Canada at the breaking point? Justin Trudeau, Le Devoir and Me

Just a quick post this weekend to link to a story in Le Devoir today by Guillaume Bourgault-Côté, occasioned by Justin Trudeau's recent remarks about how the possibility of living in a Canada whose identity actually did correspond to the refashioning that PM Harper has undertaken could make him contemplate Quebec separatism. I am quoted in a couple of places in that piece.

For the non-French readers among you, the gist of my comments refer both to the wholesale ramping up of the pace and ideologization of the new Conservative majority government's policy agenda, and to my view that it's not just, or even primarilly Quebecers who are opposed to this (as other commenters in the piece suggest), but that there is widespread anger and concern amongst progressives throughout Canada. I'd add, and I said this to the journalist, that I don't think it is constructive to express these frustrations in the language of regional separatism, given how widespread this dissent to Harper is, but rather to make much more of an effort to draw connections between what is a rather widespread current of opposition.

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Nycole Turmel, meet Jean Lapierre

Gosh, the Twitterverse is atweet today with spin and counter-spin on Daniel Leblanc's article in the Globe and Mail about interim NDP leader Nycole Turmel's very recent membership in the Bloc Quebecois. Some partisans are crying foul and alleging that this is a smear campaign. Other commentators are observing that it's commonplace to switch political allegiances.

Here are my two cents: Welcome to the big leagues Dippers! Changing political allegiances is pretty common in Canadian politics. Jean Lapierre did it. Rene Levesque did it. Bob Rae did it. Belinda Stronach did it. Scott Brison did it. Lucien Bouchard did it (a bunch of times, in fact). Heck, I've been a card carrying member of different parties in my lifetime (none at the moment though). Over one's lifespan, your political ideals may shift, and so too might your party affiliations. But if you're going to run for political office, you'll need to be prepared to be clear about your political past, and why you've changed your beliefs.

What appears to be igniting the firestorm in this case is the apparent absence of changed political beliefs on the part of Turmel, at least insofar as the letter obtained by Leblanc would indicate (which is not necessarilly the full extent of her reasoning). And let's get real, kids, separatism/sovereigntism is a big deal in Canadian politics. It's legitimate for Canadians to want to know where their politicians stand on this issue. And if that makes the current NDP, with its Quebec-heavy caucus, uncomfortable, that's too bad. Ever since May, the party appears to have been trying to dance around the éléphant in the room, and at some point, that's going to become impossible. The party known for heralding strong national social programs in English-speaking Canada is going to have to publicly reconcile this stance with its asymmetric-federalism stance in Quebec.

This might well be a good opportunity to start that public conversation and provide some clarity. Because without Jack Layton's personal popularity to hold the party together, things might become very tense, very quickly. A clear public statement from Turmel would be an excellent start.

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Is Pauline Marois running to be the next Liberal premier of Quebec?

I've decided that I have a certain fondness for Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois. She seems to be a moderate in her party, she acknowledges that bilingualism might be an asset for job advancement, and now she wants to free herself of the obligation to run an election campaign that would require her to hold a referendum on sovereignty association if she won.

Instead, Marois would like Quebec to "go to the limits of what can be done within the existing system", and perhaps strengthen language laws and promote nationalism in the Quebec history curriculum. Funny, that sounds to me like what Quebec's premiers have been doing ever since the days of Jean Lesage in the 1960s. Federalism, contrary to what separatist leaders have long claimed, is a remarkably flexible political system, and Quebec has a lot of power at its disposal under the existing terms of the Constitution. I'm going to be very curious to see - if she succeeds in convincing her own party's militants - how she plans on distinguishing her agenda from Jean Charest's!

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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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