Québec 2007 , results

[GAP]

I don't think so. The French put much more stock in the distinction than do the English.

 

[Yrys]

But it seems to me that there more francophones (in Montréal)
that are bilingual then anglophone, thus beeing able to intereact
with the other culture...

 

[DocBacon]

In Canmore, Alberta, where I live, it is common for the French-speaking parents of young children to raise their families with no English.  These families are here because of the large Federal service employment at Banff National Park, where hiring is predicated on fluency in French (English fluency, I my experience, is an obvious secondary requirement).  Because of the accommodation of French in the Alberta education system, these children may be able to get through their entire education, without leaving Alberta, and never have to learn English.

The fact that French isolationism can continue in the "red-necked" corners of Alberta is not accidental: it is the result of deliberate national policy aimed at providing French-Canadians with opportunities not available to Anglos within Quebec.  Add the cost of this and other programs and we'll begin to realize the true costs of retaining Quebec within the constitutional family.  Also, over the years of federal transfers, Alberta has contributed a net $200billion to the kitty, while Quebec has received a net $218billion.  Anyone on this site will also be aware of the transfers of jobs and dollars that go to Quebec with federal procurement (IMPs, uniforms, aircraft maintenance, etc) that do not appear in the ledger of  transfer payments.  Finally, add the costs due to the restrictions on the flow of labour and services into Quebec whereas Quebec labourers and companies are free to displace domestics in other provinces with impunity.

Anybody think there isn't a need to address the fiscal imbalances?  I'd be happy if the next vote on the issue of Quebec's separation came tomorrow - provided all of the rest of Canada got a vote as well.

Before anyone attacks for my apparent dislike of our Quebec-Canadians, I'll state for the record that half my family are French-speakers (of the prairie variety) and that I spoke French in the home as a child as well.  But I got over it.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I think GAP is right.  It, whatever 'it' is, matters more to French Canadians.  I suspect that's common to most minorities.

 

[Kirkhill]

Wouldn't both be as deep ?

I'm puzzled.

Yrys, I think what Edward and GAP are getting at, and in large part I agree with them, is that there is a legacy in Quebec that Quebecois might have to overcome.  In Quebec Durham is a dirty word, it certainly is for my Fransaskoise Mother-in-law in Saskatchewan.  That report supplies a filter through which all Anglo actions have been seen for over 170 years.  That includes actions that Anglos thought were being introduced for general benefit.  Specifically I am referring to universal education.

What modern Anglos, I believe, fail to understand is the depth of the aversion of the Roman Catholic church, and in particular the Jesuits (EDIT: In the past), to supplying a general education.  I have recommended Young Trudeau before and I will do so again because it gives the best description yet of how to control a society.  Where Anglos were offered a universal education, dating back to the 1830s and free access to any reading material they chose, resulting in them coming to their own, individual, sometimes obnoxious sense, of what was right, the Clergy in Quebec, and to be honest throughout Catholic Europe, dictated and controlled "the message".  They demanded that education NOT be universal and public but that it be supplied to Franco-Quebecers through the Church.  Protestants ended up getting their education through THEIR church.

It was Catholic policy to limit education, because they felt farmers didn't need it and they would be less likely to stray if they weren't tempted by "foreign" "sinful" messages.  Accordingly the Church supplied a bare minimum of elementary education, restricted who went on to further education, dictated the books that were permissible to read, controlled newspaper and cinema content - and insisted that only French be spoken.  This was policy in Quebec until the Quiet Revolution and it was policy in the rest of the Roman Catholic world, including places like Ireland, until Pope John XXIII in the late 1950s.   Edit: They also stipulated which organizations it was permissible for the faithful to join.  This included unions.

The net effect is that Quebecers, especially those not exposed to Anglos, have a lot of ground to make up in getting to know Anglos and coming to their own conclusions about the history that they have been taught for over 150 years.  Only now do I think that some areas are being exposed to Anglos through the television and the internet.  Even that process is slowed by the language difference - a language difference perpetuated by the Parti Quebecois and the Bernard Landrys of the nation.  Bernard and Pierre learned at the same schools.  While they may have come to different conclusions with each other, and with the Jesuits, they learned well the techniques that would allow them to control the message and guide their flocks away from sin.

I believe that there is a considerable body of evidence that suggests that a certain segment of the Roman Catholic hierarchy fought a 200 year war against what they considered the aberration of Anglo-Saxon liberal democracy. Quebecers were caught in that battle and not, I believe, to their advantage.

Interestingly the same attitudes seem to prevail in certain communities towards the pragmatism of Anglo-Saxon liberal democracy.  After a 1000 years of being told that there is a right answer and somebody else can supply it for you, it seems it takes a little time for the idea to take hold that you might be responsible for your own successes and failures. 

Unfortunately when individuals find their own answers it puts those with the right answers out of jobs.

But getting back to the original point - the short form is there is lot of propagandizing that has to be overcome.


Cheers, Chris.

 

[DocBacon]

A lot of propagandizing indeed, Chris.  Your very insightful post(s) have explained much of what I have understood as pure obstinacy and given me an historical perspective to the Quebecois that I frankly attributed to a faux guallic sense of superiority.

I still, however, believe that les pequistes are modern animals, creatures of the urban university landscape that thrive on multicultural arts grants and favourable federal hiring practices.  In my perfect world (where Quebec wasn't the tail that wagged the dog of confederation) French would be accorded the same levels of public support as Spanish or Japanese - that is, not the huge appropriations of money and effort that prop up our Quebec cousins, but rather and educational option supported in order to broaden the minds of students in line with the national interests of trade and diplomacy.

Perhaps I'm just angry that our accommodation of the French has led to the substitution of a flawed and distorted Bill of Rights for 600 years of English common law.  Also, the additional status allowed for the French has sundered the universality of rights and obligations, and created a spectrum of Canadians from those Anglophones born here through the French-Canadians and First-Nations-Canadians to the Canadians-In-Waiting who do not, and will not, speak either official language.  And what did we gain?  Hardly a more coherent notion of what is a Canadian.

During the last (but not, if we are to believe the Blocheads, the Last) referendum we were asked to declare that our Canada included Quebec.  Well, my Canada has a little spot along the St.Lawrence reserved for the part of Quebec that wants to remain 300 years in the past, when France and French were important contributors to the world.  The rest of the partitioned province of Quebec, in my Canada, is welcome to enjoy the benefits of being Canadian (with out hyphens).

 

[Edward Campbell]

Yet another article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail, from another journalist who deserves a read whenever he stays within his lanes:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070329.wxcomartin29/BNStory/National/home

No celebrations, please: The bad guys will be back

LAWRENCE MARTIN
From Thursday's Globe and Mail

Most every time a political party suffers a stiff setback, someone will draw out the dagger and declare that it is moribund.

The astute separatist leader Gilles Duceppe was fielding questions of that nature after the bad day his flock incurred in the Quebec election. "We've been hearing that kind of talk since August of 1976," the Bloc Québécois Leader responded. "That was when Pierre Trudeau declared separatism is dead." As he noted, only a few months later, the Parti Québécois won a majority in the province.

He could have used several other examples to drive home the point that anyone popping champagne corks at the sight of the PQ's third-place finish is ill-advised.

In the 1980 referendum, the separatists were repudiated by a vote of 60 per cent to 40 per cent. The following year, Quebeckers returned René Lévesque's Péquistes to office with another majority.

Heading into the 1995 referendum, the federal side was cruising to the point where Jean Chrétien could look at the numbers and head off to the golf course, confident that another 1980-styled victory was at hand. Then the sovereigntists switched leaders -- which they might do again -- and Lucien Bouchard rolled back the stone. Everyone knows how close they came to winning that vote.

This is a movement that has fed off adversity. In response to the failed Meech Lake accord, the sovereigntists undertook expansion, forming a federal party, the Bloc Québécois. Overnight, it became Canada's Official Opposition.

The Bloc was supposed to be a short-term phenomenon. It, too, has had its death warrant written a few times -- and with the news that Michel Gauthier, its high-quality MP, won't be running again, there will be more of them. But the Bloc is still likely to remain the dominant federal party in Quebec.

Despite Monday's apparent drubbing, it should be remembered that the Péquistes, who lost only nine of their seats, came within a two- or three-point swing of winning the election. That was with an inexperienced leader, and it was in the face of much federal largesse bestowed on the province. The second-place showing of Mario Dumont's Action Démocratique du Québec was obviously a punishing rebuke. But there is a scenario in which the ADQ's rise could work favourably for the Péquistes.

It is worth recalling that, when Brian Mulroney was in office in the 1980s, he contemplated the idea of creating a provincial Conservative party in Quebec. He abandoned the idea, a principal reason being that it would create two federalist options for Quebeckers. They would divide the vote, creating a wonderful advantage for the PQ.

If, in the Quebec voter's eyes, the ADQ becomes another federalist option -- a cousin of sorts to Stephen Harper's Conservatives -- the scenario that Mr. Mulroney feared could come to pass. In this past election, Mr. Dumont had the best of both worlds. He was seen as half one, half the other. But, with his enhanced stature, he won't be able to sustain that kind of ambiguity.

Strangely, the best thing that could happen for Canadian unity would be for Mr. Dumont to steer away from federalist affiliation and move closer to the separatist camp. In that way, vote-splitting would occur among the sovereigntists.

Meantime, Mr. Harper has to tread carefully. He can justifiably take some credit for the PQ's poor showing on Monday. While the gifts he bestowed on the province didn't trigger the majority victory for Jean Charest that he intended, his granting nation status to the Québécois served to undermine the secessionists.

But such is the new dynamic in Quebec that Mr. Harper cannot bank with assuredness on any outcome. Given the symmetry between his party and the ascendant ADQ, common wisdom suggests he can ride the momentum and score big in the province in the next federal campaign. But Quebeckers often tend to go one way, then the other. Having given the secessionists a beating provincially, they are now just as likely to turn around and deliver a big vote to Mr. Duceppe, a decidedly more popular leader than the PQ's André Boisclair, in the federal campaign.

It's dangerous for anyone -- witness how several provinces tend to vote one way federally and the other way provincially -- to draw direct lines from one jurisdiction to another. Non sequiturs, especially in Quebec, abound.

[email protected]

It is Dumont’s ambiguity which is interesting.  He is very, very skilled at being neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring.  This appears to appeal to Québecers.  I do not believe, not for a μsecond, that he is a federalist; I do believe that he is smart enough to see that most Québecers do not want unequivocal national independence – thus, his appealing (to most French Québecers) ambiguity.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Gable has it right in this cartoon reproduced here under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail.

 

[Reccesoldier]

Gable has it right in this cartoon reproduced here under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail.

I think Dracula would have been a better representative monster.  Sovereignty was not raised from the dead it is undead.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here is another, by Peter Schrank, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from thisd week's Economist.

 

[Cybelle24]

But it seems to me that there more francophones (in Montréal)
that are bilingual then anglophone, thus beeing able to intereact
with the other culture...

That's soooooo true. And not only in Montreal...

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail is Rex Murphy’s take on ’autonomy‘:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070330.wcorex0331/BNStory/Front/home

Separatism by another name

REX MURPHY
From Saturday's Globe and Mail

All the observers agree: The Quebec election was a landmark vote. It changed the dynamics of the province. It broke down the pattern of a generation. It sidelined the great contest between federalists and separatists in that province.

And most of all, they agree that the outstanding result for Mario Dumont and his Action Démocratique du Québec, which catapulted the party to second place and him to Opposition leader, was great news for Stephen Harper and for Canada.

After all, the separatists had their worst result since 1970. The PQ may have been mortally injured. Separatists, and the idea they have championed, have aged. Both are now enfeebled and maybe irrelevant.

Mr. Harper caught this euphoric tone when he noted that “two-thirds of Quebeckers voted against having another referendum.” Which is a very exhilarating thing to say, but two-thirds of Quebeckers did no such thing.

It is true that two-thirds voted for parties other than the PQ. But the “not holding a referendum” aspect of the other two parties was but one item on the menu of reasons voters chose when they gave their support to Mr. Dumont or Jean Charest.

Totalling the numbers of people who did not vote for a certain party, and taking that aggregate as the measure of the rejection of a single issue in a multiparty, multi-issue election is dishonest. In our system, it's worth clarifying, we count the votes for parties. Last example: In the most recent federal election, 95 per cent of Canadians did not vote against the Green Party. Five per cent voted for it.

But back to Mr. Dumont. It's true he is not, now, a separatist. He was in 1995, when he voted Yes in that year's referendum. And it is also true he has no interest in promoting or pushing for a referendum on separation from Canada. Mainly, however, I suspect not because he feels a chill at the idea of an independent Quebec, but because a referendum as a tactical instrument for that glorious result is increasingly seen as useless.

Mr. Dumont is not a sovereigntist. He is — clumsy word ahead — an autonomist. He wants more autonomy for Quebec. Canada is autonomous. The provinces and territories within it, by definition, are not. And if someone can point the difference between an autonomous Quebec and an independent Quebec, please alert the dictionary-makers.

The 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary defines autonomy as “possessed of autonomy, self-governing, independent.” Now, self-government or independence has been the explicit goal of the separatists as long as they have been separatists.

Why is the embrace of Quebec's autonomy as a goal more welcome by the forces of Canadian federalism than the embrace of its ideal synonym?

Let us not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.

Furthermore, we have had within the past year the passage in our federal Parliament of a resolution that confirms the nationhood of the Québécois. We have also had the extension to Quebec of the right or competence to attend international gatherings, such as UNESCO.

So Quebeckers are a nation. Quebec qua Quebec may attend international conferences. And on the night of the most historic Quebec election in a generation, the star performer is the leader of a party who wants more autonomy for Quebec.

I suggest the reason Mr. Dumont is so obliging in dismissing a referendum from his political arsenal is that he sees it has become a useless ritual toward the advancement of goals ever so conveniently being achieved without one.

After all, if the federal Parliament declares by resolution that “the Québécois form a nation,” if its “powers” are ever more exercised separately from any central mandate, if Quebec has an international presence, and if the goal of the only dynamic party in the province of Quebec right now is to expand the latitudes of its already generously established autonomy — why chatter about some damn referendum? This boat sails better without that dropped anchor.

Quebec is and has been quietly disengaging itself, with the co-operation in particular of Mr. Harper's government, from its provincial status within the Confederation. It is edging toward an equivalent status with the rest of the country seen as a whole.

As for the ADQ's victory this week marking a breach from the independence project, read these portions of the party's platform. It goes . . . “our first allegiance, our passion and our loyalty are toward Quebec. It refers to Canadians outside Quebec as “privileged partners” not fellow citizens, speaks of relations with Ottawa as “bilateral and equal” and finally proposes the official name for what we now know as a province as the “Autonomist State of Quebec.” The rise of the ADQ is not a funeral for separatism. It is a refashioning of the quest, a more beguiling referendum-free path to that fractious future.

Rex Murphy is a commentator with CBC-TV's The National and host of CBC Radio One's Cross-Country Checkup.

Caveat lector: Even though our Fathers of Confederation, having just seen the problems in the USA, wanted a strong central government the Constitution they signed created one in which the sub-units have far greater power than is the case in most other federal states*.  Acknowledging that, I favour even greater autonomy for all provinces – to be gained by the simple act of the federal government withdrawing to areas on exclusive federal jurisdiction (§91) and by further negotiation.

I welcome Dumont’s success and his barely hiddenindépendist leanings.  I think, I hope he will find a kindred spirit in Stephen Harper, if Harper gets a majority government.  I think the only way we will ever fix the innumerable flaws in our current Constitution is by forcing the whole thing open and renegotiating the very basics of our federation.


----------
* See Watts, Comparing Federal System, McGill-Quenn’s University Press, 1999

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail is a comment by William Johnson, a former president of (the now inactive)  Alliance Québec:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070331.COJOHNSON31/TPStory/?query=william+johnson

The autonomists' threat: death by a thousand cuts
The federalists, in turn, must insist on a full, final disclosure of all the new powers and money that Quebec will demand, says author WILLIAM JOHNSON

WILLIAM JOHNSON

As of Monday's election in Quebec, a referendum on secession is off the agenda, perhaps forever. Now comes the hard part.

For three decades, Quebec's political class raised the referendum to the status of a myth. The referendum founded an all-or-nothing proposition. You won or lost the referendum, there was no in-between. You won or lost sovereignty, depending on the referendum vote. The Constitution? The rights of aboriginals or other Canadians? They vanished when the magic wand of a referendum was waved.

The all-or-nothing posture led all Quebec parties except Robert Bourassa's Liberals to oppose the 1987 Meech Lake accord. Eighty-five per cent of the briefs submitted to a legislative committee opposed it. Then, in the 1992 referendum, Quebeckers voted down the Charlottetown accord, which, among other "gains," would have guaranteed their province a quarter of all Commons seats in perpetuity. The nationalists preferred nothing to not enough.

But now, that has changed. "Sovereignty is still desirable, but in the short term it is obviously not attainable," Parti Québécois Leader André Boisclair confirmed Tuesday. What? Sovereignty is only "desirable," rather than "absolutely, imperatively necessary"? PQ true believers will burn Mr. Boisclair at the stake.

But more important was Mr. Boisclair's hint as to where he will now push his party: He will call the bluff of the "autonomist" Action Démocratique du Québec and the less hurried but also autonomist Quebec Liberal Party. He will propose that the three join in demands or ultimatums delivered to Ottawa. The other parties will either join the coalition of the autonomists or be exposed as lapdogs.

Mario Dumont also spoke Tuesday of a coalition: "What I would hope for is that we could rally some kind of unanimity at the National Assembly around an autonomist vision."

In the past, there were times when the parties joined together for a unanimous resolution in the National Assembly, as a common front against the federal government. One such resolution demanded that Paul Martin's government resolve "the fiscal imbalance" between Ottawa and Quebec. Mr. Martin ignored it at his peril. Stephen Harper embraced it.

The new situation -- a frail minority government with the balance of power held by two opposition parties committed to autonomy -- sets the stage for concerted action. All three parties ran on a central policy of wresting more from Ottawa. Premier Jean Charest said Tuesday that "the status quo is unacceptable." The other two parties will soon put him to the test.

The campaign for autonomy could take the form of a Quebec referendum demanding a specific power. As opposition leader, Jacques Parizeau suggested holding such "sectoral referendums," but backed off when his hardliners insisted on the principle of all or nothing. Now, a sectoral referendum could prove a weapon of war whose time has come.

The new approach will threaten Canada's stability as much as did the all-or-nothing referendum practice. It would threaten death by a thousand cuts -- or even just a few. Quebec's nationalist militancy of the early 1990s could be revived, reigniting interregional confrontations.

Federal politicians must develop a strategy to counter this new threat. Since 1960, the pattern of Quebec parties has been one of relatively moderate initial demands for more money and more autonomy that became precedents for more radical demands for more money and autonomy. Each party, facing elections, now devises new ways of standing up to Ottawa, saying: "Damn you, sir, I want some more!"

Mr. Dumont's election policy of s'affirmer sans se séparer]]]] -- asserting ourselves without separating -- is unlikely to remain an empty slogan. The second verb is what federalists heard loudly. But Mr. Boisclair emphasized the first: Mr. Dumont's autonomist assertiveness will be put to the test between now and the next Quebec election, likely within 18 months. He proposed "to promote and defend the autonomy of Quebec by conducting bilateral relations with Ottawa as between equals." D'égal à égal. The two-nations theory makes a comeback.

The tactical federal response should be to demand, as a precondition to negotiations, a full, final disclosure of all the new powers and new money that will be demanded. The list must include a commitment to make no further future demands. This would have the effect of breaking up the common front of what Pierre Trudeau called "the blackmailers."

The PQ could never limit its demands for autonomy to what is reasonable in a successful federation.

The ADQ would be forced to renounce its determined ambiguity and declare the full scope of its "autonomism." Would it be the entire slate of Jean Allaire's report, adopted as the constitutional policy of the Liberal Party in 1991? That would have transferred 22 powers to Quebec and left Ottawa as a skeleton. Mr. Dumont urged its adoption at the convention. The following year, as president of the Young Liberals, he stormed out of the party when Mr. Bourassa accepted that the Charlottetown terms be put to a referendum rather than the far more stringent Allaire report. Mr. Dumont then helped create the ADQ with Mr. Allaire because the Liberals did not demand enough. Nothing, in preference to not enough. Challenged by Mr. Boisclair during the leaders' debate to reveal what powers he would reclaim, Mr. Dumont named the Allaire report and evoked some of its indicative items.

The Quebec Liberal Party would also have to choose at last between its constant practice of escalating demands and its commitment to federalism. Since the 1960s, the party's position has been that Ottawa must revise the Constitution and its governmental structure to recognize Quebec as a nation more or less equal to the rest of Canada; then, when Canada has remade itself, the QLP defends the right of Quebeckers to secede at any time by a mere majority referendum vote. That, clearly, is a non-starter.

The times call for clarity -- at long last.

William Johnson, a former president of Alliance Quebec, is the author of Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada.

The Allaire Report recommended that 22 areas of jurisdiction – 21 of them already covered in whole or in part by (§92) – be given over wholly or on a shared basis to Québec I objected only to the way it proposed to managed some shared jurisdictions.  There is nothing strange about sharing foreign affairs and trade matters.  Consider, for example, a fishing dispute with the USA.  The “lead” agencies are The Department of State for the USA and DFAIT for Canada but the US delegation will, by law, include the states involved and the Canadian delegation will too, albeit not by law.  It would be unthinkable that Canada and the USA would try to renegotiate the Auto Pact without involving the province of Ontario and, I am 99.99% certain, the Canadian Auto Workers and industry associations, too.  I thought Allaire’s proposals for communications were amateurish, to be charitable.  Although I think almost anything, even a gang of circus clowns, would be better than the CRTC, I think Allaire arrived at a solution which would be worse.

But, the fly in the ointment is that Québec’s autonomists want Allaire or even Allaire+ for Québec, only.  They want, as Johnson says, deux nations or  d'égal à égal with the other national government of Canada and the other nine provinces.  This position is, must be, completely unacceptable to any Canadian national government.  If Québec tries to force the issue it may be necessary for Canada to hold a referendum leading up to a Constitutional congress.

 

[GAP]

Does all this just not take the issues to a different, but compatible level?  Nothing has changed, except to achieve the same thing through different methods/words.

 

[Kirkhill]

A good read from Lord Black in the National Post today comparing Dumont's electorate to that of Duplessis....

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=c62e39a8-3f1e-4493-8058-5f9a38544e38

Conrad Black: Dumont poised to be new Duplessis
Conrad Black, National Post
Published: Saturday, March 31, 2007
The largely negative reaction to the Quebec election in federalist Canada is astounding. Independentist sentiment in that province has collapsed to barely over a quarter of the vote, where it was 35 years ago. The ADQ leader, who is now the leader of the Opposition, Mario Dumont, represents at least the partial return of the Duplessis formula of getting non-separatist nationalists and conservatives to vote together, a delicate but useful operation. And this election is the beginning of a revival of fiscal and social conservatism in Quebec, after a lapse of 40 years.

The guardians and champions of the bonne entente movement in English Canada -- the advocates of French-English conciliation, often at exorbitant fiscal cost to Ontario and Alberta and jurisdictional cost to Ottawa -- seem heartbroken. They effectively promised to keep Quebec in Canada by giving it everything it asked except independence.

They never disputed the right of Quebec to secede because admission of that right preserved the apparent indispensability of the Liberal party to the integrality of Canada. They are now like ardent Cold Warriors, wandering around with the daze of acute cabin fever after the Berlin Wall came down and the USSR collapsed.

The separatists tormented Canada for decades. From the founding of the Union Nationale by Duplessis in 1935 through the Laurendeau-Dunton Report 30 years later, the authentic spokesmen for the culture and the state of Quebec promised that biculturalism would solve the country's problems; an effort by the English to learn French and give French an equal status, and not just the French clinging to a provincial corner of the continent.

As soon as this began to happen, the same leaders of Quebec -- Le Devoir, the leading Quebec historians, Rene Levesque, the Liberal education minister Paul Gerin-Lajoie and other equivalent worthies -- denounced biculturalism as an attempt to assimilate French Quebec, a Trojan Horse to produce English unilingualism via the halfway house of bilingualism.

The elites of Quebec were exposed in their hypocrisy and parochialism, in their desire to preserve a fiefdom of isolated French Canadians they could exploit. The federal Liberal party quickly adapted to this, and metamorphosed overnight from Mr. Pearson's biculturalists (Lester Pearson did not speak 100 words of French), to Pierre Trudeau's championship of heavy financial transfers to Quebec, universal charter rights that could be vacated by any province and were essentially window dressing, and an iron fist against any secessionist threat to the federal state. Trudeau bagged the rednecks who wanted to crack down on Quebec, the bonne ententistes who wanted to conciliate Quebec, and the conventional Quebec federalists of convenience in the same net. Bob Stanfield and Joe Clark were completely implausible alternatives, and after Brian Mulroney's heartfelt effort at constitutional resolution at Meech Lake, the federal Progressive Conservatives conveniently (for the Liberals) cracked up.

Quebec's Quiet Revolution, starting in 1960, was really just the secularization of the elites. Duplessis maintained a priest-ridden society, while asserting the provincial government's authority over the Church, to maintain low public-sector salaries and devote most of Quebec's budget to highways, schools, hospitals, universities and the other instances of a modern state, which Quebec had never been before.

With Jean Lesage, Rene Levesque and the other leaders of the Quiet Revolution, we had the same people teaching the same students and caring for the same patients in the same schools and hospitals, at 10 times the cost to the taxpayers, as the clerical personnel left their religious orders, intermarried, unionized and created industrial relations chaos in the public sector. Quebec, so long the most socially conservative part of Canada, had an extravagant romance with "social democracy," not because the avaricious descendants of the Norman and Breton peasants who founded New France suddenly became socialistic, but because this was an intellectually presentable method of redistributing money from the English and Jewish upper income groups of Quebec to the new haut-fonctionnaire apparat.

The frequently insulting treatment of the non-French minority in Quebec, endless fatuous debates about the "privilege" of speaking English in a province of a 75% English-speaking country and 98% English- speaking continent (north of the Rio Grande), drove out many. But they could not take their comfortable homes and commodious offices with them.

Duplessis knew that only an agile political personality could maintain his nationalist-conservative coalition. He had it arranged for his most talented followers, Paul Sauve and Daniel Johnson, to follow him. No one could foresee that those able premiers would die in their early fifties of cardiological problems, while just starting to build their governments. With the death of Johnson in 1968, nationalism in Quebec passed from the hands of the conservatives who had held it since Henri Bourassa, to the moderate left and Rene Levesque.

Where Duplessis and Johnson had promised "autonomy," enhanced provincial rights and jurisdiction, but not independence, Levesque promised the more egregious confidence trick of sovereignty and association. Quebec would eat its cake, and still retain it in its lap, it would exchange embassies with the world while receiving equalization payments. It was a complete fraud. Claude Morin, the chief architect of the program, was a closet federalist.

Jacques Parizeau and Lucien Bouchard gave the trick question one more try, and Jean Chretien, after panicking in the second referendum campaign, did finally produce the Clarity Act, requiring a strong majority on an unambiguous question.

Meanwhile, English Canada was satisfied it had made a sincere effort to redress any just grievances the Quebecers had had. They had had some and they were redressed. Demographic trends steadily diluted Quebec's ability to disrupt the country.


The rise in energy prices and international shortages of water, and surging economic growth rates across much of Asia have lifted Canada to an unprecedented geopolitical prosperity and significance. The federal conservative opposition reunited and the Quebec nationalists seized the federal Quebec rotten borough in Quebec so Canada went from one-and-a-third party rule (the Liberals in government federally for 80 of the 110 years since the rise of Laurier in 1896), to two-party rule.

The Canadian dollar rose from US65$ to US93?, the percentage of the Canadian gross domestic product that was comprised of trade with the U.S. declined from 43% to 36% and is continuing to diminish. Canada is becoming steadily more important in the world, and Quebec less important in Canada. This is becoming a greater country every year and the rights of the French will be absolutely respected as this process continues, as a matter of principle and respect for a founding people, not as a result of blackmail.

Of course most French Quebecers aren't much interested in Canada; they never were. They only joined Confederation, in 1867, over the opposition of many of their leaders, including A.A. Dorion, because they were afraid of being swallowed whole by the United States.

Having realized that they can't leave it, and that they are subsidized by approximately $1,000 from Ontario and Alberta for every French Quebecer per year to remain in it, and that Canada is a country to be respected and even proud of, their pan-Canadian instincts will show green shoots any year now. Dumont will bring back Duplessist economics, the Liberals will get a "chef " like Tashereau or Lesage, or at least a local Mackenzie King like Robert Bourassa, and the Bloc and PQ will dissolve. They are anachronisms. What is wrong with all of that?

Canada's and Quebec's political institutions have shown maturity, subtlety, and have endured without recourse to repression. Why is there not unconfined rejoicing at The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and the CBC? Cabin fever, I guess, after decades of overachieving appeasement, but they will get over it.

NATIONALPOST.COM

Reproduced in accordance with the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

Some fairly contentious takes on motivation - always a dangerous minefield to tread - but interesting observations on group dynamics and culture.

As to the prospects of an eternal resolution ....... Fuggedabahtit. >  We are as the rest of the world.  Humanity defines itself by difference.

 

[a_majoor]

The long term goal of Prime Minister Harper is bringing each sphere of government back into its level of jurisdiction. Although it gives some people the vapours to hear that the Federal government should take care of defence, foreign affairs, fiscal and monetary policy the Prime Minister is only referring back to the legal duties of the Federal Government as outlined (by law) in the BNA act. My god, the right wingers might demand the Rule of Law next!

As has been noted, the fly in the ointment seems to be the demand by the Quebec elite of autonomy for them only, not a decentralized Confederation as envisioned by the Prime Minister. I suspect that if the Prime Minister forges ahead with decentralization, it will take the wind out of the sails of the PQ and ADQ, since they are getting what they claim to ask for, while also forcing them to assume responsibility for the actual governance of the province (without external life support) as well.

If this will ever happen is debatable, I would suggest there is plenty of entrenched opposition to decentralization from all the provinces, which see the present day blurring of jurisdictions as a wonderful way to deflect blame and responsibility for their own mismanagement.....

 

[Kirkhill]

If this will ever happen is debatable, I would suggest there is plenty of entrenched opposition to decentralization from all the provinces, which see the present day blurring of jurisdictions as a wonderful way to deflect blame and responsibility for their own mismanagement.....

+1 Arthur

Much easier to get elected when you don't have to demand taxes to pay for the services wanted.  Much more rewarding to blame mummy and daddy for not giving us enough of an allowance to buy beer for the buddies.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Ottawa Citizen, is an interesting column:

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/opinion/story.html?id=9d033eec-b4a2-44c7-9a2a-e48157a2a585

Au revoir, said Quebec

Brigitte Pellerin, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Thursday, April 05, 2007

Is it clear by now that we are living in historic times? That the latest Quebec election was historically historic so we who cover it must be saying Really Important Things? Good. Now maybe we'll be able to pay attention to what history actually tells us.

First, we should stop reading tea leaves trying to figure out exactly how every event in the Canada-Quebec relationship might affect the Canada-Quebec relationship. What good has that ever done anybody? Instead, let's admit that a relationship where one partner talks endlessly about "us" while the other watches TV is in big trouble, and govern ourselves accordingly.

I said last week, and I maintain, that Quebec voters were very clever in electing this particular minority government. But not for the reason most Anglo commentators seem to think. The sheer number of columns claiming a "realignment" of Quebec politics along "left-right" lines instead of the old "sovereigntist/federalist" lines has made me snap.

One, this famous realignment happened after the last referendum more than 10 years ago. If it were good for Canadian unity, we'd know by now. Two, while countless Rest of Canada denizens genuinely care what Quebecers are up to and how they're feeling about the relationship, Quebecers don't give a hoot about the welfare and happiness of Rest of Canada denizens. And three, well, there's that "autonomist" thing.

I understand teenagers who want independence as long as Mommy continues to cook lunch, do the laundry and provide an allowance along with high-speed Internet. It's a bit odd coming from Mario Dumont, a 36-year-old professional politician. But this is Quebec, where such things are common, even from politicians who try to pass themselves off as "proud Canadians" in Ontario while promising to defend Quebec's interests against the nasty federal government when campaigning in Quebec City. I mean you, Jean Charest.

That's why it doesn't matter whether the tea leaves say the PQ or any other party will manage to hold yet another referendum on sovereignty. The whole sovereigntist/federalist debate has ceased to be of consequence. Instead, the notion that Quebec ought to be semi-independent, or at least enjoy a privileged status somewhere inside or outside Canada (or, more likely, right on the fence waiting for ever more money and special privileges) is so dominant among French-speaking Quebecers that every Quebec politician is, by now, a sovereigntist-autonomist-style nationalist.

Remember the saying about Ronald Reagan winning the Cold War without firing a single shot? Well, Quebec nationalists managed to win their little war without firing a single referendum victory.

I know. It's kinda sad. I have Anglo friends who are scared and horrified at the same time. For them, Canada without Quebec is unthinkable so they cling to the notion that somehow we're all in the same boat fighting those darn nationalists. I feel sorry for them; they may love Quebec dearly, but Quebec is flipping channels.

Even the time to say goodbye is behind us. My husband, John Robson, wondered in this space on Friday whether "Quebec quietly left and we missed it." Yes indeed. It hadn't quite sunk in for me until I noticed the deafening silence from Quebec commentators failing to talk about what the latest Quebec election might mean for the future of Canada. Quebecers are still here physically and monetarily, but certainly not emotionally and psychologically.

It's most obvious with small things. For instance, very few in Quebec celebrate Canada Day or Victoria Day (the latter is now called Journee nationale des Patriotes) or, this week, the 90th anniversary of the battle of Vimy Ridge -- where, the story goes, Canada became a nation. This newspaper has been full of stories about it for a solid week. The French papers? In La Presse and Le Devoir, a short Agence France-Presse wire story earlier this week. A search on the Journal de Montreal website yielded a big fat nothing. They're just not interested.

According to a 2005 Dominion Institute survey, as the Citizen reported, "49 per cent of respondents from Western Canada could identify Vimy Ridge as an important battle of the First World war, but that number dropped to six per cent in Quebec." I certainly don't remember hearing anything about it in school. The Plains of Abraham? Oh, yeah. But you know, we didn't like English wars so we kinda skipped them.

That was 20-odd years ago, in a part of Quebec that went on solidly to vote No in 1995. Imagine what's going on in separatist circles.

So you see, instead of talking about historic elections and suchlike, maybe we ought to listen to what history is desperately trying to tell us.

It sounds like "Au revoir."

Brigitte Pellerin's column appears Tuesday and Thursday.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2007

I suspect, maybe fear, that she’s right: Québec has, for all practical purposes, left Canada.  All that remains is to determine the terms of the common market which will enable Québecers to enjoy life as, ” teenagers who want independence as long as Mommy (Canada) continues to cook lunch, do the laundry and provide an allowance along with high-speed Internet.”

 

[GAP]

It sure sounds like that has happened, and if so, so be it.

Given that, if and when it actually occurs, I desperately hope that whatever political party is in power, they have the gonads to realign the seat balance in the other sections of Canada, rather than leave Ontario with the only axe, and everybody else carries their own chopping block.

If there are  to be changes, lets do it proper and settle all this in-equalization BS

 

[Reccesoldier]

” teenagers who want independence as long as Mommy (Canada) continues to cook lunch, do the laundry and provide an allowance along with high-speed Internet.”

I'd say Mom isn't the Nation, but the government and under that supposition I'd say...

Ask mommy all you want kids Dad (the population) isn't going to play that game and any Mom that did would be looking at one of those rare instances when Dad puts his (electoral) foot down.