The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

Canada's continuing national-unity struggles have reached a new stage. In the wake of the 1992 referendum on the Charlottetown constitutional accord, constitutional reform has become all but impossible in English Canada, leaving Quebec to choose, over the coming year, between the current arrangements and independence. In the game of constitutional chicken, the English Canadian car cannot swerve. Will the Quebec car swerve?

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.

The federal structure of Canada has always been very important for Quebec, especially since the Quiet Revolution. By the 1960s, Quebec had come to constitute a communication network of its own. This reinforced the notion of provincial autonomy. Quebec's claims were supported by two important federal commissions. The Ottawa government, however, under Pierre Elliott Trudeau's leadership, reacted with the concept of a single Canadian nation. Trudeau's actions culminated with the 1982 Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Since the Quebec National Assembly did not and could not approve a constitutional scheme that totally ignored Quebec as a people, the Canadian Constitution was and still is illegitimate for Quebecers. Efforts at rectifying this anomaly were in vain, in great part because the very spirit of Canadianism resulting from the application of the Charter did not allow for the full recognition of a distinct society in Quebec. This is why Quebecers, who are strong believers in federalism, may be led to sovereignty. Canada, as it is now conceived by most Canadians, does not seem compatible with an enduring Quebec identity.

Several features of Canadian political institutions have contributed in important ways to Canada's constitutional discontent. The system of plurality elections in single-member districts to the House of Commons tends to exaggerate regional differences in support for political parties, leading to some regions being severely underrepresented in the governing party caucus. This perceived exclusion has heightened regional alienation, especially in western Canada. Federalism in Canada has empowered provincial majorities, but it has also created grievances among provincial minorities and increased the visibility and perceived legitimacy of provincial government leaders rather than federal politicians as spokespersons for regional interests. A veto-ridden constitutional amending formula, and the failure of the last two rounds of constitutional negotiations, strengthen the argument made by politicians favoring Quebec sovereignty that no package of reforms meeting Quebec's aspirations is likely to win approval in the rest of Canada.

Quebec nationalism constitutes a clear case of ethnonationalism in the developed world. This article draws on the research of social psychologist Henri Tajfel, who argues that ethnic movements are motivated primarily by a need to establish a positive social identity. It also identifies language, and in this case the French language, as both the distinguishing characteristic of ethnic identity and the principal vehicle of ethnic assertiveness. The origins of Quebec ethnonationalism are surveyed, and then it is examined in the context of the highly modern and democratic society that the province has become. Answers are sought to such questions as: In what measure is it a specific case, and in what measure does it reflect wider trends? How can its present exceptional vitality be explained? How different is Quebec really from the rest of Canada, indeed, of North America? Do those differences require it to be a separate country? The burning question of whether Quebec will in fact become a sovereign state remains unanswered, but information and insights are provided on which to base conjectures on the subject.

The traditional view that Canada's relations with Europe are a significant influence on Canadian life and Canada's international role no longer prevails in Canadian politics. New immigration and multiculturalism encourage other than (West) European inputs; in addition, decisions taken in 1987-88 seem to bring economic and military-strategic tendencies toward continentalism and sover-eignty to their logical conclusion, at the expense of reaffirmation of ties with Europe and Atlanticism. However, Canada's security remains tied to North America and Europe, and Canada's interest in being seen as an involved international actor also implies inevitable ties with Europe, via trade and through investments and collaboration in high-technology ventures. In the past four decades, Ottawa had to bow to the force of the argument that the North Atlantic Alliance might do without a Canadian military contribution but that Canada could not afford to forgo the goodwill of its partners in the inescapable security community. After the end of the divisions that accompanied the Cold War, both Canada and Europe will have to assess the lessons of the 1947-89 epoch. This article attempts to spotlight the main stakes in the developments between Canada, the United States, and NATO Europe.

By geography, population, and public policy, Canada is a Pacific Rim country. Despite grandiose plans and rhetoric, however, Canada's economy is in retreat, dominated by the southern direction of investment and trade ties with the United States and reinforced by the huge levels of foreign investment that are increasingly rationalized along North American triad lines. The western Canadian provinces are the most Asian oriented, but Canada's business elites, scoring ever lower on measures of international competitiveness, are withdrawing to a regional base. Canada's capacity to diversify the industrial base and build new trade alliances is deeply constrained by the country's deficit and debt problems, as well as business and political elites who remain wedded to an Atlantic Rim focus.

Trade unionism and social democratic parties are significantly stronger in Canada than in the United States. While many factors have been suggested to account for these differences, this article emphasizes the impact of cross-national variations in values: Tory/communitarian, group oriented, and statist in the north; more individualistic, meritocratic, and antistatist in the south.

Christianity has profoundly shaped the contours of Canadian life from the early seventeenth century to the present. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Canadian Catholicism and Protestantism had been more influential in virtually every aspect of Canadian life than they had been in the United States. Throughout the last two centuries in Canada, there has been a growing gap between elite religion and the populist variety. Secularization has not necessarily destroyed Canadian Christianity. Rather, it has helped to de-Christianize the elite but not necessarily the rank and file. Thus secularization has significantly weakened the churches, especially the mainline ones. The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a remarkable transformation of Canadian religious life. Not only are more and more Canadians abandoning Christianity altogether, but more are privatizing their faith, and a significant percentage of those who are remaining in the churches are Evangelical. There is, then, a noteworthy residue of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century pietism and orthodoxy still to be found in Canadian Christianity.

The Conservative years under Prime Minister Brain Mulroney, 1984-93, marked a watershed in the history of Canada-U.S. relations. During this period, Canada dismantled its long-standing pillars of nationalism and openly embraced continentalist economic policies. The country's two solitudes, Quebec and English Canada, had always been vigilant in securing their identities. Quebec feared assimilation by English Canada, and English Canada, by the United States. While Quebec kept up the fight through the 1980s, upping the ante on nationalism, English Canada drew down its protectionist curtain. Thus one solitude's identity is secured; the other's, more vulnerable than ever before. As evidenced by support for free trade in the 1988 election and the absence of opposition to new levels of Americanization since that time, English Canadians appear more and more willing to embrace the American way and, perhaps, an American destiny. With the turn south in the Mulroney years secured by landmark treaties, treaties that the new Liberal government has ratified, a de facto economic union is being formed. Economic unions, by definition, argue for joint political management. Canada's borderline will increasingly become a formality. The country, should member parts not seek American annexation in the meantime, will eventually find membership in a North American federation of some kind.

Canada's increasingly diversified trade and investment pattern may eventually give the country more maneuverability in its foreign economic policy than it ever enjoyed during the eras of Pax Britannica and Pax Americana. From the conquest of New France until 1914, Canada's economy was firmly within the imperial orbit, dependent upon Britain as a source of capital and as the largest buyer of its exports. The interwar years saw Britain vying with the United States to be Canada's largest trading and investment partner. Although Canadian and imperial preferences attempted to give Britain the edge, the Canadian government shifted policy by entering trade agreements with the United States in 1935 and 1938. By 1939, Canada was clearly within Pax Americana, with the United States now the predominant foreign influence in the Canadian economy. Since the 1960s, however, new factors have emerged to moderate American economic influence in Canada, including the decline of the traditional branch plant; the rapid growth of Canadian exports abroad, including the sale of manufactured goods to the American market; and the rise of Canadian multinational enterprises with extensive influence in the United States.

Following new federal regulations and procedures introduced in the 1960s, the nature of immigrant flows to Canada has changed radically. Over the last two decades, the immigrant population has increasingly become nonwhite and now comes mostly from macroregions other than Europe (including Britain) and the United States—notably, Asia. Thus the new immigrants exhibit greater cultural and racialized diversity than ever before. Most immigrants settle in Canada's cities, principally the leading metropolitan centers. Certain metropolitan areas—especially Toronto—attract large numbers; others participate relatively little in the settlement process. This, together with new social geographies at the municipal and neighborhood scales, has important implications for public debates over immigration and intergovernmental policymaking. The new immigrants have brought about important changes in urban social life, including education, health care, policing, business development, and labor markets. New urban realities challenge Canadian society at a critical period in its statehood.

Immigration and the multicultural population that results from it are contentious issues in contemporary Canada. Canada accepts more than twice as many immigrants per capita as does the United States, and a majority of immigrants now comes from nontraditional sources in Asia, the Caribbean, and Central America. Critics of a liberal immigration policy charge that these newcomers threaten Canada's social harmony and challenge its cultural identity and that the country faces unprecedented economic and security problems because of uncontrolled immigration. Historical and contemporary evidence suggests, however, that the situation is neither unprecedented nor a crisis. Canada needs immigrants for the compelling reasons it has always sought them: for economic growth and to replace population lost by emigration to the United States. By any comparative yardstick, the Canadian experiments in immigration and multiculturalism have been a resounding success.

Canada officially adopted a policy of multiculturalism in 1971. Since then, immigration patterns have changed. The number of immigrants has increased, and the major source has shifted from Europe to Asia, Africa, and their diasporas. Indeed, a fifth force has emerged. Examples from the 1993 federal election, from conflicts especially in metropolitan Toronto and Vancouver, and the observations of writers on multiculturalism suggest that the laudable ideal of multiculturalism has neither prevented racism nor helped English Canadians establish an identity. English Canadians face a challenge in melding diverse cultures into a unity that all can share.