Open Thread – Quebec as a “Nation”

From the Toronto Star – Candidates navigate roiling ‘nation’ waters:

Rather than stumbling through serial constitutional crises in search of elusive consensus, Harper is taking a shortcut to the conclusion that Canada is whatever Canadians think it is, no matter how different.

There’s a certain modern appeal to a country that’s a collection of illusions. It lets ordinary people get on with daily life and allows federal politicians to escape the ultimate responsibility of setting national objectives and then working with other governments to get from now to then.

Fatigue and the energy needed to make modern sense of a quill-pen Constitution are the most compelling arguments for limiting aspirations. But there’s not much heart-throbbing about a country satisfied to be no more than the sum of its multiple parts.

From the Globe and Mail – Canadians strongly reject Quebec nationhood: poll:

Canadians overwhelmingly rejected the concept of Quebec nationhood in a new poll released Tuesday, one day after all parties in Parliament declared the Quebecois a nation within Canada.

Outside Quebec, 77 per cent of Canadians rejected the idea the province forms a nation, suggested the Leger Marketing survey conducted for the TVA television network and distributed to The Canadian Press.

Among regional, linguistic and Liberal party breakdowns, French-speaking Quebeckers, at 71 per cent, were the only group to “personally consider that Quebeckers form a nation.”

As well, Liberal leadership candidate Bob Rae has the most support among Canadians of any of the candidates, according to the poll.

The concept of a Nation is a very 18-19th century idea. It’s the idea of a more or less ethnically homogeneous political entity that manages its own affairs for its own interests. A Nation is by definition closed, insular, and conservative insofar as it struggles to preserve its distinct character in the face of constant exposure to different cultural values.

In other words, it’s profoundly antithetical to the idea of Canada, which is a multi-national, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural political entity that takes a larger, more open approach to governance and continually reinvents itself as its culture changes and evolves.

The guiding principle in a Nation is chauvinism – deciding that one culture is better or more pure than others and maintaining a bulwark that insulates that culture from outside infiltration or dilution.

The guiding principle of Canada, by contrast, is tolerance – deciding that fundamental values of life, liberty, expression, and compassion are enough to unite a diverse citizenry that often disagrees about particular cultural issues but respects the other’s right to have an opinion and to pursue various expressions of “the good”.

It’s no surprise that the Harper Conservatives have decided to champion Quebec’s Nationhood. It plays into their profoundly conservative idea that Canada is not a real country and exists only because of governmental meddling (think of the east-west railroad as a countervail to the “natural” north-south economic imperative).

Further, it supports the Conservative (big-C) tactic of devolving powers to lower levels of government that have less tax powers and are therefore more constrained by markets and private interests.

Finally, it opens the constitutional can of worms that feeds Western alienation and gives hope to those Westerners – among whom we must count Harper himself – who want to “build a firewall” around Alberta and assert a kind of nationhood there as well.

In other words, it serves Harper’s ultimate goal of making the idea of Canada too dysfunctional to persist.

It’s hard to know what to make of all this and as a result I think many Canadians are yawning about it by now, although in an irritated way.

Collective irritation with debates on Canada’s future as a unified country aside, it seems the significance of this is that it demonstrates Harper is playing games with the country, or that it will invigorate separatists, or that it will discourage separatists, or that it illustrates that a great deal of fuss can be made over nothing at all.

In the latter vein is Nation debate as clear as poutine, which made me laugh today:

Depending on how it is used, [“Québécois”] can mean all the French Canadians in all of Canada, although most of the time it means only the French Canadians in Quebec.

Except when it means everybody, French Canadian or not, who lives in Quebec.

When it doesn’t, though, don’t get the idea it refers to all francophone Quebecers, since sometimes it is used to mean only the “pure laine” descendants of Quebec’s original French settlers.

The Prime Minister dispatched two of his cabinet’s brightest lights, Senator Marjory LeBreton and Lawrence Cannon, the minister of transport, to clarify things.

LeBreton was succinct. “I know anglophone Quebecers who call themselves Quebecois.”

Asked if he agreed with her that the motion applied to everybody who lives in Quebec, “regardless of the boat their ancestors came over on,” Cannon was equally succinct. “No, it doesn’t. Let’s be clear on this.”

Then Cannon began to wobble even more. “Québécois” in the Conservative motion meant exactly the same as it did in the Bloc Québécois motion it was introduced to counter — namely the pure laine, old-stock francophones.

The difference was that the BQ had used the term in order to divide; the Conservatives were using it to unite.

After being taken into the shop and tinkered with, however, Cannon’s wobble was so thoroughly corrected that when it came time for the vote, he was steering in precisely the opposite direction. The motion now included “all who live in the province of Quebec.” It didn’t matter “what language they speak.”

Finally, Stephen Harper himself rumbled in to set everybody straight with words Humpty Dumpty would be proud to use if he were still together enough to talk. “The Québécois know who they are.”

As alevo points out, the real significance of this controversy might be as a big distraction. I think it’s ridiculous.

Like many Canadians I am sick and tired of the national unity debate. Like many Ontarians, I am REALLY sick of it.

Let’s face it: Ontario would do just fine on its own if it had to. We have by far the biggest provincial economy in Canada (40% of GDP compared to 20% for Quebec and 16% for Alberta – although Alberta’s per capita GDP is better), 5 million more people than the next closest province, Quebec (12 541 400 compared to 7 598 100), and we are the seat of the country’s capital which in my opinion means that if the country split up, Ontario would have rights on the name “Canada”.

I don’t know about that last part, but as much as I love this entire, unified country, I am getting sick of the separatists. And I don’t even really mean the Quebec separatists, since they have proven themselves a pretty incompetent lot. I’m talking about the Alberta separatists, who are now apparently running the country but still won’t shut up.

There are many challenges facing this country – this nation – that are far more important than the latest unity flap.

I’ve just been staying at home waiting for something to happen.
I haven’t gotten much done lately.
My life’s been completely bland lately, but so it goes. Not much on my mind these days.