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Partition helps federalismThe notion of dividing up Quebec riles separatists, not francophones
LIONEL ALBERT
Of course, Grey is right about a clear separation question. That will never be posed and he is being all too lawyerly by adducing the idea. But the notion, frequently repeated in the English-language media, that the partition thesis encourages separatism does not accord with the facts. If there were any validity to that idea, the separatists would have used it ever since William Shaw and I introduced the subject in our 1980 book, Partition: the Price of Quebec's Independence. Not only did francophone publishers refuse to publish a translation of the book but the French-language media virtually refused even to mention the subject for the next 15 years. Not one separatist ever got up and shouted, "Look what those villains want to do! They want to break up our beloved Quebec." That the separatists were wise to avoid the subject became clear when partition finally broke onto the national political stage after the 1995 sovereignty referendum. The near-majority for the Yes genuinely shocked the Ottawa powers who had pictured a nice comfortable Yes vote of about 40-45 per cent, just right to justify continuing the massive benefits flowing to Quebec. Two months later, at the McGill Moot Court meeting, Montreal's anglophones finally embraced partition, and the federal Liberal caucus followed by publicly adopting partition as the answer to separation. As one of the very few who had been trying for 15 years to get the message of partition across, with little success, I suddenly found the English-language media unable to talk about anything else. So loud and clear was the message that the francophone media were finally obliged to report the bad news. I was bemused to hear plaintive calls to a prestigious French open-line radio program; one well-spoken caller tried to comfort the others by suggesting that because the Liberal caucus meeting took place in Vancouver, the more extreme element in English Canada had to be thrown a bone, and Plan B would soon be forgotten. (In fact, it was Liberal MPs from Ontario and New Brunswick who were the most vocal in their support for partition.) Quebec federalists realized that they indeed had powerful friends who were tired, as one Ontario Liberal MP put it, "of walking on eggs" whenever the threat of separation came up but were glad to be able to speak their minds at last. In two Montreal-area federal by-elections that followed, both Bloc Quebecois candidates studiously avoided the subject of partition. Despite the fact that these were by-elections where opposition normally does well, despite the fact that both Bloc candidates, notably Daniel Turp in Papineau, were of higher calibre than the ones the party had fielded in the preceding general election, despite the fact that the Bloc brought in hundreds of workers to help in the one riding, again Papineau, that was mostly francophone and despite the fact that the latter seat had been held for years by a popular veteran Liberal cabinet minister, Andre Ouellet, while the new Liberal candidate, Pierre Pettigrew, was an outsider, the Liberal vote increased and the separatist vote declined in both ridings. The partition thesis had done its work. The problem with Julius Grey and others is that they do not understand why the mass of French Canadians vote for separatist parties and options in the first place. Popular support for separatism only took root when concrete benefits "for the sake of national unity" started to flow. The trigger was the humiliation of Donald Gordon, president of the then-Crown-owned Canadian National Railway, when Ottawa forced him to change his mind and appoint a French-Canadian vice-president. Later, both the Progressive Conservative Party and Jean Chretien endorsed a spurious Quebec "right of self-determination." Given this history of signals from Ottawa that there would be no downside to voting the separatist ticket, the Yes forces in the 1995 referendum only had to say, "Oui, et ca devient possible" - in other words, Just say Yes. When the big Yes vote produced nationwide support for partition, which is ultimately a clearly understandable way of saying No, the separatist vote suffered. In 1980, we wrote that French Canadians "would rather have a large province than a small country. That is why separation will not happen."
Those words remain true today. The partition cat that was let out of the bag after the
last referendum will never be stuffed back in.
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