Canada and coalitions

What mainly drives the distaste for coalitions is that, in any recent parliament, such a majority coalition would have to include the separatist Bloc Québecois party. Coalitions involving Vlaams Belang in Belgium, or Sinn Fein in the UK, would probably be similarly unpopular. A secondary concern is that, when talk of a coalition was rampant in 2008, the leading party of said coalition had just had its worst election result in twenty years. The idea that the incumbent Tories, who had just improved their standing, would be replaced by the Liberals, who had just done very poorly, made many uneasy.

Should the Liberals and NDP make gains, and be capable of forming a majority without the Bloc Québecois, I don’t think opposition to a coalition would be very strong. Unfortunately, such a result seems very unlikely in this election.

I live under it and still don’t understand it.

The BQ has so far said that it would not join a government of Canada (they take their seats, unlike Sinn Fein, but they won’t sit in a Cabinet), and it’s not clear that the anglophone supporters of the two left parties could stomach it anyways. That means that a left majority government is unlikely.

But the BQ often permits minority governments to stay in power, and in 08 was on the verge of a deal that would have swung their support to a left minority government.

There’s a view that it would somehow be embarrassing to have to rely of the Bloc’s tacit support to stay in power; but the Conservative minority government has had to rely on it, to no apparent embarrassment.

So I remain puzzled. There’s a genuine belief that plurality government has more democratic legitimacy than coalitions that rely on post-election deals; and pre-election coalition agreements seem to be anathema because the Libs and NDP don’t like each other very much and want to carry out their competition for seats. All of this is hand-waving in lieu of an explanation, though. At some point you’d expect the Libs and NDP to defy custom for the sake of gaining power.

I’ve heard it sincerely said that this is just Ignatieff being impatient; he’s going to give it his one try, and if it doesn’t work, he might as well get on with his life.

My own hunch is something more like: there are still enough Liberals who believe in their hearts that they are the natural party of (majority) government and that any other outcome is an aberration, and in particular that Harper is a kind of un-Canadian alien force that the country’s immune system is surely going to reject eventually, that the party’s just willing to roll the dice an extra time , polls be damned. (And this belief is related to their allergy to coalitions, as well.) And Ignatieff is so sure of himself as a debater and charismatic leader that he’s sure he’ll crush Harper in debates.

And I think the official answer is: the voters haven’t had time to absorb a recent round of ethics problems, but a campaign that focuses attention on them while they’re fresh has a better chance of knocking Harper off than trying to remind voters two years hence of something they didn’t really care about at the time.

In any case, the answer’s far from obvious, and has a lot of my Canadian left-leaning friends shaking their heads in puzzlement.

Jacob @2: the impression I was left with after talking to friends of mine who are left-of-centre but opposed the coalition was that a) a coalition would be less stable than a Conservative minority and b) that Stéphane Dion would not make a good Prime Minister. It could be that unfamiliarity with coalitions is why they believe (a), while having lived in Europe I know that coalition governments are quite common. The second point seems entirely justified, especially as Dion was replaced shortly after the proposal for a coalition.

Bill @3: What Jacob said seems reasonable and echoes what I read in The Globe and Mail. For the other parties, the NDP might lose core supporters if it’s seen to be propping up a Conservative government, and the Bloc have solid support and don’t gain anything from supporting the government.

I wouldn’t call the Liberal party of Canada left leaning. While they tend to be sociall progressive, and they do still believe in a strong welfare state, economically they do fall in quite squarely with European Liberal parties. They are decidely centre in a very Canadian way.

The primary problem with the coalition is indeed the Bloc Quebecois. The funny thing is is that the arch federalism of the Liberals is about as dead as the seperatism of the Bloc Quebecois. Both parties are aware of the new, extremely regional, political reality of Canada, but neither is willing to admit it.

As far as recent polls are concerned though, I would take it with a grain of salt. Indeed the Conservatives have made some grounds, but it’s been on the basis of a attack ads. The opposition simply can’t afford to aggressively pre campaign. I would wait until the election really gets rolling before paying attention the the polls. The most interesting statistic of seen recently is something along the lines of, where Harper would garner 35% of the popular vote, only 20-25% respond positively to the question of whether they would want a Harper majority.

Harper has succeeded so far largely by completely controlling the narrative of the political situation. With the recent run of quite severe controversies, the opposition believes they may finally have enough ammunition to get people to see through it – and I think they might be right.

Unfortunately, doing this correctly would require competence from the opposition, which is not something I would rely on.

Well, so much for that: Ignatieff rules out coalition with NDP, Bloc

And he formally commits himself to a plurality rule: “Whoever leads the party that wins the most seats on election day should be called on to form the government”

And here is an attack ad from the Conservatives, stating that Ignatieff will be form a coalition with the BQ.

As it has already been pointed out, one of the reasons why there hasn’t been a coalition is that it would require support from the Bloc Quebecois, which, in spite of the fact that they’re pretty much on the left, are constantly demonised outside Quebec as some kind of evil racist party of traitors.

I’m a Bloc supporter, by the way.

In 1995, I voted no (for the USians: in 95 there was a referendum on Quebec independence, I voted against independence). When the results came in (the pro independence vote got 49%) I thought: man, that was close! Something must be done! Some of Quebec’s grievances must be acknowledged, there must be a way of bringing Quebec back into the fold, make Quebec sign the Canadian constitution, Quebec’s particularities must be recognized… Nearly 16 years later, nothing has happened. Everything is as it was. Considering the constant Quebec bashing I hear from other Canadians, maybe even worse. My increased sympathy for independence comes from that.

There’s also an increased feeling of alienation from the rest of Canada: as demonstrated by the repeated election of the Conservatives, in recent years, the economic and political power of western Canada has been on the rise, and, without excessive generalization, I can say that their values are much more to the right than those of eastern Canada, Quebec included.

A few days ago, I read a comment from an Albertan where he referred to Quebec as a third-world nation… This is typical of the Quebec-bashing comments that constantly appear in English-Canadian mass media. Anyway, coming from someone living in a province that is virtually a one-party “state” (the conservatives have been in power there for the last 50 years) which has oil extraction as its main (and almost sole) industry, I thought that was pretty rich.

Small comment on Joe Heath’s #4 there:

“The comments you can see above, suggesting that the Liberal Party is not left wing, or not centre-left, illustrate the sort of leftist purism that is one of the major obstacles to Liberal-NDP rapprochement. A lot of Canadian NDP-left types really believe the NDP’s electoral rhetoric about the Liberals being neoliberal opportunists, no different from the conservatives, etc. etc.”

But the Liberals really are neoliberals – it’s not that we believe ‘rhetoric,’ it’s that we remember Chrétien and Martin, who were neoliberals. We’re aware that they’re different from the Conservative party, though.

Also, no Liberal-NDP rapprochement is possible because there was no initial approcher to re, if you follow me. The Canadian left grew up all on its own, it didn’t split from the Liberal party. Such an alliance, formal or informal, would actually be unprecedented. I almost brought myself to vote for an NDP candidate in the… what, 2003 election, in admiration of Jack Layton’s pushing Paul Martin’s minority government around on a few issues in the budget. But then I remembered that I don’t vote.

I must underline once again that the Liberal Party of Canada is in no way a left-of-centre party. Despite what Joe Heath says.

If the Liberal Party of Canada was in any way a progressive or left party, why, then, does it at the British Columbia level exist in formal coalition with the Conservatives with the avowed aim of keeping the progressive NDP in power? And anyone in BC can assure you that the BC Liberal Party is a hard right party economically.

The Canadian left IS fragmented; the division between the Greens and the NDP are enough to keep the NDP a bit-player and I suspect get Conservative candidates over the line in more then a few ridings.

From an ignorant American, what would be so bad about Quebec seceding? If that’s what the Quebecois want (and maybe it isn’t), why can’t they have it? Is it expected they’d behave horribly if they left? Do other Canadians really value possession of Quebec very highly?

If there are other similarly ignorant Americans here, they might find Jamal Greene’s Selling Originalism interesting in its comparison of American, Canadian & Australian constitutional thought. The part about Canadian jurists personally knowing Charter authors well enough to have a low opinion of them is worth a chuckle.

Wikipedia has other examples of taboo coalitions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordon_sanitaire

Vasi- The BC Liberals just had a leadership ballot, where the winning candidate, Christy Clark, was often described as being from the ‘Liberal’ side of the coalition, vs Kevin Falcon, the ‘Conservative’ candidate.

The organisations aren’t formally linked, and party identity in Canada isn’t as solid as it is in other countries, but watching on the ground here, I’d say there’s enough of a link to draw conclusions.

For what it is worth, there is a BC Conservative Party, but it is tiny (no members in the legislature and no prospects of that happening either). I strongly suspect that the same people who vote Conservative federally vote Liberal at the provincial level.

Scott: your elaboration appears to further support the position of Myles and Vasi that the BC Liberal Party has little in common with the national Liberal Party, making your argument that the latter should be judged by the former seem specious.

Can I just say that H.P.Loveshack is the best pseudonym ever? (#15)

Everything is as it was. Considering the constant Quebec bashing I hear from other Canadians, maybe even worse.

Perhaps Anglo-Canadians wouldn’t bash Quebec so much if it actually had a functioning economy and didn’t depend so much on transfer payments. Which it did until it thought it really sweet to encourage all the Anglos to get out of Montreal, so Quebeckers can be maîtres chez (des plus pauvres) nous.

On the “I won’t form a coalition” talk from Ignatieff, it is worth keeping in mind that he is pretty much obliged to say this. Come election time, the Liberals always appeal to NDP voters saying “don’t waste your vote on the NDP, we’re the only ones with a chance of getting the Conservatives out of power.” If he announces in advance that he’s open to collaboration with the NDP, then it deprives them of a major argument for voting Liberal. Note that he only “categorically” precludes a coalition with the BQ.

As to whether the (federal) Liberals are a centre-left party, I’m sure we can agree that on almost any policy question they are to the left of the U.K. Labour party. (To take one isolated but significant example, they are quite hostile to purchaser-provider splits in health care). That should be enough to give non-Canadians their bearings.

At Myles (#15),

Ah yes, the equalisation payment horseshit, indubitably my favourite double anti-Quebec double-standard…

For those who don’t know: in Canada, the federal government makes payments to less wealthy Canadian provinces to equalize the provinces’ “fiscal capacity”—their ability to generate tax revenues. Quebec gets the biggest amount. But Quebec is the second most populous province, so per capita Quebecers receive much less than, say, Manitobans or people for Prince Edward Island, a point Quebec bashers usually ignore. Another point they like to ignore is the fact that some of the present “have” provinces, like Alberta and Newfoundland, received these payments for decades… Then oil was found within their territories, and in typical nouveau-riche fashion, they started forgetting their cash-strapped past.

Bill Gardner,

No, it doesn’t. Provinces elect their own territorial governments.

Quebec gets the biggest amount. But Quebec is the second most populous province, so per capita Quebecers receive much less than, say, Manitobans or people for Prince Edward Island, a point Quebec bashers usually ignore.

Yeah, I know about this. Of course the PEI government gets more, because there are fixed costs of running any kind of a provincial government, no matter how small, so on a per capita basis PEI transfer payments are very high. The problem with Quebec is that it’s really not a marginal province by any stretch of the imagination: it is the second-biggest province, and close to one-quarter the population of Canada. That it’s currently an enormous economic laggard is much more problematic for the country than the case for say, Nova Scotia, because whereas the latter is genuinely a marginal province with marginal industries the same can’t be said of Quebec, which has the lowest GDP per capita outside the Maritimes.

I don’t think anybody minds paying equalization payments as long as they are leading to a healthier eventual result, or if it’s to compensate for a inherently disadvantaged position, but the Quebec economy is neither of these things. There’s no inherent reason why Ontario should be booming while Quebec is not.

Sorry, wrong cedilla c.

Countries with less territory, less population and less natural resources than Quebec are doing quite fine, thank you. I have little doubt that Quebecers, after a period of adjustment, would be able to build a nice little comfortable nation for themselves.

Why is it that Quebec is a relative laggard? They speak a different language from most of their neighbors? Antagonism from majority culture, or resulting counter-productive culture among the Quebecois? Borrowing from Weber, some sort of Catholic cultural deal? Similar antagonism between the Flemish & Walloons in Belgium might support that last bit, but Razib says Weber’s theory doesn’t seem to apply well to former Hapsburg domains.

Hmm, my Windows word-finding “Ctrl + F” function finds 48 references to “Quebec” in the comments on this post. It seems that cultural separatist movements may inhibit the formation of political coalitions. Who would have thunk it?

Regarding Quebec’s laggardness…. I have a simple solution: Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland just have to stop exploiting their oil resources. That way, they’ll become the laggards and they’ll receive equalisation payments.

Canada hasn’t had coalition governments (or not since WWI), but it’s had minority governments supported by a smaller party, with a formal deal between them, i.e. the smaller party promises to support the government in confidence votes and in return the government promises to enact some legislation on the smaller party’s agenda.

I’m pretty sure the Pearson Liberal governments of 1963-68 (best Canadian governments ever?) had that kind of arrangement with the NDP, Trudeau certainly had it with the NDP in 1972-74, the first David Peterson government in Ontario had it with the NDP in the 1980s, etc.

That kind of arrangement isn’t de facto that massively different from a coalition, so it’s not clear why Harper managed to scare Canadian voters away from the coalition idea in 2008. (Well, for one, he lied and said the BQ would be part of the coalition.) And the history of the looser kind of arrangement is that it tends to be bad for the smaller party, which loses seats in the next election since they no longer seem so distinguishable from the governing party.

And that, disastrous though the decision may turn out to be, was probably one factor in the Liberal/NDP decision(s) to topple the government now. They can’t spend years and years pretending to be opposition parties while always, at the end of the day, supporting the government. In fact, what’s best for each is that the other party support the government while they oppose it, so they can accuse the other of not really being opposed to the government (as the NDP accused the Liberals in the last election). The two parties end up in a kind of game of chicken, each trying to be the one that holds out longest against supporting the government. But after a while neither is willing to cave in to the other and they decide, each on their own, to pull the plug — suicidal as that decision may turn out to be. But i guess they’d say the alternative — continually supporting rather than opposing a Conservative government — is also suicidal in its way.

If Quebec separates will they take their per capita share of the debt with them?

I think the big worry is what will happen to the maritimes if Quebec separates.

Damn, I keep making stupid typos. Sorry about that! English, she is hard, yes?

Myles, because French was the native language of the vast majority of their employees.

I mean, duh!

I’m actually quite in favour of bilingual immersion, just immersion in actual, metropolitan French, rather than a regional dialect. Canada has been doing it wrong.

Oh, and since French is the official language of Quebec, that means that whenever they have to deal with government, they have to do it in French.

Once again, duh!

Regional dialect, eh? Spare me the condescending crap.

I think we had better terminate this conversation, or I may become rather rude.

Myles: I’m actually quite in favour of bilingual immersion, just immersion in actual, metropolitan French, rather than a regional dialect. Canada has been doing it wrong.

Which sodding metropolis? (Spoken as a Brit who’s been living in Canada for four years, two of them in Quebec City.)

I’m also not convinced that Québec vs. ROC is the be all and end all of Canadian politics, nor that Harper is as benevolently regarded as Myles seems to suggest.

I just wanted to echo Joe Heath at #14 re how this election came to pass. I doubt that any of the current opposition parties actually wanted to push an election now, but there have been several recent narratives regarding the ruling government refusing to provide information to, or misleading MPs. This culminated in a recent finding of the government being in Contempt of Parliament, which ended up being the trigger for the non-confidence motion and this next election.

If the opposition parties had let that slide, then it would have been a tacit acknowledgement that those actions were acceptable. If you ask me, it ends up being a bit of a gamble on whether the public as a whole cares more about the ethics and standards that this government has been violating versus what the expected level of scheming and dealing should be.

Given his disdain for regional dialects, one can only assume Myles speaks an impeccable RP
I know, it’s just too killing, eh what? Demmed Canadians, thinking they speak the Queen’s English, beastly cheek.

I would like to thank Myles and H.P. Loveshack for illustrating to the non-Canadians on this forum the current (dismal) state of Anglo/Franco relations in Canada. However, as a fellow Canadian, I would like to try respectfully to somewhat elevate the tone of the discussion.

First, Myles: please avoid taking cheap shots at Quebecois language and culture. It is really beneath you, and it pretty much vitiates your credibility in this discussion.

H.P.: Perhaps it would help of you could clearly articulate what exactly the French Quebecois hope to achieve by separation. I live in Canada, and I still haven’t figured it out. Here is my (ignorant) perspective —perhaps you can correct any misunderstandings I have.

Many years ago, the British conquered the French part of Canada, and the French Canadians became a `conquered people’. However, they had it pretty good as a `conquered people’; the conquest did not involve rape, pillage, forced religious conversion, ethnic cleansing, or outright genocide (unlike, say, the way Europeans treated the natives Americans), or wholesale enslavement and exploitation (e.g. Europe in Africa). Instead, the French Canadians were allowed to keep their language, their culture, their Catholic religion, and even their Napoleonic legal institutions. They were only required to swear allegiance to the British Empire and live under a British elite, and effectively became second-class citizens in their own homeland.

Fast forward two hundred years. In the 1950s, the French Canadians had formal legal equality (and special legal protections) under Canadian law, but were an economic and political underclass. However, over the last 60 years, the `Quiet Revolution’, the Sovereigntist movement, and strong Federal government support for official bilingualism and multiculturalism have pretty much erased these inequalities. As far as I can see, French Canadians now have full participation in the Canadian elite (economic, political, academic, etc.). Indeed, the Canadian federal government not only legally protects French language and culture, but actively subsidizes it (not just through transfer payments, but also e.g. through cultural institutions like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the National Film Board, and through publicly-funded French language schools across Canada, etc.). So it is very difficult for an English Canadian to understand the Separatist grievance. In exactly what sense are the French in any way persecuted, marginalized, excluded, or in any way discriminated against in Canada in 2011?

One major problem Quebec does face is that it is `an island of French in a sea of English’ (i.e. North America). The language barrier certainly imposes economic costs (which perhaps explains why the Quebec economy consistently underperforms compared to other parts of Canada, despite the high average education level of the Quebecois population). However, I fail to see how the rest of Canada can be blamed for this, and I fail to see how political separation from Canada will in any way solve this problem. If anything, an independent Quebec would be even more culturally and economically marginalized in North America. Perhaps you could explain this part.

On the other side of the question, some people ask, “What’s the big deal if Quebec separates, if that’s really what they want?” There are several reasons why Quebec separation is objectionable:

First of all, separation would involve significant costs; there would be a border to enforce, a separate currency to manage, and a whole host of Federal government institutions which would have to be duplicated by the newly independent Quebec government.

Indeed, separation goes completely against the major political trend of the last sixty years towards greater global economic and political integration (exemplified by the European Union, NAFTA, etc.). This trend has been driven by the recognition that nationalism and national borders are generally a problem, not a solution. Separatists have to explain why this logic does not apply to them.

Second of all, the history teaches us to be strongly suspicious of ethnic nationalist political movements (which is what French Separatism is). Around the world, ethnic nationalism is a force which has often lead to gross human rights violations. To be more specific: Quebec contains a substantial Anglophone minority (especially in Montreal), who are justifiably afraid that they would be persecuted or marginalized in a sovereign Quebec. French sovereigntist policy is (understandably) obsessed with the long-term threat of linguistic and cultural assimilation into the North American anglophone majority culture. Over the past 30 years, this perceived threat has been used to justify policies which explicitly discriminate against anglophones (e.g. the infamous sign law, which stipulates that on any public notice, the French text must appear first and appear in larger font than the English text; or the fact that anglophone public schools and universities in Quebec have been systematically underfunded, compared to their francophone counterparts; or the fact that new immigrants to Quebec are discouraged, in the strongest possible terms, from adopting the English language). In other parts of the world, these sorts of discriminatory policies would be regarded as prima facie evidence of official racism, but because the anglophones are the majority in North America and still perceived as some kind of `elite’ in Quebec, these policies have been tolerated. But in an independent Quebec run by revanchist ethnic nationalists with an outsized persecution complex, there is a real risk that anti-anglophone policies would run out of control. H.P., please explain why Quebecois anglophones have nothing to worry about.

Third, the logic of Separatism leads inexorably to Balkanization. If Quebec can separate from the Rest Of Canada, then why can’t the western (English) half of the island of Montreal separate from the Rest Of Quebec? The Separatists often speak of how Canada has `two founding nations’ (English and French). But in fact there are three founding nations —it’s just that the third nation (the natives, a.k.a. the `First Nation’) was almost entirely eradicated and assimilated by the other two. Much of northern Quebec is actually populated by natives. And certainly, these natives have infinitely greater reason to consider themselves a persecuted and marginalized minority than the French Canadians do. If Quebec can secede from Canada, then why can’t these natives secede from Quebec?

I hope you are starting to see that it is very difficult to take seriously the idea of ethnic autonomy without risking total political disintegration.

In fact, many of Quebec’s grievances are shared by other provinces (e.g. Alberta and B.C.) —namely that the Federal government is too strong, and the Provincial governments are not sufficiently autonomous. So instead of separation, perhaps a better solution would be a more decentralized Canadian constitution, which gives greater autonomy to all the provinces. Quebec could use its enhanced autonomy to promote French language and culture. Alberta could use its enhanced autonomy to continue become a northern version of Texas. This is a solution which would please everyone (except the Feds). H.P. could you please explain why this sort of political decentralization would not be sufficient to address Separatist grievances?

@ hellblazer

Does such analysis extend only to Alberta rednecks and Newfies, or can it be extended to include any group of folks who privelege a more regional approach to their politics?

If Alberta Rednecks and Newfies are distinct enough cultures to qualify as having their own easily applied stereotypes, how is their myopic regionalism any different than that proffered by the Bloc?

Oh, and there’s a big difference between the “regionalism” of Quebec and that of other provinces: the other provinces never elected separatist governments and they didn’t have two independence referendums.

40% of the population of Quebec are hardcore separatists. The vast majority of french-speaking Quebecers are, to different degrees, nationalists, in the sense that they think of themselves as Quebecers first. It’s just that there’s still a large % that believe that Quebec benefits from staying in Canada. I used to believe that too, but the last 15 years made me reconsider.

the other provinces never elected separatist governments and they didn’t have two independence referendums.

So the lesson plan for getting ahead in the Canadian confederation is, electing separatist governments that spar with the rest of Canada at every turn, and then waste money on referenda. Merci beaucoup! Why didn’t I think of that? What is this, Mean Girls?

But see, if Canadian nationalism is legitimate, then so is Quebec nationalism.

If Quebec insists on being such a distinct nation, then perhaps it should stop taking money from another separate, wholly distinct nation: Canada. The transfer payments are a small part of a giant web of subsidies that includes various make-work schemes and industrial policies.

I don’t mind formal independence. What I mind is this delusional half-association nonsense the PQ keeps putting forward. It’s basically a situation where the subsidies would continue as before, but with no accountability. And this is not to mention that the rest of Canada would probably not want to remain in association with a sovereign Quebec, or that the federal government will presumably relocate out of Hull. If you don’t like the marriage, why not just get a formal divorce? Either a subsidized and Canadian Quebec, or an unsubsidized (in any sense) and independent Quebec. Pick one and stick with it. A subsidized and independent Quebec is not in the cards, despite the impression the PQ likes to give.

(I don’t mind the Bloc, by the way.)

Anglos up and down the country feel pissed about the fact that Canada, an officially multicultural country is bending backwards to accommodate the most explicitly ethno-nationalist jurisdiction in North America.

Well, up and down requires a sample size of 2, and the rest is tendentious (you don’t think the US and Mexico are competitively ethno-nationalist?)

Perhaps, but you need to give Arizona points for effort.

Arizona needs to work harder to surmount the level set by Bill 101.

Not wishing to fan the flames (and acknowledging I know very little about my country of residence) – I think saying “metropolitan French” = “French spoken in France” is rather tendentious. Besides, are we talking about “haute français” or the way people actually speak in various parts of France? I’m sure some French academicians would approve of Quebecers sticking to “bonne fin de semaine” rather than “bonne weekend”, just as they’d have conniptions over using “bienvenue” to mean “you’re welcome”.

Manitoban French, *that is weird* – or at least sounds it…

Oh, and Marc P. Vato @70 appears to be talking a lot of sense.

The divergence in accent is greater than in English

…my dad’s bigger than your dad

It wasn’t sufficient to be bilingual; you had to be Quebecois. Perhaps that’s changed.

Perhaps. Or perhaps your anecdote is just that.

…I have adopted their language…

I hope your accent is appropriately metropolitan.

Funny, the more I talk to English Canadians about Quebec, the more I become convinced that separation is the only viable option!

Than you, Myles and Marc P. Vato!

Honestly, more than a few Anglos would be perfectly happy for the rest of Canada to secede from Quebec, if the Quebeckers don’t want to do it themselves.

H.P. Loveshack @90: Regarding the failure of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown processes: those agreements were negotiated in good faith by a lot of people from across Canada, and presumably would have been beneficial to many provinces. I don’t know the details of why they failed to be ratified, but I suspect it represents a typical failure of the political process, probably mainly due to public apathy and ignorance, combined with the fear-mongering of certain vested interests. It is probably comparable to more recent failures of B.C. and Ontario to ratify changes to their election laws. It does not represent some sort of anglophone conspiracy against Quebec. If this is the best evidence you can provide of how Quebec gets `screwed’ by the rest of Canada, then you are not doing very well at all.

If separation comes to the table, well, then the spectre of “ethnic nationalism” and “racism towards the english minority” and “partition of Quebec” is raised , the usual federalist bogeymen. Never mind that Quebec has had several openly separatist governments through the years and that not once has the English minority ever lost any important rights.

That may be because these French separatist governments have still had to operate under Canadian Federal law and the Canadian Charter of Rights, so there was a clear limit to how discriminatory their policies could be. These sorts of legal limitations are, presumably, precisely what the French Separatists hope to escape by formally separating from the rest of Canada.

Sorry, having English printed in smaller characters on a sign doesn’t qualify as an oppressive demand.

If the state of Arizona passed a law saying that all public signs had to display English text first and in larger font than Spanish text, and that Spanish-only signs were illegal, this law would be struck down by the SCOTUS in a nanosecond as a violation of the First Amendment.

I am not claiming that Quebec anglophones are horribly oppressed. As you say, the current disciminatory policies are pretty small beer. I am simply pointing out a clear pattern of ethnically motivated discrimination, which any student of history would find disturbing.

And the threats of partition are infantile. The province of Quebec has borders that are accepted by the federal government and the bordering provinces. It never occurred to a Quebec separatist to annex the french speaking areas of nearby New Brunswick.

First of all, enough with the name-calling. Second of all, I am not making threats: I am simply pointing out that it is logically inconsistent for you to say that the French Quebecois `nation’ has a moral right to separate from the rest of Canada because of their special ethnic status (`distinct society’, etc.), but for you at the same time to deny that other ethnic groups within Quebec would have at least as much moral right to secede from an independent Quebec.

By the way, you still haven’t answered my main questions: in exactly what way is the rest of Canada somehow victimizing or oppressing the French Quebecois in 2011? Exactly what do you hope to gain by separating? And don’t give me vague talk about `autonomy’, `national pride’, `dignity’ or `distinct society’. I want concrete examples of how life in a separate Quebec would be better for the average person.

Yeah, yeah, I know, this strange insistence from Quebecers to keep speaking French and preserving their culture is surely an indication of “insularity”. What’s wrong with them, eh? Why can’t they just be part of our big Canadian multicultural family and speak English like everyone else ? Surely they must be racist!

Oh, and Mr. Vato, Quebec anglophones aren’t an ethnicity. They’re just Quebecers that speak English as their mother tongue.

You keep trying to frame the argument in terms of ethnicity, presumably because it allows you then to accuse separatists of racism. This isn’t a matter of ethnicity. It is a matter of language and culture.

Separation is a problem because it does a few things:

1. It’s extremely disruptive at the well-integrated border of Ontario and Quebec, especially considering the very large number of federal institutions at the Ottawa-Hull area, and the federal investments in West Quebec. Even if they were to be paid off by Quebec (during a negotiation that would be so epic it would dwarf any of the constitutional arguments), reestablishing them on both sides of the border would be difficult and painful.

2. It turns the Maritime provinces into East Pakistan Canada, cutting them off geographically and further reducing the sense that they are part of the family in the West; these places rely on equalization far more than Quebec to remain populated.

3. It makes the Canadian fragments more susceptible to arm-twisting and weaker as a negotiating unit with the USA.

4. It does not clearly overcome any of the global reasons why English is dominant; it doesn’t put any further francisization tools into the hands of Quebec.

5. It represents a failure in the world of a multiethnic/multicultural state. It’s a terrible example. We want countries to come together under larger federal umbrellas, not fragment into smaller ones.

That’s why few anglo-Canadians are in favour of a sovereign Quebec, protestations to the contrary. And few Quebec sovereigntists, even, are truly willing to go “cold turkey” on Canada—it is merely that they believe that they deserve a special status in a far looser arrangement, where it would still be easy to drive to Toronto and there would be no economic dislocation. A little bit of have your cake and eat it too.

You can always exceed the minimum.

It is the fundamental conflict between the Quebec and RoC left that for the RoC left, the federal arena has traditionally been the bulwark of social democracy. The only way that can be achieved is having a federal government with teeth to force e.g. Alberta into compliance. I have never seen why that should preclude Quebec from doing better than compliance and, indeed, on the health care front, Quebec is often accused of doing worse than compliance.

Recent events suggest that exclusive trust in either level is misplaced. We need both to back up the others and taking the federal government out of the equation is taking out one level of backup.

Mandos,

have you perchance noticed who has run the federal government in the last 5 years?

I don’t expect things to improve, you know. As I said at the beginning of this, in recent years, the economic and political power of western Canada has been on the rise, and, without excessive generalization, I can say that their values are much more to the right than those of eastern Canada, Quebec included.

Please, can we go back to talking about Libya, or zombies, or something? I taught political science and Canadian constitutional law from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s–the period of Meech Lake, Oka, Charlottetown, the second Quebec referendum… I live in the West but have elderly inlaws in Montreal. This whole thread reminds me that eternity spent in Hell would be preferable to reliving those events and arguments. I just recently gave away a bunch of lit from that period, e.g. “Sovereign Injustice: Forcible Inclusion of the James Bay Cree in a Sovereign Quebec”, “Negotiating with a Sovereign Quebec”, “After Meech”…it filled a large laundry basket that was too heavy for one person to lift.

have you perchance noticed who has run the federal government in the last 5 years?

Yes, that’s why I said that trust in a single level of government is misplaced. It’s a strength of federal systems of administration that there are two layers, and a further strength when these two layers have some overlap/redundancy, so that one can compensate when the other is weakened. Full subsidiarity and unitary states (as an independent Quebec would most likely be) are not necessarily optimal.

Right now the vandals are in federal administration. At other times they will be in provincial (Quebec included).

I don’t expect things to improve, you know. As I said at the beginning of this, in recent years, the economic and political power of western Canada has been on the rise, and, without excessive generalization, I can say that their values are much more to the right than those of eastern Canada, Quebec included.

What is rising in Western Canada is a form of populism that has taken both left and right-wing forms historically, and now takes a right-wing form in a greatly distended reaction to Trudeau, etc. That population has always stemmed from being seen as a “branch” of the Toronto-Montreal axis rather than a part of Canada with a right to its own interests.

In some ways, as terrible as a Harper majority would be, it may have the result of renormalizing politics in the West and defusing the populist fuel that fires the right-wing movement in Canada. (I don’t recommend it, of course.) But your implication suggests acknowledgement that the current primary division in Canada is not French/English but East-West.

I think the problem is the insistence on imposing the language on those who wish to make a different choice. Why, for instance, must children go to elementary school in French, unless one of their parents was educated in English in Canada? Why isn’t this a matter of personal choice as it would be in any other province?

A minority polity must make choices from a lens different from one of strict individual rights that is the privilege of the majority, if it is to survive as a cultural unit. It chafes to the individualist, but Quebec has taken it as a precondition of its existence that it must be able to override the economic imperative to anglicize.

This is hard to judge. I belong to one of the English-speaking polities of Canada, but my personal background is one of a descendant of Muslim Leagues who help break India for reasons very similar to the ones raised by Quebec sovereigntists. So I have a dual sympathy here.

At Boomer (#109),

“Why isn’t this a matter of personal choice as it would be in any other province?”

Surely, you’re jesting, right?

@ Loveshack (#114),

I’m not aware that French Canadians in any other provinces, even Alberta, are compelled to send their children to English school.

Nobody is begging Quebec to stay in Canada.

If “nobody” means “absolutely everyone in Canada but me” (I like Quebec!) then I am struck by the constant effort made to keep Quebec in Canada.

French immersion school down the block; long waiting list for it.

French immersion school down the block; long waiting list for it.

French immersion schools have more to do with academic (and also a bit of social) sorting (the sort of people who put their kids into immersion are usually upper-middle class but not rich enough to afford a good independent school, and the kids are consequently quite good in school usually).

If indeed anybody wanted their kids to grow up bilingual (and there are some), it’s not for the sake of Quebec. It’s because French is a great language to learn. This whole notion that Canada must beg, beg, beg Quebec to stay is just bizarre; if they want to secede and become a middle-income, stagnating economy, let them!

We already produced Conrad Black.

Who happened to know more of Quebec’s history than most Quebeckers themselves, and actually wrote the authoritative biography of Maurice Duplessis (I believe that was his M.A. topic).

He’s a crook, but one thing he’s not is an anti-Quebec xenophobe.

As an outsider interested in getting up to speed in Canadian politics, I appreciate the intervention by Blain @117.

Quebec separatism had no role in causing this election, and will not be decided (in any way) by the outcome of this election.

So, then, what issues might be decided by the outcome of this election?

The main issues:

1. whether Stephen Harper will have an unfettered hand in the dismantlement of Canadian federal institutions, particularly completing his transformation of the public service in his own image.

2. whether there will be a realignment of Canadian partisan politics in which there will be no nationally-viable centrist party—or, conversely, whether the form of Western populism to which Stephen Harper nominally hews (over his Randroid interior) has reached the limits of its national appeal.

Other issues surround the Canadian deficit (IMO, not that bad all things considered) and military spending (useless aircraft).

1. whether Stephen Harper will have an unfettered hand in the dismantlement of Canadian federal institutions, particularly completing his transformation of the public service in his own image.

Yawn. This is honestly the most alarmist interpretation possible. Does Harper suck? Yes. Does he suck more in relation to politicizing the civil service more than Jean Chrétien did? No. Does it matter? Not really. Does anybody really care? No. I’m not even voting in this election.

2. whether there will be a realignment of Canadian partisan politics in which there will be no nationally-viable centrist party

It’s not a problem with the Liberal Party; it’s a problem with Ignatieff, who basically comes across as a insufferable tool and a Yank besides. If we had been led by, say, Frank McKenna, instead of Iggy, we probably would have won a billion years ago. It’s still the natural governing party, it’s just going through a rough patch.

Yawn. This is honestly the most alarmist interpretation possible. Does Harper suck? Yes. Does he suck more in relation to politicizing the civil service more than Jean Chrétien did? No. Does it matter? Not really. Does anybody really care? No. I’m not even voting in this election.

I’m sorry to say that it matters a great deal. It’s a tribute to the professionalism of the Canadian public service that the disarray in which many arms of the Canadian government are is not yet obvious to the average Joe Canadian. JC has nothing on Harper in this department. Imagine a stealthier Bush. It is not merely politicizing, it is vandalism.

It’s not a problem with the Liberal Party; it’s a problem with Ignatieff, who basically comes across as a insufferable tool and a Yank besides. If we had been led by, say, Frank McKenna, instead of Iggy, we probably would have won a billion years ago. It’s still the natural governing party, it’s just going through a rough patch.

A rough patch meaning that most of Quebec is inaccessible—so inaccessible, it has been opened over the past couple of elections to the NDP—and the shift in population and other trends means that Western populism could sweep it away. Iggy is not a cause, he’s a symptom. If you really are some kind of non-voting Liberal sympathizer (I’m not), you are all too sanguine about what has happened.

This is an important election.

H.P. Loveshack @ 101 says:

You keep trying to frame the argument in terms of ethnicity, presumably because it allows you then to accuse separatists of racism. This isn’t a matter of ethnicity. It is a matter of language and culture.

Most of the time, there is no meaningful way to define `ethnicity’ except language and culture. What else did you have in mind? Genetics? At a genetic level, it is impossible to distinguish e.g. a Serbian from a Croatian or a Hutu from a Tutsi. So-called `ethnicities’ are entirely cultural/linguistic constructs.

But if you insist on maintaining some hairsplitting distinction between `discrimination on the basis of ethnicity’ versus `discrimination on the basis of language and culture’, so be it. Then the objectionable policies of Quebec separatists would be `merely’ discrimination on the basis of language and culture. I fail to see how this makes them less objectionable.

Also, you still have not answered my core questions. In exactly what way are French Quebecois oppressed or marginalized in Canada in 2011? And exactly what substantive improvements to Quebecois welfare do you think you will accomplish through separation?

In a later exchange with Mandos, you make it sound like your problem is that the Rest of Canada is too right-wing. Left to its own devices, Quebec would like to become a European style welfare state. But somehow anglophone rednecks in Alberta keep thwarting this noble goal. Is this your core grievance? If so, perhaps you could explain exactly the mechanism whereby membership in Confederation prevents Quebec from implementing European style welfare policies. My understanding is that most `welfare state’ institutions are actually provincial jurisdiction (e.g. healthcare, public education, social assistance), so Quebec can run these things any way it wants. And indeed, Quebec has, traditionally, has been quite left-wing in these areas (which is good, IMHO). But nothing is stopping Quebec from moving even further to the left. Certainly, anglophones in Western Canada aren’t stopping Quebec.

In fact, if anything, separatism has been counterproductive to the Canadian left. By splitting the left wing vote, the Bloc Quebecois has greatly helped the federal Conservatives in recent elections. Which brings me to my next point.

Blain @117 says:

Quebec separatism had no role in causing this election, and will not be decided (in any way) by the outcome of this election.

The connection is the Bloc Quebecois. Of course, as a permanent minority party, the BQ will never be able to foist a Quebec separation referendum onto the agenda of Parliament. But that’s not it’s job. It’s job is to act as a `spoiler’ party, which siphons Parliamentary seats away from the other parties, and then uses its block of seats to extort concessions for Quebec from whatever minority/coalition government happens to be in power. This is why Harper can score political points by accusing Ignatieff of secretly planning a `coalition government’, because `coalition’ here is understood as a code-word for `negotiating with the evil BQ’.

@ Boomer (#116),

“I’m not aware that French Canadians in any other provinces, even Alberta, are compelled to send their children to English school.”

Not that I know of, no. I mean, You have something much much better than any stupid language law. You have Hollywood, New York and London, and rock’n’roll and hip hop, action movies and CNN and the entire weight of globalised english mass culture behind you. Language laws? You don’t need no stinking language laws!

Canadian multiculturalism is a load of shit: of course you can afford to give the impression that people have those kinds of choices! In the end, you know they’ll ended good little english speaking multicultural citizens of nowhere, just like most North Americans.

There’s a big question of whether e.g. the CBC would survive a Harper administration. Harper’s hardcore supporters view the CBC as a left-wing propaganda engine brainwashing the east into voting to steal Alberta oil.

There’s a big question of whether e.g. the CBC would survive a Harper administration.

The CBC can always be recreated. Canada’s trade position cannot. I like the CBC a lot, and I think it should be expanded with greater federal funding, but look, if we managed to save CBC and not work on our long-term economic position, it’d all be for nought.

As long as mass communication remains cheap, anyway, we (or our descendants) re all going to end up speaking the same language in the long run, whatever that language is. Language laws or no language laws, independent Quebec or not.

The CBC can always be recreated. Canada’s trade position cannot. I like the CBC a lot, and I think it should be expanded with greater federal funding, but look, if we managed to save CBC and not work on our long-term economic position, it’d all be for nought.

As someone who is frankly happier about cultural globalization that economic globalization, Canada’s trade position can go hang itself. (Why I am not a Liberal.) The CBC will be impossible to reconstitute once it is gone; the age of free trade has supplanted the age of positive institution-building. Until that ends, the bulwarks (including public broadcasting, in whatever language) must be maintained.

As someone who is frankly happier about cultural globalization that economic globalization, Canada’s trade position can go hang itself. (Why I am not a Liberal.)

You know, the CBC would more or less be gutted anyways if Canada’s economic position turns into a giant version of Newfoundland in 1949, out of necessity if nothing else…

Rich countries can fund their cultural sectors more generously. Poorer countries cannot.

So, you all speak English, right… And what is your ethnicity exactly?

Sure, the vast majority of French speakers in North America belong to one particular group, but the vast majority have completely abandoned, since at least the 1960s, a purely ethnic definition of themselves as a people.

It is you who insist in framing the Quebec question in ethnical terms. I never mentioned it. This ethnicity crap is just your way of bringing up the racism accusations against separatists.

If the problem is dependence on the USA, then by all means reduce that dependence.

It’s like hydraulics. You can’t reduce dependence on the USA unless you increase trade with other countries. As some must have pointed out before me, the only effect of Canadian protectionism is compounded dominance by the American economy, because Canadian protectionism deters Americans much less than it deters other foreigners. Let’s just not go down that road again.

Is this blog actually moderated?

Mandos: I do not agree that these things [prosperity and free trade] are necessarily linked except in the minds of those who subscribe to economism.

People with a nuanced view will recognize that increased allocative efficiency and free trade are close to necessarily linked. In the short term, increased allocative efficiency is linked to greater economic activity, which, depending on distribution, may or may not get translated into greater prosperity.

The problem with free trade for welfare liberals, which probably describes most people here, is that while it makes today’s pie bigger, and so is ceteris paribus desirable, increased allocative efficiency in the short term may not lead to greater economic growth in the long term, as some impediments to free trade can be sound industrial policy, and the diminishing marginal utility of wealth can mean that a bigger but less evenly-distributed pie can decrease material well-being.

So I’d restate your point to limit it to calling a necessary link between unharnessed, unmoderated free trade and prosperity a symptom of economism.

Don’t bother with Myles Mandos. He has never seen a job that he didn’t want shipped overseas.

Loveshack: *shrug* How is that accusation of double standards any different from the anglo reaction to the idea that Canada is partitionable but Quebec is not? You basically dismissed every criticism without a response other than incredulity. Are the reasons why someone might object so hard to imagine?

The basic issue is whether cultural collectivities have rights.

MPAV: I’ll keep that in mind. :)

I know I said I was done, but i can’t resist to poke fun at Mandos argument about partition: look, right now pretty much everyone agrees what the territory of Quebec is. The federal government agrees, the neighbouring provinces agree, it all has been set down in treaty. What you are telling me is, if Quebec secedes, this changes.

When one territorial treaty opens, all relevant treaties open. You seem to think that Quebec is already a sovereign entity inside of Canada as opposed to a subsidiary, non-sovereign entity whose administrative borders are perfectly negotiable.

Otherwise no group without a well-defined border could ever secede. Everyone who wanted to secede would already have to be in possession of a province. That’s a pretty ridiculous position. Tito could have turned Yugoslavia into a unitary state and avoided all the fuss, otherwise.

This is all ridiculous anyway. It’s not actually going to happen on a “Yes” vote to a referendum, and it isn’t a way to punish Quebeckers. My argument was simply to point out that the accusations of hypocrisy work both ways. Quebec separatists cannot accuse “Canadian nationalists” of being hypocrites—there isn’t a sovereign Quebec nation yet; there are negative consequences to doing so and few positive ones.

look, right now pretty much everyone agrees what the territory of Quebec is.

Couldn’t the same be said of Canada?

And what of the first nations in the North? My understanding is their preference is to remain in Canada, for pretty understandable reasons. Even if their precise boundaries aren’t precisely currently defined, should that really serve to vitiate their self-determination rights?

Modern Canadian federalists have nothing to offer Quebecers except accusations of racism and threats of partition.

Oh, I lied, I have one other thing to say. Loveshack, so are you.

polyorchnid octopunch 03.28.11 at 1:23 pm:

“Oh, I lied, I have one other thing to say. Loveshack, so are you.”

Hey, Polyorchnid, I think you forgot to add that I’m also racist and insular and I don’t know what else. [/sarcasm]

Blah blah, blah… We are not going to achieve anything by continuously arguing about this.

For separatists in the Canadian province of Quebec, the nation is Quebec. For their opponents, either inside the province of Quebec, or outside it, the nation is Canada.

Personally, I have no attachment to Canada, your country. It comes down to this: I do not feel Canadian. Fundamentally, the basis of it isn’t rational, it’s emotional. And your own attachment to your country, fundamentally,is as emotional as my attachment to Quebec. You’ll probably deny it and then find reasons why your own nationalism is more legitimate than mine, but it’s a load of crap.

As I said before, I want out. And the more I read your belittling arguments and your veiled accusations of racism and your rationalisations and justifications and constant reframing of the issue in the least flattering terms possible, the less I want to be part of it.

Just wanted to add this letter to the editor from the Montreal Gazette from an Anglo Doctor working out of Montreal.

” Re: “A different story on language,” (Letters, March 24).

Several letters over the past few days have dealt with language difficulties in dealings with the Quebec bureaucracy. Michael Samuelson states that having always lived in Montreal he has never had any difficulties and while in business never had any problems with the Office québécois de la langue française (although many others have, as has been widely reported over the years.)

As a physician who also has lived in Montreal all his life I can also state that I never had any problems with the Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec whenever I called the special line for professionals for billing information to the medicare system; that is, until last fall when, speaking with an agent, I was informed that by law she was now under no obligation to speak to me in English. English discussions are permissible if a citizen were to call for information, but such courtesies were no longer to be extended to provincial professionals.

Such lack of respect and courtesy is just another cog in the wheel that drives young anglophone professionals out of Quebec.

There is no mystery to this continuing exodus. I complained in writing to my MNA, Geoff Kelly, on this issue but never received the courtesy of a response. But then again I’m an anglo and I guess my vote is presumably guaranteed.

John Bray M.D.

Beaconsfield ”

H.P. Loveshack I am curious what your response to this letter is.

“There is no reason other than basic courtesy to address anglophones in English, anglophones should not take it for granted, or feel entitled to it.”

And you wonder why anglophones are worried about how an independent Quebec would treat them? This attitude helps explain why Quebec is suffering such a shortage of trained medical professionals.

@ MPAVictoria,

More Quebec bashing.

You must be one of those annoying english speakers that go to Paris and demand to be served in “la langue de Shakespeare” at all times!

Sure Quebec suffering’s “a shortage of trained medical professionals”, mostly generalist doctors. But so is the rest of Canada. And Quebec’s shortage was caused by massive cuts to healthcare, not because english-speaking doctors are leaving the province in droves because of our terrible, oppressive, racist language laws.

I’m done with this debate.

If only. At least you are posting fewer comments on this subject than everyone else put together, so maybe someday you’ll be done. Or maybe Quebec and Arizona can secede from their respective countries and create a new North American alliance of “Culture Remains Always Pure” and leave the rest of us in peace.

@ Jake (#176),

Yes, I know, I’m a terrible, horrible racist. I must really despise and hate anglophones. I mean, I even bothered learning their language just so I could tell them how much I despise and hate them! [/sarcasm]

Et vous, comment va votre Français, mon cher Jake?

By the way, I think there are there are something like 58 countries that have French as an official language, including Canada.

They must all be racist, insular and, oh… So, so racist!

“Quebec is French, period.”

Yikes. If I said Canada is English, period, I wonder how you’d react.

I think it’s so telling, you scratch under the surface of an apparently reasonable separatist, and you find ugly, ugly things. Their own “emotional needs” are paramount over anyone else’s rights, especially if those others are anglophone or allophone, or really anybody who isn’t “pur laine”. It’s like a spoiled child, who must be coddled and at all times told it’s special and different, and how its poop smells better than anyone else’s, or they’re just going to take their ball and go home.

“I find the feeling of entitlement of so many English speakers rather humorous.”

There’s enough projection going on in this sentence to make one’s head spin.

@boomer (#182)

He’s not incorrect. Quebec is the only unilingual province in Canada. However, the province is functionally bilingual in all but some rural areas.

However, any sort of generalization doesn’t help the conversation. It’s just name calling, facually incorrect, and doesn’t contribute.

Boomer (#184):

“There’s enough projection going on in this sentence to make one’s head spin.”

In the territory of Quebec, anglophones represent about 13% of the population. I speak and write your language. Montreal is, by far, the most bilingual place in Canada.

How’s your French?

@Blain (#187)

Unfortunately, it’s an election that was best suited for the Liberals to fight about fifteen years ago. Harper is vulnerable, but it requires the kind of bloody knuckles campaign that hammering relentlessly on the contempt charge and the scandals without even the slightest pause or concession. Letting the Tories start by defining this based on the ‘coalition’ nonsense has cost them a week already, and I get the feeling that the Liberal gameplan is to try and win it all at the debates. If so, they’ve badly miscalculated their strategy.

“Montreal is, by far, the most bilingual place in Canada.”
And yet you argue that an Anglophone Doctor should not be able to receive government services in English.

MPAVictoria (#192) said “And yet you argue that an Anglophone Doctor should not be able to receive government services in English.”

I argue that he shouldn’t feel entitled to them, just like I think that one shouldn’t expect to be served in english in a Spanish cafe. Out of politeness, the waiter might address you in English, but he isn’t required to do so.

Quebec isn’t bilingual. Nevertheless, as the Anglophone doctor mentioned, it is rare that someone refuses to use English.

Dex (#195),

“I firmly believe the only way to adress Quebec’s desire as a unique society is from within Canada, and that only happens when Quebec has the influence to force a seat at the table. That doesn’t happen when their representation is dominated by seperatists.”

After the failures of Charlottetown and Meech, many Quebecers, even federalists Quebecers, pretty much lost all hope that their interests can be expressed and defended by a purely federalist party.

Just look at the political platforms and the leaders of the NPD, Liberals and Tories: if you were a Quebecer, even a mildly autonomist Quebecer, not a hardcore separatist, would you vote for any of these parties? Or would you vote for the Bloc and Duceppe, who at least are consistent and, for the most part, honest about their allegiances?

I don’t even really blame the Federalist parties: the mood of the rest of Canada is such that any significant positive gesture towards Quebec has pretty much become political suicide.

You’re easily confused. The Province of Quebec isn’t bilingual, it’s official language is French. But many, many Montrealers, the citizens of the largest city in the Province of Quebec, which is still part of Canada, speak both french and english.

If Montreal is bilingual and anglophones pay taxes shouldn’t they have the option of having services provided in English where numbers warrant such service? I support the Federal Gov’t providing services in French where numbers warrant. If there is a need for the service what is to be gained by failing to provide it?

MPAVictoria (#200):

“If Montreal is bilingual and anglophones pay taxes shouldn’t they have the option of having services provided in English where numbers warrant such service? ”

They have that option: for instance, there are english school boards, universities and hospitals. Many government services are provided in both languages. But, by the looks of it (I’m referring to your doctor’s letter), there are some government services which sometimes aren’t. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know. The government must have its own reasons… Maybe there aren’t enough english-speaking persons requesting the service to justify maintaining a bilingual functionary. Maybe there’s a bilingual functionary, but he got dumped by his english-speaking girlfriend that morning. I don’t know. I don’t get all hot and bothered if there are some services that aren’t provided, as long as most are.

Shorter H.P Lovecraft: Don’t worry everybody I will be just fine.

And the name is Loveshack, not Lovecraft.

@ MPAVictoria (#207),

“Oh so sorry Mr. Sanctimony McPatronizer”

LOL!

Seriously though I am sorry that you have felt the need to move from the federalist to the separatist camp. I think Canada is a stronger country with Quebec in it.

I find it interesting that those from Quebec feel that they are not being represented within Canada while other Canadians feel that Quebec has far to much influence. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

Loveshack: “the other provinces never elected separatist governments and they didn’t have two independence referendums.”

Sure and they voted No in both referendums, and they have voted the separatists out of government 8 years ago, and don’t forget that even when the PQ was in government, they never received close to 50% of the vote. So it is hard to follow your argument. The tendency seems to be precisely that Quebecers care less now about independence than they did 15 years ago, when the last referendum failed. Wouldn’t it be more productive to focus on a political project that actually appeals to a majority of Quebecers?

“You can’t just ignore the elephant in the room: eventually, probably next time the federal government tries to intervene within matters of provincial jurisdiction”

Can you give examples of the kind of issues you think the federal gov’t is intervening in?

@ MPAVictoria
As opposed to HPL, I moved the other way around, from being a sovereigntist (using this word is not just positive spin, by the way, but it reflects the real resonance it has in Quebec, which is related to the capacity to manage one’s own affairs – most ‘separatists’ I’ve ever known would love to have their own country without having to dismantle anybody else’s) to being a federalist, under the general assumption that some economies of scales are actually pretty useful for our cultural vitality (not mentioning other public goods for which we share an interest with everyone else). This being said, I think we could all do without a lot of the drama that we see on both sides of the issue. I also find it difficult to understand that we all seem to have disagreements where we still assume the good faith of the other party, but as soon as linguistic politics comes in, no one seems to just agree to disagree. It’s all historical humiliation here, and human rights violation there.

It’s also interesting to see that ‘separatists’ often get conflated with the much larger set of those who believe that bill 101 is a legitimate law (for those not familiar with our political background, this is our language law, which constrains somewhat the use of language in public and institutional settings). Why is language so much more fundamental a right than, say, use of a given currency, when the use of English is limited, but is incomprehensibly childish nit-picking when it is a francophone majority making a democratic choice to tilt incentives a bit further in its favor? If Arizona had a Spanish-speaking majority voting a pro-Spanish law, then the comparison would make more sense, right? But would it have the same rhetorical strength then?

Dialogue across the language divide would take a huge step in the right direction if it just left these old colonial rivalries in the closet for a while. But that’s the old idealist in me talking – for now, the cold shoulder is probably the best we can do.

Steve LaBonne (#214): Quebec,s liberal party, the main provincial federalist party, are extremely unpopular right now, so much so that i don,t think they will be able to climb back and win the next elections, which are due, I believe, in a couple of years. There will be a PQ government sooner or later. This issue won’t go away.

“The last conflict involving federal vs. provincial jurisdictions (it’s still going) involved the creation by the Federal government of a national securities commission. The governments of Alberta and Quebec oppose the creation of such a commission: provinces have traditionally been responsible for regulating securities because of their constitutional authority over property and civil rights.”

But after seeing the mess that poorly regulated securities markets resulted in in the United States doesn’t it make sense to regulate this on a national level? I mean regulating securities is hardly the sort of thing to inspire people to the barricades is it?

Whats the difference between a Quebecer who is Quebecer first and one who is Canadian first. As a french canadian living in montreal I see allot of overlap between the two. Everytime the subject of Quebec cultured is brought up it is always presented as being some kind of fixed unchanging group-think, independent of the people who actually inhabit the province. I simply dont consider it possible for a group of people to “lose” their culture, it can only change and modify, something that people like Loveshack apparently consider abhorrent.

Honestly, as someone born in 85 my whole childhood has been dominated by the question of seperation and i am sick of it. Separatism has taken on this mythic idea where if it achieved then all of our problems will be instantly and eternally fixed, feeding into this is a complete refusal by seperatists to define exactly in what way and to what degree seperation whould happen, better to keep things vague so that we do not mire ourselves in the detail.

At this point ive come to the decision that seperatism is either a joke or a failure. Either the PQ has no hope or no intention (or both) of calling another referendum and simply fans seperatist flames to get their votes (think anti-abortion politicians in the states). Or it simply just failed and the whole thing should be tabled and a forgotten for the short term and frankly most likely for the long term too.

Almost all of my friends are francophone and none of them are separatists, in fact in all the people i know, the only seperatist i know of is my own father, i don’t know anyone of my generation who wants seperation most don’t even care. Bill 101 might have preserved the french language but it did nothing to give the kind of emotional connection that would make them care.

Bill, I dont know to much about literature that you could find, though I would encourage you to look for anything about the founding of canada as a nation since its full of politicians who where quite a character, high stakes political drama and judging from the pictures, lots of booze. I cannot imagine such a combination not generating some interesting reading :)

Otherwise you can always grab some inspirations from these patriotic canadian commercials

They are little vignettes that contain important events and characters to canadian culture and probably the most patriotic thing Canadians could ever produce. As a child I saw them all the time during commercial breaks on TV. You can probably use them as jumping points for books that refer to the more interesting parts of our history.

Yikes, what happened to this thread? Anyway, not having time to thoroughly parse or think through all the comments since my last one, I’ll just second #118, # 163, # 164, # 187 and #222

chris: “How could the British king, at or before the time of the Declaration of Independence, possibly have allowed anyone to keep Napoleonic legal institutions?”

Good point. I quoted the “Napoleonic” from Marc without thinking. The clause in the Declaration I am referring to is this: “For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province…” The clause refers to a 1774 law that allowed Quebec to keep most of its French legal traditions and to remain catholic. An explanation of the context is here: http://colonialhall.com/histdocs/declaration/declarationanalysis20.php

Let’s try an allegory.

Those who want independence for Quebec (separation from Canada, say those who are against it) are like the nerds looking forward to the singularity, wanting the singularity to happen. They are even willing to work hard towards its success, sometimes.

Those who do not want the singularity or are in denial of it or denounced it as impossible (or don’t know much about computers) are the good people in the rest of Canada.

Now the singularity won’t happen overnight and in the meantime the singularity nerds and those who are in denial of it have to sort of live in the same country and think of forming a political coalition to make Peace, Order, and Good Government possible..

The only way to make a coalition happen is for the singularity denial bunch to enter in a pact with the singularity nerds, those who want to download their brains into computers and become one with machines. Oh, and in addition to the digitizing of minds and their downloading that part of the Canadian landscape in and around Quebec is going to be completely transformed by nanobots.

“Let nanobots loose on our Canadian soil? You must be crazy!”, say many people in the rest of Canada, outside of singularity-yearning Quebec. “Nano-whats?” say many other people in the rest of Canada. They haven’t quite caught up with the concepts involved you see.

“But the singularity will be good for everybody!” say the singularity nerds of Quebec. “Eternal life for all. No suffering. No material wants. Besides, it’s Quebec soil, it’s our land”

“Enter into a coalition with those digital freaks? I’d rather go back to the abacus”

This allegory means to show that we are not speaking the same language.

I’m not entirely sure, as I almost never am when reading separatist arguments, what H.P. Loveshack is talking about when he talks about how English Canada isn’t willing to make concessions to Quebec to preserve the French language and their unique status within Canada; I have vivid memories of Parliament overwhelmingly passing a motion declaring that Quebec constituted a nation within Canada. I would also not be at all surprised if Yvon Godin’s bill mandating bilingualism for Supreme Court appointees becomes law in the next Parliament. Against this, we have…a proposed national securities regulator. I can feel the oppression all the way out here in the Maritimes.

Quebec nationalists, as we’ve seen in this thread, feel very aggrieved when anyone brings up the possibility of partitioning la belle province in the aftermath of a successful secession referendum. I honestly don’t know why. The Supreme Court ruled in the Secession Reference that the government of Canada would be obliged to negotiate with the government of Quebec in the aftermath of a successful referendum; there’s no obligation that the federal government abandon Canadian citizens in Montreal and the north who wished to remain Canadian.

I think the biggest blind spot sovereigntists have is not any of the strawmen that H.P. Loveshack had delighted in thrashing. They seem to have no appreciation for how the rest of the country would react to a yes vote. I think that H.P. Loveshack is right to scornfully dismiss the notion that we’d send in the army. Quebec would become an independent country, and without bloodshed. After that, all bets are off. And it’s the rosy assumptions that seem to permeate sovereigntist discourse that I think most infuriates and, in a dark way, amuses people in the ROC. Canadian passports? No assumption of Canadian debt? An undivided Quebec? Dream on, I say.

My basic position on Quebec nationalism is that while I would like it if Quebec would continue to pursue its aspirations within Canada, I really don’t care if Quebeckers decide to go. The only thing I will say is that they should make that choice with their eyes open: it will be a messy, if bloodless, divorce, and both Quebec and Canada will come out of it diminished. If, after considering that, Quebeckers choice independence, then frankly I think the country is better off without them.

I think the biggest blind spot sovereigntists have is not any of the strawmen that H.P. Loveshack had delighted in thrashing. They seem to have no appreciation for how the rest of the country would react to a yes vote.

I think the even bigger problem would be how those Quebecers who voted No would react. Suppose an independence vote succeeds with 55% (a higher share is totally unrealistic). That would leave the new country with 45% of its population opposed to its existence. These people won’t just roll over and assimilate, let alone enthusiastically support the new nation. The idea that you hold referendums until you scratch together a bare majority in favor, and then have a democratic mandate for secession, and then a new country with a bright future is just waiting for you, that is what strikes me as incredibly naive about the whole souverainiste project. Anglophones and Francophones and First Nations will have to live together in Quebec whether or not you call it a sovereign country.

You know what’s going to happen if there’s no independence? The demographic, political and economical weight of Quebec within the Canadian federation will continue to inexorably decline. The west and the prairies are on the rise, and they are far more conservative, far more favourable to North American integration, and less understanding of Quebec’s needs. Under the weight of North American mass culture, Quebecers eventually will go the way of the Manitoban french. But I’m sure we’ll keep a few nice folkloric traditions for the tourists, something a bit like Cajun music and creole cuisine.

As I said before, the present territory of the province of Quebec is accepted by pretty much all the institutions involved, federal and provincial… And most importantly, it is accepted by the majority of Quebecers. If you really want to start negotiating with a newly independent Quebec under the worst possible terms, just bring partition to the table. It’s the best way to really alienate Quebecers and start some serious conflict.

Hell, you might even unify the vast majority of the francophone population, even those that voted “Non”, against the rest of Canada!

It is a blog comment section. We are whipping up pixels.

The present territory of the nation of Canada is accepted by pretty much all institutions involved; it’s only a disaffected minority in one province that disagrees.

Ahhh… I’m bored.

Quebec doesn’t have to be any different. That’s my point.

A sovereign Quebec is still going to have the troubles of an ascendent global English language hegemony. Will still have to deal with cultural imports from ROC and the USA. Will still be filled with a not insignificant number of anglophones. It’s not like a sovereign Quebec could do a better job at policing language than it’s doing right now.

What advantages are there? Their own flag and symbolic unity to strengthen cultural identity. That’s awesome. It’s also what Quebec has right now.

Also too, my point about Hamilton. Because a Hamilton NHL team is much more likely at this time than a Yes vote under the Clarity Act.

“As I said before, the present territory of the province of Quebec is accepted by pretty much all the institutions involved, federal and provincial”

This isn’t really an answer. The territory that makes up Montreal, or a hypothetical native reserve, is pretty much accepted by all institutions involved. Why can’t these political organizations democratically opt out of Quebec the same way Quebec can opt out of Canada? This is particularly true in regards to native reserves.

Oh, keep in mind that I, in no way, speak for other separatists or even other Quebecers. I’m just some guy with way too much free time on his hands.

I just hope that my opinions and explanations have made you understand a bit bettter why so many Quebecers vote for the Bloc and the Parti Quebecois.

But it is obvious that some people prefer to just listen to their prejudices and demonize away… What can a poor seperatist do, eh?

But it is obvious that some people prefer to just listen to their prejudices and demonize away… What can a poor seperatist do, eh?

The problem is that sovereigntists do not take this discussion as a two-way street, but tend to take the objections to it as illegitimate. Canada as a whole is open to the prospect of Quebec separating with active support for the idea in some pockets particularly in the West. It’s just that it may not have the salutary effects you think it has, and the ongoing threat itself has negative consequences that prevent other political developments from moving forward.

Ironically, the Bloc might in any case be one of the best arguments against sovereignty…

Since we’re dealing with Alternate Universe scenarios (next we should do one where teh Leafs win against Buffalo tonight, pushing the Sabres into a massive season-ending slump, securing a spot in the play-offs which leads to Toronto’s first Stanley Cup in forever and then Scarlett Johanssen shows up wearing nothing but a James Reimer jersey), I’m also against partition. I’m in agreement with HPL that Quebec’s borders are defined. That’s how you determine who gets to vote in the Referendum. If Montreal or Cree Nation want to separate from Sovereign Quebec or join Canada or propose a non-binding statement that Gilles Duceppe is a poopyhead, they’ll have to take the positive step of doing so.

Cause, you know, that sounds really weird to me.

Yes. Quebec’s influence on Canadian politics is by far out of proportion to her population, economy, heck even her land mass. As the petulent and squeaky wheel in Confederation that has a long history of being catered to, being part of Canada is in her best interests. Granted this is declining, what with the new dominance of the Oil Sands interests – but Sovereignty is not going to change that at all. In fact, one might argue that removing such a large non-Alberta chunk from Canada might make Quebec-ROC relations even more difficult in terms of respecting Quebec’s distinct identity.

Unless of course you have some explanation as to how a sovereign Quebec has better options and ability to promote her identity.

Mandos,

Nice! Now try to convince me that black is white!

This is silly.

That you have never been exposed to this line of argument (very standard and old in English media, particularly in the West) and react with incredulity suggests that you are not as much of an old hand at this as I thought you were. It is basically taken as a given in Anglo media that the federal state protects rather than dilutes francophone culture as a kind of “van Allen belt” given the stiff “solar wind” of global economics.

Wait. I quoted the wrong part. My bad.

No takers on the Hamilton thing, huh?

Dragon-King Wangchuck:
I could get behind a new hockey team in Hamilton. At the end of the day what is one more team for my beloved Oilers to lose to anyway?

CT comments policy “Commenters who who routinely seek to make marginally relevant debating points may be barred to make room for those with a substantive contribution to the discussion. It is up to us. ” How does this conversation not meet this threshold?

Secession is such a tired issue (especially around here) that Lonely Planet advises visitors to avoid talking about it lest you bore your dinner hosts. We can discuss the BQ without using the S word.

John, check this one out.

Legislative Coalitions and Minority Governments in Canada
http://www.cpsa-acsp.ca/papers-2009/Godbout-Hoyland.pdf

Jean-François Godbout ( Department of Political Science, Simon Fraser University)
Bjørn Høyland (Department of Political Science, University of Oslo)

Dragon-King:
I am sure we will both be very old men before Canada wins another Cup. Who knows though? Maybe the Canucks will do it this year.

Mandos,

My god, I just realised I should thank you for all you have done for Quebec! You have been so busy, working so hard, protecting us from the big bad anglo world, and here I am, a mountain of ingratitude, biting the hand that feeds me! [/sarcasm]

As I said before, this is silly.

Well since Vancouver is not The Centre of The Universe, I’m all “meh.” Really, it would be nice for the Leafs to make the post-season for the first time since the Lockout. Regarding Hamilton though, as an Oilers fan, how would you feel if Calgary got an NHL team?

@Mandos 248:

I’m from that second-order CA (-lifornia) and I’m reading, learning, enjoying, refreshing. Though I spent an embarassingly long amount of time wondering why Taiwan had such an outsize influence on Canadian politics. (The ROC.)

A brief summary of recent Canadian politics: “The decline of the Liberal Party has forced an uncertain realignment. Government is increasingly dysfunctional, because none of the four parties in the House of Commons present a vision that can win a majority.”

Sound fair? Is the Liberal Party still the natural party of government? Were Martin, Dion, and now Ignatieff all so… distasteful?

MPAVictoria,

Could you please tell me how many french speaking Quebcers work for the feds, as a % of the population of Quebec? 1%? 20%? 0,005%?

My god, I just realised I should thank you for all you have done for Quebec! You have been so busy, working so hard, protecting us from the big bad anglo world, and here I am, a mountain of ingratitude, biting the hand that feeds me! [/sarcasm]

Don’t shoot the messenger. This is exactly how Quebec is seen in the West, and you probably know that know that—a mountain of ingratitude, biting that hand that feeds it. It’s less so in Ontario, which stands to be hurt be the departure of Quebec. But its the default position in e.g. Alberta to believe that Alberta oil subsidizes Quebec culture.

I would be so quick to completely dismiss all of the idea, though. As I said, there are disadvantages to unitary states. I don’t agree with the Western populists; Quebec along with all other provinces punch above their overall individual weights in the highly decentralized Canadian system…

Could you please tell me how many french speaking Quebcers work for the feds, as a % of the population of Quebec? 1%? 20%? 0,005%?

I have no current number, but way back in the nineties it was over 100 000 employees. It’s not going to be insubstantial. Presuming those people are doing necessary things separating from Canada may not lead to those positions vanishing, just that the feds won’t be paying their salaries.

Cheapskates at Statistics Canada have tables that seem to promise numbers for those earning federal dollars but want money.

http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/pick-choisir?lang=eng&id=1830002&pattern=1830002&searchTypeByValue=1

H.P. Loveshack:
No I don’t know what the percentage is, however given that the federal government employees tens of thousands of workers I am betting the number is higher then you might think. Not trying to be patronizing.

This argument is still on? God is Loveshack tireless.

And this is quite right:

And it’s the rosy assumptions that seem to permeate sovereigntist discourse that I think most infuriates and, in a dark way, amuses people in the ROC. Canadian passports? No assumption of Canadian debt? An undivided Quebec? Dream on, I say.

Canadian passports for a sovereign Quebec…snicker. I’d sooner give Canadian passports to the French.

By the way, of course secessionists like HPL want to declare the possibility of “partition” by non-Francophones seceding from Quebec out-of-bounds. After all, the result would put much of HydroQuebec’s generation capacity in a non-Francophone Cree polity that isn’t likely to want to keep selling at “Heritage Pool” rates.

perl -pe “s/BQ/PQ/g ;” previous_post.txt

You are right: Many citizens were really really upset about this PQ initiative and maybe they realized that the PQ doesn’t have much respect for regional autonomy within Quebec.

@ piglet

Respectfully, if I may, your points against secession only make unambiguous sense in my view when language is taken out of the equation. Clearly, there is no comparable situation in either the US or Australia. The Quebec case must be looked at first and foremost through the language question.

1. We may very well believe this is wishful thinking, and I’m inkling on your side there, but in all fairness to the argument, the secessionist idea is that sovereignty would make it clear to prospective immigrants that Quebec is not a passageway to an anglophone continent but a francophone country on its own. Again, we can disagree as to how efficient this would be, but the point seems to me totally legitimate, and my crystal ball is no better than anyone else on either side of the issue. Is yours?

2. There is no comparable situation in either the US or Australia. They’re federations alright, but they include no jurisdiction with an ambition to maintain a thriving democratic society operating in a different language than that of the other jurisdictions. Disputes between levels of government then are not simply administrative in nature, they pit deep-seated political loyalties against each other. Consider the possibility that for many people in Quebec, Ottawa is making decisions that make no sense within the political discussions that go on in french newspapers – these decisions appear to be imposed against the collective will, at least as it is represented in their own language. The regulatory body thing is one of those.

If democracy is government by discussion, multilingual democracy can’t be just a minor variation on that theme. It has to be a special challenge, that’s for sure.

“The whole point of the exercise is defining a Quebec nation that is an integral unit. Montreal is not a nation by their reckoning; therefore why should it be autonomous?”

I don’t know who gets to make these definitions: this is a nation and this is not. Besides, Quebec is NOT an integral unit by any non-arbitrary definition. Neither is Canada or indeed any other country I know of. But that is precisely the point: We should know better, in 2011, than looking for organically defined, ethnically homogeneous nation-states.

Tell us how separation is impossible (it clearly isn’t, based on all the precedents), tell us how it won’t solve our problems (clearly with our hands on the wheel, instead of sharing with western canada, can’t hurt our causes), you can’t.

No border is sacred. The question is, is it better than not? Are you saying that that question is not worth asking?

What Alberta thinks, I agree, is not in itself relevant: I only present it as an illustration that the things that sovereigntists believe are absurd and incoherent may not be.

@ piglet

On the immigration argument, I was only offering, as best I could see it, the main argument of those who see a demographic advantage over the longer term from a Québécois country. I’m not saying we should agree with this conjecture, but only that it is neither inconsistent nor particularly implausible. I’m afraid I don’t see the relevance of your response, though. The argument has nothing to do with the presence of the anglophone minority, and it has nothing to do with controlling the selection of immigrants from within the pool of self-selected prospects. It has to do with making that first step, i.e. the decision to migrate, a function of moving to a French-speaking country as opposed to moving to an English-speaking one. The conjecture that is made here is precisely that, currently, prospective immigrants are under the impression that Canada is really an English-speaking country, hence as you say, Quebec ends up with mainly federalist immigrants despite its measure of control over immigration. We can have different theories of the motives of immigrants, which will make us pick different sides with respect to this argument, but there’s really no obvious way to “win” it, assuming it’s of any interest. The only respectable way out of this, that I know of, is called voting.

As to the securities regulation, again, I still think that you’re leaving aside a significant aspect of the question, which is that pretty much all social relations, including political and economic ones, are taking place within a linguistic universe. People who can’t get understand each other can’t do much together either. Now, clearly, if we do speak the same language, we can still find all sorts of ways to disagree and fight and use up our testosterone. In that sense, you’re right again: there’s no need for the language issue to explain the existence of tensions over the optimal level of centralization. But this does not vitiate the linguistic argument in any way – I’m just saying it is painting an additional coat of such tensions, and that it’s not an imaginary coat. Surely you must know that a good part of the story here is that anglophones have traditionally been seen as those who had control over the main levers of Quebec economy until the Quiet Revolution. One of the main results of the 60s-70s era is often called “Quebec inc.”, i.e. the francophone newly developed larger-business class, and which got sort of mythological status, kind of like Maurice Richard standing up to the Anglo establishment. So the idea that there would be no real incentive anymore for businesses to lead their financial activities in french is bound to tickle those who think that a strong culture requires a capacity to do as much of its business as possible in the language of that culture. Again, I’m not saying this is just cause for declaring war on anyone, I’m saying it just makes sense that it is a real bone of contention, rather just another proof of the stupidity of those who don’t see things the way we do.

The conjecture that is made here is precisely that, currently, prospective immigrants are under the impression that Canada is really an English-speaking country, hence as you say, Quebec ends up with mainly federalist immigrants despite its measure of control over immigration.

The immigrants I know who have gone through the process are usually under the impression that Canada’s languages are French and English, with French being particularly advantageous in Quebec. It may be different for refugee claimants, but I have also met immigrants who were awfully confused at the relative lack of French elsewhere in the country.

Yvan, an awful lot of countries, maybe most, are not monolingual. I don’t dispute that the language barrier adds problems (but also a cultural wealth that we shouldn’t want to miss) but I can’t follow the claim that any mundane political dispute involving Quebec must be interpreted in the prism of language.

“Not sure if and why your response in #302 is directed to me”

No it’s not but your comment fit.