There'll always be a Canada and a Canadian Constitutional Crisis

Abstract

Since 1976, when an avowedly separatist Parti Québécois under René Lévèsque took power in Quebec, Canada has been caught up in a drama of continuing constitutional crisis, or so it appears. The most critical act was the popular defeat on referendum in October 1992 of a comprehensive settlement reached unanimously by the first ministers, federal and provincial, and the territories with concurrence of interested groups. The latest act was a Quebec election in September 1994, which returned the Parti Québécois to power and may result in another Quebec referendum on independence sometime in 1995. This article seeks to provide some historical perspective on the apparently continuing crisis; by breaking the crisis up into its components, discontinuity becomes rather more prominent than continuity. Without attempting to predict outcome, it is reasonable to hope that there will, indeed, always be a Canada with Quebec included.

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References

1. Louis Balthazar , “L'identité québécoise en mutation” (Paper delivered to Le comité sur l'identité du groupe Réflexion-Québec, n.p., n.d.), pp. 6-7; my translation.

2. René Lévèsque , “The Government of Quebec and the Road to the Referendum” (Speech to the National Assembly, 10 Oct. 1978), in My Quebec, by René Lévèsque (Toronto: Methuen, 1979), p. ix.

3. Donald V. Smiley , Canada in Question: Federalism in the Eighties, 3d ed. (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1980), p. 333.

4. Reuven Brenner , “Canadian Choices,” in Economic Dimensions of Constitutional Change, ed. R. Boadway , D. D. Puris , and J. F. Wen (Kingston, ON: John Deutsch Institute, 1991), p. 123.

5. Quoted in Norman Tarnow , “The Quebec Round—A Bureaucrat's Perspective,” in Meech Lake: From Centre to Periphery, ed. Hilda Symonds and H. Peter Oberlander (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, Centre for Human Settlements, 1988), p. 20.

6. Quoted in Keith Banting and Richard Simeon , “Federalism, Democracy and the Constitution,” in And No One Cheered: Federalism, Democracy & the Constitution Act, ed. K. Banting and R. Simeon (Toronto: Metheun, 1983), p. 2.

7. Quebec Update, 15 Dec. 1985 (Quebec Delegation at Los Angeles).

8. “A Guide to the Constitutional Accord of June 3, 1987,” in Meech Lake, ed. Symonds and Oberlander , p. 192.

9. Ibid., p. 185.

10.

10. Report to the People and Government of Canada of the Citizens' Forum on Canada's Future (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1991), pp. 59-60.

11.

11. Ibid., p. 96.

12.

12. Ibid., pp. 5-6.

13.

13. Report of the Special Joint Committee on a Renewed Canada (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1992), p. xi.

14.

14. “Notes for an Address by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, Sept. 24, 1991” (Prime Minister's Office, 1991), p. 2.

15.

15. Quoted in Susan Delacourt , “Steady Hand on Unity Helm” Globe and Mail (Toronto), 18 Apr. 1992.

16.

16. La Presse (Montreal), 26 Oct. 1993; my translation.

17.

17. Globe and Mail (Toronto), 27 Oct. 1993.

18.

18. Ibid., 1 Nov. 1993.

19.

19. The Reid Report, no. 8, pp. 3-6 (Nov.-Dec. 1993). This report discusses the Angus Reid poll on the year's-end overview of “national unity.”