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Letter from the Other Canada*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Guy Laforest
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Extract

LESS THAN TWO YEARS AGO, THE READERS OF Government and Opposition had reasons to be moderately optimistic concerning the future of our country. If their judgment was based on George Feaver's ‘Letter from Canada’, it appeared prudent to conclude that it was no small achievement for Canada to have persisted as a state in the face of tremendous adversity. These readers may have also trusted some distinguished experts on Canadian history and politics. Donald Smiley recently wrote that he had ’very much over-estimated the strength of Québec nationalism and provincialist influences elsewhere in the country and very much under-estimated the capacity of the system to respond effectively to such divisive pressures’. Smiley's judgment was supported by Kenneth McRoberts: ‘Canada's most serious political crisis, which originated in the political modernization of the Quiet Revolution and saw the election of a Québec government formally committed to Québec sovereignty, appears to have run its course.’

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , 01 April 1990 , pp. 231 - 247
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1990

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References

1 Feaver, George, ‘Letter from Canada’, Government and Opposition, Vol. 23, No. 4, 1988, pp. 471–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Smiley, D. V., The Federal Condition in Canada, Toronto, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1987, p. XI Google Scholar.

3 McRoberts, Kenneth, Quebec: Social Change and Political Crisis, Third Edition, Toronto, McClelland & Stewart, 1988, p. 440 Google Scholar.

4 Feaver, p. 471.

5 ibid., p. 472.

6 It is Feaver who points out the parallel between Rawls and Trudeau. However, he misinterprets Rawls. It is not true that liberty, according to the difference principle of the theory of justice, ‘Could be justified only where resulting differences benefited the least advantaged’. Fundamental liberties and their institutions have absolute priority for Rawls. Once these freedoms are established for each and everyone, however, social and economic inequalities must satisfy the requirements of the difference principle. See Feaver, p. 475, and Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1971, Section 39, p. 250 Google Scholar

7 ibid., Section 36, p. 226.

8 ibid., Section 36, p. 225. Trudeau’s understanding of language and culture also derives from a vision of the disengaged self similar to Rawls’s position.

9 Taylor, Charles, ‘Alternative Futures: Legitimacy, Identity and Alienation in Late Twentieth Century Canada’ in Cairns, Alan and Williams, Cynthia, Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Democracy in Canada, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1985, p. 146 Google Scholar

10 ibid., pp. 220–21.

11 See for instance Donald Smiley, ‘A Dangerous Deed: The Constitution Act, 1982’ in Banting, Keith and Simeon, Richard, And No One Cheered: Federalism, Democracy & the Constitution Act, Toronto, Methuen, 1983, p. 78 Google Scholar.

12 Stevenson, Garth, Unfulfilled Union: Canadian Federalism and National Unity, Third Edition, Toronto, Sage Educational Publishing Company, 1989, p. 256 Google Scholar.

13 Franklin, Julian, John Locke and the Theory of Sovereignty, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978, p. 97 Google Scholar. Locke’s theory of dissolution and resistance is much more radical than Rawls’s conception of civil disobedience, limited to regimes which are fundamentally just or almost completely just. From a Quebec perspective, there is something profoundly unjust about the events of 1980–82, hence the need to move from Rawls to Locke.

14 McRoberts, p. 326.

15 There was confusion during the referendum campaign because of a plethora of projects in the name of ‘renewed federalism’. See McWhinney, Edward, Canada and the Constitution 1979–1982, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1982, pp. 31–32 Google Scholar.

16 Locke, John, The Second Treatise of Government, New York, MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986, paragraph 221, p. 123 Google Scholar.

17 This has been analysed by one of Québec’s senior political scientists. See Bergeron, Gérard, Notre miroir à deux faces, Montréal, Québec Amérique, 1985, p. 235 Google Scholar.

18 Pierre Elliott Trudeau, ‘L’accord constitutionnel de 1982 n’a pas été un marché de dupes pour le Québec’, in Johnston, Donald, Lac Meech: Trudeau parle, Montréal, Hurtubise HMH, 1989, pp. 124–25Google Scholar.

19 Locke, paragraph 214, p. 121.

20 ibid., paragraph 209, p. 117.

21 See for instance the various contributions in Leslie, Peter M. and Watts, Ronald, Canada: The State of the Federation 1987–1988, Kingston, Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, 1988 Google Scholar.

22 Ford v. Attorney General of Québec, (1988) 2 SCR, 712–789

23 It is in Montréal that section 23 of the 1982 Charter of Rights and Liberties has its most important effects. It increases the number of persons who can legitimately enter the English school system.

24 Simpson, Jeffrey, ‘Hardening Hearts’, Toronto Globe and Mail, 20 06 1989, p. A6 Google Scholar.

25 Locke, paragraphs 223 and 225, pp. 125–26.

26 The text of the accord and a number of critical perspectives on its consequences can be found in Behiels, Michael (ed.), The Meech Luke Primer: Conflicting Views of the 1987 Constitutional Accord, Ottawa, University of Ottawa Press, 1989 Google Scholar.

27 Feaver, p. 483

28 See for instance Stevenson, pp. 32–3.

29 The presence of dualist themes in Canadian federalism is explored by Smiley, The Federal Condition in Canada, pp. 129–30.

30 Knopff, Rainer and Morton, F. L., ‘Nation-Building and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom’, in Cairns, Alan and Cynthia, Williams, , Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in Canada, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1985, p. 146 Google Scholar.

31 Michael Behiels, ‘Introduction’, in Behiels, p. XXIV.

32 See The Globe and Mail, Toronto, 28 October 1989, pp. D-1 and D-2.

33 Locke, paragraph 223, p. 125.

34 Grant, George, Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism, Ottawa, Carleton University Press, 1986, p. 68 Google Scholar.

35 Whitaker, Reg, ‘No Laments for the Nation: Free Trade and the Election of 1988’, Canadian Dimension, LXVIII (Number 779), 03 1989, p. 13 Google Scholar.