Just when we thought it was time to write an obituary for Quebec’s independence movement it has reemerged, like a wraith from an extinct world, in the shape of a new Premier, Bernard Landry. Responding to sustained pressure from the members of his party Mr. Landry (who became Premier on March 8, 2001) has promised to create the “winning conditions” for a new referendum. And his personal convictions are such that he doesn’t need any encouragement.
Landry has gone into action with a somewhat new approach. He is laying the groundwork with a program which would get everyone in Quebec to nod their heads in agreement when he tells them that Quebec is a “nation”. This campaign has inspired the inevitable reactions, a few dozen fantastic articles in Le Devoir, some ambivalent comments by the Liberal Party of Quebec, and an editorial rebuke in the Montreal paper.
Mr. Landry’s itinerary will take us from “nation” to “people” to “nation-state”. He argues that Quebec is already a “nation-state” by virtue of its existing constitutional powers, but it remains a crippled thing, half baked. In his opinion Quebec will become a legitimate example of this model of political organization only when its powers are made absolute. This is the substance of the argument that Quebecers will be asked to accept in the months ahead.
Is this campaign going to get off the ground? The signs are mixed. Meanwhile the rest of the country, which reads neither Le Devoir nor The Montreal Gazette on a daily basis, prefers to concern itself with other matters, while awaiting a specific question from Quebec to which it must reply.
Regardless of the success of Mr. Landry’s activism I believe that the specific question about Quebec’s role in the Confederation is facing us today, and requires attention now. It is illustrated most vividly by the unchangeable mindset of francophone Quebecers, who have elected a separatist government in Quebec for 17 of the past 25 years and send a continuing majority of separatist members of Parliament in Ottawa. I would argue that there is a fundamental incompatibility between the way Canadians and Quebecers understand the role of government . We have taken two different paths which make it inevitable that we will eventually separate. The following remarks take a look at these two very different visions of the role of politics in our lives.
In my view the most honest way of understanding politics is to see it as a form of coercion. The underlying notion is that there are limits to liberty, that there are some things that every person should be required to do, or refrain from doing, in the public interest, and that people will not do these things unless they are obliged to, by law – accompanied by some institutions which will make sure that these laws will be obeyed. And few of us would disagree. While we do insist that everyone is different, and that there should be no limit on our right to think and feel as we wish, we believe, at the same time, that there must be some limits placed on our personal freedom to act.
And this is essentially what government, and politics, is all about.
The proper extent to which this coercion should be carried, the limits to these limits to freedom, is the principal subject of political philosophy. For the purposes of my analysis I’m going to propose that there are three different configurations in which a political space can be arranged – as a civic society, an enterprise society, and a culturally-based society.
The Civic Society
The civic society, in its most elementary form, is the effort to maintain order. Its most perfect symbol is the traffic code that requires us to stop when the light is red and to go on green, and to drive on the right hand side of the road. Other laws of the civic society concern themselves with such relatively uncontroversial issues as sanitation, noise pollution, public safety, and zoning, with crimes against the person, the right to private property, and the enforcement of contracts. These limits to action are all embodied in civil and criminal codes and even if we may not agree with each and every article, we sleep better knowing they are in place.
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the healthy co-existence of these two different visions of the role of politics is impossible. Quebec will eventually be separated from Canada. |
The purpose of these “civic” rules is to protect individuals from the unacceptable behavior of their neighbors. In some countries, including our own, there are also laws whose object is to protect the citizen from abuse by his own government. These take the form of Charters of Human or Individual Rights and they are frequently given precedence over other laws by virtue of their inclusion in a written Constitution.
These are all examples of the laws of what I call the civic society. Their common feature is that they are rules whose purpose is to provide space - for individuals to seek their own objectives and satisfy their own desires. No common purpose for society is implied – civic laws presuppose a society of independent agents wishing to act in their own interest and capable of doing so. The Greek word for it is, I believe, “nomocracy”. The noted British philosopher Michael Oakeshott calls it “societas” and defines it as “a formal relationship in terms of rules” as opposed to “a substantive relationship in terms of action”.
The civic society is one which can work easily in a country made up of widely differing races, religions, languages and interest groups. It is able to accommodate itself to these interests and causes because it has no purpose of its own to defend against such community purposes. It assumes that people just want freedom to get on with their lives and let others do the same.
The Enterprise Society
Reed Scowen
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All modern governments, however, see their mandate as going far beyond the maintenance of law and order. Over time they have developed economic and social projects and purposes which strike the fancy of the rulers or the ruled. In doing so they become “enterprise” societies. (I use the word "enterprise” in its original and non-ideological meaning, as an “undertaking”). The most obvious of these enterprises, and the one with the longest history, is the waging of wars, but today’s governments also engage in a number of more respectable activities. Modern society requires a modern infrastructure and so governments have been given the mandate to construct and maintain roads, waterworks, sewers, harbors, airports, electricity systems, parks, public transport, schools, and hospitals.
Additionally, most countries see themselves as an “economy”. They have given themselves a currency, a central bank, a series of monetary and fiscal policies and a number of other tools which are employed to influence such macro-economic conditions as employment, inflation, productivity and currency exchange rates. Some states – and Quebec is an outstanding example – have also given themselves something called an Industrial Policy on the basis of which they offer subsidies of various kinds to certain corporations, or in some cases purchase or expropriate these corporations in order to stimulate employment and productivity. The Canadian and Quebec governments and their agencies have at various times over the last 50 years owned companies which operate railway trains and airplanes, and produce oil, steel, jams and jellies, ships, pharmaceuticals and just about anything else you can think of.
The enterprise state may have another feature, an interest in “social justice”, with a consequent policy of redistributing wealth, from those who have it, to the sick, the poor, the elderly and to people in economically inhospitable regions of our country. Canada has this feature. Approximately 50% of our Gross National Product works its way through our governments for these purposes and Canadians seem to agree that this is the kind of society we want to have.
The Greeks had a word for the enterprise state - “teleocracy”. Oakeshott refers to it as “universitas”, a society which has given to its government “the direction (and perhaps the imposition) of a common substantive purpose…(the people) understanding themselves as comrades in a common undertaking”.
It is important to note that the enterprise society reposes on the premise that there are classes, or at least categories, of people – rich, poor, sick, healthy, old, young who should be identified and treated in different ways. But these categories are social or economic. In its actions the enterprise state is usually blind to the ethnic origin, linguistic preferences, religious faith or ancestry of its inhabitants.
The Culturally Based Society
And this brings us to the third and last of our categories of political action, the “culturally based society”, and the idea of “the nation”.
In understanding this third kind of political society, culturally based, it’s important to make a distinction between a nation and nationalism. A “nation”, understood as a group of people sharing and promoting a common language, ethnic origin or culture, can exist in any political system. The civic society which we described earlier, makes an ideal home for any number of nations. “Nationalism”, on the other hand, requires that the state be mobilized for the advancement of a single nation, presumably the nation which is in the majority, or has the most powerful army. It is not a concept which encourages diversity.
Nationalism is a word which has been given many meanings and there is an enormous literature on the subject. But the common thread is the proposition that a country should be composed of people of a single race, or religious belief or language or culture and that the state has the responsibility to illustrate and promote this single culture. The nation state is based on a concept of “pre-political unity”. The idea is that a country made up entirely, for example, of Jews, or white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, will be easier to manage and more pleasant for its inhabitants to live in than one which encompasses people of many races, languages and religions.
Nationalism was invented in Europe at the beginning of the 19th Century, it is a child of the Enlightenment, and it is in Europe that one finds its most perfect examples. In fact the great states of Europe – Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Spain - are all “nation states”. They have defined themselves as countries whose people have a distinct language, ethnicity and culture and the debate over the relative merits of these ethnic groups has led to some horrific European wars over the past two centuries. Today these countries are attempting to come to terms with a flood of immigrants of differing ethnicities and they are also attempting to place some authority in a supra-national body, the European Union. But these new elements only serve to highlight the essentially nationalist nature of the states themselves.
Despite the aggressiveness it has inspired nationalism, as exemplified by the great states of Western Europe, may arguably be viewed as some kind of political and social triumph. However as a product for exportation from Western Europe it’s results have less successful. The concept was given a mighty boost by the American President, Woodrow Wilson, in the months after the First World War, when in order to dispose of the remnants of the Hapsburg Empire, he invented the term “self-determination” and established it as a guiding principle of international law. Wilson did not live to face the consequences of his grand idea but the US and the rest of us have spent the last seventy years trying to figure out which of the world’s governments, born in this cradle of “self-determination”, should be given recognition, and when, and for how long. The waiting list requiring attention is quite depressing – the Balkans, the Middle East, Ireland, Afghanistan, Kashmir, the countries of the former Soviet Union and, at a lower octane level, Quebec.
And now I’d like to make some generalizations about all this for Canadian politics. My argument can be summed up as follows.
First, for reasons which are one consequence of the phenomenon of globalization, namely migration, Canada, excluding Quebec, is a civic society and an enterprise society but is not, and can never become, a nation-state. In this respect its political philosophy closely resembles that of its neighbor, the United States.
Second, Quebec, like Canada, is both a civic society and an enterprise society. However, for reasons which are understandable, is also a nation-state, based on the European model. It is in Quebec’s interests to remain a nation-state – and it will.
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You will never be invited to a weekend conference in Toronto on “The English language as the Defining Feature of our Identity”. |
Third, even in our federal system the healthy co-existence of these two different visions of the role of politics is impossible. Quebec will eventually be separated from Canada. Quebecers will always insist that the French language and culture, and the nation-state of Quebec which represents this ethnic group, must have a privileged position accorded to no other language, culture or province in Canada - in the words of Bernard Landry “I don’t want equality with Manitoba”. The rest of Canada cannot and should not ever agree to this.
Politics in Canada
Let’s talk about Canada first. Canada (outside Quebec) has no nationality – or to be more precise it contains many nationalities, but the Canadian state has no interest in advancing the cause of any of them.
It has been suggested that Canada - the “Rest of Canada”- forms one of the Two Founding Nations, the British, and represents British culture and values. This was arguably true until the end of the Second World War, the last time we went collectively to the aid of our “mother country”. But since that time things have changed. People of British origin now represent only about 20% of the population and the idea that we are here in America as an outpost of Anglo-Saxon culture has been abandoned. It’s true that the British monarch is still our Head of State and we use a parliamentary system modeled on Westminster, but these institutions remain, not because they are British, but because we haven’t yet figured out how to replace them with something better. So far as the other Founding Nation, the French, is concerned its members scarcely exist in the rest of Canada. Only about 3% of the population is French and in this year’s census it will be revealed that the second language of Canada, outside Quebec, is Chinese. Canada and the US, in an age of globalization, have become the first truly global countries.. We have said “no” to our two Founding Nations, to the values of the French and the British, and “yes” to a set of values which transcend all nationalities.
Reed Scowen |
Some will argue that Canada does have a single culture defined by the widespread use and the official status of the English language. But English speaking Canadians do not define themselves by the language they speak. It is seen as a means of communication, easy to learn and widely used around the world. But you will never be invited to a weekend conference in Toronto on “The English language as the Defining Feature of our Identity”. The question of what it means to be an anglophone is not one which resonates outside Quebec – in the rest of the country the word “anglophone” isn’t even in the vocabulary.
Canada and the United States were settled, from Europe, mainly by British and French colonists who at first wanted only to recreate the political traditions and conditions of their mother country on unexplored soil. For the first 150 years the political struggles of these settlers remained tributary to those of the two mother countries. Then something important happened. The Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution created a new country inspired by the idea of a new political order which specifically rejected the tribal nationalisms of Europe. The statement that “all men are equal” resonates in the United States today as it did in 1776 . Its practical consequences can be seen most clearly in the monumental and largely successful struggle over the past century and a half to bring black Americans from a state of slavery into the mainstream of American life. This original idea is the underpinning for the individualism, the meritocracy, the energy, the success, of the United States of America.
I believe that Canada has arrived at a point where the principles of that Declaration of Independence resonate as powerfully in Lethbridge as they do in Wichita. Our own European-based political experience continued for another 200 years after the United States became independent. But it has ended because of globalization, the opening of our country to immigrants from every corner of the globe and the phenomenal reception which this invitation has received. Vancouver is now the North American city with the highest proportion of immigrants to the total population, and Toronto is in second place. I would argue that Canada since 1950 has been evolving into a true “American” state, a country of the New World, not copying the values of Jefferson, Washington and Lincoln but arriving, by another route, at exactly the same conclusions.
We have an instinctive tendency to reject the idea that we are like the Americans. Our government redistributes about 10% more of our Gross National Product than in the United States which stimulates us to believe that we are a “kinder and gentler people”. But our respective conceptions of the fundamental role of government in our lives are close to identical. Some fear that to admit this will result in the loss of Canadian identity, and to assimilation. But despite our worries on this score no one has ever made a convincing demonstration that two countries sharing the same political philosophy must become one country.
Politics in Quebec
Quebec shares with the rest of Canada the values of the civic society and the enterprise society. But Quebec is also a culturally based society, a nation-state.
For forty years we have lived with the efforts of Quebec’s political leaders to ensure the survival and expand the boundaries of the French language and culture. It has been a battle waged on five complementary fronts.
Pierre Trudeau gave himself the challenge of expanding the use of French outside Quebec, in Ottawa and in areas of federal jurisdiction throughout the country.
Rene Levesque’s contribution was the independence movement and a political party whose goal is to achieve it.
Robert Bourassa will be remembered for his efforts to obtain a privileged, distinct society status for Quebec within the Canadian constitution.
On top of these initiatives every provincial leader since Lesage has been inspired by two additional goals. The first is to recuperate as many powers as possible to Quebec from Ottawa within the limits of the existing constitution (immigration policy is an example). The second is to use all of the existing provincial powers available to make Quebec more completely French (The language laws, and the current plan to abolish Montreal’s anglophone municipalities, are illustrations of this).
The project is sometimes presented as simply an effort to promote the use of the French language. But everyone living in Quebec knows that this is not true. Political discourse is filled with statements which link the French language to a culture, a unique way of seeing the world. Only a few weeks ago the new Premier of Quebec has announced that “all immigrants have the obligation to respect the cultural characteristics of the francophone majority”.
The opposition of non-francophone Quebecers to this nationalism and their continuing exodus from the province, is not due to a lack of understanding of the Quebec project, as some francophone leaders would claim. It happens because the project is understood, viscerally, instinctively. The obstacles to living and working in Quebec in any language except French are pervasive and they show no signs of diminishing.
This project has the overwhelming support of Quebec’s francophones. They are certainly not all separatists but only a very small minority are prepared to accept the Canadian constitution as it is, and no one would consider the repeal of the language laws. There are big political paydays for Quebec nationalism. A Quebec political party which said it was interested in neither independence or “special status” in the Canadian confederation would have absolutely no chance of forming a government. Overwhelmingly, francophone Quebecers see themselves as Quebecers first and as Canadians second, or not at all.
Some may feel that I am exaggerating the intensity of Quebec nationalism. Others will argue that it is dying out with the ascendance of a new generation which is not interested in the quarrels of the 60s and 70s. Time will tell, but I believe that these views are mistaken. It’s true that most francophone Quebecers do not believe that it would be prudent to separate politically from Canada. But no one thinks that the pressure on Ottawa, and on the English in Quebec, should be ended. Quebec has been so thoroughly francisized, and non-francophone elements so completely removed from the public life of this province, that ethnic nationalism is institutionalized to the point where it is scarcely recognized as such any more by the general public. It is seen as “normal”.
And it’s all so European. In the months ahead the new Premier will be reminding you constantly that he wants Quebec to be like a European nation, connected to Canada in an association which resembles the European Union. In fact Quebec has already become a European style nation-state in America, in a New World which, everywhere else on this continent, is devoted to the erection of a society based on fundamentally different and incompatible political values.
Quebec’s Future in Canada
In a recent book (“Time to Say Goodbye – The Case For Getting Quebec Out of Canada. McClelland & Stewart. 1999) I have tried to show in some detail how this contradiction, this existence of a highly developed nation-state within the constitution of what is essentially a civic society, creates daily problems of a practical nature - unjustified efforts by Ottawa to appease Quebec, lack of cooperation by Quebec in intelligently balancing the roles of the provincial and federal governments, the impossibility of constitutional reform, and so on. It also makes it impossible for us as Canadians to develop the common and worthy vision of political society which is the heritage of the other nine provinces. My conclusions are not only an academic analysis. They are founded on twenty-five years of experience in the public life of Quebec.
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The obstacles to living and working in Quebec in any language except French are pervasive and they show no signs of diminishing. |
However, even if you agree that the political values of Quebec and the rest of Canada are incompatible, the question of what is to be done about it remains. Perhaps your answer will be that the efforts of so many people of good will to maintain Canadian Unity must continue, that new ways to satisfy Quebec should be explored. Or perhaps it’s better not to think about the issue any more and hope it will go away. Either of these answers are understandable.
But in the coming months the new Premier of Quebec will probably launch another referendum campaign. At least he will try. We are going to be reminded daily of the unreasonable constraints imposed by Ottawa on Quebec, federal-provincial cooperation will be blocked, the efforts to make Quebec more completely French are going to intensify. And we may be faced with a winning referendum, or with one which is defeated by narrow margin. What is the appropriate response?
About Canada
It’s often said, and it can’t be said too often, that geographically speaking this is a difficult country to hold together. We are a strip of people about 200 miles wide and 3000 miles long so it’s very hard to get to know our neighbors. In the USA most Americans have fellow citizens living to their east, west, north and south. In this respect, by contrast, Canada is one-dimensional. We are joined together, not by geography but in a political union based on common rules and some common projects – we are a civic society and an enterprise society.
Even if Quebec were to make a decision is made to separate this will not result in the breakup of Canada. The existence of Canada does not depend on Quebec’s membership. The one province that wants to leave is not the only thing which is holding our country together. There’s more to Canada than that.
As an enterprise society we are justifiably proud of our common commitments, health care, education, social security, our international activity, protection of our environment, the development of our economy.
But we should not minimize the importance of the other part, our membership, as Canadians, in a rules-based civil society. The most important aspect of globalization for Canadians is not the Internet, or Free Trade which connects us to the world around us; it is the steadily growing presence in our communities of people from every part of the globe who have come to be with us here in “America”, to find freedom to pursue their own lives based on their personal vision, their own hopes and dreams, their own culture - their own identities. We have no choice, we cannot be a nation-state. We believe in a place with a life that shelters individual lives and allows people to become better than they might otherwise be, using internal resources that, in the final analysis, only they can develop – a place where our civilization is not measured mainly by the actions of our government but by a concern for our society which manifests itself in decisions we take in our daily life, as neighbors.
Our constitution, our political practice, is founded in a firm conviction that everyone should be left as free as possible to do this and that no ethnic group, no language group, no cultural community, no nation within our boundaries should be given a head start in this adventure. This is our strength; this is why people come to live here; this is how we differ from the states of Europe and Asia - and from Quebec. We are building the right kind of society and while it may take us a couple of centuries before we get it completely right, the best hopes of mankind rest with us. If Quebecers want to accompany us on this path, as another Manitoba, they should be welcomed. My own view is, that for some very understandable reasons, they will never be able to do this.
This document is an abridged version of “Does Canada Need Quebec- Reflections on Globalization, Identity and Nationalism”, the Provigo Lecture delivered at Bishop’s University, March 8, 2001.
Reed Scowen is the author of two books on Quebec and Canada. Over the past twenty five years he has been a Liberal member of the Quebec National Assembly, Economic Advisor to Robert Bourassa, and Delegate General for Quebec in London, New York and Washington.
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London School of Economics Foundation Canada Board Member
October 8, 1999 Reed Scowen is an interesting cat – a three term member of the Quebec National Assembly, an economic adviser to Robert Bourassa and a senior Quebec public servant, he’s written a book called Time To Say Goodbye (The Case For Getting Quebec Out Of Canada) published by McClelland & Stewart at $19.95 in paperback. The title says it all – Mr Scowen thinks that the "Rest of Canada" ought to kiss Quebec goodbye.
click Provigo Lecture BISHOP'S UNIVERSITY by Reed Scowen
March 8th 2001 (plain text)
Alliance Quebec
