THE NEW NATIONALISM: QUEBEC 1980

...Taxes rose...

...The federalist vote in 1976 was thus split between the Liberals, the Union Nationale (a faded conservative group that, for the occasion, adopted a stance in opposition to Bourassa's language policy), and even the separatist PQ, since the latter had removed the independence issue from contention...

...they will get another chance to say "no" if things are not to their liking...

...Conveniently overlooked is that today's young are tomorrow's old...

...It is unnecessary to point to the nature of diaspora experience with turmoil and emerging nationalism from post-Moorish Spain to the Ayatollah's Iran...

...What if some unforeseen event makes this scenario wrong...

...French-speaking Quebecers were encouraged to limit their participation in the world of business...

...Soon Levesque began to take an ambiguous public stance on the future of Quebec within Canada...

...Levesque )ecomes truly indignant when confronted with this similarity and points out, correctly, :hat there is nothing specifically anti-Semitic tbout the PQ's program...

...Quebec also suffers from some shrinkage of its tax base as people and wealth depart, as well as from limitations on its access to the capital markets in North America...

...Legal limitations on extraprovincial union affiliation did not protect the Quebec labor movement from "alien values...

...With its own employees it decided to play tough: strikes and lockouts have paralyzed the liquor monopoly and interfered seriously with the operation of some hospitals...

...The independence movement of the '60s also included some groups of MarxistLeninist persuasion, who professed the belief that a sovereign Quebec was just another step on their road...

...It was in the public sphere that dramatic changes became visible...

...5 The school issue is sharply contested by many affected parents for a reason that goes beyond the ethnocentric...

...If the nine English-speaking Canadian provinces did close ranks with the United States, could there be a really independent Quebec in their midst...

...The prosperity of the early '60s and the frugality of their predecessors allowed the Liberal government easy access to revenues and borrowing...

...There was also a gang of marching-in-tight-formation-under-a-sea-offlags toughs led by a former boxer...

...While elsewhere in Canada this process was merely one of publicsector expansion and income redistribution, in Quebec it meant a process of increasing job opportunities for, and the growing influence of, a new French-speaking middle class...

...3 The public sector kept growing...

...These resources are 68 transferred to government-administered zones accessible at a reasonable fee to everyone...

...In "natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics," the number of Francophones increased by 26,000 while non-Francophone jobholders increased by less than 300...

...In office, the Liberals substantially increased the size of the public sector by buying out the private owners of the electric power utilities in the province (thus converting middle-class English-language jobs to middle-class French-language jobs at public expense), displacing the Church in various social functions, and expanding the administrative and regulatory activities of Quebec...

...The major promise of the PQ in the 1976 campaign was good government...

...By 1973 the PQ ran unsuccessfully on a platform of holding a referendum on the independence issue if elected...

...his critics argue that in fact the PQ promotes the rule of middle-class technocrats...

...The English-speaking minority is reasonably mobile across Canada and perhaps the United States...

...Is the PQ a "social democratic" party...

...Until the early '60s how-to-vote instructions from the pulpit, stolen ballot boxes, baseball bats, and bribery were established features of the electoral process, on a scale unique in postwar Canada...

...While many French-Canadians are as deeply dedicated to democracy as anyone, Quebec collectively has political traditions more in keeping with Tammany Hall than with Westminster...

...Army in World War II and subsequently became a popular French-language television commentator, was elected as a Liberal to the Quebec legislature in 1960...

...The threat to that English-speaking community affects established connections and business opportunities specifically, and the overall prosperity of the business community in general...

...More interesting is the "democratic" part of the question...

...fhe resurrection of the term a decade later, without :apical letters, is presumably intended to appeal, dmultaneously, to persons who find independence too :xtreme, and to the separatist faithful conscious of party raditions...

...3) If the PQ attains its aim of independence, the government might restrict property rights and the mobility of persons...

...The image of Quebec's Liberal government, in office 1970-76 under Robert Bourassa, eroded during its last two years...

...Many in the Montreal corporate and professional world continue to live and work mostly in English even though they may know or may be learning French...

...Meanwhile, PQ militants are told that they must be patient with apparent compromises along the road to independence...

...Those who have left seem to be young university graduates and professionals...

...The early and mid-'60s were also a period of rising expectations, rapid urbanization, a move by the Church away from authoritarian influence, and rapid strides in unionization as well as the secularization of the labor movement...

...progressive...

...Lévesque seeks to avert this fate by repackaging the issue...

...While the PQ's success was clearly a large gain for separatism, the 1976 election cannot be interpreted as a popular endorsement of Quebec independence...

...Time is on their side, the separatists argue on the basis of polls showing that the young tend to favor independence while the old tend to oppose it...

...Non-French-Canadians in the midmanagerial ranks might find themselves bypassed at promotion time regardless of language skills, where management seeks to show how anxious it is to earn its Certificat de Francisation...

...Another measure limits severely the conversion of agricultural land in the St...

...Reports of fears concerning the future of Quebec have often been attributed to members of the Jewish community in Montreal...

...While low-income earners had their taxes reduced, those with annual incomes over (U.S...

...The first fear is well warranted, but its grounds did not originate with the PQ...

...The experience was traumatic to many Quebec intellectuals...

...scandals emerged...

...The former was murdered, the latter held prisoner for several months...

...Those who hazard predictions have to invent their methodology and then use it to obtain the results...

...Another strange tradition, started by the Union Nationale and carried on by Levesque, is the public reinterpretation of election results in terms of the French-speaking vote alone, suggesting none too subtly that the ballots cast by citizens belonging to the minority are somehow of less than full value...

...Nor was it all manifestos in those days...

...Not much has been heard of the promise of reform since the 1976 election, when the PQ benefited from the system...

...Churchrun and private hospitals and universities as well as school boards found themselves relying on provincial financing to an extent sufficient to allow the Quebec government control over their key policies...

...During the years of Liberal government, confrontations with the unions were sharp and resulted in settlements favoring labor...

...In an attempt to undercut their separatist foes, the Liberals sponsored legislation limiting the public use of English and the traditional access to English-language schools for the children of French-speaking and immigrant families.' The language measures alienated the newly constrained voters, without satisfying those with more extreme views on the language issue...

...The result was a surprising degree of militancy, particularly in the public-sector unions...

...The numerous studies in existence—some pointing to looming tragedy, others to business-as-usual, and one promised by the PQ for late 1979 points to prosperity arising from independence—rarely diverge in outcome from the known prejudices of their authors...

...His major triumph in that period was the provincial takeover of the shareholder-owned electric utilities...

...His views are close to those of Prime Minister Clark and the premiers of other key Canadian provinces...

...European immigrants usually learned English upon settling in Quebec (usually in Montreal) and sent their children to English schools...

...In 1978 the government of Quebec decided to make its income tax sharply more 5 The earliest measure to encourage members of the English-language community to attend university outside Quebec was provided by the Union Nationale government in 1967-68, with no serious objection voiced by anyone...

...Meanwhile, Quebec, like other governments in North America, found itself under pressure from some citizens who felt overtaxed, from others who requested additional spending programs, and from inflation...

...This measure created a two-year junior-college system...

...The French-language Roman Catholic schools had no interest in accommodating Jewish students...

...But English-speaking residents could get by comfortably in Montreal without learning French, unless they happened to be salesmen of consumer goods or first-line supervisors of labor...

...A Quebec cabinet minister and a British diplomat were kidnapped in Montreal...

...4 Access to English-language elementary and high schools is limited to those new pupils 4 The Office de la Langue Française (it has no official name in English) enforces the language legislation and sponsors related research...

...This involved the highly unpopular practice of testing five-year-olds for language skills...

...The ideological content of their rhetoric was indistinguishable from that of the American New Left, except that the "people" were understood to be French-speaking, while the "exploiters" in Quebec were "aliens...

...With some minor exceptions...

...In a well-publicized gesture, the government of Quebec promised separate municipal status to a group of Hassidic Jews near Montreal, enabling the group to regulate the community in accordance with its traditions...

...The New York Times quotes an administrator of multicampus Antioch College as opposing a "Canadian solution" to his troubled institution...

...In an apparent attempt to do something for organized labor, the government provided legislation to help unionization, and to hinder strike-breaking activity in the private sector...

...The "social" part may be answered with a cautious yes...

...8 As revealed so far, "sovereignty-association" involves the devolution of all federal legislative and taxing powers for the territory of Quebec to the National Assembly in Quebec City...

...The French educational system remained religious and classical...

...All signs on billboards and in stores, public and private, are to be in French only...

...In 1970 the newly organized party obtained 23 percent of the popular vote on a straight independence ticket...

...The real hardship so far has been on unilingual persons seeking blue-collar and junior white-collar jobs...

...Mail boxes and people were blown up...

...On other occasions, they accept the facts as part of a long-term and inevitable trend in the 6 Cynics in Montreal hypothesize that Laurin and Levesque have agreed behind the scenes to act out the role of the extremist and the reasonable compromiser respectively, to allow the government to assume whatever posture is expedient in dealing with the minority groups in Quebec, and at the same time continue to appeal to the various constituencies within the PQ...

...Free milk is now provided in the schools, a measure not lost on Quebec's dairy farmers...

...This phase is now known as the "quiet revolution...

...65 within the larger country...

...There seems to be an idea abroad that Canada is about to fall apart...

...2) The PQ's antibusiness stance and the uncertainties created by it drive businessmen and economic activity away from Quebec, resulting in stagnation or worse...

...others complain that they cannot recruit qualified staff...

...René Uvesque, who served as a correspondent with the U.S...

...There is no nonconfessional public school system in Quebec...

...In the course of the crisis the government of Canada, in conjunction with the Quebec government, called in the Canadian Army and suspended civil liberties in Quebec...

...American awareness of current Quebec developments may be dated to November 1976, when the separatist Parti Quebecois (it has no English name, hereafter the PQ) received 42 percent of the popular vote and 60 percent of the seats in the Quebec National Assembly...

...6 WORRIES ABOUT THE PQ REGIME may be roughly classified as follows: (1) The language policies will make life uncomfortable, perhaps to the extent of making a living impossible, for those without the appropriate mastery of French...

...Quebec independence, as an idea, has been around for a long time...

...26,000 began paying taxes substantially in excess of what is charged in Ontario and the other eight provinces...

...The head offices of national corporations in Montreal are being decimated by migration to Toronto and Calgary...

...English came to be seen as the language of "le boss," so that upwardly mobile FrenchCanadians sought to become bilingual and made sure that their children did not grow up as strangers to the English language and the customs that go with it...

...Armed struggle" failed...

...afterward they are bound to recognize the "new reality...

...The government of Canada is likely to counter a referendum success by Levesque by holding a referendum of its own, with a simple, straight question on independence...

...A.D...

...Independence implies risks to available markets and of unforeseeable modes of government regulation...

...The newly elected Clark government decided not to proceed for now with the necessary legislation in the expectation that the PQ will lose its own referendum...

...The new Quebec Liberal chief, Claude Ryan (a Francophone nationalist, the name notwithstanding), favors constitutional reform leading to greater provincial powers in a more decentralized Canada...

...There is an economic basis to Jewish fears of the PQ...

...Quebec could then deal on an "equal-to-equal" basis with the rest of Canada, with which it would maintain a vaguely defined common-market and currency union...

...Levesque quickly became the leader of strongly nationalist, ethnocentric elements in his party...

...2 The Church has traditionally viewed the making of profit with suspicion...

...strikes plagued hospitals and schools, liquor monopoly and electric power system...

...Some persons associated with Quebec separatism have been cnown to engage in pro-Palestinian Arab itterances, but this is as far as the matter goes...

...Under these circumstances, English became the language of business...

...Businessmen contemplating long-term investment had to take into account the possibility, no matter how remote, of Quebec's secession...

...Pierre Vallières, the leading ideologue of violence, soon declared himself in favor of electoral politics, and took a job on the payroll of the federal government...

...The leadership of the PQ managed to get such folks to lower their profile to the point of invisibility...

...The violence climaxed a few months after the Kent State incident in 1970...

...The unforeseen consequence was the emergence of Marxist elements in the leadership...

...During those years the opposition PQ generally supported the unions whose leaders in turn made separatist noises...

...without French it is very difficult to find employment...

...What these conditions mean in each particular case is determined by a government agency...

...By the early 1960s the resurrectors of the idea dropped the name and the clerical association, and substituted a left-wing revolutionary model...

...Erosion of the Englishspeaking community is the predictable consequence...

...An indigenous leadership emerged, much more radical than the rank-and-file...

...Historical memories of resentment 3 The apparent intent of the Quebec government was to widen the scope for union activity on the basis of Church philosophy...

...The population of Quebec in 1976 was 6.2 million...

...Within the government, there emerged Culture Minister Laurin, father of the language legislation...

...On balance, the Jewish experience in contemporary Quebec is no different from that of any other upwardly mobile minority group...

...Affluent families continue to have access to two or three English private schools not subject to the language legislation...

...Mostly farmers, they looked to the Roman Catholic Church for education, hospitals, political inspiration, and spiritual salvation...

...With Canadian federation in 1867, FrenchCanadians played an increasing role in the political process, as well as in the conflicts ' Bourassa's legislation sought to limit admittance to English-language schools of both Protestant and Roman Catholic school systems to children who could speak English...

...Since its election in 1976, the PQ has changed things in Quebec...

...What is to be promoted instead is "sovereignty-association," a term for which the PQ is gradually inventing content...

...The third fear is in part the worry that the PQ government may in fact introduce some measure such as a loan program or a "buy in Quebec" campaign that will speedily reverse fortunes...

...5 million persons reported French as their mother tongue, 0.8 million English, while the remaining 0.4 million recorded either as "unspecified" or as having spoken another language first...

...Levesque argues in response that the other governments are just posturing before the referendum...

...To accomplish this should be difficult, chiefly because his main opponents on the independence issue are also French-speaking Quebecers...

...Those who dominated business in Quebec perceived French-speaking persons as ethnically different...

...Other Canadian universities admit Quebec students without the junior college diploma...

...The key facts are that according to the latest poll data about 70 percent of all Quebecers wish to remain within Canada (a proportion consistent with previous surveys over the years), while electoral support for the PQ is and has been consistently greater than willingness to secede...

...He was appointed minister in charge of mines and hydroelectric resources...

...The teaching of English as a second language is started in grade five in most French-language Catholic schools, and then without adequate resources...

...After the election of the PQ and its introduction of language and tax measures, the adverse trends accelerated...

...those leaving will have them educated elsewhwere...

...They found that in "management and administration," Francophones in Quebec gained 20,000 additional jobs between 1971 and 1978, while persons whose prime language is not French lost 8,000 posts in the same period...

...Curiously, the platform of the PQ, while not disguising its ultimate aims, excluded the specific promise of Quebec sovereignty, except for a commitment to hold a referendum (technically a plebiscite) on the independence issue at some unspecified time while in office...

...It is hard to imagine a well-functioning rump-Canada consisting of two non-contiguous parts with a sovereign Quebec in-between...

...The scope of public health and educational activities was substantially increased through the '60s and early '70s, largely through Ottawa-initiated offers of financial support...

...westward move of Canadian economic activity...

...Another controversial change concerns income-tax rates...

...caused a great many businesses to move their head office, or at least some key officers, out of Quebec...

...Public works now provide partial relief...

...If this scenario is right, the PQ should be back on the opposition benches in a couple of years...

...For these reasons, the chances of the PQ's ultimate success look slim...

...The PQ has its doubts about being able to sell even "sovereignty-association" to its electorate, so it is probable that the question on the referendum ballot (which is to be determined by the government and unveiled shortly before the actual referendum date) might read, "Do you give a mandate to the government of Quebec to open negotiations for sovereignty-association with English Canada...

...The PQ now is committed, should it win the referendum, to an unspecified "second consultation" with the electorate before any final action is taken on independence...

...What can be said with certainty is that the persons and the capital that would leave if Quebec ceased to be part of Canada can be easily identified...

...The PQ responds to the observed facts in three different ways...

...The PQ has merely added shrill rhetoric, threats, and a language "police...

...The PQ has threatened to call a second referendum if it loses the first, and a third if it loses the second, etc...

...Suffice it to say that under British rule Frenchspeaking Quebecers were assured freedom of their religion and institutions...

...Levesque speaks of his wish to follow the Swedish model...

...On those occasions there is no explanation provided as to why the trend suddenly accelerated with the election of the PQ in 1976...

...The effect, as perceived by parents, is an unreasonable limitation on the opportunities available to their children...

...Improving the lot of the poor is part of the PQ program...

...In effect, this provision denies English-language schooling to the children of French-speaking Quebecers and of most immigrants to Quebec, be their origins in Toronto, New York, London, Paris, or Rome...

...the certificate is issued only to those parents who can show that at least one of them completed English-language elementary schooling in Quebec...

...To the misfortune of the PQ, some of their rhetoric sounds strangely familiar to survivors of the rationalist period of Europe...

...Affiliates of the American AFL-CIO were to be kept out, at least in the public sector...

...What finally is the probable range of outcomes in Quebec...

...Meanwhile, a moderate branch of the independence movement evolved out of the Liberal party...

...The small and conservative provincial government, while maintaining official bilingualism, was in fact almost exclusively French-speaking and nationalist in orientation...

...It is also possible to start with the desired results and work back to methodology...

...The best restaurants usually have unreserved tables, and downtown there is a minimum of traffic jams...

...One of them, thirty-year-old David Levine, was until recently executive assistant to the Minister of Economic Development...

...Soon after that opus appeared, 69 rumors circulated in Montreal that Lévesquc did not really trust Laurin...

...Former Prime Minister (and now federal 9 The former Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau was committed to a federally sponsored referendum if needed...

...Before World War II there was talk of a corporatist Laurentian Republic with strong Roman Catholic characteristics...

...9 Levesque's only hope of winning that one is to engineer some sort of English-French confrontation that would result in a polarization of Quebec in support of the PQ...

...Quebec universities admit non-Quebec students to four-year programs, without their ever having to attend junior college...

...I propose to argue that the possibility of disintegration is remote...

...United States politicians keep repeating proposals for closer links with Canada in energy and resource markets...

...The voters are now told that marking their ballots "yes" involves no risk, for it is only a mandate for exploratory negotiation...

...Perhaps coincidentally, voices from the labor movement have become more cautious on the issue of Quebec independence...

...Perhaps it is even harder to imagine the 18 million inhabitants of this rump-Canada agreeing to share the running of their trade and monetary institutions on an " equal-to-equal" basis joined in "sovereigntyassociation" with 6 million Quebecers...

...More recently, the subsidiaries of American corporations—attracted by tariffprotected Canadian markets, natural resources, and cheap labor—appeared in large numbers...

...Private rights to fishing and hunting preserves, held largely by non-residents, are being terminated...

...The combined effect of the language legislation and the income tax change, along with the political climate...

...By the late 1950s, Quebec had a stable, wellestablished English-speaking society, generally with middle-class characteristics...

...For Montrealers with good jobs the lack of prosperity is not unpleasant...

...Following the victory of the Union Nationale in the 1966 elections, Levesque and his friends were forced out of the opposition Liberal party...

...With 30 percent of the popular vote, they formed the official opposition until 1976...

...The economic consequences of Quebec independence and the accompanying reactions of the government are unknown and, to make matters worse, they are unknowable...

...According to William Johnson's reports in the Globe and Mail (August 23 and 24, 1979), the Office is responsible for the publication of a study by Université de Montréal sociologists Paul Bernard and Jean Renaud...

...Quebec is the only Canadian province with its own income-tax collection machinery...

...Bourassa had promised increased employment but found the province caught in the North American recession...

...The curious juxtaposition of traditions led to such oddities as the lack of a Quebec journal of parliamentary proceedings, on the pattern of Hansard or the Congressional Record (until the '60s), and to the decision of the PQ, then the opposition, not to accept routinely the election results in 1970 and 1973 when the party's percentage of the popular vote was more than the proportion of seats it collected...

...The long-governing Union Nationale lost the 1960 Quebec elections to the Liberals, who ran on a reformist and nationalist platform...

...Income supplementation for the working poor, dental care for children, free drugs, and a propertytax rebate for the elderly have been introduced...

...Lawrence valley...

...opposition leader) Trudeau, whose personal popularity in Quebec remains great, can be expected to campaign with Ryan for the defeat of the PQ in the referendum, in favor of constitutional reform...

...Perhaps its most important legislation was Law 101, formally referred to as the Charter of the French language...

...Economics, as a body of thought, does not provide a single, foolproof, workable method of quantifying future changes in trade patterns, tax policies, capital flows, or government reactions...

...Sometimes they deny them by pointing to some statistic that happens to run counter to trend...

...Orders have gone out to PQ activists to drop all references to separation and independence...

...Economic development was left, initially, to Scottish fur-traders and bankers, English-speaking railroad promoters, merchants, and manufacturers in Montreal...

...71 Canada as well as the country's other nine provincial governments are on record saying they have no intention of negotiating "sovereignty-association" with the government of Quebec...

...The uncertainty about Quebec's future began with the violence of the '60s and the emergence of the PQ...

...The relations between the business community, English and French alike on the one hand, and the PQ on the other, suggest that the party is seen by them as antibusiness...

...November 1979 I am indebted to Irving Brecher, Leonie Gordon, Richard Hamilton, Barbara Haskel, and Storrs McCall for comments on an earlier draft...

...The evolution of this population from the handful of French settlers and Indians found by the victorious British after the Battle of the Plains of Abraham cannot be done justice here...

...2 Their prestige occupations were in the Church and in the professions...

...The construction industry in Montreal went into a very bad slump following the 1976 election...

...Houses and apartments can be had relatively cheaply...

...Law 101 officially abolished bilingualism within the provincial ambit, subject to certain minimal concessions to the minority...

...By contrast, in the English system French is taught intensively, a welcome change that began in the last decade...

...How long could a disintegrating Canada resist the courtship of Washington...

...The English Protestant schools agreed to do so...

...Each business must obtain a Certificat de Francisation from the government by demonstrating that French is now its internal language of communication, and that Frenchspeaking persons are being promoted to positions of responsibility...

...If the forthcoming referendum were to address itself to the issue of Quebec independence alone, the PQ should be resoundingly defeated...

...Its diploma is a precondition for the admittance of Quebec students to three-year undergraduate programs in Quebec universities...

...Second, the fear of economic decline is well founded, judging by the experience to date...

...The PQ seems to have adopted a two-sided stance to labor...

...The sales tax on clothing and Footwear has been eliminated...

...66 against British rule were reinforced by the ambitions of an aspiring French-speaking middle class to displace their Englishspeaking bosses...

...Though often bilingual, the younger members of the Quebec Jewish community, for the most part, were educated in English...

...The other nine provinces get a percentage that's added to the federal income tax and collected by Ottawa...

...Both the written program of the party and to a lesser extent the actions of the government favor the redistribution of income, more government regulation, increased publicsector employment, and the development of cooperatives...

...On balance, therefore, investment in Quebec gradually became less attractive...

...THE PQ ROSE in this environment from two traditions...

...French-Canadians had to master it in order to advance in commerce...

...70 The PQ does have a handful of Jewish members...

...If the PQ should win the 1980 referendum, complications begin...

...It took Jews, who had to build their own institutions in Montreal, until the late 1950s to be fully accepted by the Englishspeaking community...

...The usual consequence is an additional barrier...

...Ever since the early '60s, French has been gradually displacing English...

...The Quebec government, including ancillary bodies such as school boards, is the largest employer in the province...

...Bernard and Renaud are not pleased with their findings, and recommend "a model of appropriation or reappropriation of jobs, with Francophones expelling nonFrancophones into the job categories that are less 67 whose parents obtain a certificate from the government...

...There is no promise of any offsetting inflow...

...Those entering Quebec are not able to send their children to English schools...

...The government of Sovereignty Association was the name of l.kvesque's )riginal separatist group before the formation of the PQ...

...Unfortunately for the PQ, this gesture is not likely to deal with the difficulties noted in the text...

...For two years, the PQ enjoyed the resulting peace...

...The Jewish exodus from Montreal has been estimated at 5,000 to 25,000 out of a Jewish population of about 125,000...

...Judging by the polls the population of Quebec supported these policies of the Trudeau government overwhelmingly...

...Among the latter, the outstanding events were the loss of French language rights in the Province of Manitoba, and the development in Quebec of resistance to participation in the two World Wars...

...In another year or so, a larger group was formed with the various left, right, and center separatists constituting the PQ under the leadership of Levesque...

...His latest contribution is a White Paper on the cultural life of Quebec in the future (i.e., post-Independence), which reads more like a day in the life of Prague than of Stockholm...

...Since that time, however, Quebec now has accepted the public institutions of parliamentary government...