[Mayworks-org] A "Québécois Nation"?

[The Bullet]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( T h e B u l l e t ))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 40... December 18, 2006

________________________________________________________________

A "Québécois Nation"? Harper Fuels an Important Debate

**Richard Fidler**

The House of Commons voted on November 27 to support a Tory
government motion that "the Québécois form a nation within a united
Canada." What does it mean? And why now?

The second question is easier to answer. The motion was triggered by
an unexpected turn of events. Michael Ignatieff, in his quest for the
Liberal leadership this fall, ignited a firestorm of protest within
his party when he suggested that Quebec should be recognized as a
"nation" in the Constitution. A similar proposal was endorsed by the
federal party's Quebec wing. It was promptly denounced by the other
candidates and widely condemned as a "gaffe" in the English-Canadian
media.

Fellow Liberal leadership contender Bob Rae voiced the widespread
unease in ruling circles: "I'm not somebody who is going to set this
country on a constitutional adventure, whose consequences and whose
outcome I'm not certain of," Rae said.

Rae was an architect of the ill-fated Charlottetown Accord, forged by
the provincial premiers after the defeat of the Meech Lake Accord in
the early 1990s. Neither of these proposed constitutional
arrangements recognized Quebec as a nation. But Meech died in the
face of English-Canadian opposition to a clause simply identifying
Quebec as a "distinct society." 

Charlottetown was defeated in a pan-Canadian referendum in which
Quebec voters rejected it because it failed to recognize the
province's national specificity, while voters in the rest of Canada
(ROC) rejected it because they thought it did. Three years later,
Quebec came within a hair's breadth of voting for sovereignty.

Since then, no federal politician of any stature has dared broach the
issue of reforming the Constitution to accommodate Quebec concerns.

Now there was an opening. The Bloc Québécois, seeing an opportunity
to deepen the Liberal rift and embarrass the minority Harper
government, proposed a parliamentary motion along the lines of the
Ignatieff-Quebec Liberal position. Harper, to avoid the trap, and
desperate to win more votes in Quebec, then proposed his own motion.
Media reports indicate it was drafted in consultation with Opposition
leaders including Stéphane Dion, then a candidate for the federal
Liberal leadership. After some hesitation, the Bloc signed on, as did
the NDP. The Liberals split on the vote.

The Quebec Liberals then abandoned their motion at the party's
convention, apparently in the belief that the parliamentary vote
absolved them of the need for further debate - although, as we shall
see, the Quebec issue proved decisive to the outcome of the
leadership contest.

If nothing else, the controversy was a further reminder of the
political volatility of the unresolved question of Quebec's
constitutional status. 

For the Liberals in particular, Ignatieff's challenge was agonizing;
he was implicitly questioning the entire legacy associated with
Pierre Trudeau, whose career as prime minister was devoted to
fighting Quebec nationhood and attempting to substitute for it a
"Canadian" nationality in which distinct national differences were
dissolved in a melting pot of English-French official bilingualism
from coast to coast.

That conception had appeared to triumph in 1982 with the "patriation"
of the Canadian constitution from Westminster. The deal dropped
Quebec's de facto veto over constitutional amendments and imposed a
Charter of Rights that overrode Quebec's language laws. But the
unilateral 1982 deal was largely opposed in Quebec, where the
National Assembly voted overwhelmingly to reject it. Ever since,
successive governments have been trying to restore the legitimacy of
the Canadian state among Quebecers, without much success. On one
level, that is the goal of Harper's motion.

When is a "Québécois" not a Quebecer?

Does the recent resolution represent a turn in Canadian politics?
That was certainly how it was treated in the mass media in English
Canada and - more importantly - in Quebec. In the Canadian
constitution, Quebec has no national status but is just one of 10
provinces, albeit one with a distinct legal system (the Civil Code).
There is no recognition of a "Quebec nation" or "a Québécois people".
While not a constitutional change, the parliamentary resolution does
seem to say something never before officially acknowledged within the
federal system: that there is a Quebec nation.

On its face, the Harper motion is analogous with recent moves by
governments in Britain and Spain, for example, to recognize the
historical reality of distinct nations within their territory. In
this sense, it is a concession to the historic movement of the
Québécois for equal status - linguistic, social, economic and
political - as a French-speaking minority within Canada. Yet the
motion also indicates a clear intent to limit the potential political
consequences.

The wording itself suggests a clue to the government's intention. The
original Bloc motion, which had identified the "Québécois" as a
nation, referred to them in English as "Quebeckers". That is, a
territorial concept, encompassing everyone who inhabits Quebec
irrespective of first language or ethnic origin. This is now the
common definition of "Québécois" in Quebec. Harper's motion, in
contrast, used the term "Québécois" in both French and English
versions, an ethnic connotation implying that only those whose first
language is French qualified as a "nation."

The Tories, like many other MPs, seemed confused by the terminology.
Le Devoir reporter Hélène Buzzetti asked Harper's Quebec lieutenant
Lawrence Cannon if the reference to "Québécois" included all
residents of Quebec "without regard to the boat on which their
ancestors arrived?" Not really, the minister replied. It referred
only to the "French Canadians" who happened to live in Quebec.

Buzzetti then asked if she was a Québécoise since her Italian
ancestors had arrived in America long after Champlain. She might be,
Cannon replied, if she "felt" she was Québécoise. He added: "But I
don't think it's a question of forcing someone who does not feel he
is Québécois, who must necessarily be bound to that thing... There
are some people who basically have opted for Canada." What about the
Quebec Anglophones, then, are they Québécois, the reporter persisted.
"They can be," said Cannon, whose Irish forebears settled in Quebec in
1795. "I consider myself to be Québécois."

Cannon then accused the Bloc members of holding an ethnic "old stock"
definition of Quebec. But Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe pointed out that
in the Bloc's view anyone who inhabits Quebec is a "Québécois". It
was the Tories, with their purely subjective definition, who were
fostering "ethnic nationalism" - the same charge they and other
federalists have levelled, unjustly, against Quebec nationalists such
as Jacques Parizeau, the former Parti québécois leader.

That was the interpretation, as well, of many federalists. There is
"no such thing as a Quebec nation", protested columnist Lysiane
Gagnon in the Globe & Mail. But there is a "French-Canadian nation"
that includes French-speaking minorities outside Quebec, she said.
And within Quebec, "French Canadian and Québécois are synonyms." The
Trudeau (and Chrétien) concept, in other words. Anglophones can't be
"Québécois."

Michael Bliss, a "professor emeritus" writing in the National Post,
was even more categorical. Nations are either ethnic, bound by "ties
of blood", or territorial, exercising political independence, he
argued in an article entitled "Canada Under Attack". Quebec is not
independent, so its "nation" must be ethnic. "If Quebecers are a
nation because they are of the French-Canadian tribe, the volk, as
the Germans used to say, then we are legitimizing racial/ethnic
concepts that are ugly almost beyond belief in the 21st century." You
get the drift? Today the nation, tomorrow the Reich. Let's call it
blissful ignorance.

Preparing for partition?

In fact, there is an ominous logic in the Harper resolution's
deliberate reference to a "Québécois," not "Quebec" nation. It was
noted by journalist Pierre Dubuc in L'aut'journal, a left
sovereigntist newspaper.

"When Prime Minister Harper uses the term 'Québécois' rather than
'Quebeckers' in the English wording of his motion," said Dubuc, he
"wants to open the door to the partition of Quebec territory if the
Yes wins in the next referendum." Harper "is implying that he would
recognize only the independence of a Quebec with a truncated
territory", the part inhabited by old-stock Francophone Quebecers.
Dubuc pointed to Harper's record on this question.

"Immediately after the 1995 referendum, Mr. Harper tabled a bill in
the House of Commons stipulating that the federal government would
hold its own referendum in Quebec on the same day as the Quebec
government's referendum. He even formulated a two-pronged question
for the federal referendum... (a) Should Quebec separate from Canada
and become an independent country without any special legal
relationship to Canada - YES or NO? (b) if Quebec separates from
Canada, should my municipality continue to be part of Canada - YES or
NO?"

Harper is not the first politician to think of invoking the spectre
of partition in the face of a pro-sovereignty vote, Dubuc noted. In
his recent memoir, The Way it Works: Inside Ottawa, Eddie Goldenberg,
Jean Chrétien's closest advisor for some 30 years, writes that in the
1995 referendum Chrétien, then prime minister, wanted to make the
partition of Quebec a central theme of the federal campaign, around
the slogan "If Canada is divisible, so is Quebec." The threat was
dropped only because the Quebec Liberals, leaders of the No side,
were opposed to it, according to Goldenberg.

After the referendum, Chrétien came up with "Plan B". He recruited
federalist convert Stéphane Dion as his intergovernmental affairs
minister, asked the Supreme Court for a legal opinion on secession
and enacted the Clarity Act. The Act arrogates to the federal
government the power to refuse to negotiate Quebec sovereignty after
a successful Yes vote if Parliament deems there is an insufficient
majority around a clear question. Its prototype was Harper's earlier
private member's bill. 

Meanwhile, Ottawa continued to promote "Canadian unity" through such
efforts as the sponsorship program and to fund groups partial to
partition such as Alliance Quebec.

Quebec sovereignty supporters refer to the partitionist strategy as
"the Irish solution" - a reference to England's frustration of Irish
independence in the 1920s through the separation from Eire of the
Protestant Six Counties to form the Northern Ireland dependency of
Westminster. Events in recent decades have revealed the disastrous
repercussions of that "solution."

A "nation" without the right to national self-determination?

Which brings us to the second half of the Harper motion: "... a
nation within a united Canada". One would think that if the
"Québécois" are a nation within Canada, then surely they are a nation
without Canada. Ah, but there's the rub. Whoever says "nation" says...
self-determination. The right of nations to self-determination has
long been a fundamental concept of international law and diplomacy.
It was first acknowledged more than a hundred years ago by the
international workers and socialist movement; it entered the rhetoric
of bourgeois discourse with the Treaty of Versailles after World War
I. As a key ingredient of "Wilsonian" diplomacy, it was wielded by
Washington as the United States sought to build its world order on
the decline and ruin of the old European empires. And the right of
nations to self-determination was the dominant principle in the wave
of decolonization that swept the world in the aftermath of World War
II. 

Today, of course, it is Washington that is the prime offender against
this right as it tramples the self-determination and independence of a
majority of the world's nations. But Canada can offer its own
examples.

For dominant nations, "self-determination" is not an issue. But for
minority, dominated nations, it is of central importance. Although
this distinction is now rarely invoked in Canada in polite
constitutional discourse, it is fundamental to an understanding of
the Quebec reality. A nation whose collective identity is denied or
inhibited by another nation is not free to determine its own future
as a nation. Fueling the mass movement for Quebec independence, or
"sovereignty", is the growing perception among Québécois that the
very existence of the federal regime blocks their ability to mount an
effective defence of their language and culture and to develop fully
as a nation that is master of its own fate.

The fundamental changes they want necessitate corresponding changes
in Quebec's constitutional status. And it is becoming clear to many,
perhaps a majority, that whatever the legal and political
relationship that an independent Quebec might subsequently negotiate
with what remains of Canada, Quebec must first declare and win its
political independence. The hostility expressed in English Canada
even to Harper's purely symbolic motion simply drives the point home.

Le Devoir correspondent Manon Cornellier expressed the impatience of
even many Quebec federalists in a Nov. 29 column:

"When the Meech Lake Accord died, Quebec premier Robert Bourassa
stated: 

'English Canada must clearly understand that, whatever is said,
whatever is done, Quebec is now and always will be a distinct
society, free to secure its destiny and its development.' The motion
adopted Monday night in Ottawa alters nothing. Nor did its absence
for some years.

"The impediment to Quebec's ability to be the master of its own
choices likes elsewhere. First, in the absence of limits to the
federal spending power, a source of Ottawa's intrusions on provincial
affairs. Second, in the refusal to grant the provinces the right to
withdraw from federal programs in their spheres of jurisdiction, that
is, a right of unconditional withdrawal accompanied by full financial
compensation. 

Finally, in the federal government's insistence that the fiscal
imbalance will be resolved through increased cash transfers instead
of transfers of tax points that it cannot take back. And of course,
there is the refusal to resume constitutional discussions to get
Quebec to adhere to the 1982 Constitution."

Recognition of the Québécois nation, Cornellier added, "to be
meaningful, requires... fundamental changes that can again give
Quebec the room for manoeuvre that has been eroded by Ottawa since
the Second World War."

Even within the federal context, as many Quebecers have noted in
recent years, recognition of Quebec as a distinct nation, not a
province like the others, could help break the political logjam that
so often is used to frustrate social reform in both Quebec and
English Canada. Quebec's resistance to "national standards" set and
enforced by Ottawa often serves to thwart demands for meaningful
social programs in Canada. Allowing Quebec to choose and shape its
own social programs as a nation could free the rest of Canada to
develop its own reforms enforced by standards not applying to Quebec.

Was Harper's motion, then, the thin edge of the wedge, opening the
way to further challenges of Quebec's constitutional status? And did
it have political implications going beyond the purely constitutional
aspect?

The morning after the parliamentary vote, an editorial in the Globe
and Mail, a supporter of Harper's gesture (and of Dion's candidacy),
cynically sought to minimize any such interpretations: "No one should
think that because of the political gamesmanship in Ottawa culminating
in yesterday's exercise, the government of Canada should take concrete
measures to appease Quebec, or for that matter any party that might be
offended by the resolution. This particular game is done. Canada woke
up this morning still one nation, undivided." Q.E.D. (that which was
to be demonstrated)

An issue that haunts us still . . .

One nation or two... or many? The refusal to address these questions
frontally and clearly has dogged Canadian discourse on the national
question since the 1960s, when Quebec began to assert its distinct
nationhood by developing its own programs in areas within its
jurisdiction and gradually seeking greater powers within the
federation. The NDP's founding convention in 1961 adopted the "two
nation" thesis, only to abandon it soon afterward when its Quebec
component insisted on forming an autonomous party in the province.

The Tories came close to a split over the issue and Diefenbaker's
incorrigible insistence on "one Canada". The Liberals under Pearson
initially adopted a conciliatory line, but then embraced Trudeau's
hard-line resistance to Quebec nationalism. The ghosts of these past
battles hovered over the Liberal leadership contest.

After he signalled support for recognizing Quebec's national
existence in the Constitution, the front-runner Ignatieff's campaign
lost momentum and soon stalled. As the other candidates manoeuvred to
defeat him, the Quebec question emerged as the key to a winning
alignment of forces. Gerard Kennedy and Stéphane Dion, rated third
and fourth in delegate preferences going into the convention, agreed
between them that the one with the lower vote on the first ballot
would desist in favour of the other.

It was a logical alliance; Dion's record on Quebec was clear while
Kennedy's rock-hard opposition to recognizing Quebec or Quebeckers as
a nation had already won him the support of Pierre Trudeau's son
Justin and David Orchard, the latter a shrill "one-nation"
Diefenbaker clone and prominent ex-Tory who reportedly mobilized at
least 100 votes for Kennedy on the first ballot. When Dion's vote
surged and Rae was defeated on the third ballot, the Chrétien forces
who had been his mainstay rallied as one to Dion to deliver the
knockout blow to Ignatieff. And thus "Canada's natural governing
party" was delivered to Mr. Plan B himself.

Which is not to say that Dion is simply a Chrétien clone, let alone
another Trudeau. He is on record as opposing Chrétien's refusal to
negotiate the parental leaves issue with Quebec and has criticized
Ottawa's Millenium Scholarship program, which intruded on Quebec's
jurisdiction over education. In sharp contrast to both Trudeau and
Chrétien, he has characterized Quebec's Law 101, the Charter of the
French Language, as "a great Canadian law". He supported the Meech
Lake constitutional agreement. And in his victory speech at the
Liberal convention he called for a "federalism respectful of
jurisdictions", a "type of phrase not heard from a Liberal leader
since Pearson" says constitutional scholar Guy Laforest, a former
academic colleague of Dion.

In the last analysis, however, the public debate sparked by Ignatieff
and Harper underscores once again the extreme unwillingness of
Canada's ruling class to accommodate Quebec's national aspirations
within the federal regime. Whether Dion's leadership will help the
federal Liberal party regain support they lost to the Tories in the
last election remains to be seen. Likewise unclear is whether
Harper's motion will win the Tories new support among "soft"
nationalists in Quebec. Dion voted for Harper's motion, albeit
"reluctantly", he says, so whatever the differences between them on
this issue they are unlikely to figure prominently in English Canada
in the next election. Both see the resolution as purely symbolic,
yielding nothing of substance to Quebec.

Nation and citizenship

In its implicit distinction between "Quebec" and "Québécois," the
Harper motion, whether consciously or not, impinges on a debate
within Quebec itself over the definition of the nation. The
predominant view among most Quebecers, including many who do not
support Quebec independence, is that the Quebec nation encompasses
all the inhabitants of Quebec territory irrespective of ethnic origin
or mother tongue.

This is the "civic nation," a political concept of citizenship. It
was embraced by the federal NDP when it adopted a resolution drafted
by its Quebec supporters at its most recent convention, in September
2006.

"The national character of Québec," it says, "is based primarily, but
not exclusively, on:

i. a primarily Francophone society in which French is recognized as
the language of work and the common public language; 
ii. a specific culture, unique in America, that is expressed by a
sense of identity with and belonging to Quebec; 
iii. a specific history; 
iv. its own political, economic, cultural and social institutions,
including government institutions and institutions in civil society."

The resolution has some important flaws (see
http://www.socialistvoice.com/Soc-Voice/Soc-Voice-62.htm
). But what it says about Quebec's national character is a useful
starting point for discussions on this question within the party, the
unions and the broader labour movement in English Canada. The NDP MPs
supported both the Harper motion and a similar one by the Bloc that
omitted the "united Canada" reference.
The concept of the civic nation is explained at some length by Pierre
Dubuc, in his article on the Harper motion cited earlier, although he
does not use that terminology.

"Contrary to what is insinuated by Michael Bliss, the Quebec nation
is not based on ties of blood. It includes, of course, the Tremblays,
the Gagnons and the Pelletiers, but also the Curzis, the Braithwaites,
the Ryans and the Mouranis. It is a historically constituted community
tracing its origins to New France and having assimilated over the
centuries people of various origins. These now constitute some 11% of
the Quebec nation.

"A nation is not an ephemeral phenomenon, but rather the result of
durable and regular relations resulting from common life from one
generation to another on the same territory. This is expressed
through a common language and culture, but also through a common
economic life with its own institutions such as the Caisse de dépôt,
the state-owned corporations, the Desjardins Movement and its trade
union organizations.

"Nations do not live in isolation from each other. They are buffetted
by history (wars, conquests) and migratory population flows. For these
reasons, the presence of national or cultural minorities on the
territory of a given nation is not unusual. In fact, it is the norm.
Quebec is no exception, with its Anglophone minority and its
minorities of immigrant origin (Greeks, Portuguese, Italians,
Haitians, Arabs).

"In these normal contexts, the members of these communities
assimilate to the dominant national group within a few generations.
In Quebec, the process is longer because of the intense competition
between the Francophone majority and the Anglophone minority to
assimilate the Allophones [non-Francophone immigrants]. According to
the Office de la langue française, the majority of language transfers
(56%) are still toward the Anglophone minority, the spearhead of a
continental Anglophone majority.

"Whatever their ethnic origin, whether they are Francophones,
Anglophones or Allophones, all inhabitants of Quebec share the same
Quebec citizenship and have the same rights. They are all
"Quebeckers". It is the law of territory  that
applies."

(Dubuc has expanded on these ideas in a provocative essay, "Sans Nous
Qui est Québécois?", available on line at
http://spqlibre.org/default.aspx?page=44&NewsId=68
)

Constituent assembly

Dubuc, like most Quebec nationalists, also makes a distinction
between nation and citizenship. He defines a distinct "Francophone
Québécois nation" within the broader "Quebec nation" of citizens, the
latter including "the Aboriginal peoples, the Anglophone minority and
the cultural minorities."

"We should, at the earliest possible opportunity," he says,
"establish what their specific rights would be and how they will be
protected in the future constitution of an independent Quebec."

In fact, a means by which these and many other related issues of
identity and rights can be resolved must be found if a clear and
compelling majority of Quebecers are to be convinced that their
national and social emancipation from oppression and exploitation
entails winning political independence as a nation. The new party of
the left, Québec solidaire (QS) puts the call for election of a
Quebec constituent assembly to discuss and determine such issues
democratically at the core of its approach to the national question.
Dubuc doesn't raise this; he is a member of the Parti québécois,
which proposes to leave all questions about social content and
political rights within a sovereign Quebec until after Quebec has
become a sovereign country.

Even the concept of the "civic" or territorial nation may require
clarification. In the mid-1980s the Quebec National Assembly, on a PQ
motion, recognized a dozen or so aboriginal peoples as "distinct
nations having their own identity and exercising their rights within
Quebec."

Québec solidaire goes further. It voted at its recent policy
convention to recognize the right to self-determination of these
aboriginal nations. At the same time, the delegates voted to table
for further discussion a motion that a QS government would organize
"equitable representation of ... the aboriginal peoples" in its
proposed constituent assembly. François Saillant, a QS leader,
pointed out that relations with Quebec's indigenous peoples should be
on a "nation to nation" basis. "We can't be making decisions for
them," he said.

These and related issues of national identity and self-determination
have been debated for years within Quebec. If nothing else, the
Harper motion - insubstantial as it is - has helped to refocus
attention on them in the rest of Canada.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( T h e B u l l e t))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

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