An Act to repeal the Clarity Act

Bill C-279 is a short, one-purpose bill that repeals the Clarity Act, a federal law passed in 2000. The Clarity Act currently sets out rules for how the federal government would respond to a future provincial referendum on independence, including requiring that any referendum question be clear and that a clear majority result before the federal government would enter into negotiations on secession. If this bill passes, that law would no longer exist, removing those federal conditions and procedures entirely.

The bill's preamble explains the reasoning behind the repeal: it states that the Québécois form a nation, that this has been recognized by the House of Commons, and that decisions about Québec's future within Canada belong to the Québécois nation rather than the federal government. It also notes that Québec's own laws already give its provincial government the right to hold a referendum on any subject of its choosing and to decide the wording of the referendum question itself.

Beyond repealing the Clarity Act, the bill makes no other changes to federal law. It does not create any new rules, procedures, or institutions to replace the Clarity Act; it simply removes that law from the statute books.

This bill repeals the Clarity Act in its entirety, removing the federal legal framework that governed how Canada would respond to a provincial referendum on secession.

• Federal role removed — the House of Commons no longer has a statutory duty to assess, before a referendum, whether a proposed question is clear, or after a referendum, whether a clear majority voted for secession.
• Negotiation trigger removed — the Act's requirement that the federal government not enter into negotiations on secession unless the House of Commons had determined the question and result were clear is eliminated, so no federal statutory precondition of this kind remains in place.
• Provincial referendum authority unconstrained by this statute — without the Clarity Act, no federal legislation sets out criteria for question wording or majority thresholds that a province's referendum must meet for Canada to treat it as a basis for negotiation.
• No replacement framework created — the bill only repeals; it does not establish any new process, body, or criteria to govern how the federal government would respond to a future secession referendum.
• Oversight — repeal takes effect on the Act receiving force; there is no review mechanism, transitional provision, or sunset clause included in this bill.