Quebec Separation: Be Careful What You Wish For
As is so often the case when Quebec comes up in the news, the current provincial election has led to a lot of people calling for that province to simply leave Canada once and for all. However, I’m not sure that the people, both inside and outside Quebec, who want la belle province to leave have thought through exactly what the implications would be…
First of all, it’s pretty clear that separation would cause all kinds of economic grief for Quebec. But what’s the implication for Canada? Even with everything weighing it down
Quebec still produces about 20% of Canada’s economic GDP. What country has ever had 20% of its economy go down the tubes without experiencing economic pain of its own? The taxes and purchases made by Quebecers and their companies going to other parts of Canada would all be lost, and how exactly would we make it all up?
This also applies to specific sectors. The Oilsands Today organization has been active in trying to show how the oilsands benefit all of Canada, citing Suncor spending $425 million in Quebec in 2012 and hiring the Prevost oil company to provide transportation for oilpatch workers. What happens to those purchases if Quebec’s economy goes down the crapper? Sure, they will probably find other companies to get services from, but there’s going to be a lot of hassle and inconvenience in the meantime, and that’s not good for business.
Think about it on a larger scale, too. If Quebec leaves, it and the rest of the country are probably going to be squabbling over issues like the dollar, their share of the debt, and everything else for a long time. What’s that going to do to our international credit rating, and for foreign investment in the country, if we’re fighting with each other over how much money each of us owes? How long are those conflicts going to drag out, and how will that affect the decisions of investors?
Finally, even if you don’t care about the economic impact of separation on Quebecers, how about the impact on Atlantic Canadians? They’re going to be stuck on the other side of what will be a gaping hole in our country. Even if we partition Quebec, most of the heavily populated areas with the bulk of the infrastructure will probably still be claimed by Quebec. How is travel and trade going to be affected by that? People are still going to have to pass through Quebec to get to and from the Atlantic provinces, and how easy will that be if Quebec leaves and takes so much of the infrastructure with it? Is Ottawa going to build a bunch of roads through the more sparsely northland, which we might try and have partitioned? Newfoundlander and Mulroney-era Cabinet Minister John Crosbie was pretty clear when he said that Quebec’s separation would be very bad for the Atlantic provinces, and I don’t see any reason to disagree with him.
Admittedly, I’m not an economist. Maybe I’m completely off base with these assumptions. However, from everything I’ve seen it seems to me that everyone who wants Quebec to leave Canada, both inside and outside the province, might want to be careful what they wish for. The results may not be what they expect.
Aside from all that, people might wonder why the separation issue keeps popping up again and again. Are Quebecers really that unwilling to commit to Canada? Why can’t they seem to decide?
I don’t think the only issue is with the Franco-Quebecois themselves. Could it be that maybe, just maybe, there are still some major unresolved issues as far as Quebec’s relationship with Canada goes? Why is Philippe Couillard talking about the need to reopen the Constitution at some point, even if he would prioritize other issues for the time being?
Why is Stéphane Dion on record as defending Quebec’s language laws and Quebec nationalism, and spent so much time back in the 1990s as supporting recognizing his province in the Constitution as a distinct society? Why did Pierre Trudeau’s old friend Gérard Pelletier, who was one of Trudeau’s earliest allies in fighting separatism, reproach some of Trudeau’s latter-day supporters for enlisting the likes of William Johnson and Mordecai Richler in their fight against separatism?
I find it telling that even the likes of René Levésque and Lucien Bouchard had to support sovereignty-association, and didn’t think Quebecers would go for a full and complete separation from Canada. I wonder how many people who voted Yes in the referendums may have been affected by the “association” part of the proposal. Yes, some of it may have had to do with things like money and passports, but I’m not convinced that’s all there is to it.
It all suggests to me that many Quebecers are still attached to Canada, but that they’re alienated by the way Canada is currently set up, particularly in that it doesn’t recognize for the sense of distinctiveness many of them feel. Pierre Trudeau fought all his life against that…but Trudeau’s efforts had far more impact on other Canadians than they have on the Franco-Quebecois.
That could well be the key to resolving the conflict at some point in the future.
Sources cited:
André Burelle, Pierre Elliott Trudeau: L’intellectuel et le politique. Éditions Fides, 2005. Page 429.
John C. Crosbie, No Holds Barred: My Life In Politics. Toronto: McClelland And Stewart, 1997. Pages 464–465.
Stéphane Dion,Straight Talk: Speeches And Writings On Canadian Unity. Pages 138–149 and 221.
Paul Wells, “Like father, like son: Stéphane Dion’s views are surprisingly similar to his late father’s.”Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, August 30, 1997, page A1.
This article was originally written in March 2014 in response to people calling for Quebec to secede from Canada…and advising them to be careful what they wish for.
Originally published at www.vivelecanada.ca.
