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Canada's Last Stand
| Article
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19318 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1991 |
2,594 Words |
| Author
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Eric Y. Beaudan
Eric Y. Beaudan is a free-lance writer based in Toronto,
Canada. He specializes in international affairs, security
policy, and aerospace. |
By October 26, 1992, Canada will reach a turning point in its history. Unless the political winds of change swiftly reverse their course, the 10 provinces that make up the second largest country in the world will no longer be hegemonic. Quebec will have opted out of the confederation founded in 1867, asserting itself as a fully independent state or, more likely, creating a "sovereignty-association" with the rest of Canada. What the "rest of Canada" will include--Ontario, the Maritime Provinces, or the Prairies--still has to be determined.
The decision of the ruling Quebec Liberal Party to hold a referendum by the October 1992 deadline was made public in January 1991. In March, one of Canada's most influential business publications, the Globe and Mail's Report on Business, published the results of a poll it conducted among 6,000 business leaders, 3,000 of them Quebec residents. An amazing 75.9 percent of Quebec respondents claimed that their province would become a sovereign state. Almost as puzzling, 63 percent of English Canadians believed Quebec would not choose independence. These figures are a stark reflection of the country's division.
Historical Roots
What triggered the current rift and the decision to hold a referendum was a political Pandora's box called the Meech Lake Accord. Ironically, the accord's original intention was to end disputes between Quebec and the rest of Canada regarding the Constitutional Act of 1982. Quebec's Premier Rene Levesque (the equivalent of a governor in the United States) had refused to sign the act at the time on the ground that it did not protect the interests of French Canadians.
The 1982 act itself defined individual rights and freedoms--including the right of free speech and language--for the first time in Canadian history. It was the second attempt to revise the Canadian constitution, originally called the British North America Act of 1867. The first revision, adopted in 1982 after the queen of England renounced England's jurisdiction over the Canadian constitution, recognized the right of the Canadian Parliament to amend the document.
Levesque's successor as Quebec premier, Robert Bourassa, tabled five conditions for his province to ratify the 1982 act upon his election in 1986. The first, which calls for the "recognition of Quebec as a distinct society," generated the most anger among English Canadians, who did not feel that Quebeckers' French origins entitled the province to a
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