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One Canada--Or Two?
| Article
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20691 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1992 |
4,134 Words |
| Author
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James W. Ceaser
James W. Ceaser is professor of government at the University
of Virginia and visiting professor at Claremount McKenna
College. |
While Americans this fall are conducting their campaign to decide who will be president, Canadians will be deciding if they want to keep their country together. The Canadian Parliament has just passed a law allowing for a national referendum (which may, however, never be held) on a new constitutional settlement (which has yet to be concluded).
If this sounds confusing, or even a bit ominous, it is. Ever since the War of 1812, when Henry Clay and the "war hawks" sought unsuccessfully to annex our northern neighbor, Americans have stopped paying much attention to Canada, other than to take some solace in the idea that it always would be there. But even this comforting notion is now in question, and Americans should seriously begin to consider whether they like Canada well enough to have more than one of it.
The present constitutional crisis dates back to 1982, when Canada under Prime Minister Elliot Trudeau repatriated its Constitution from Great Britain and added a national Charter of Rights. The problem, however, was that the predominantly French-speaking province of Quebec never formally endorsed these changes. Many in the province viewed these acts as a kind of coup that illegitimately curtailed the authority of the provincial government and established a powerful central state responsible for directly interpreting individual rights. To many Quebecers, this new understanding of Canada undermined the old idea, based on the British North American Act of 1867 (the old Constitution), according to which Canada is a union of two peoples (English and French).
The reaction against the Constitution in Quebec, together with the change of the governing party in Ottawa in 1984, reopened the constitutional question. A series of meetings among provincial leaders and the federal government produced the Meech Lake Accord in 1987 that recognized Quebec as a "distinct society" and that seemed to move back toward the two-peoples concept. Despite being supported by many of the nation's political leaders, the plan was rejected in 1990 because of a negative vote by one small province, Manitoba. This action, however, was not nearly as aberrant as it seemed. Polls indicated that a majority of the English-speaking public opposed the Meech Lake Accord, largely because it ceded too much to Quebec. The Quebecers took the rejection of Meech Lake not just as an insult, but as a sign of a growing and perhaps impassable breach between Quebec and Canada. There followed a resurgence of sentiment in Quebec for leaving Canada, as well as surprising growth of opinion in the rest of Canada that may be Quebec just should
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