De Gaulle, she ain't

I think that Chantal Hebert has hit the nail on the head with her analysis of Segolene Royal's recent comments about Quebec sovereignty. Reading the initial quotes from Royal, I got the sense that she was making reassuring platitudes to a guest, about an issue that really didn't matter all that much to her. Her recent backtracking and inept efforts to clarify her position reinforce this impression. This is not like the cold calculated manoeuvring of Charles de Gaulle to get Quebec separate invitations to meetings of la Francophonie, to be sure.

That being said, it really is tiresome to see French politicians, whose country traded away New France so that they could hold on to Guadeloupe and Martinique, playing the French solidarity card and, yes, meddling in Canadian politics. You can bet that the day that a Canadian Prime Minister calls on France to grant official language recognition to the Basque language will be the day that the French government condemns Canada for meddling - and that wouldn't even be about calls for recognition of an independent Basque state!

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