The Quebec Question: Something Old, Something New

When Stephen Harper announced that he intended to introduce a motion in the House of Commons declaring that Quebec constituted a nation within Canada, this seemingly profound gesture was more about political tactics that about setting right historic wrongs. Harper deftly inserted himself between the Bloc Quebecois and a divided Liberal party on the eve on its leadership convention with his sudden initiative.

What set the dominoes falling in the first place was the position adopted by Michael Ignatieff that the way to resolve the Quebec question was with the formula: “Quebec is my nation; Canada is my country.” To this the Bloc responded with its own initiative---a Commons resolution to declare that Quebec was a nation tout court. Ignatieff’s maladroitly handled foray on the Quebec question led to an effective riposte from leadership rival Bob Rae. When Ignatieff, who has an unerring eye for the maladroit, warned that Canada could face civil war unless the Quebec question was resolved, Rae had him. Only someone who was not around for the Meech Lake and Charlottetown melodramas would reopen this can of worms, said Rae, who presents himself as the man of experience and reasoned calm.

Now Harper has landed the Liberals in a quagmire, or has he? He has forced the Liberals (with a few possible dissenters), as well as the Bloc and the NDP to support his motion. When the Liberals vote for the resolution recognizing Quebec as a nation on Monday, they will concede a tactical victory to Harper. If they had refused, they would have offended the large majority of Quebecers---with their National Assembly and national capital region (around Quebec City)---who have long thought of themselves as constituting a nation.

And what are the Liberals to do when they get to Montreal with the resolution advanced by the Ignatieff camp that would embed the recognition of Quebec as a nation in the constitution, when the conditions for this permit, something the Harper resolution decidedly does not do?

Before assessing the significance of all this, we need to take a brief journey through history to review the evolution of this thorny question.

The idea that French Canadians or Quebecers (both notions were advanced) constitute a nation has a very long pedigree. It had been around for decades by the time the Quiet Revolution got underway in Quebec in the 1960s. The question was transformed during the sixties, a time when nations in Africa and elsewhere were throwing off the chains of colonialism and establishing sovereign states---so that, in theory at least, they would no longer be ruled by the old imperial powers. With the Union Nationale regime out of the way, young Quebec nationalists were proclaiming that Quebec was just as much a nation---with its shared history, common culture, religion and large territory---as the newly independent states that were making their debut.

Many were inspired by the recent Cuban Revolution. I remember student leaders, at the time, who displayed maps of Cuba on the walls of their offices. “If Cuba can do it, why not Quebec with its higher level of development, vaster resources and ample territory?” they asked rhetorically.

From this point, federal political parties tried placing a toe in these frigid waters.

The first federal party to state that Canada was a country made up of “two founding nations” was the NDP at its inaugural convention in Ottawa in 1961. The term “nation” it was carefully explained, was used in a sociological sense, in accordance with the meaning of the French word nation to convey the idea that French speakers in Canada constituted a people. The NDP took this step in the early days of the Quiet Revolution. The gesture was somewhat costly politically. A few distinguished social democrats, long time members of the CCF, such as Eugene Forsey, were so annoyed that they refused to join the fledgling NDP.

After Robert Stanfield became federal Conservative leader in 1967, his party took tentative steps, as well, to declare that Canada was composed of two nations.

What was significant was that both these attempts to recognize the national character of the French fact in Canada---unclear though they were about whether these propositions referred to French Canada as a whole or to Quebec---came from political parties overwhelmingly based in English Canada. These well meaning attempts to reach an understanding with Quebec nationalists were stopped dead in their tracks by the rise of the personality who dominated the era---Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

When Trudeau entered federal politics, he brought with him his deep-seated disdain for nationalism. His interpretation of modern history was that the idea that as a consequence of their unique personalities (cultures), nations have the right to self-determination was the root of much of the world’s misery.

What Quebec needed, he insisted, was the development of the capacities of individual Quebecers. Through education, enterprise and a mastery of technology, Quebecers would make themselves a force to be reckoned with across Canada. Their achievements would win them power in Ottawa in addition to the power they already had in Quebec City and would assure the survival of their language and culture. Quebec had no need of special recognition as the homeland of a nation, he argued. He held solidly to this position in power and out. After leaving office, he railed against the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords, deploring any arrangement that would bestow “distinct society” status on Quebec.

While Trudeau’s position never won over more than a few politicians in provincial politics in Quebec, it had a decisive impact in English Canada. His insistence that all provinces must be treated alike and that none had more importance than any other in its role in guaranteeing the linguistic and cultural rights of Francophones won easy ascendancy in English Canada. After all, here was a Quebecer who was keeping Quebec in its place. Trudeau’s new constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms took deeper root in English Canada than in Quebec and when he died he was mourned more deeply in Ontario than in Quebec.

Great though his influence was, Trudeau could not will the Quebec national question away. The insistence that Quebec must be accorded recognition for its collective character, its national character, has remained. A few Francophones like Stephane Dion, the author of the Clarity Act, clung to the Trudeau mantra, notwithstanding Dion’s decision to vote for Harper’s motion. For the rest, federalists or sovereignists, recognition of Quebec as a nation is desired, for the former to win soft nationalists to the federal cause, for the latter as a stepping stone to sovereignty.

Michael Ignatieff must be credited with having revisited a question that endures, while being reproached for having done it badly. For his part, the emptiness of Stephen Harper’s gesture is revealed in the fact that his resolution is like the Cheshire Cat, Quebec gets nothing from it but the smile. The moment Harper offered something substantial to Quebec, his political base in Alberta would rise in condemnation.

The worst thing about the historical legacy of Pierre Trudeau was to convince English Canadians that they need not trouble themselves with the Quebec question. For that reason, at least, the resolution with a smile is worth passing. With genuine recognition of Quebec as a nation, which must come one day, Canada can and will survive, but as a country made up not only of individuals, but also of collectivities, of which Quebec is one. Canadians have nothing to fear from embracing the deep diversity that has always characterized their country.

The Americans are Rethinking their Empire

The stunning defeat of the Republicans in the U.S. Congressional elections two weeks ago has prompted a much needed rethink about the global strategy of the American Empire.

Nearly four years after the invasion of the country by the “coalition of the willing”, Iraq is sinking into civil war. The American occupiers have been reduced to the level of spectators as sectarian violence drives Iraq toward balkanization. Political elders have been called in to seek a graceful way out of Iraq for the Bush administration. Disillusioned with the war and the broader vision of the administration, American voters punished the Republicans when they handed control of both houses of Congress to the Democrats.

More than the Bush administration is in crisis. The American global position is threatened. The U.S. military is overstretched. Iran appears to be the major winner as a consequence of the Iraq debacle, more likely than ever to develop nuclear weapons, and to become a more decisive regional player. North Korea defied the will of the international system with its nuclear test in the autumn of 2006. Washington relies ever more on China, its ultimate global rival, to rein in the regime in Pyongyang.

The financial position of the United States in the global system grows over more imperiled, in need of a major correction. Americans owe more than two trillion dollars more to foreigners than is owed by foreigners to them. More than a trillion dollars in U.S. securities are held by the Chinese and the Japanese. The position of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency is in doubt.

Pulling back from the details, what snaps into focus is the fact that the American Empire is in crisis. The United States faces problems remarkably similar in kind to those experienced by previous empires.

With the presidency of George W. Bush in tatters, the unilateralist experiment undertaken by the neo-conservative leadership of the United States since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 has been repudiated by the American people. The warrior ethnic promulgated by the authors of the invasion of Iraq----Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and others---has landed the United States in a quagmire in some ways more difficult than that of Vietnam. Since 1945, it has been a feature of every American administration to maintain domination over the critical region of the Persian Gulf with its vast petroleum reserves. Losing in Vietnam was humiliating for the United States and led to deep national soul-searching and self-doubt. Losing in Iraq means that American power in a more critical region of the world has been irretrievably checked.

Over the next two years, leading up to the presidential elections of 2008, we will be witness to a fundamental debate, not about whether the American Empire should continue to exist, but about how its strategic position in the world can be salvaged in the aftermath of the Iraq catastrophe.

Socialist Candidate Segolene Royal: Can She Win the French Presidency?

Menton: France: Segolene Royal, the fifty-three year old politician, has won the nomination to be the Socialist candidate in the French presidential election in the spring of 2007. Against two rivals, the old “elephants” as they were called, Royal won over 60 per cent of the votes cast. Just over 200,000 party members voted in the contest in which individual members decided the issue. She has become the first woman to be in a position to be elected president of the French Republic.

The elephants she defeated were Laurent Fabius, famous for having become France’s youngest prime minister ever when he was named to the position in 1984 by President Francois Mitterrand. The last two decades have not been kind to the boy wonder of the Socialist Party who ended up third in the race with 18 per cent of the vote. The second place candidate, with just over 20 per cent of the vote, was Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former economic minister of France, whose career was soiled when he was embroiled in a kick-back scheme to finance the Socialist Party, an offence all too common among French politicians.

The struggle for the nomination was nasty. Supporters of her opponents tried to throw Segolene Royal off her stride with their boisterous behaviour during all-candidates debates. Both Fabius and Strauss-Kahn seemed to believe that the nomination should come to people like them, men with long histories in the French political wars, and not a woman, who appears not to be a member of the country’s political class. But that is where they made their miscalculation. In France, the political class is a species wondrous to behold, made up of men who have been in the limelight for decades. When I came to France in 1986 to spend a year here for the first time, I grew familiar, during evening telecasts, with many of the politicians who are still to be seen today.

Even more than is the case with politicians in other countries, there is a separation between the members of the political class and the people. Politicians, of whatever political stripe, speak in the same tones, with their regional accents stamped out, and with a supply of rhetoric that is stupefying. For those who become big time players, political life goes on forever, as these personalities slowly grow into caricatures of themselves. That is what happened to Fabius and Strauss-Kahn.

Naturally, for their kind and for the aging men who are attached to their kind of politics, there is wonderment and alarm about what is being called Segomania in France. I encountered a well-educated, aging man in Menton today who expressed the view that Royal is an air-head who has managed to charm a large number of people with little more than a winning smile. For many who are in shock, the dismissal of the victorious candidate is a coded attack against the idea that any woman could be ready to become the president of the republic.

In truth Segolene Royal is a very experienced politician, who has served in the cabinet, and who has learned the hard-knuckle game of French politics. But she has managed to do it with a style of communication that is something new in France. While she summons plenty of dignity in her speeches and public appearances, she doesn’t talk like a politician. She speaks with clarity about the problems of working people, women and minorities in France in a way the country has not seen. She communicates easily with people, whether they are homeless, those without papers to remain in the country, or are members of France’s economic and political elites. She talks of a new and more inclusive French society in a way that calls up a vision of the future, in sharp contrast to the elephants in her party who seemed mired in the wars of the past. She generates hope like no candidate of the left since Francois Mitterrand in his greatest days.

Now she faces the great struggle that will be decided in the months to come---the battle, almost certainly against Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, for the presidency. While the right has not yet picked its candidate, Sarkozy is presumed by almost everyone to be the standard-bearer.

Like Royal, he does not communicate in the orotund tones of the political class. He speaks to his adherents with a spare and pugnacious directness. His appeal is to those who are insecure, whatever their rank in French society---insecure about the effects of globalization, about the rising visibility of North Africans and Muslims in France, and about the capacity of France to count for something in the world of the 21st century. His stock-in-trade is fear, which is why he is always on the scene within hours of a social outburst in one of the dispiriting suburbs of the great French cities.

There is an almost unnatural energy about Sarkozy as he strides to a microphone with gendarmes in the background. He is the little tough guy who is promising to straighten this country out. It scarcely matters to his adherents that he is wedded to the liberal economics (we would call these views neo-con) that visits the tempest of globalization on businesspeople and workers alike.

France is facing one of the major political turning points of its history. For over two centuries, the forces of expanding democracy and of reaction have been in contention, sometimes with one side in the ascendancy, sometimes the other. The trump card in Sarkozy’s frenetic crusade of the right is race. While he codes his message in a way that the right-wing extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the Front National, does not, he is clear enough in what he intends. Sarkozy promises to put the trouble makers in their place, back into the shadows, where they cannot trouble the citizenry at large. The mailed-fist of the uncompromising state would be his weapon. And he has shown that he knows how to use it.

Two alternative political courses are in view, the one that leads to a broader democracy and the other that leads to repression.

Segolene Versus Sarko

For the next five months, my blog will be coming to you from Menton, France. I’ll be there working on two books, one on a comparison of the American Empire with its predecessors, to be published by Penguin Books next fall. The other book, titled Oil, is also to appear next fall in the Groundwork Guide Series.

(I’ll be puttering away, as well, on a book I’ve been writing for fifteen years on the wacky life of the exile in France. It’s working title is Jamais Provence, and I haven’t yet pitched it to a publisher.)

I will post regularly from Menton on my usual subjects, and to these I’ll add observations about French and European society, especially on the hugely important issue of “belonging and not belonging”, how Europeans are coping with multi-cultural challenges.

I’ll write about the upcoming Presidential election in France. At present the leading candidate for the Socialists is Segolene Royal. The front-runner for the right is Nicolas Sarkozy, the law and order, minister of the interior, who shows up within hours on the scene of any protest from minorities against their lot in France, driving home his message that with him in the Elysee Palace, security will be the leading priority.

I also plan to write a series of posts arguing the case for the withdrawal of Canadian soldiers from Afghanistan.

In a few days, I’ll be checking in from Menton, as soon as France Telecom sets up my Internet access.

We Don't Need Hot Air From Jack Layton

Canada is emitting enough greenhouse gases without additional hot air from NDP leader Jack Layton.

At the beginning of November, Jack Layton threw a parliamentary life-line to Stephen Harper. He met with the prime minister after threatening that the NDP was prepared to introduce a motion of non-confidence in the Conservatives if they did not show flexibility on the issue of climate change. The maneuver was designed to resemble the NDP’s ultimatum to Paul Martin’s government in 2005 on the issue of the Liberal budget.

The difference was that the challenge to the Liberals bore fruit. Real changes were made to the budget that benefited ordinary Canadians. The ultimatum to Harper won’t end up reducing Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions by one ton.

Following his meeting with Layton, Stephen Harper announced that the government would send its Clean Air Act to a parliamentary committee prior to second reading. The NDP backed away from its threatened confidence motion and sent out a release headlined: “NDP achieves victory on climate change.”

“This breaks the parliamentary logjam,” declared Jack Layton. “What has been achieved over the last 48 hours means that this minority parliament will move forward on vital climate change legislation. This is a victory for all Canadians.”

Just what victory has been achieved “for all Canadians”?

A recent public opinion poll released by the CBC and Environics revealed that 71 per cent of Canadians believe the Conservatives’ Clean Air Act is not tough enough. On the issue of climate change, the Conservatives have become a bad joke. Defending the government’s phony mid century targets for achieving emission reductions has made Environment Minister Rona Ambrose a national embarrassment as she takes to the world stage at the UN conference on climate change in Nairobi.

So along comes Jack Layton to ease Stephen Harper’s pain. He meets with the prime minister, declares victory and today he fails to show up with Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe and Interim Liberal Leader Bill Graham at a joint news conference to condemn the Conservatives for their disgraceful environmental policy.

Instead of forging a united parliamentary opposition to Stephen Harper on climate change, the NDP plays its own game, whose cynical goal is all-too-obvious. The NDP hopes to make Harper look better than he really is, and wants to make the Liberals look worse than they are now prepared to be. This has everything to do with setting the stage for Jack Layton’s next election campaign and nothing to do with achieving real action on climate change.

Everybody knows that the late Liberal government had an abominable environmental record during its thirteen years in office. But anybody who has been watching the Liberal leadership contest knows that the four leading candidates are all committed to serious action on climate change. There has been a sea-change in the urgency with which Canadians now approach this question. If Stephen Harper is driven from office in the next election, climate change will be the first item on the new government’s agenda, whoever is installed at 24 Sussex Drive.

Meanwhile Stephen Harper, whose image is being air-brushed by Jack Layton, is the one national leader who is solidly committed to doing nothing on greenhouse gas emissions. Has the NDP forgotten that the Conservatives are the party of, by and for Big Oil? This is the party that advertises Canada as the most secure source of petroleum for the United States. Stephen Harper and his friends in the oil patch are dedicated to ramping up the production of oil from the Alberta oil sands as rapidly as possible. There are billions of dollars to be made from this.

Present oil sands technology involves the use of clean natural gas and enormous supplies of water to produce dirty oil. While oil sands production is transforming much of northern Alberta into a lobotomized lunarscape, greenhouse gas emissions are skyrocketing. The plain fact is that as long as this country fails to face up to the consequences of its position as the number one external supplier of oil to the U.S., it cannot play a positive role on the issue of climate change.

Stephen Harper may shift his rhetoric a little to help the NDP keep its share of the non-Conservative vote, but he will never budge on his commitment to Big Oil.

Who is Jack Layton trying to kid?