As home to the only French-speaking society in North America,
Québec is totally distinct from the rest of the continent -
so distinct, in fact, that its political elite have been obsessed
with the politics of secession for the last forty years. The
genesis of Québec's potential political separation from its
English-speaking neighbours tracks back to France's ceding of the
colony to Britain after the Conquest of 1759. At first this
transfer saw little change in the life of most Québécois. Permitted
to maintain their language and religion, they stayed under the
control of the Catholic Church, whose domination of rural society -
evident in the huge churches of Québec's tiny villages - resulted
in an economically and educationally deprived subclass whose main
contribution was huge families. It was these huge families, though,
that ensured French-speakers would continue to dominate the
province demographically - a political move termed the revanche
du berceau (revenge of the cradle).
The creation of Lower and Upper Canada in 1791 emphasized the
inequalities between anglophones and francophones, as the
French-speaking majority in Lower Canada were ruled by the
so-called Château Clique - an assembly of francophone
priests and seigneurs who had to answer to a British governor and
council appointed in London. Rebellions against this hierarchy by
the French Patriotes in 1837 led to an investigation by Lord
Durham who concluded that English and French relations were akin to
"two nations warring within the bosom of a single state". His
prescription for peace was immersing French-Canadians in the
English culture of North America, and the subsequent establishment
of the Province of Canada in 1840 can be seen as a deliberate
attempt to marginalize francophone opinion within an
English-speaking state.
French-Canadians remained insulated from the economic mainstream
until twentieth-century industrialization , financed and run
by the better-educated anglophones, led to a mass francophone
migration to the cities. Here, a French-speaking middle class soon
began to articulate the grievances of the workforce and to
criticize the suffocating effect the Church was having on
francophone opportunity. The shake-up of Québec society finally
came about with the so-called Quiet Revolution in the 1960s,
spurred by the provincial government under the leadership of Jean
Lesage and his Liberal Party of Québec. The provincial government
took control of welfare, health and education away from the Church
and, under the slogan " Maîtres chez-nous " (Masters of our
own house), established state-owned industries that reversed
anglophone financial domination by encouraging the development of a
francophone entrepreneurial and business class.
In order to implement these fiscal policies, Québec needed to
administer its own taxes, and the provincial Liberals, despite
being staunchly federalist, were constantly at loggerheads with
Ottawa. Encouraged and influenced by other nationalist struggles,
Québécois' desire for cultural recognition and political power
intensified and reached a violent peak in 1970 with the terrorist
actions of the largely unpopular Front de Libération du
Québec (FLQ) in Montréal. The kidnapping of Cabinet Minster
Pierre Laporte and British diplomat James Cross, with Laporte
winding up dead in the trunk of a car, led then-Prime Minister
Pierre Elliott Trudeau to enact the War Measures Act and send
Canadian troops into the streets of Montréal. Six years later a
massive reaction against the ruling provincial Liberals brought the
separatist Parti Québécois (PQ) to power in Montréal. Led by
René Lévesque, the Parti Québécois accelerated the process of
social change with the Charte de la langue française ,
better known as Bill 101 , which established French as the
province's official language. With French dominant in the workplace
and the classroom, Québécois thought they had got as close as
possible to cultural and social independence. Still reeling from
the terrorist activities of the FLQ and scared that Lévesque's
ultimate objective of separatism would leave Québec economically
adrift, the 6.5-million population voted 60:40 against sovereignty
in a 1980 referendum.
Having made the promise that voting against separation meant
voting for a "new Canada", Trudeau set about repatriating the
country's Constitution in the autumn of 1981. Québec was
prepared to contest the agreement with the support of other
provincial leaders, but was spectacularly denied the opportunity to
do so when Trudeau called a late-night meeting on the issue and did
not invite Lévesque to the table. "The night of the long knives",
as the event became known, wound up imposing a Constitution on the
province that placed its language rights in jeopardy and removed
its veto power over constitutional amendments. Accordingly, the
provincial government refused to sign it - and hasn't to this
day.
The Constitution's failure to include Québec became a lingering
source of ire, which the beau risque (beautiful risk)
equally failed to extinguish. A good-faith alliance between
Québécois, the Liberal Party of Québec under Robert Bourassa, and
the federal Progressive-Conservatives under Brian Mulroney, the
beau risque produced the Meech Lake Accord in 1990.
Inspired by Mulroney's talk of bringing Québec back into the
Canadian fold with "honour and enthusiasm", the accord sought to
recognize Québec's status as a "distinct society" and give it the
power to opt out of federal legislation it didn't like - including
the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Canadian
equivalent of the American Bill of Rights. The talks collapsed on
Québec's national holiday, la Fête St-Jean-Baptiste, and tens of
thousands of Québécois took to the streets to demonstrate their
frustration. The failure also prompted Lucien Bouchard, one of
Mulroney's cabinet ministers and primary promoter of the agreement
to English Canada, to resign from the Progressive-Conservative
Party and form a new sovereignist federal party, the Bloc
Québécois . In desperation, the Liberal leader Robert Bourassa
hastily threw together a constitutional agreement, the
Charlottetown Accord , that attempted not only to satisfy
Québec, but the rest of Canada, and the aboriginal peoples as well.
The accord's scope was so enormous that it failed on all points and
was rejected by Québec and several other provinces in a Canada-wide
referendum in 1992.
In October 1993, Québec's displeasure with federalism was
evident in the election of Lucien Bouchard's Bloc Québécois to the
ironic status of Her Majesty's Official Opposition in Ottawa. The
cause received added support in 1994 when the Parti Québécois was
returned to provincial power after vowing to hold a province-wide
referendum on separation from Canada. The referendum was
held a year later and the vote was so close - the province opted to
remain a part of Canada by a margin of under one percent
(50.6:49.4) - that calls immediately arose for a third referendum
(prompting pundits to refer to the process as the
"neverendum").
In 1996, Bouchard left federal politics to take the leadership
of the PQ, determined to become the leader of a new country and
promising to proceed with the separation process and work on the
economy. Another step towards constitutional reform was taken in
September 1997, when nine of Canada's ten provincial premiers
endorsed the Calgary Declaration stating that Québec's
unique character should be recognized - a shift from the "distinct
society" recognition proposal in the failed Meech Lake and
Charlottetown constitutional reform packages. Bouchard, the only
premier not in attendance at the meeting, took the new term as "an
insult", and the declaration's intentions never really got off the
ground. Instead, the federal Liberals enacted the Clarity
Act in 1999 - a sharp departure from their previous kowtowing
tactics, as the act laid out the requirements Québec needed to meet
to secede from Canada. While it infuriated leaders of the
sovereignist movement, it also met with sharp criticism from
members of the federalist camp who were convinced it would ignite
sovereignist fire and result in a definitive Yes vote. Their fears
didn't come to pass, however; in a surprising turn of the popular
vote, the 2000 federal elections saw the federal Liberals win more
in Québec than the Bloc Québécois.
An even greater shock was Bouchard's sudden resignation as
Premier of Québec in January 2001, leaving the PQ with no obvious
successor that matched his powers of oratory or charisma. Without
Bouchard, there is little hope of achieving the dream of a
sovereign Québec in the near future - if ever. Whoever the party
chooses as his replacement will have to contend with the current
political climate that suggests Québécois are tired of the
political wrangling and would rather see a new deal that keeps them
in Canada. After suffering through the long recession due, in large
part, to the political battles that have dominated Québec for the
last two decades, Québécois have a vested interest in maintaining
the momentum of economic growth the province is currently
experiencing. And, for the time being, they appear more interested
in maintaining political peace than encouraging old fights