Define "junior", oh great Toronto Star!

Kathleen Wynne's new Ontario cabinet is being announced today, and my local MP, Liz Sandals, has apparently been tapped to become the new education minister.  But that's not the observation that leapt out at me from today's Toronto Star article about the cabinet shuffle.  Authors Robert Benzie and Rob Ferguson note that former Education Minister Laurel Broten has been "demoted" to Intergovernmental Affairs, calling it a "a ministry so junior McGuinty ran it himself for years."

 [ETA: Interesting to note that the updated version of the article calls Intergovernmental Affairs: "barely a stand-alone department because the premier usually handles all its major files personally."]

To me, this drives home just how ill-served we are by many of our journalists these days.  Just because a portfolio is held by the premier does not make it junior or unimportant.  Indeed, given how Canada's system of federalism works (or doesn't), the role of intergovernmental affairs minister can be quite important indeed.  Federally, that role was once held by Stéphane Dion, in the aftermath of the 1995 referendum.  Many Canadian Prime Ministers also acted as their own foreign affairs minister.  And what does it say that Wynne is planning on running the Ministry of Agriculture herself?  Just last Wednesday, the Star ran an article arguing that this decision was a way of signalling the importance of this ministry!

Just to be clear, I do think that the decision to move Laurel Broten out of education is probably a demotion.  But to conflate that with implying that the Intergovernmental Affairs ministry is insignificant betrays a woeful lack of perception of how Canada's system of government operates.

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Federalism - It's not just for Centralizers any more!

As an addendum to yesterday's post, I see that Nycole Turmel has re-stated her commitment to federalism, and plans to end her membership in the sovereignist Quebec Solidaire. But here's the central issue for me, as someone who teaches courses on Canadian politics and federalism. Saying that you are a "federalist" is a pretty meaningless statement in some important respects. The central feature of "federalism" as a system of government is that power is divided between a central government and regional governments, with each sovereign in their own sphere - although often with some overlapping jurisdictions. Where the balance of power lies between the two levels of government, and how responsibilities are divided up, varies wildly between different federations around the world. Switzerland, for example, gives almost all of the powers to the cantons, while the USA has swung back and forth between a state-centric and national government-centered approach. So when Nycole Turmel says that she is a commited (or strong) federalist, all this really means is that she is not a supporter of Quebec separatism.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate even this level of clarity. As someone who has studied Quebec history for years, I'm well aware that the sovereignist parties have basically monopolized left-wing politics for decades, and many NDP supporters hold their noses and vote Bloc, or PQ, or QS because of their social policies. But for many NDP supporters outside the province of Quebec, it actually does matter a lot whether the party is still committed to a strong national government role in the provision of social welfare. And this, at least for me, is one of the big unknowns about what the May election means for the future of NDP policy. I'm happy that Turmel does not support the sovereignist planks of the two sovereignist parties that she has been a member of, but I'd still like to know more about how she conceives of the future of Canadian federalism. For me, this isn't about using national unity as a political wedge issue, it's about getting more information about how the NDP is conceiving of future directions for the funding and delivery of Canadian social programs.

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Don't add, just translate!

Inspired by a thought-provoking little column today by Chantal Hébert about the ongoing failure of Quebec politics to transcend the grievance game, I have finally picked up my copy of André Pratte's edited collection Reconquering Canada: Quebec Federalists Speak Up For Change. As it happens, I also own the French version, published as Reconquérir le Canada: Un nouveau projet pour la nation québécoise. I'm hoping to have a review up at some point in the future. However, being an occasionally lazy reader (and fighting a cold, although that's not really my excuse), I'm reading the English translation. The translator is Patrick Watson, a long-time writer, director, and broadcaster perhaps best known for his work with the CBC.

While reading the first article, by Daniel Fournier, I came across the following passage:

Whether it was the Manitoba Schools Question of 1890, which created publicly funded separate schools for French and English students, or the Manitoba Language Question in the 1980s, which required all provincial laws and legislative documents to be translated into French, French Canadians generally, and French Quebeckers in particular, have been wary of attempts by some of their fellow-citizens to shape Canada in their own image.

I found this rather startling, since the Manitoba Schools Question of 1890 did not create publicly funded separate schools - it abolished them, and only permitted religious instruction after regular school hours - and only allowed French language instruction in a limited capacity until this too was eliminated in 1916. I was questioning Fournier's history, and indeed the rest of his argument. But then I turned to the original French, which reads as follows:

Que ce soit lors de la question des écoles au Manitoba, dans les années 1890, ou de la querelle linguistique, dans la même province, dans les années 1980, les Canadiens français en général, et les Québécois francophones en particulier, ont légitimement exprimé leurs préoccupations devant les tentatives de certains de leurs concitoyens de façonner le Canada à leur guise.

The bilingual among you will note that there is nothing in the French version which explains what the 1890 Manitoba Schools Question or the 1980 Manitoba language question were - Watson (or the editor) introduced that content themselves. Now, being married to a translator, I'm not the best person in my household to expound on theories of translation. But I imagine that you'd be hard-pressed to find a theorist who advocates introducing new material which is factually incorrect into the target text.

Unfortunately, a sadly low percentage of this country's population is sufficiently bilingual to read in the other official language. As such, they rely on translators. Especially in a book such as this - which is attempting to explain and promote the positions of federalist Quebeckers to English-speaking Canadian readers - one needs to be careful to do so as faithfully to the original as possible. Hopefully, the rest of the text will be cleaner, but I'm now wondering whether I would be further ahead to read the French version.

[...end rant]

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