With Grits, Canada Splits?

The Liberals take credit for national unity. It never seems to occur to them that the disunity of this country can be laid at their doorstep.

The seeds of Quebec dissent were sown in 1759 when Wolfe beat Montcalm, followed by the Peace of Paris in 1763, where France abandoned Quebec for all time. This is why the Army recruiters of the First and Second World Wars often were wasting their breath appealing to Quebecers to help save France.

It would take a hell of a lot more time and space than I have available to begin to do the history, so fast forward to 1976. Clearly, leaving aside the rebellions of 1837, the election of the Parti Québécois under René Lévesque was the beginning of serious attempts by Quebec to separate from the rest of Canada. Though I hate to say it, I must, through clenched teeth, acknowledge that Pierre Trudeau was the only Canadian leader to understand what could and what could not be conceded to Quebec in order to (in the best meaning of the word) appease them.

(It must be remembered that the appeasement so bitterly attacked by Churchill was very different, and he consistently over the years supported the appeasement of legitimate claims.)

Trudeau, right and wrong

Trudeau saw Quebec's claim to French being an official language as reasonable, though the policy came into being in Lester Pearson's time. He also saw the need, as have all prime ministers, to bribe Quebec with goodies out of the national treasury for the dual purpose of taking Quebecers' minds off separation and, of course, for their political betterment.

What Trudeau saw as unacceptable even as a debating tool was any constitutional concessions. From a constitutional perspective, to Trudeau, Quebec was indeed a province comme les autres. At the time of Meech Lake in the late 80s and early 90s, Trudeau, though out of office, warned of the dangers of conceding special powers to Quebec. He was, again, outspoken in his condemnation of Charlottetown, concluding that if we pacified Quebec in that fashion, Canada would end not with a bang but a whimper. (His words.)

It was, however, Trudeau who provided the catalyst to the coming together of the new separatism, which took form in 1983, when he patriated the Constitution without getting the approval of the National Assembly in Quebec City. This gave René Lévesque a platform to claim that because he and the Parti Québécois didn't sign on the Constitution, Quebec had been insulted and dealt with badly. The Quebec Court of Appeal (all francophones) unanimously rejected Lévesque's claim. The Supreme Court of Canada, with three judges from Quebec, also unanimously dismissed Lévesque's argument.

New joker: Quebec as 'nation'

Then came Brian Mulroney, who had supported the new Constitution as it was approved in 1982, but suddenly reversed his field as he saw a political hole in the wall and took advantage. Saying that when the Tories won and he was prime minister he would "make Canada whole again," he recruited French separatists to the Tory party. (Some Mulroney apologists say these people were "sovereignists" not "separatists," to which the name Lucien Bouchard should be a full answer.)

The entire exercise of "making Canada whole again" was rubbish of course, but rubbish was Brian Mulroney's stock in trade. Born with glibness and political smarts, Mulroney was unburdened by a politica or any other kind of conscience so far as I can see.

Now we have a new joker in the deck: the move to have Quebec seen as a "nation," which, one would assume, is at least one notch up on "distinct society."

Prepare ourselves

I am sorely troubled, as a patriotic Canadian, to see this inexorable drift to a national split-up. I frankly think the break is inevitable and I believe that history and present policies confirm that.

I'm even more troubled by the fact that no preparations are in the making for a truncated Canada. In the words of Gordon Gibson in a book he wrote a few years ago, what happens if the wheels come off?

Canadians have the very human frailty of assuming that because something hasn't happened so far, it never will. I once had a mother-in-law who didn't like life insurance because it was bad luck! Silly, but no more silly than failing to plan, because if you do, the occurrence you fear will for that reason come to pass.