Is this reflective of the mainstream opinion against independence for Quebec? It’s from a Socialist website. www.geocities.com/socialist_action/quebec1.html What, if any, points is it lacking?
Needless to say, the Canadian bourgeoisie in its entirety is adamantly opposed to Quebec independence, and for very good reasons. It would reduce their status in the world. They would also lose control over an important part of their internal market, something which is very important for major federally regulated Canadian corporations, like the big banks and insurance companies, or Bell Telephone, the largest Canadian company. Furthermore, Quebec independence would weaken the Federal State very much and potentially open the door to demands from other groups such as Native peoples. The main instrument of class domination would be very much reduced.
Kanada is long past. Cascadia might be an option, but must move now. Les quebecois must take care of themselves. Dollar Solvency? C’est tous fous!
Surrender unto The Void.
Mes chers Canadiens, pourquoi fait afin que beaucoup de vous vous opposiez à indépendance pour Québec? Comment est-ce qu’un Québec indépendant blesserait le Canadien moyen?
PS How is the above French? I use 1800translate.com and the free trial for the automatic translation feature.
[quote=“v”]Mes chers Canadiens, pourquoi fait afin que beaucoup de vous vous opposiez à indépendance pour Québec? Comment est-ce qu’un Québec indépendant blesserait le Canadien moyen?
[/quote]
Funny you should address “My dear Canadians” solely in French even though a large majority of Canadians do not speak it. It also implies, v, that you are Canadian yourself…of course, you very well may be, but if you are, you should know the answer to that question.
For many it’s an emotional issue, plain and simple. For me, speaking from a purely pragmatic point of view, if Quebec should ever separate, it will cause great political and economic instability in Canada. The Canadian gov’t will be forced to deal with numerous issues due to the fallout of separation and will be, at least in the short term, too distracted to properly govern in any other area. Economic uncertainly will most likely decrease foreign investments and hit the stock markets rather hard. All this will impact my life negatively. Furthermore, the town in which I live will fall on hard economic times as a mass number of jobs get moved out of the region.
Native bands have indicated that they will not go along with a separate Quebec and will take that as a precedent to declare separation themselves within Quebec. So what may happen is that Quebec separates, then the natives separate from Quebec and attempts to rejoin Canada (claiming a majority of the Quebec’s land mass and precious resources), fingers are pointed and rhetoric flies everywhere, all the while the economy goes to hell and everyone is worse off for it all – English Canadians, French Canadians, and even the Americans who has to live beside this mess.
So the question you may want to ask is how does an independent Quebec benefit Canadians versus the damage that it may bring to their daily lives. For most Canadians outside of Quebec, I simply don’t see much of an upside but plenty of downsides (even for those within Quebec).
v, are you in favour of a separate Quebec? If so, why?
I don’t think anything said on that website is anywhere close to mainstream opinion. It’s a very left leaning organization that has minimal support even within Quebec itself. The number one goal of this organization, according to its own website, is to “Abolish Capitalism”. The fact that the website is hosted on “geocities” instead of its own domain name also speaks volumes about the reach and support of this organization.
Furthermore, it seems to play fast and loose with the facts. The article states: “They polled their members and found 65% opposed to sovereignty, almost the opposite of the general public.” The sentence implies that about 2 out of every 3 persons in Quebec supports sovereignty (independence). This is simply not true. Quebec rejected a sovereignty referendum just fairly recently in 1995 (although it was very close) and unlike Taiwan, there were no missiles pointed at the province.
Hi! How’s your son’s English coming along? I’m not Canadian- I’m American. I don’t know a lot about the Quebec issue, hence the post. I only posted in French as a joke- as you’ll see in that post, I had to use a translation website- but my French speaking students tell me it does a pretty good job. Anyway, I’m trying to learn more about the issue of seccession in general and unilateral secession in particular. It’s a very interesting topic. So that’s what led me to ask about Quebec. In your post you didn’t go into whether you thought the desire for an independent Quebec was justifiable- you just talked about the hardship it would bring. You also noted that Quebec isn’t under threat of missile attack as Taiwan is. This leds me to believe that you think there is no good reason for an independent Quebec. If there were good reason, economic hardship outside of Quebec would not trump the right of Quebec to be independent. Economic hardships could always be lessened by instituting a slow pace of separation. If survival of French culture is the main reason for an independent Quebec, it seems this goal could be achieved without independence. I read another website which talked about how the internet, cable/satellite TV and other technologies have made it easier to keep up the French language/culture. Is the real reaon Quebec wants to be independent because they are a wealthier province and they want to improve their standard of living by not sharing that wealth with poorer provinces? Just a guess on my part.
There are many reasons to oppose an independent Quebec and few, imho, to support it.
I generally support constituting and maintaining larger political entities, for reasons that were fairly well summed up by Clinton at a government-sponsored symposium on federalism. I don’t pretend that these reasons reflect majority opinion, much of which–at first blush–is based on emotion, but this pretty well represents my thinking. Chew these over and let me know if they don’t answer your curiosity.
[quote]President Bill Clinton […] in an address to a Canadian government-sponsored symposium on federalism held at Mont Tremblant, Quebec, the US president touted the Canadian federal state as an example to the world: “For two centuries you have shown the world how people of different cultures can live together in peace, prosperity and mutual respect, in a country where human differences are democratically expressed, not forcefully repressed.”
Clinton’s speech, which closed the International Conference on Federalism, was widely interpreted as a strong rebuff to Quebec’s ruling provincial party, the Parti Québécois (PQ), which had sought to use the conference to make the case for Quebec independence. Calling for national minorities thinking of independence to ask “serious questions,” Clinton delivered an unmistakable message to Quebec.
[b]Before pursuing secession, said Clinton, a people should ask, “Is there an abuse of human rights? Is there a way people can get along if they come from different heritages? Are minority rights as well as majority rights respected?.. How are we going to cooperate with our neighbors; is it going to be better or worse if we are independent or if we have a federalist system?”
“If every racial and ethnic and religious group that occupies a specific piece of land” seeks independence, continued the president, “we might have 800 countries in the world… Maybe we’d have 8,000.”[/b] Such a development, he declared, would threaten international cooperation and the world economy.[/quote]
Why would anybody want to live in the same country as a bunch of French?! Vere everybody zey talk like ze Inspecteur Cleuseau…
Oh, I think they could manage the transition will enough:
(1) Declare Qwabeck independent. Kick the Noofies out too.
(2) But form a common market with free movement of workers. Let’s call it CAFTA. Only let Qwebeck join if they promise to leave those gay accent marks out of their name.
(3) Run CAFTA from out of the former headquarters in–what’s the name of Canada’s capitol? Canada City? Whatever. That way nothing really changes, and stability is ensured alongside national pride.
(4) Can Qwabeck people like, put on shows where they sing and do native dances for the tourists? Or is it all just discos and ballerinas? Aw who cares–just make something up, who’ll know?
Hi v, it’s coming along swimmingly, so much so we’ve stopped doing 100% English bedtime stories with him.
What are “justifiable” reasons for seccession? Economics? Geography? Culture? Language? Political ideology? Power? Religion? I think just about any independence movement has its own justifications. But you did asked how an independent Quebec would affect the average Canadian, so I answered (assuming you believe that I’m an average Canadian). Just because there are some justifications for independence does not mean I have to support it. Western provinces (esp. Alberta) have independence movements as well (small) and they have their own justifications different from Quebec.
Certainly not. Quebec has legitimate reasons for separation, but also plenty of reasons not to as well. My statement was simply to note that Quebec voted against independence even without the threat of military obliteration (50.6% against), meaning Quebecers did not make this decision under duress.
True, but I’m harzarding a guess that should Quebec ever declare unilateral independence, it may very well end up with a lot less than it bargained for. As I wrote previously, native bands, who claim a large chunk of Quebec and much of its natural resources, have already declared that they will not go along with a separate Quebec. They’ve even mused publicly about separating from Quebec if Quebec separates from Canada. The economic engine and the largest city in Quebec, Montreal, is also against separation. What I see is economic hardship for Quebecers themselves as well as the rest of Canada.
I don’t know just how much more “French” Quebec can become even if it were to become independent. Funny you should mention the internet because the Quebec government fears the internet (with its mostly English content) will dilute its “Frenchness”, so much so, it actually went to court in 2002 to force advertisements of Quebec companies on the internet to be have French words twice the size of all other languages. In fact, Quebec’s language laws in favour of French, known as Bill 101, are so strict that not only does it violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it also violates the international agreements regarding civil and political rights according to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
In Canada, there’s something called “equalization payments”, where provinces pay into a pool of money relative to each province’s revenue. The money is then divided according to (more or less) population. This means that the richer provinces (the “have” provinces) pay more into the pool but get less back in return while the relatively poorer provinces (the “have-not” provinces) end up with more money in its coffers. Quebec is considered as a “have-not” province. Separation will cost the province $5-6 billion dollars a year in equalization payments.
IMO, modern day Quebec separatism is not driven by economics or the preservation of its culture, but rather, it is driven by nationalism. Much like Taiwan, this nationalism often excludes minorities, and thus, is also outright rejected by those same minorites. When Quebec rejected the independence referendum in 1995, the Quebec premier stood in front of TV cameras and told everyone that “we” (white francophones) were defeated by “money and the ethnic vote”. You may think Quebec and Taiwan independence are worlds apart, but they do share similar characteristics.
A large percentage of a recognizable group of people (francophones, BSRs) do not feel an attachment to the “motherland” (English Canada, mainland China) due to a different language (French, Minnan) and a conquered history (French defeated by British, BSR suppressed under WSR). The independence movement is often framed in such as way that people outside of this group are sometimes blamed and marginalized (anglophones/immigrants/natives, WSR/aborigines).
I, like many Canadians, think independance for Quebec is a question Quebecers have to decide. They’ve had referendums in Quebec - and the decision was to stay in Canada.
I, emotionally, do not feel a part of central or eastern Canada - ie., Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes, Newfoundland. Emotionally, western separatism appeals to me.
However, in the short run, separation of any province will have a negative impact on the economy of the country as a whole.
Thanks to all who replied. Scjma- very interesting comments on the similarities between Taiwanese nationalism and Quebec nationalism- especially the sometime marginalizing of minorities. However, Taiwan has so much to lose if it unifies in the way of range of personal freedoms, where as Quebec’s reasons for independence as given here seem pretty frivolous. Also very interesting comments by former president and cigar lover Bill Clinton as given by Jaboney:
[b]Before pursuing secession, said Clinton, a people should ask, “Is there an abuse of human rights? Is there a way people can get along if they come from different heritages? Are minority rights as well as majority rights respected?.. How are we going to cooperate with our neighbors; is it going to be better or worse if we are independent or if we have a federalist system?”
“If every racial and ethnic and religious group that occupies a specific piece of land” seeks independence, continued the president, “we might have 800 countries in the world… Maybe we’d have 8,000.”[/b] Such a development, he declared, would threaten international cooperation and the world economy.[/quote][/quote]
Since he sent in the 7th fleet to protect Taiwan, Clinton is also against forceful annexation. A question: if Quebec unilaterally seceded, what do you think would be the Canadian response? If the Native peoples within Quebec then unilaterally seceded from Quebec, what do you think would be the Quebec response? And are the reasons for an independent Quebec as frivolous as they sound- people are mainly worried about cultural preservation? The family can control that without having the whole province go independent. If I were raising my daughters in Taiwan and I was worried that they were losing their English language skills or that they were being infected by some pernicious part of Taiwan culture, I would make sure that they visited the US every summer and stayed with family. Actually, when I look at the teen culture in the US, I want to go to Taiwan for the summers with my daughters. Except that it is so hotttttt!!!
Having lived in Montreal as a child and a victim of Bill 101, I can attest first hand to the similarity of BSR and Francophone attitudes towards people that don’t comply with their idea of culture.
Businesses have been leaving Quebec steadily for the past 20 years due to political instability.
If Quebec is the archetype of what will follow on Taiwan if TI becomes even more mainstream, then it is truly hopeless for Taiwan.
Francophone vs. Anglophone in terms of Quebec is a clearly a case of multiculturalism gone wrong.
[quote=“ac_dropout”]Having lived in Montreal as a child and a victim of Bill 101, I can attest first hand to the similarity of BSR and Francophone attitudes towards people that don’t comply with their idea of culture.
Businesses have been leaving Quebec steadily for the past 20 years due to political instability.
If Quebec is the archetype of what will follow on Taiwan if TI becomes even more mainstream, then it is truly hopeless for Taiwan.
Francophone vs. Anglophone in terms of Quebec is a clearly a case of multiculturalism gone wrong.[/quote]
You seem to be a victim of many places. Of course, you could look at it the other way as well. I’ve got some English Canadian friends who speak quite good French due to those laws. They did not seem overly ‘victimised’ and enjoy increased employment opportunities with French. But that is only anecdotal and a small no. of data points
I’ll won’t comment on Taiwan’s post-unification prospects since so much has already been said in the TP forum. However, I don’t think those advocating for independence see their reasons as frivolous. Afterall, there are two major parties (one federal – Bloc Quebecois, one provincial – Parti Quebecois) dedicated to the cause of sovereignty. I think at the end of the day, independence comes down to identity. If you don’t feel a shared identity with a majority of the country, that in itself is good enough for many to seek independence. All other arguments are simply auxiliary reasonings supporting the main justification.
I don’t think the Quebec population would go for unilateral secession. The damage it would cause in terms of economic and political instability is simply too great. Not only is it illegal under current laws, a unilateral declaration of independence, when Quebec is not being oppressed, will lack legitimacy in the eyes of the world. Having said that, if such a situation were to occur, I really don’t know what would happen as it’s uncharted waters.
Quebec’s desire to preserve its culture is only part of the reason for separation; I also don’t think it an illegitimate concern. Afterall, Quebec has 6+ million French speakers surrounded by about 320 million English speakers. An immigrant and his children may be able to preserve their culture, but the grandchildren will end up being assimilated. That is the fear of some Quebecers. However, Quebec has great powers in how it implements its language and cultural policies. In fact, under the Canadian constitution, provinces can pass laws that violate the constitution by invoking the notwithstanding clause. Quebec has in fact invoked this very clause (Bill 101) to the ire of many.
While Canadians understand that Quebec has the right to separate, most do not support separation. Much like I support your right to free speech, but supporting this right does not mean I also have to support the words that come out of your mouth.
I think the issue of independence eventually comes down to identity. Some argue that Taiwan has only been ruled from the mainland for only 4 years in the past century. Hence, why bother unifying something that’s been separate for so long. But Hong Kong was ruled by a foreign power for 154 years but an overwhelming majority still identify themselves as Chinese rather than anything else. The same goes for Macau. That’s why the population has accepted and to some extent, embraced, reunifying with China. The two Koreas, despite their drastic differences in economy and ideology, still wish to eventually unify because of a shared identity. The same is true for Germany. When identities clash, some will seek independence at all costs, even if those costs involve war, genocide, ethnic cleansing and terrorism – Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, Chechnya, present-day Iraq, etc. If everyone in Taiwan identified themselves as Chinese, they will find a way to unify even if there were some costs in terms of personal freedoms. The need to assert one’s self identity is great indeed.
More similiarities between QI and TI – the largest city in both Quebec and Taiwan are opposed to separation (Montreal, Taipei). The most ardent pro-independence population tend to be those in small towns and rural areas. The native population in both Quebec and Taiwan are opposed to independence.
It’s not multiculturalism gone bad since Quebec has never really embraced multiculturalism. There is one exception, though, to the language law and it suits the goals of the government. As you are aware, Bill 101 stipulates that any outdoor sign shall have French at least twice the size of all other languages. The problem comes when you have Chinese on the signs, since Chinese writing conveys a lot more information in its height than alphabet based languages. Squishing the characters down in height severly affects readability. Some existing signs also has Chinese written vertically. Furthermore, Montreal’s Chinatown is one of its well recognized tourist attractions, often dumping bus loads of tourists from outside the province. Imagine walking into Chinatown and seeing signs on all the shops and restaurants being in French only (along with barely readable Chinese). I think it would cease to become a tourist attraction pretty quickly.
The government went around this issue by declaring Chinese writing as pictures, thus, it need not fall under Bill 101. The government even went and erected two gates (牌樓) around Chinatown with incriptions at the top in, gasp, Chinese only!
I’m quite familiar with the Chinatown in Montreal it is urban and quaint. However, Francophone strongholds like Laval have become quite the Nazi in their mentality. Most of the people I know there are Greek immigrants and they are pressured into becoming Francophone-nazi. One of the most ridiculous experience I have ever had in these was there was a 16 year old behind the register of a convenient store that refuse to speak English when inquiring about a plastic fork. Even though I had a briefest of education under Bill 101, I’m not so ignorant to believe that within 20 years all Basic English language has been wiped out in Laval.
[quote=“ac_dropout”] One of the most ridiculous experience I have ever had in these was there was a 16 year old behind the register of a convenient store that refuse to speak English when inquiring about a plastic fork. Even though I had a briefest of education under Bill 101, I’m not so ignorant to believe that within 20 years all Basic English language has been wiped out in Laval.[/quote]Outside of Montreal, the majority of Quebecers are unilingual French-speakers. Just like outside of Quebec, where the vast majority of Canadians are unilingual English-speakers. You couldn’t expect to talk about forks in French in any convenience store in my hometown - and we have pretty well all “studied” French in high school.
Even my cousins in Vancouver (CBC) were more bilingual in French than this Francophone Nazi I had the total displeasure of dealing with. I was there for a funeral; it only aggravated matters and left a deep negative impression with me. Because I spent my some of my childhood in that neighborhood, it just saddens me to see that Francophone pride being taken to such an extent to make non-Francophone feel unwelcome.
By the time I got back to my hotel I remember giving a compliment to the receptionist how good her English was, not as sarcasm but as relief I could communicate and get some service in this Francophone stronghold I was stuck in.
A bloodless civil war only 1 hour away from the USA boarder.
If 2 people are willing, they can get a lot across about a simple topic (like a plastic fork) using no spoken language- just gestures and drawings. Otherwise how would I be able to teach in a school district with over 200 different languages spoken? If someone has a negative attitude towards you, it doesn’t matter if they have a PhD in the literature of your dominant language- they can still block communication by tuning you out- a shrug of the shoulders- a condescending laugh-zhuang sa. Seems like even if that person were monolingual in French, either you or him weren’t willing to go the extra mile (km) to communicate. Some people get flustered and give up too easily as well.
Quebec often touts itself as having a “distinct society” within Canada and therefore, asks to be treated differently from the other provinces (of which Alberta vehemently opposes). The main thrust of this distinctiveness is language and culture and these are claims not without merit.
Take a look at this interactive web site showing the languages spoken in Canada broken down by province: Languages in Canada
Canada as a whole (population, 2001 census):
English: 21.86 million
French: 7.21 million
Chinese (all dialects): 0.86 million
With almost 1 in 4 speaks, one may think that French is just about everywhere in Canada. But if we ignore the stats in Quebec (French: 6.24 million, English: 1.19 million, Chinese 0.045 million), we end up with:
Canada sans Quebec:
English: 20.67 million
French: 0.97 million
Chinese (all dialects): 0.81 million
New Brunswick is also the only officially bilingual province in Canada. So if we exclude New Brunswick as well and look at “English only Canada”, we end up with:
English-only Canada (sans Quebec, N.B.):
English: 20.12 million
French: 0.73 million
Chinese (all dialects): 0.81 million
In non-Quebec Canada, French baaaarely squeaks above Chinese in the number of speakers. These are also 2001 figures and the Chinese population has increased since then through immigration. In English-only Canada, French has become the third most spoken language. This may be quite surprising but it certainly does support Quebec’s argument of a distinct society.
It also implies, v, that you are Canadian yourself…of course, you very well may be, but if you are, you should know the answer to that question.