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The Partition Principle: Remapping Quebec After Separation

by Trevor McAlpine

Enough Is Enough: An Attorney’s Struggle for Democracy in Quebec

by Guy Bertrand, Angéline Fournier, Marie Thérese Blanc, trans.

Canada Is Not a Real Country

by Thomas Schnurmacher

At a dinner party more years ago than I can recall, I remember denouncing a Westmount woman and her ilk for being responsible for the growing separatist movement in Quebec. Heatedly, I
argued that the anglos had treated Québécois so badly for so long that what was happening then was inevitable and even understandable.
I may even have been correct two decades ago, but today the shoe is firmly on the other pied; now, it is the anglos who are treated badly by a francophone majority that glories in rubbing their noses in the dirt. We all know the litany of stupidities imposed by Quebec governments: rules governing who can attend English-language schools; the “francization” of business; the sign laws; a unilingual French public service and a racially-based polity; differential university tuition rates for extra-province students; and the still-real possibility of the destruction of the country.

Now For Plan B

For years, our federal leaders urged us to be calm, up to and through the 1995 referendum, which was won only by the barest of margins. Plan A will fix things, the government then said, but soft words in this case seem only to lead to demands for more. And just as Canadians outside Quebec, to judge by the opinion polls, are tired of seeking accommodation so, it seems, are anglophones and allophones inside Quebec, as well as federalist francophones. Increasingly, Plan B, the hard line, seems to be gaining adherents.

Three small books, all produced by the same publisher, ECW, are the leading indicators of this trend. The book that has attracted the most attention is Guy Bertrand’s, Enough Is Enough, primarily because he was a prominent middle-rank péquiste for years and because of the court case he launched attacking the constitutionality of Quebec’s referendum laws. Winning a Quebec Superior Court ruling that separation would be unconstitutional (printed in full here as an appendix), Bertrand finally shamed Ottawa into intervening at his side when the decision was appealed.

Bertrand’s book is less than stellar in terms of its writing and organization, but his argument is compelling. To him, the separatist elites in politics, the media, and academe are pressing their case like religious fanatics, gulling the poor and trampling on heretic anglos. He is also effective in arguing that a separate Quebec simply could not afford to carry the provincial debt and Quebec’s share of the national debt. The former separatist, convinced that Quebec has all the powers it needs to live as it chooses within Canada, has turned into the passionate federalist.

In Canada is Not a Real Country, Thomas Schnurmacher, who came to Canada from Hungary as a boy, is similarly passionate. This popular Montreal radio phone-in show host writes at full shriek. His title, taken from one of Lucien Bouchard’s deliberately provocative comments, served as his starting point: Bouchard thinks Canada is not real because Canada does not act like a real country. “If it did,” Schnurmacher says, Canada “would not continue to put up with the constant threats from separatists to deprive their fellow citizens of the country they love.”

With tart tongue and biting wit, Schnurmacher notes that Canada is the only federation that allows a region to hold separation referenda. He excoriates the “lamb lobby” of anglophones who constantly preach patience and understanding, and he calls on Ottawa to adopt Plan B’s hard line now. The soft nationalists, those who think that Quebec will get a better deal from Canada if they vote “Oui,” will return to the federalist camp if they can see that Canada will not move further. Put contingency legislation on the books now, in other words. “Soft nationalists,” Schnurmacher says correctly, “do not want to risk doing it completely alone…They wouldn’t mind having their own country, provided there is no risk at all and provided they would not have to face a substantially reduced standard of living.”

Provided, too, that Quebec would not be partitioned after independence. This is the argument Trevor McAlpine, an engineer and management consultant, makes in The Partition Principle: Remapping Quebec After Separation . McAlpine writes clearly and simply about a complex, emotional issue. His case is based upon the impeccable logic that if Canada is divisible, then so too is Quebec. This contention makes the Parti and Bloc Québécois bristle – “Canada is not a real country” was how Bouchard responded when asked why what was good for the goose was not good for the gander. But, as McAlpine notes irrefutably, the idea of partition did not originate with the federalists.

All But Unanswerable

He makes the case that Quebec’s first nations are a “people” in international law as much as and even more than Québécois. Their case for separation from Quebec, if they should wish to press it, is all but unanswerable. And the English-speaking similarly have credible arguments for partition on both geographical and political grounds if Quebec chooses to separate.

McAlpine’s last lines are worth pondering: “No new borderlines will ever be drawn that will satisfy everyone. Conflict will be inevitable.” He does not define conflict, but he is surely correct. Canadians and Québécois alike must recognize that, in the event of separation, there is the certainty of political conflict and the possibility of violence up to and including civil war. No one wishes bloodshed, but no one today can predict what will happen in a supercharged emotional period two, three, or five years in the future.

What is unquestionably clear is that it is not the federalists, not my Westmount friend, and not the Bertrands, Schnurmachers, and McAlpines, who are the provocateurs. Those who try to break up what now exists, those who ride the racialist and ideological hobby horse of separatism, are the ones who have created the anglo backlash. If there is conflict, it will be on the heads of the separatists.

 

Reviewer: J.l. Granatstein

Publisher: ECW

DETAILS

Price: $9.95

Page Count: 80 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 1-55022-291-0

Released: Oct.

Issue Date: 1997-1

Categories: Politics & Current Affairs

Reviewer: J.l. Granatstein

Publisher: ECW

DETAILS

Price: $19.95

Page Count: 190 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 1-55022-302-X

Released: Sept.

Issue Date: January 1, 1997

Categories: Politics & Current Affairs

Tags: , ,

Reviewer: J.l. Granatstein

Publisher: ECW

DETAILS

Price: $12.95

Page Count: 158 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 1-55022-290-2

Released: Oct.

Issue Date: January 1, 1997

Categories: Politics & Current Affairs