Is Canada Falling Apart?
WALLER, HAROLD M.
THE MOOD IN QUEBEC Is Canada Falling Apart? BY HAROLD M. WALLER Montreal Canada may be on the verge of breaking up. Only 11 years after the defeat of Quebec's sovereignty-association...
...If that did not happen, Quebec would hold a referendum on independence or a variation thereof...
...There are signs that such a process is already under way...
...Even after the election of the PQ in 1976, the close call of the 1980 referendum, and the adoption of the new Constitution without Quebec's assent in 1982, it appeared that the country would hold together...
...That is why they fudge the issue of independence by advocating a form of economic association with the rest of Canada, including the use of a common currency...
...What can be expected from the other provinces is anybody's guess...
...Once Manitoba and Newfoundland finally declined to ratify the Accord last year, the threats proved to be a self-fulfilling prophecy...
...There are those who believe that Canada will once more muddle through...
...The Allaire report called for a sweeping decentralization of the Canadian federation, leaving Ottawa with little more than power over Canada Post and national defense...
...Presumably it would be more radical than Meech Lake, and full agreement would have to be reached by the fall of next year...
...There was widespread agreement that something drastic had to be done, that Quebec could not simply accept the rebuff and slink away: The pride and self-respect of the Québécois people were at stake...
...They dangle the idea of sovereignty, while privately hoping the outcome will stop short of that point...
...Only 11 years after the defeat of Quebec's sovereignty-association referendum and six years after the Parti Québécois (PQ) lost at the polls, separatism has reappeared with a vengeance, claiming broad support among the French Canadians who make up over 80per cent of this province...
...But neither the Allaire nor the Berlanger-Campeau recommendations were ever pursued by Bourassa...
...Still others, in all parts of the country, deeply regret the turn of events that has led Canada to the brink of fission...
...Harold M. Waller, a frequent contributor, is associate professor of political science at McGill University...
...The Federal government, to its credit, has been more nuanced in its response...
...The French media evoked the memory and imagery of the Conquest, when the British forces defeated the French on the Plains of Abraham in 1759...
...For the moment, there is still time to act and room to maneuver...
...Now the opposition PQ is more independenceoriented than ever before, the ruling Liberals led by Premier Robert Bourassa are also encouraging the view that Quebec might indeed separate, and the governing Progressive Conservative Party in Ottawa seems very uncertain about the direction in which it wishes to move the country...
...It is to ascertain just what ordinary Canadians want and report its findings by the end of June...
...In general there has been little inclination to seek to cut a deal on Quebec's terms...
...On the contrary, many Canadians have expressed the feeling that if Quebec really wants to leave, it should be allowed to do so and then fend for itself...
...The 18-month horizon represented a compromise between the PQ and the Liberals...
...It is very possible that the Reform Party and the Bloc Québécois will join the PCs, the Liberals, and the New Democratic Party in a House with no majority, but that is a most unwelcome prospect in a time of crisis...
...Any seats that it gains in the elections that have to be held before the fall of '93 would probably be at the expense of Mulroney's Tories...
...A poll taken this April, though, shows the province to be nearly evenly split, with 48 per cent favoring sovereignty and 43 per cent opposing it...
...Despite the fact that Canada has been a partnership between French and English Canadians for a long time, the humiliation of the Conquest still resonates within French Quebec...
...In short, Mulroney may be in jeopardy of losing the two key elements of his winning electoral coalitions of 1984 and 1988, the West and Quebec...
...The Reform Party, having made great progress in the region, is likely to be well-represented in the next House of Commons...
...The Quebec wing of the Tories is in disarray, too...
...On a more serious level, a new set of constitutional proposals is being prepared, probably for unveiling in late summer or the fall...
...For many months after Meech Lake failed the rest of Canada seemed to be paralyzed into inaction...
...Other Quebecers, who traditionally identify strongly with Canada and are very concerned about how independence would affect them, oppose sovereignty by a wide margin...
...Since its founding in 1867, the Canadian union has been plagued by strains that people of good will have never been able to fully resolve, but real progress was made toward bringing Quebecers into the mainstream of Canadian life...
...They contend that Canada could not reject association and express confidence that their large neighbor to the south would take a benevolent view of the enterprise...
...They also hope extreme nationalist sentiment will diminish as the public begins to examine the implications of independence soberly...
...To be sure, the margin is more decisive among French-speaking people (54-36...
...Almost immediately, too, a firestorm of nationalist sentiment flared in Quebec's political, cultural and intellectual circles...
...It is avowedly separatist and may make an impressive showing in the French province in the next balloting, again at the expense of the PC...
...The Belanger-Campeau group proposed giving Canada one last try at coming up with a scheme Quebec would find acceptable...
...Actually, Canada as a whole is becoming increasingly less governable...
...In order to be seen as doing something, Mulroney has dispatched a commission led by journalist Keith Spicer across the country at a cost of tens of millions of dollars...
...More pragmatic nationalists—and it seems as if every French Québécois is now a nationalist—believe only very extreme talk will jar the rest of Canada into concluding an agreement satisfactory to Quebec...
...There is little doubt that both the Ottawa and Quebec governments ardently wish to conclude an arrangement that will at least appear to be keeping the country together, but the PQ, sensing victory, is likely to oppose it...
...Former Mulroney right-hand man Lucien Bouchard has formed a parliamentary caucus with about a dozen members called the Bloc Québécois...
...As a result, federalists are confused and demoralized, while separatists have the heady feeling that at last independence is right around the corner...
...The present crisis was precipitated by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's attempt to induce Quebec to accept the Constitution by adding amendments that would recognize the distinctive nature of the predominantly French-speaking province through shifts in governmental powers...
...But is Canada, in both its English and French dimensions, capable of producing the leaders who could take the steps that are necessary to keep the country whole...
...Former Prime Minister Joe Clark (more recently the foreign minister) has been assigned the task of working out the details...
...The efforts to obtain the requisite unanimous consent of the nine other provinces to the package, known as the Meech Lake Accord, were marked by threats from Bourassa and Mulroney that failure might spawn renewed indépendentiste fervor...
...The West is losing patience with the continued focus on the concerns of the central part of the country and Quebec...
...In other words, sovereignty—yes, association—no...
...Then the secessionist party knew it lacked majority backing in the electorate, the provincial Liberal Party held to a decidedly federalist orientation, and the Federal government under Pierre Elliott Trudeau was strongly committed to maintaining the integrity of the country...
...During the last half of 1990, support for independence was running at 60 to 70 per cent in the polls, which was remarkable in the light of the fact that the 1980 referendum—to give the government a mandate to negotiate sovereignty-association—garnered merely 40 per cent of the votes...
...Unhappily, it is difficult to come up with a resoundingly affirmative answer...
...Sovereignty advocates know they are vulnerableon the economic arguments...
...The situation today is fundamentally different from the one that obtained during the early PQ period (1977-1980...
...All of this raises a multitude of questions—some procedural, some economic, some constitutional...
...As a sop to public opinion, he established a Liberal Party committee headed by Yvan Allaire and a multiparty Commission headed by Gérard Belanger and Lucien Campeau to look at some of the options and recommend courses of action...
...Others in this province and elsewhere not only believe the Quebec situation is beyond repair...
...They think that after Quebec realistically assesses its economic situation a formula for preserving federalism, even if in a somewhat diminished state, will be found...
...Bourassa, who is assumed to harbor serious doubts about the wisdom of what is currently called the sovereignty impulse, was carried by the flow and began to talk about nonfederalist options, often cryptically...
...they welcome what seems to promise an end to the interminable wrangling that has been a feature of Canadian federalism for so long...
Vol. 74 • April 1991 • No. 5
