IT WAS A SCENE FROM the Latin America of the 1950s, or, perhaps, the Europe of the 1930s. Near midnight, Jacques Parizeau, the heavyset, mustachioed premier of the province of Quebec, puffed to the rostrum to acknowledge his 50.5 to 49.5 percent loss in the October 30 referendum on secession from Canada.
“It’s true we have been defeated,” he declaimed with a bitter smile. “But basically by what? By money and the ethnic vote.” The important thing, he added, was that 60 percent of French speakers — of “those who make us what we are” — voted in favor of secession. Parizeau continued: “I know many of you will want to hit a wall — or something else.” But have patience. “We will have our own revenge and we will have our own country.”
It was an apt conclusion to a day that shocked the mild sensibilities of English Canada. Voters in English-speaking neighborhoods suffered delays of more than two hours, as government-appointed scrutineers outfitted with electoral lists on which non-French names had been marked in yellow highlighter painstakingly checked their identities. Government-appointed vote counters rejected 2 percent of all ballots cast for being improperly marked; up to 12 percent in constituencies known to oppose separation. In at least one instance, a voter wearing the red poppy insignia that commemorates Canada’s war dead (Canada’s Remembrance Day is Nov. 11) was ordered to remove this piece of “federalist propaganda” before he could enter the polling place.
Non-Canadians often have difficulty understanding what the separatist battle is about. Canada is a pleasant place to live, and French-Canadians do not look very much like an oppressed minority. The first French-Canadian prime minister was electe d in 1896. Since 1968, Canada has been ruled by non-Quebec prime ministers for precisely 22 months. Quebec’s political clout is equally disproportionate throughout the federal civil service. Three of the nine seats on Canada’s Supreme Court are reserved for Quebeckers.
Economically, Quebec receives far more than it contributes to the Canadian Confederation. That is true both directly — through the government-to- government transfers known as “equalization” payments — and indirectly, via the federal government’s unemployment insurance and astonishingly generous Canada Pension Plan. On a symbolic level Quebec is privileged as well: French is the sole official language in Quebec (with an 82 percent Francophone population), while neighboring Ontario (Francophone population 5 percent) earnestly prints its government documents — including driver’s licenses — in both English and French.
Parizeau’s outburst the night of the referendum answers the question. French- speaking Quebeckers voted for separation not because of any objective grievances against English Canada, but because they regard themselves as a nation and — rationally or irrationally — aspire to their own state.
Their nationalism isn’t always attractive. It makes no room for English speakers, many of whom can trace their families’ arrival to the 18th century, or for French-speaking non-white immigrants. And, it won’t surprise you to hear, Quebec nationalism has long harbored a special hatred for Jews. (Since the election of the first separatist government in 1976, more than 100,000 Jews have moved out of the province.) But that’s all beside the point now. The next referendum could occur as soon as November 1996, and it seems probable that the next time the separatists will win.
The day after the referendum Parizeau announced that he would resign as premier. That opens the way to the province’s premiership for Lucien Bouchard, leader of the separatist bloc in the federal House of Commons and the most popular figure in Quebec. Bouchard’s ascendance will create unsolvable political problems for the federal government and Prim Minister Jean Chretien. Unlike Parizeau, whose resemblance to an old-fashioned Norman restaurateur perversely endeared him to English Canadians, Bouchard is a dar, Miltonic figure universally loathed in the rest of the country. English Canadian public opnion will not tolerate anything that might be construed as a concession to him. Nor will the prime minister — who has never been accused of excessive cleverness — find it easy to speak past Bouchard directly to wavering Quebec voters.
English-Canadian optimists can rattle off a list of reasons why they can hope that the separatist vote will dwindle over the next 12 months. It is true, for example, that many separatist voters have no idea what separatism will mean. In the referendum campaign, they were promised that the citizens of a ” sovereign” Quebec would retain their Canadian passports and would continue to use the Candian dollar as their legal tender. Opinion pools found that as many as one-third of all separatist voters imagined that Quebec would continue to send members of Parliament to Ottawa after it became “sovereign.”
The optimists hope that with more informaiton about the actual costs of separation, with a better federalist campaign than the lackluster performance mounted this time, and — finally — with another round of constitutional concessions from English Canada, a 1996 referendum could be stymied. These hopes are ill-founded. Quebec voters were abundantly informed of the true costs of separation — they chose to ignore them. Meanwhile, after 30 years of conciliation, English Canada’s mood is hardening. There will be no deals.
So what should happen instead?
A tough-minded English Canada would act now to design a new federal union capable of surviving the deparute of Quebec. That would entail:
(1) Immediately balancing the federal budget. This would end chronic deficits, proportionately double those of the United States, and reduce the vulnerability of Canada’s currency and credit rating on international markets.
(2) Strengthening the economic union between the nine English-speaking province. Amazingly, Canada permits provincial governments to practice ecomonic discrimination against out-of-province firms.
(3) Redirecting trade flows away from Quebec by entering into a closer econom ic union with the United States. Despite the North American Free trade Agremeen t, Canada still transacts only a fraction of the business with the United State s that it would in a borderless world. One recent study found that, adjusted fo r population, Quebec trades 20 times as much with British Columbia as with California. A true North American common market would help insure English Canda against the mood swings of the Quebec electorate — and would benefit the Unite d States by ensuring that its largest trading partner does not stumble into an unnecessary slump .
Foresight and American assistance could mitigate the economic costs of the fracture of Canada. But nothing can mitigate the political implication of a separatist victory; that not even tolerant Canada could make a binational, bilingual state work.
There is a warning here for Americna multiculturalists — and for Americna policy makers who want to send American troops to Bosnia to preserve in the bloodstained Balkans a type of polity that could not survive on the gentle banks of the St. Lawrence River.
by David Frum
