To ask it is to strike at the heart of the issue of multiculturalism and pluriethnicity in that part of the world. No one can deny that the rapid and at time radical socioeconomic, political, and institutional transformations that have marked Quebec society over the past thirty-five were largely aimed at redressing two centuries of second-class status, two centuries of injustice and inequality. The perception that other Quebeccers anglophones, immigrants have of them as an hegemonic group then it is not totally unwarranted.
On the other hand, the exercise of this so-called hegemony is not easily carried the administrative and political confines of the Canadian state. Manifestations of its will to self-determination, whether expressed in rallies for political sovereignty or in demands for administrative latitude, have always been interpreted as a direct threat to the integrity of the Canadian state.
Even Quebec's insistence that Canada is best expressed in the idea of a compact between two founding nations. English and French, is seen as suspect in many quarters. Implicit in this ides is the claim according to which both English and French Canadians have equal say in the control f the machinery of government.
The making of Canada into an officially bilingual English and French country in was partly meant to address Quebec's understanding of the Canadian federation and correct, at least symbolically, some of the socioeconomic inequality historically suffered by all French-speaking Canadians not only those living in Quebec. It implicity recognized the social and political importance of the French constituency in Canada by giving them the right to state services in their own language from Victoria to St.
John's, However, it also implied that English-speaking Canadians should equally expect to have access to state services in their mother tongue in predominantly French-speaking Quebec. Indeed the official bilingualization of Canada, just like the policies on multiculturalism that were to follow in the s and s, and the Constitutional Reform Act of , were all premised on a narrow egalitarian conception of society and politics: Canada is comprised of a large variety of people with different ethnocultural backgrounds; they must cherish their different and distinct individuality, they must respect each other's right to express it but, at the end of the day, they are all Canadians and they must all be treated equally by the federal state, their ultimate representative.
Behind the apparent generosity and humanism of such an approach lies a strategy of containment of Quebec's administrative and political aspirations. This message was repeatedly driven home in no uncertain terms by large segments of the Canadian population outside Quebec during intense public debates over the constitutional future of Canada between and Governmental attempts to accommodate some of Quebec's minimal demands were met twice with public reprobation: in with the demise of a federal government-initiated proposal for constitutional reform -the so-called Meech Lake Accord - aimed at appeasing Quebec's historical demands by entrenching its distinctive character and special status in the constitution, and aghain in at a national referendum on the Charlottetown Accord, a watered-down version of the Meech Lake package.
Both the Meech Lake and Charlottetown acords were presented by their proponents as an ultimate effort to keep the country united. Both have had the dubious distinction of further exacterbating the senitment of exasperation which Quebec and the rest of Canada feel for each other.
By becoming the mainstay of national identity. Canada's "ina bilingual framework" has reinforced the identities of minorities that have no territorial base other than the Canadian political community. It lends support to a political cutlure increasingly bent on removing all references to duality, to the notion of two founding majorities, and to that of a distinct political community in Quebec. In the current Canadian political framework, one identity is worth as much as another: a hierarchy of identities, as the idea of two founding nations implies, can no longer be tolerated.
Unsurprisingly, aboriginal peoples maintain today that they are the one and only original founding nation, and representatives of immigrant communities are making clear that they cannot endorse a two or even three-nation definition of the country. The political and constitutional developments of the past fifteen years in Canada have led to the actual negation of Quebec's specificity and to the trivialization of the Quebecois aspirations.
IN this sense, their so-called ethnocultural hegemony over Quebec is highly relative. The long-established and still powerful anglophone minority, immigrants, and aboriginal peoples are pressing down on them to define the content of their sociopolitical project and explain just how all those who are not French ethnics figure in it.
To what extent should they aim for the establishment of a democratic, inclusive, pluriethnic, and multicultural society without jeopardizing their own identity and the fragile socioeconomic hold they have on Quebec, without, in other words, running the risk of being made culturally, socially, and politically irrelevant in the long run?
Quebec stands as an interesting showcase of the challenges facing ethnic pluralism in modern democracies. Although substantial numbers of immigrants have regularly landed in Quebec throughout the 20th century, the reality of immigration - the reality of "otherness," of social heterogeneity - did not hit the political and cultural imagination of Quebecers until they started to modernize and open up to the world in the s and s.
Their social inwardness, maintained by a conservative and ubiquitous clerical elite, made them essentially oblivious to the surrounding social environment.
English and French lived in separate social and institutional universes; so was it as well with the immigrants. In the emancipatory and self-assertive atmosphere of the s and s, immigration and interthnic relations took on a political salience that they never had before.
Quebec's provincial flag flies on a flagpole in Ottawa, July 3, What does Quebec want? Each peak scaled only becomes the base camp for further ascents. The question can never be answered, because the minute it was — the minute the government of Quebec said: this , this is what we want, this is all we need to be happy — the province would lose its leverage.
People have tried, lord knows: from the Quebec Pension Plan in the s, separate and distinct from the Canada Pension Plan ; to agreements to share power over immigration and surrender federal tax points in the s; to the repeated attempts to answer the Quebec question since then — Meech Lake, Charlottetown, asymmetric federalism, the works.
None succeeded. But it does not matter who asks the question. What matters is that it cannot be answered. We should not imagine, however, that the attempt will be without consequences. Whether or not the phrase has legal weight, it is bound to affect how the issue is framed in political debates. Former health minister Gaetan Barrette won't run in Quebec vaccination campaign director Daniel Pare given award of merit. Rain forecast to change to snow overnight in Montreal, are your winter tires on?
Baby endangered rockhopper penguin born at Montreal Biodome. Leonard Cohen graphic novel a tour of the legend's music, women, life and legacy. As the poppy turns , the new face of remembrance emerges. Don't Miss false. Bear breaks into California home, helps itself to some KFC. Sesame Street's Big Bird criticized for pro-vaccine stance. Veterans in Iqaluit brave cold temperatures in ceremony. The PQ definition of sovereignty was first set out in a white paper before the referendum.
According to this definition, Quebec sovereignty means:. The flip side of the coin is that the Canadian government would no longer collect taxes from a sovereign Quebec. Canadian laws wouldn't have legal force anymore in Quebec. And Canadian treaties and agreements would no longer bind Quebec. In a word, from a Canadian point of view, Quebec would be as separate a country as the United States or Mexico. The regional committees are comprised of ten to fifteen local people including MNAs and MPs and presided over by local non-elected representatives.
Other committees for the young, the elderly and ethnic communities may also be created. The national committee will be made up of the presidents of the regional committees and chaired by an individual handpicked by the premier. The committees, which are being boycotted by federalists who consider their mandates stacked, will begin their pro-sovereignty propaganda and consultations in February.
The committees are charged to draft a "Declaration of Sovereignty" modelled on the the U. The end result will be a bill on sovereignty that the PQ plans to ram through the National Assembly, perhaps as soon as March. The stage would be set for a referendum on sovereignty as early as May or June.
If there is a yes vote in the referendum, the act declaring Quebec a sovereign country would take effect one year later. Jacques Parizeau originally intended to hold a referendum on sovereignty 8 to 10 months after the September 12, provincial election. This would have placed it sometime between May 12, and July 12, With the polls showing that there isn't enough support for sovereignty to carry a referendum, the date has been slipping.
Parizeau is now merely promising to hold the referendum by the end of Signs of splits in the separatist camp are emerging. The Bloc's Bouchard is more cautious and shares Green Bay Packer Coach Vince Lombardi's philosophy that winning isn't everything, it is the only thing. Fearing that another humiliation of Quebec would undercut Quebec's bargaining power, Bouchard says a referendum should only be held when it can be won.
This could presumably be in eight months, eight years or never.
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