Canada’s political leaders got a severe rebuff this/last week when six out of 10 provinces and an overall majority rejected the referendum on constitutional reform. It was the second rebuff in 2 years. The Meech Lake Accord was rejected in 1990. It required the 10 provincial parliaments to agree. The Charlottetown agreement required the people of each province to agree and later to be ratified by all parliaments. The heart of the issue was the position of Quebec in the Canadian federation.
Quebeckers have felt for more than a century that they have had a raw deal: under-represented in the Federal Parliament, francophone culture at threat, discriminated on grounds of language, economically disadvantaged. In the 1970s it flared in violence with kidnappings and other terrorist acts, spearheaded by the Front for the Liberation of Quebec. Fortunately, violence has been put aside as a means for Quebeckers to attain their aspirations. Further, many of those aspirations have been met. No-one can seriously say that francophone culture is under systemic threat from Canadian authorities. True, it is under the general threat from the onslaught of American “”culture” in the form of television and economic domination. However, to the extent it is true it is also true of Australia or anywhere else.
French has received official recognition. If anything, the pendulum has swung to far the other way. Inappropriate official bilingualism is the imposed policy in the western provinces where virtually no-one speaks French. Further, Quebec’s economic fortunes in relation to the rest of Canada no longer have the disparity of past decades.
None the less, Quebeckers still felt inferior and demanded greater recognition. The calls became stronger after the failure of the Meech Lake Accord. They took up the call for a “”distinct society” within Canada.
The calls immediately drew a “”me-too” response from two quarters: aboriginal Canadians and the western provinces.
The former sought constitutional recognition giving them self-determination and the same status as federal and provincial governments. The latter sought greater autonomy from the central government in Ottawa and a greater say in that government. Essentially they sought reform of the appointed Senate to a senate along Australian to provide an equal number of elected senators from each province and for the senate to have real powers over legislation: elected, equal and effective.
To his great credit, the Canadian Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, and his federal colleagues did something few politicians do anywhere graciously: agree to surrender power. He worked with the provinces and the aboriginal people to reach an agreed proposal to go to the people. It would have taken considerable power from the central government.
But the proposal was doomed by “”me-tooism”. As Australian experience shows, the people will reject constitutional change given the slightest reason for doing so. Thus the piling together of three issues (Quebec, aboriginal rights and the federal balance) gave the people three reasons for rejecting the proposal. People uncomfortable with any one of them clearly voted against the lot, no matter how meritorious they thought the remaining two. Mr Mulroney’s attempt to persuade the west to give more to Quebec by giving more to the west clearly failed.
It is a tragedy that recognition for greater aboriginal rights fell, too. That perhaps is a lesson for Australian Aboriginal groups not to latch on to various other 2001 constitutional-reform movements for a republic or bill of rights or whatever.
The other sad point for Canadian unification is that there is no fall-back position. Charlottetown was the fall back from Meech Lake; there is no fall-back from Charlottetown.
Perhaps the lesson is that the position of Quebec in the Canadian federation has always been an irreconcilable contradiction. To satisfy Quebec’s ever-increasing demands for special status or greater autonomy necessarily required resistance from the other provinces. And conversely, to get an agreement to satisfy the other provinces would necessarily leave Quebec dissatisfied. Quebeckers have played on other Canadians’ sentiment for unity for a long time. Former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau has called it blackmail.
Now two major attempts at reconciliation and compromise to achieve unity have failed, it seems the best path now is for the central government and the other nine provinces to do nothing. They must call the bluff if it is one or accept the inevitable: that the majority of Quebeckers will now want to go it alone.
If they do, the rest of Canada must make the process as amicable and painless as possible and to ensure that economic, transport and other links remain intact and that there is free movement of people and trade between the two. To fail in that task would result in profound detriment to Quebec and the other provinces, especially the maritime provinces of Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, which would be cut off from the rest of Canada.