As home to the only French-speaking
society in North America,
Quebec
is totally distinct from the rest of
the continent - so distinct, in
fact, that its political elite have
been obsessed with the politics of
secession for the last forty years.
The genesis of Quebec's potential
political separation from its
English-speaking neighbors tracks
back to France's ceding of the
colony to Britain after the Conquest
of 1759. At first this transfer saw
little change in the life of most Québécois.
Permitted to maintain their language
and religion, they stayed under the
control of the Catholic Church,
whose domination of rural society -
evident in the huge churches of Quebec's
tiny villages - resulted in an
economically and educationally
deprived subclass whose main
contribution was huge families. It
was these huge families, though,
that ensured French-speakers would
continue to dominate the province
demographically - a political move
termed the
revanche du berceau
(revenge of the cradle).
The creation of Lower and Upper
Canada in 1791 emphasized the
inequalities between anglophones and
francophones, as the French-speaking
majority in Lower Canada were ruled
by the so-called Château Clique
- an assembly of francophone priests
and seigneurs who had to answer to a
British governor and council
appointed in London. Rebellions
against this hierarchy by the French
Patriotes in 1837 led to an
investigation by Lord Durham who
concluded that English and French
relations were akin to "two
nations warring within the bosom of
a single state". His
prescription for peace was immersing
French-Canadians in the English
culture of North America, and the
subsequent establishment of the
Province of Canada in 1840 can be
seen as a deliberate attempt to
marginalize francophone opinion
within an English-speaking state.
French-Canadians remained
insulated from the economic
mainstream until twentieth-century industrialization
, financed and run by the
better-educated anglophones, led to
a mass francophone migration to the
cities. Here, a French-speaking
middle class soon began to
articulate the grievances of the
workforce and to criticize the
suffocating effect the Church was
having on francophone opportunity.
The shake-up of Quebec society
finally came about with the
so-called Quiet Revolution in
the 1960s, spurred by the provincial
government under the leadership of
Jean Lesage and his Liberal Party of
Quebec. The provincial government
took control of welfare, health and
education away from the Church and,
under the slogan " Maîtres
chez-nous " (Masters of our
own house), established state-owned
industries that reversed anglophone
financial domination by encouraging
the development of a francophone
entrepreneurial and business class.
In order to implement these
fiscal policies, Quebec needed to
administer its own taxes, and the
provincial Liberals, despite being
staunchly federalist, were
constantly at loggerheads with
Ottawa. Encouraged and influenced by
other nationalist struggles, Québécois'
desire for cultural recognition and
political power intensified and
reached a violent peak in 1970 with
the terrorist actions of the largely
unpopular Front de Libération du
Quebec (FLQ) in Montréal. The
kidnapping of Cabinet Minster Pierre
Laporte and British diplomat James
Cross, with Laporte winding up dead
in the trunk of a car, led
then-Prime Minister Pierre Elliott
Trudeau to enact the War Measures
Act and send Canadian troops into
the streets of Montréal. Six years
later a massive reaction against the
ruling provincial Liberals brought
the separatist Parti Québécois
(PQ) to power in Montréal. Led by
René Lévesque, the Parti Québécois
accelerated the process of social
change with the Charte de la
langue française , better known
as Bill 101 , which
established French as the province's
official language. With French
dominant in the workplace and the
classroom, Québécois thought they
had got as close as possible to
cultural and social independence.
Still reeling from the terrorist
activities of the FLQ and scared
that Lévesque's ultimate objective
of separatism would leave Quebec
economically adrift, the 6.5-million
population voted 60:40 against
sovereignty in a 1980 referendum.
Having made the promise that
voting against separation meant
voting for a "new Canada",
Trudeau set about repatriating the
country's Constitution in the
autumn of 1981. Quebec was prepared
to contest the agreement with the
support of other provincial leaders,
but was spectacularly denied the
opportunity to do so when Trudeau
called a late-night meeting on the
issue and did not invite Lévesque
to the table. "The night of the
long knives", as the event
became known, wound up imposing a
Constitution on the province that
placed its language rights in
jeopardy and removed its veto power
over constitutional amendments.
Accordingly, the provincial
government refused to sign it - and
hasn't to this day.
The Constitution's failure to
include Quebec became a lingering
source of ire, which the beau
risque (beautiful risk) equally
failed to extinguish. A good-faith
alliance between Québécois, the
Liberal Party of Quebec under Robert
Bourassa, and the federal
Progressive-Conservatives under
Brian Mulroney, the beau risque
produced the Meech Lake Accord
in 1990. Inspired by Mulroney's talk
of bringing Quebec back into the
Canadian fold with "honour and
enthusiasm", the accord sought
to recognize Quebec's status as a
"distinct society" and
give it the power to opt out of
federal legislation it didn't like -
including the Canadian Charter of
Rights and Freedoms, the Canadian
equivalent of the American Bill of
Rights. The talks collapsed on Quebec's
national holiday, la Fête St-Jean-Baptiste,
and tens of thousands of Québécois
took to the streets to demonstrate
their frustration. The failure also
prompted Lucien Bouchard, one of
Mulroney's cabinet ministers and
primary promoter of the agreement to
English Canada, to resign from the
Progressive-Conservative Party and
form a new sovereignist federal
party, the Bloc Québécois .
In desperation, the Liberal leader
Robert Bourassa hastily threw
together a constitutional agreement,
the Charlottetown Accord ,
that attempted not only to satisfy Quebec,
but the rest of Canada, and the
aboriginal peoples as well. The
accord's scope was so enormous that
it failed on all points and was
rejected by Quebec and several other
provinces in a Canada-wide
referendum in 1992.
In October 1993, Quebec's
displeasure with federalism was
evident in the election of Lucien
Bouchard's Bloc Québécois to the
ironic status of Her Majesty's
Official Opposition in Ottawa. The
cause received added support in 1994
when the Parti Québécois was
returned to provincial power after
vowing to hold a province-wide
referendum on separation from
Canada. The referendum was
held a year later and the vote was
so close - the province opted to
remain a part of Canada by a margin
of under one percent (50.6:49.4) -
that calls immediately arose for a
third referendum (prompting pundits
to refer to the process as the
"neverendum").
In 1996, Bouchard left federal
politics to take the leadership of
the PQ, determined to become the
leader of a new country and
promising to proceed with the
separation process and work on the
economy. Another step towards
constitutional reform was taken in
September 1997, when nine of
Canada's ten provincial premiers
endorsed the Calgary Declaration
stating that Quebec's unique
character should be recognized - a
shift from the "distinct
society" recognition proposal
in the failed Meech Lake and
Charlottetown constitutional reform
packages. Bouchard, the only premier
not in attendance at the meeting,
took the new term as "an
insult", and the declaration's
intentions never really got off the
ground. Instead, the federal
Liberals enacted the Clarity Act
in 1999 - a sharp departure from
their previous kowtowing tactics, as
the act laid out the requirements Quebec
needed to meet to secede from
Canada. While it infuriated leaders
of the sovereignist movement, it
also met with sharp criticism from
members of the federalist camp who
were convinced it would ignite
sovereignist fire and result in a
definitive Yes vote. Their fears
didn't come to pass, however; in a
surprising turn of the popular vote,
the 2000 federal elections saw the
federal Liberals win more in Quebec
than the Bloc Québécois.
An even greater shock was
Bouchard's sudden resignation as
Premier of Quebec in January 2001,
leaving the PQ with no obvious
successor that matched his powers of
oratory or charisma. Without
Bouchard, there is little hope of
achieving the dream of a sovereign Quebec
in the near future - if ever.
Whoever the party chooses as his
replacement will have to contend
with the current political climate
that suggests Québécois are tired
of the political wrangling and would
rather see a new deal that keeps
them in Canada. After suffering
through the long recession due, in
large part, to the political battles
that have dominated Quebec for the
last two decades, Québécois have a
vested interest in maintaining the
momentum of economic growth the
province is currently experiencing.
And, for the time being, they appear
more interested in maintaining
political peace than encouraging old
fights.
