ranging interview with The Canadian Press. ”The Supreme Court said it has to be a clear response to a clear question.”

The NDP’s Sherbrooke Declaration is available here.

Tags: NDP, NDP leadership, Quebec, Romeo Saganash, secession, Sherbrooke Declaration, Supreme Court

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Anonymous

That’s awesome. Romeo Saganash has a better grasp of the cold, hard realities of secession than anyone else in the NDP caucus.

The other NDP MPs are too busy pandering to souverainistes by adhering to the discredited Sherbrooke Declaration, which clearly contradicts the Supreme Court ruling. A 50.01% “OUI” vote in a referendum is NOT sufficient to break up Canada, nor should it be.

Anonymous

Saganash has a better grasp of reality – on secession and other matters – than the overwhelming majority of members of parliament. I have bet a twoney with a colleague that with Saganash as leader the NPD could form the next government. Without Saganash, Harper, IMO, is in for another term.

kcm2

He said Quebecers have the right to determine their own future but so, too, do the Cree and Inuit peoples whose traditional territory encompasses the northern two-thirds of Quebec.
“They have the right to decide the fate of their own traditional territory as a people,” Saganash said, adding that international law agrees on that point

The cold hard logic of Trudeau’s framing of the question of self determination still stands – If Canada is divisible then so is Quebec. It is no surprise to me that it took a FN’s individual to point that out yet again.