The Clarity Act (, known as Bill C-20 before it became law) is legislation passed by the Parliament of Canada that established the conditions under which the Government of Canada would enter into negotiations that might lead to secession following such a vote by one of the provinces. The Clarity Bill (C-20) was tabled for first reading in the House of Commons on 13 December 1999. It was passed by the House on 15 March 2000, and by the Senate, in its final version, on 29 June 2000.
Although the law applies to all provinces, the Clarity Act was created in response to the 1995 Quebec referendum and ongoing independence movement in that province. The content of the act was based on the 1998 secession reference to the Supreme Court of Canada made by the federal government of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. Previously in 1996, a private member's bill, the Quebec Contingency Act (Bill C-341) was introduced to establish the conditions which would apply to a referendum regarding the separation of Quebec from Canada, but it did not proceed further than the first reading.
Two days after the act had been introduced in the Canadian House of Commons, the Parti Québécois government passed An Act respecting the exercise of the fundamental rights and prerogatives of the Québec people and the Québec State in the National Assembly of Quebec.
Background
Ambiguity of referendum question
The motivation behind the act was largely based on the near separation vote of the 1995 Quebec referendum, in which the people of Quebec voted against the sovereignty option by a small margin (50.58% to 49.42%). Controversy surrounded the ambiguity and wording of the ballot question. In French, the question on the ballot asked:
In English, the question on the ballot asked:
Trilingual ballots were issued in communities in which Indigenous languages were commonly used.
Stéphane Dion and the three letters
Prime Minister Chrétien advised the governor general to appoint political scientist Stéphane Dion (first elected as Member of Parliament for the riding of Saint-Laurent–Cartierville in Montreal in 1996) as Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs in 1996. Dion would challenge Quebec sovereigntist assertions about the legal validity of the 1995 Quebec referendum question in three open letters to Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard and Quebec Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Jacques Brassard.
In the first open letter, Dion challenged three assertions that Bouchard had made: that a unilateral declaration of independence is supported by international law, that a majority of "50% plus one" was a sufficient threshold for secession, and that international law would protect the territorial integrity of Quebec following a secession. Against the first assertion, Dion argued that the vast majority of international law experts "believe that the right to declare secession unilaterally does not belong to constituent entities of a democratic country such as Canada".
On 20 August 1998, the Supreme Court answered, concluding that Quebec cannot secede unilaterally under Canadian or international law. However, the Government of Canada would have to enter into negotiations with the Quebec government if Quebecers expressed a clear will to secede. It confirmed that the Parliament of Canada had the power to determine whether or not a referendum question was clear enough to trigger such negotiations. The Constitution of Canada would remain in effect until terms of secession were agreed to by all parties involved, through an amendment to the Constitution, which needs the consent of the federal Parliament and every province.
The court did not define what a clear majority means, and left that definition to politicians.
Any negotiations would need to consider "many issues of great complexity and difficulty", such as economics, debt, minorities, Aboriginals, and boundaries. The court stated that: