ON Nov. 27, Parliament voted strongly to support prime minister Stephen Harper’s recent conversion to the view that the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada.
The motion cost the minority Conservatives a cabinet minister when bright young rural Ontario MP and intergovernmental affairs minister Michael Chong could not swallow what he saw as a dilution of his view of Canada.
A handful of other MPs could not abide the reopening of that poisonous debate, and voted against it if they were in opposition or sat on their hands if they were Conservatives, because a vote against it could lead to expulsion from the Conservative caucus.
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Meanwhile, the majority of Conservative, Liberal and New Democratic Party MPs, joined by all the Bloc Québécois MPs, approved the resolution affirming the Québécois as a nation within Canada.
Just to repeat that: the majority of “federalist” MPs and all “separatist” MPs dedicated to breaking up Canada voted for it. Based on that vote breakdown, which faction in the endless Canadian unity debate do you suppose this motion benefits?
By using the term “Québécois” in both French and English versions of the motion, Harper clearly meant to say that French-speaking Quebeckers are a nation.
The objections from Chong and Liberal leadership candidate Gerard Kennedy to the Harper motion are instructive. What does it mean? What are its implications? Why do the separatists support it as a step toward sovereignty if Harper says it really has no implication?
Imagine if the resolution instead declared that Saskatchewanians constitute a “nation” in Canada because of: its unique history as next year country; its unique political system that has elected CCF/NDP governments 75 percent of the time since 1944; its unique sports culture that holds national football championships outdoors at -30 C; and its unique religion that reveres the curling deity.
Besides, Saskatchewanians are bound together by a common historic language, except for those who speak another one.
But who is a Saskatchewanian in this newly declared nation? People who can trace their roots to the 1905 founding of the province or those who trace their connection at least to the Great Depression as a seminal moment or those whose families have been in the province since the rise of Tommy Douglas in 1944?
Then there is the dicey question of what to do about the Saskatchewan diaspora, all those who work in Alberta so they can keep their Saskatchewan farms afloat or who retired to British Columbia?
And what does being a member of the Saskatchewanian nation mean, anyway? Are there benefits or rights that Albertans or Manitobans don’t have? Since Saskatchewan has many “first nations,” are Saskatchewanians a “second nation”?
Harper and his supporters say his Québécois motion is meant to bring closure to the issue of Quebec’s place in Canada. Why, then, has it created so many questions?
As a Reformer, Harper thought the whole issue of trying to appease Quebec “nationalists” with empty designations or real special status was a mug’s game.
He was right.
Barry Wilson, a fifth generation Irish Quebecker, has lived in five provinces and considers Quebec his province and Canada his nation.
