The Question of Separatism:

...She sees the aspirations of Quebec fitting in with her current world trend towards seeing human collectivities in terms of diversity rather than uniformity...

...One is the fact that Quebec has bred not only the most dedicated separatists in Canada, but also the most rigid centralists, the group of key members of the present Liberal cabinet who accept the Jacobinical authoritarianism of Pierre Trudeau...

...Her view is sympathetic...

...And she examines with a great deal of shrewdness the various plans put forward by the advocates of Quebecois self-determination, and particularly Rene Levesque's proposals for Sovereignty-Association which continue to haunt the Canadian political scene in spite of the fact that they were narrowly defeated in a 1979 provincial referendum...

...it may end with Caftada as we know it no longer existing, since the discontent with the federal system that long motivated political life in the French-speaking province of Quebec has spread recently to other provinces, particularly those most distant from Ottawa-British Columbia and Alberta in the west and Newfoundland (which only entered the Canadian confederation in 1949) in the east...

...The immediate aim of Trudeau's government is the patriation of that curious document known as the British North America Act, an 1867 statute of the imperial government which now can be changed only by the British parliament in Westminster, acting at the request of the Ottawa cabinet...

...Jacobs ignores, though they are bound to affect the situation in both Quebec and the other Canadian provinces...

...But there are aspects of the situation as it has developed in the last year which Dr...

...The inflexibility of Trudeau in his demands for high centralization, and the growing opposition of the outer provinces (more secure economically because of recent oil finds), are creating a situation where the next decade may see Quebec as only one among the provinces bent on loosening the Canadian confederation into an association of sovereign states, a modernized Switzerland...

...She uses the historic example of Norway's secession from Sweden in 1905 to show how a province can split away peacefully and become independent, provided there is good will and wisdom on both sides...

...Canada at present is in the throes of a debate over its constitutional future that will certainly not be settled as quickly as the country's impatient Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, would like...

...Once the power to amend the Act (adefacto constitution) is returned to Canada, a long period of discussion and probably disagreement will certainly follow...

...GEORGE WOODCOCKWOODCOCK...

...She argues that countries small in terms of population can-as the examples of Switzerland and Belgium show-develop prosperous economies and high living standards, provided they are willing to use inventiveness as a major resource...

...she points out the defects in Levesque's proposals at the same time as she recognizes that to allow Quebec sovereignty within a pattern of economic association might well be an advantage to the rest of Canada rather than the reverse...

...If that happens it will be an experiment heavy with interest for a world that has grown tired of nineteenth-century ideas of nationality...

...Trudeau's attitudes in turn have bred resentment in Western and Atlantic Canada, many of whose people believe the attention perpetually focused on the Quebec problem is harming their local interests...

...In discussing Quebec's claims, which she favors, Jane Jacobs is temperate and fair...

...In The Question of Separatism, Jane Jacobs-an immigrant Canadian and an internationally respected authority on the problems of urbanism-has turned her acute perceptions to one aspect of the present Canadian crisis, which is the possibility-and the desirability-of Quebec's becoming a viable independent state...

...their attitudes would be more appropriate to Metropolitan France than to French Quebec...