The French Fact
Bishop, Jordan
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 FROM CANADA THE FRENCH FACT Several months have passed since the elections that brought Ren6 Lrvesque's Parti Qudb~cois to power in the National Assembly. Mr....
...According to Mr...
...Excavate down through the pile by the radiator, or finger carefully the precarious tower of items on the stereo speaker--whichever of my sophisticated filing systems I consult, the result is the same: fewer stories about international politics or Washington skullduggery, more about international trade, local unemployment and price indexes...
...he will give in...
...The idea of sovereignty does not carry as much weight today as it did in the eighteenth century, and the decentralization that everyone talks about and most people despair of achieving might better be realized through alternative forms of political organization resuiting from the separation of Quebec...
...What then...
...But whether or not the tax rebates are inflationary, if some thousands of American business leaders think they are inflationary (and the group can number 10,000 or 500,000 without its being more than one.fourth of one percent of the population) then the power of this elite is such, that the tax rebates will be inflationary...
...With congressional waters full of energy and auto lobbyists circling around his energy program he may soon arrive at that point...
...Up to a point...
...JORDAN BISHOP (Jordan Bishop, a regular contributor, teaches at the College o] Cape Breton in Nova Scotia...
...Cmnmonweal: 295 we in the Maritimes would have to follow suit, whether enthusiastically or reluctantly...
...Trudeau placed much of the onus of maintaining Canadian unity on the English-speaking population...
...More and more of them are punctuated with bar charts and pie graphs...
...Yet he was forced to accept a confederation rather than a unitary state because of the "French fact...
...the "French fact" has yet to be accepted by many English-speaking Canadians, as was clearly shown by last summer's strike of English-speaking airline pilots and air traffic controllers, who objected strongly to anyone flying airplanes over Quebec "in French...
...All this makes perfectly good sense...
...In a sense the Washington address was a departure from the Prime Minister's approach to the question since the elections...
...Trudeau's interpretation of the question may assume too much with respect to the relative merits of alternative forms of political organization now that it is possible to argue that small is beautiful...
...Neither Levesque nor his caucus are in any hurry...
...There was never any plebiscite or referendum until after the fact, when the people rejected Confederation overwhelmingly...
...Member of the Legislative Assembly) from Cape Breton, having predicted Levesque's victory in a book published shortly before the Quebec elections, goes on to discuss the future of the Maritimes: "There is no doubt that very soon, after Quebec independence, tion...
...Beyond Quebec--politically and geographieallymare the Atlantic provinces...
...It will be instructive to observe the outcome...
...Yet the negotiations that have fascinated me are those with the American business community...
...Ironically, this involved some support of the conservative Union Nationale in Quebec, whose unexpected showing in the November elections may have made the PEquist majority possible...
...And while few have dared to say it out loud, it is possible that most of the economic arguments against Quebec's separation would apply with equal force to Canada's separation from the United States...
...All Carter's instincts tell him it is better to move with business rather than against it, and he is apparently willing to make a lot of concessions to that end...
...MacEwan, "Nova Scotia was taken into Confederation entirely as a result of political maneuvering, by statesmen who had no mandate to do any such thing...
...In the Washington address the problem posed by Quebec separatism was described as the greatest single problem facing Canada today, aggravated by the fact that Canada has not yet created the conditions in which French-speaking Canadians have felt that they are fully equal, or could fully develop the richness of the culture they have inherited...
...In many ways Canada is not a nation and perhaps never will be in the sense that Quebec already is a nation...
...The latest cause is, of course, the national debate over energy policy...
...l'he business of Republicans is so obviously business that we tend to take for a party interest what is a national fact...
...Sir John A. MacDonald forging (or railroading) confederation in 1867, would rather have had a unitary state to guarantee English ascendancy than a confederation...
...The Canadas and the Canadian provinces are happily spared the need to become a superpower...
...Or is it just my mood...
...000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 THE GARDENER PAUL PETRIE And there were the roses, drenching the summer's air with a thousand shining scents-And there was the roses' keeper, stoop-backed, wrinkle-faced, with a gold-toothed smile, pruning the red-barbed stems, picking off the blossoms that were overripe and searching the tight-sheathed buds for aphids, beetles, grubs-I walked beside, small shadow on the dew-soaked lawn, while on he talked---of Buddha, Gandhi, Tolstoy, Jesus Christ--all the morning prophets of the world-not understanding much, but understanding that this was the garden and this the garden's keeper whose very hands were wise, and running from rose to rose drinking the fragrant ichors of the sun...
...Tax rebates for consumers didn't make it...
...We are told that Quebec is too small to form a viable nation, that foreign investment would be driven out, that some large corporations would move from Montreal to Toronto...
...Carter is still the engineer more than the businessman...
...It could be argued that whatever Canada is or will be, it cannot be assimilated simply to the formula of the nation state...
...Then commenced a period of wooing and reassuring business not seen since the "take-a-businessman-to-lunch" splurge with which the Kennedy administration tried to repair its run-in with the steel industry...
...Regional identities are strong and wellestablished, while across the country "Canadian identity" remains an open question...
...Ren6 IAvesque and his party do not appear to be impressed...
...If I say he had a wife who was a scold, that his children grew up neither rich nor happy, that he played favorites, worked all his life at McClery's fixing stoves, and died at last unknown I speak as a sworn witness, now that those crimson ears are underground, to what prodigious magic, drifting through summer mornings, those roses heard...
...Its energy program was devised by a Republican technician who served in the last two administrations, and it met with the enthusiastic approval of John Sawhill, former GOP energy chief...
...It continued with the relatively small dose of economic stimulants, about half the percentage of GNP that the Kennedy-Johnson tax cut of 1964 employed to spur an economy in which unemployment was considerably lower...
...My guess --no more than a guessMis that, having forged no movement of Democrats on the left...
...The nation will have economic and social policy strictly on business terms...
...Another question that appears to be beneath the dignity of most politicians committed to the Confederation is the political future of a Canada without Quebec...
...There is a real question as to whether Quebec's economy would be better oriented on a North-South axis, the present East-West relationship, or some combination of both...
...tax credits for business, though the President withdrew them as well, probably will...
...Trudeau has charged that the separation of Quebec would be an international tragedy, "a crime against the history of mankind," the tragic failure of a pluralist dream...
...I am not suggesting a conspiracy, a handful of robber barons huddled in a clubroom and deciding whether to make or break Jimmy Carter...
...The entire energy program is heading towards that sieve now...
...The French fact is still with us...
...many Qudbdcois believe that the confederation that resulted has in fact realized MacDonald's preference...
...Indeed the economic goals the administration has set itself, as distinguished from those the Democratic platform announced, are not that different from Nixon's and Ford's...
...he believes in a standard for fairness other than what the market decrees...
...In fact, the Carter administration has surprised everyone with its international activism, however inconclusive its negotiations with the Soviets, with the Middle Eastern nations, and with white and black DOING BUSINESS WITH BUSINESS PETER STEINFEI~ Africa have been to date...
...As the debate progresses, a number of Upper Canadian voices choose to speak in economic terms...
...Nonetheless, since his election Carter's major effort has been to propitiate the business community...
...But Lrvesque is now the premier in the National Assembly--the Quebec legislature has been so styled long before the present upsurge of Quebec nationalism--and has promised a referendum on the issue sometime before the end of his mandate...
...Indeed, Quebec may well be the only place in the country where "nationalism" makes any sense, or better, is a force to be reckoned with...
...During the election campaign, the Parti Qudb~cois campaigned for good government, not separation, and there is little doubt that the Pdquist victory was as much a rejection of the Bourassa Liberals as a victory for separatism...
...13 May 1977:296...
...For the In my first hundred days under the Carter presidency, I have noted a major change--in the nature of my news clippings...
...In a press conference the following day, Mr...
...His administration has absorbed at least one element from the Democratic left, the middle-class consumer and ecology alliance...
...The consensus of the business community is like a sieve through which legislation must pass...
...Most recently Carter responded to the chorus of business wails about inflation by withdrawing his tax-rebate measure, but without doing anything directly about inflation except a voluntary program as unpromising as it is inoffensive...
...He believes that efficiency will lead to profits rather than the other way round...
...In fact the possibility of Maritime separation was voiced in an article published in MacLean's in 1936...
...Yet the observation that Carter is "Gerry Ford with brains" is not fair to the extent that it suggests a personal abandonment of his former ideals...
...Whether in fact separation would be a tragedy might well depend on how the rest of us react to it...
...You may think that the pilot of an airplane is not doing a very good job, you may offer suggestions, dangle incentives, even cajole with a few threats...
...Many observers, even in these days of recognized governmental responsibility for the "management" of the economy, have questioned the extent to which Ottawa can effectively manage an economy so dominated by the United States...
...Trudeau, on a state visit to Washington, assured a joint session of the United States Congress that the separation of Quebec from the Canadian federation is unthinkable, supported only by a "small minority" of the people of Quebec...
...Both Mr...
...The Liberal majority in the Commons depends absolutely on the traditionally Liberal vote (in federal politics) of Quebec, and for the moment at least, a Canada without Quebec could look forward to a solid Tory majority in Ottawa...
...Democrats dissatisfied with Carter are remarking that he is the most competent Republican president we've had...
...Yet it is obvious to everyone that the fortunes of the Liberal Party would suffer a dramatic reversal were Quebec to separate...
...The French translation of the Prime Minister's words as "un crime contre l'humanit6" has already raised some hackles in Quebec, and not only in separatist ranks...
...If Ottawa has shown little use for us to date, one can imagine what our impoverished and colonial status would be were we geographically separated from Upper Canada by another country" (Confederation and the Maritimes, Windsor, Nova Scotia, 1976...
...One wonders whether the economy is the central issue, or whether the political separation of Quebec would really entail significant changes...
...Both Conservative leaders worked hard--with little success--to build a constituency in Quebec...
...The process began with Carter's appointments--Lance, Blumenthal and Schultze in the key economic posts...
...With his insistence on comprehensiveness and long-range perspectives, he is taking us another major step towards national economic planning, not perhaps of the democratic sort I might welcome but of an intelligent, conservative cast...
...Even the name "Canada" was originally applied to "the Canadas," Upper (Ontario) and Lower (Quebec) until 1867...
...He put energy policy in the hands of someone whose political affiliations were less important than his technical orientation...
...Clark, the incumbent leader of the opposition, are committed to federalism...
...Is this what it means to have an administration focusing on domestic issues...
...It does not mean that Carter has gone to work for the "interests" rather than the "people...
...Businessmen voted against Carter 8 to 1. Labor was his critical ally, lowerincome voters his margin of victory...
...That seems to be Carter's position vis-a-vis the business community...
...He is simply respecting reality, and the reality is the overwhelming power of the business community...
...Stanfield, the former Conservative leader, and Mr...
...Trudeau very carefully avoided the use of the term "nation" to describe the people of the province...
...That the real business of America is business is a lesson we relearn under Democrats...
...He needs their coopera13 May 1977:294 moment their most important task is to provide good government, and the PEquists have already discovered that an opposition program is not quite adequate for the conduct of a government...
...He has rarely spoken to the question except in response to direct questions from the press or audiences...
...In view of the Maritime tradition separation would not be unthinkable...
...but you are not going to try anything that might upset the pilot enough to send the whole plane into a tailspin...
...Paul MacEwan, a Nova Scotia M.L.A...
...But the pattern is not new...
...More and more of them come from the business pages...
Vol. 104 • May 1977 • No. 10
