LadyAngelika
Posts: 8070
Joined: 7/4/2004
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: BLoved
I was reading LA's response to an earlier post where she was explaining why Quebec won't sign the constitution, and it is as a result of those statements that I came to my current position.
I realized Quebec has absolutely no reason to sign the constitution, and is quite willing to continue sponging off the rest of the country.
Firstly, we need to look at the history to understand why Québec resists signing the Constitution. As I'm sure you know your Canadian History, for the benefit of most of our non-Canadian readers, let me summarize. Of course this summation will be tainted with my perspective of a French Canadian and over-simplified, but many of the facts that I will present will definitely shed light on the issue.
The Constitution is a whole other story. The constitutional history of Canada begins in 1763 where France is obliged to turn over New France to the Brits under the Treaty of Paris which put the end to a 7 year war on the Plains of Abraham. There was an exodus of many of the French (e.g.: to Louisiana).
The initial Canadian Constitutional Act of 1791 was not written in Canada, but in London, England, under British Rule. The British found many ways to try to assimilate the French Canadians for Centuries to come. In fact, Lord Durham, who was praised for introducing responsible government to Canada, was not so popular for including in his 1839 report a plan to speed up the extinction of the Francophone population into a homogenized Anglophone population via assimilation.
Of course, following the British North America Act 1867, Québec was one of the 4 provinces along with Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to enter into a Confederation on July 1, 1867 in response to threats of American annexation as well as to reduce governance costs. That is what is at the core of the Federal Dominion of Canada. Later, other provinces and territories joined up until the inclusion of Nunavut in 1999. THIS to me is the foundation of Canada and the foundation of our political process. THIS permits provinces to operate in a decentralized fashion all the while supporting one another. Is it perfect, no. I have seen very few alternatives that work better. Then again, I do not major in political science and would be willing to look at alternative models.
However, there was a push for the Constitution, like some kind of magical bond that would make everything better. The Constitution, a project started out of British/Anglo domination, a bitter pill the Francos were expected to swallow.
But the Domination of the Anglos over the Francos continued. We've already discussed all the laws but in place to ensure the slow death of Franco-Ontariens. Their culture was on life support for a while but they are a resilient bunch and it is getting better, though far from strong enough to survive on their own.
But the biggest evidence of a realization of this domination was in the 1960s during the Quiet Revolution in Québec in the 1960s. The slogan of the day was Maître chez nous (Masters in our own home) was a movement to redefine the balance of power between the vastly working-class Francophone Québécois and the majority Anglophone business and property owners. Québécois men like Joseph-Armand Bombardier are heroes to us because the hegemonic systems in place made it virtually impossible for the Francophones to get ahead. In addition, this movement brought forth secularized government institutions, nationalized electricity production with Hydro-Québec and an increase in labour unions.
Realizing that history was not going to change unless they took action, the Québécois elected the Parti-Québécois who orchestrated the 1980 Referendum on Sovereignty-Association with the intention of negotiating new terms of association with the rest of Canada. There was a 84% voter turn-out and 60% voted against sovereignty. It is my belief that at that time, the great mistake was to include the word sovereignty. Of course, the political situation was so very unstable and French idiots like Charles de Gaulle had to come and stick their nose in here, suggesting we should be a sovereign state with such asinine statements such as Vive le Québec libre!
So 2 years later, when the dust barely had the time to settle, our beloved Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, who I actually look up to for many reasons, brought forth the Canadian Constitution in the form of the Canada Act 1982 which established the new Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but still signed by the Queen! So as much as I love the guy, who incidentally was a Québécois, this initiative could go 2 ways: it could either bring the defeated Québec into the loop or alienate even more. At the time, the Trudeau's Liberal party of Canada held 74/75 federal seats in Québec - he might have had a chance. Well, option 2 happened, it back fired and I'm not surprised. René Levesque, then Premier of Québec and he were not the best of buddies. It was up to the Parti-Québécois to sign and they weren't about to show such defeat, not after 300 years of the Québécois signing treaties in defeat giving up their rights to Anglo and British rule, especially not at the hands of Trudeau, who I'm sure he considered a traitor. I guess Levesque didn't like being sodomized ;-)
So 1089, new leaders were in place. Canadian Conservative Party Leader and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Québec Liberal Party Leader and Premier Robert Bourassa got together with the rest of the Canadian Premiers for the Meech Lake Accord in hoping that they could finally come to some kind of an agreement. Now Québec did not have separatists at the helm. They had voted in the Provincial Liberal party. The failure of this accord rests not in the hands of Québec but in the hands of Manitoba and Newfoundland.
And as a result, on of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's long standing friends, Lucien Bouchard and several others decided to form Le Bloc Québécois in order to defend Québec's interest in the Canadian parliament. Their feeling was that if they were obliged to be there, they would do so with their own interests. While I completely understand their motivations, this was in my mind a move that further put oil on the fire.
But in the 1993 Federal elections, the Bloc Québécois became the leader of the official opposition in the Canadian House of Commons which gave the Provincial Parti-Québécois under the lead of the Jacques Parizeau the feeling that he could be the great leader to liberate his province. And he almost won. A referendum held in Quebec on October 30, 1995 resulted in a narrow 50.56%-to-49.44% decision against Quebec sovereignty, with a 93% voter turnout. And this day I remember well. I remember being huddled with a bunch of friends in a bar on St-Laurent Street, the main street dividing the French side from the English side of Montreal, signing Oh Canada patriotically, both in French and in English.
We knew Canada did not want us to leave. We tried to convince the other indoctrinated Québécois. In fact, Canada showed us. A rally celebrating a united Canada was organized three days before the referendum vote. On October 27, 1995, an estimated 100,000 Canadians from all provinces of Canada were gathered at the Place du Canada in Montréal for what was called the "Unity Rally". Oddly enough, walking home from the Unity Rally, I ran into former Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau on a small side street (one of the many things I loved about Trudeau is after office, he roamed the streets of Montreal like a regular citizen. Mulroney does as well.) I was in awe and thanked him for all he had done to keep Canada together. He smiled at us and told us to take care of our country.
Of course, the day after the referendum, the xenophobic and alcoholic Jacques Parizeau resigned as the leader of the Parti Québécois, partly because of the controversy caused by his remarks blaming the sovereignist defeat in the referendum on "money and the ethnic vote."
Things have been tense ever since.
quote:
Meanwhile, anything doesn't go their way and they can threaten to separate... again. Not quite. Parizeau pretty much put the nail in the coffin for the separatist movement. He was his movement's own worst enemy.
A few weeks ago, Lucien Bouchard, who served both as the Bloc Québécois party leader and Leader of Opposition in the Canadian House of Commons from 1993 to 1996, and the 27th Premier of Quebec from 1996 to 2001 to try to clean up Parizeau's mess, spoke out against his former party. A front-page headline in Le Devoir last week read: "Sovereignty Is No Longer Achievable, Bouchard Says." He affirmed that only is independence on the shelf but it's not even something the Québécois should focus on for now. He stated that the Parti-Québécois has become "increasingly radical" toward minorities (obviously that was a stab at Parizeau) and is ignoring important issues like education and reducing public debt. This of course is stirring up shit like nobody's business here. quote:
I don't know why I didn't realize this earlier, but we are trying to appease Quebec, and as we all know, appeasement doesn't work.
It just emboldens the black-mailer. Yeah ok, scroll up. Maybe I was wrong about you knowing your Canadian History well.
quote:
Why shouldn't Ontario do the same? Threaten to cut off the flow of money to the rest of Canada if we don't get everything we want? It works for Quebec and they're not putting as much money into the pot as they are getting out of it.
So why not us?
And Alberta can threaten to cut off the flow of oil revenue if they don't get everything they want.
And the west coast and the east coast can threatne to cut off the use of their ports ...
And on and on until we have what left?
Nothing. Québec isn't the only province that has considered separatism.
http://www.separationalberta.com/ quote:
This is the example Quebec sets for the rest of Canada. That one was easy.
quote:
Time for a different strategy. On this, we agree.
- LA
_____________________________
Une main de fer dans un gant de velours ~ An iron hand in a velvet glove
|
RE: Quebec - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread