Contemporary Federalist Thought in Quebec: Historical Perspectives 9780228017912

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contemporary federalist thought in quebec

democracy, diversity, and citizen engagement series Series editor: Alain-G. Gagnon Vibrant movements both new and old, inspired by Indigeneity, national selfdetermination, anti-racism, migrant precarity, and their intersections with other forms of identity, raise profound questions about social justice. Such movements also provoke backlash. These developments beg the interrogation of institutional mechanisms for inclusion as they relate to democracy, citizenship, public policy, and rights across different state forms, including settler colonial and federal states. Centring the heterogeneity of mobilizations and claims-making by citizens, noncitizens, nations, and groups in the twenty-first century, the Democracy, Diversity, and Citizen Engagement Series invites consideration of how people and interests are represented. In light of how nations and people are often divided by state frontiers, the series, with the support of the Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Diversity and Democracy, also showcases work that identifies how interests and representation might be enhanced at local, national, or global levels. 1 The Parliaments of Autonomous Nations Edited by Guy Laforest and André Lecours 2 A Liberal Theory of Collective Rights Michel Seymour 3 The National Question and Electoral Politics in Quebec and Scotland Éric Bélanger, Richard Nadeau, Ailsa Henderson, and Eve Hepburn 4 Trust, Distrust, and Mistrust in Multinational Democracies Comparative Perspectives Edited by Dimitrios Karmis and François Rocher 5 Constitutional Politics in Multinational Democracies Edited by André Lecours, Nikola Brassard-Dion, and Guy Laforest 6 Fiscal Federalism in Multinational States Autonomy, Equality, and Diversity Edited by François Boucher and Alain Noël 7 The Symbolic State Minority Recognition, Majority Backlash, and Secession in Multinational Countries Karlo Basta 8 Taking Pluralism Seriously Complex Societies under Scrutiny Félix Mathieu 9 A Written Constitution for Quebec? Edited by Richard Albert and Léonid Sirota 10 Civic Freedom in an Age of Diversity The Public Philosophy of James Tully Edited by Dimitrios Karmis and Jocelyn Maclure 11 Contemporary Federalist Thought in Quebec Historical Perspectives Edited by Antoine Brousseau Desaulniers and Stéphane Savard

Contemporary Federalist Thought in Quebec Historical Perspectives

Edited by Antoine Brousseau Desaulniers and Stéphane Savard

Translated by Mary Baker with Judith Laforest, Lawrence O’Hearn, and Eric Rodrigue

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2023 isb n isb n isb n isb n

978-0-2280-1669-4 978-0-2280-1670-0 978-0-2280-1791-2 978-0-2280-1792-9

(cloth) (paper) (ep df) (ep ub)

Legal deposit second quarter 2023 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: Contemporary federalist thought in Quebec : historical perspectives / edited by Antoine Brousseau Desaulniers and Stéphane Savard ; translated by Mary Baker with Judith Laforest, Lawrence O’Hearn, and Eric Rodrigue. Other titles: Pensée fédéraliste contemporaine au Québec. English Names: Desaulniers, Antoine Brousseau, editor. | Savard, Stéphane, editor. Series: Democracy, diversity, and citizen engagement series ; 11. Description: Series statement: Democracy, diversity, and citizen engagement series ; 11 | Translation of: La pensée fédéraliste contemporaine au Québec : perspectives historiques. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20230130437 | Canadiana (ebook) 20230130453 | i sb n 9780228016700 (paper) | is bn 9780228016694 (cloth) | i sb n 9780228017912 (ep d f) | isb n 9780228017929 (ep ub) Subjects: lc s h: Federal government—Québec (Province)—History. | l c sh : Political science—Québec (Province)—History—20th century. | l c sh: Political science—Québec (Province)—History—21st century. | l cs h: Québec (Province)—History—Autonomy and independence movements. Classification: l cc j l 246.s 8 P4613 2023 | ddc 320.471/4049—dc23

This book was typeset in 10.5/13 Sabon.

Contents Foreword Kenneth McRoberts | ix Acknowledgments | xiii Note on Translation | xiv

introduction Historical Perspectives on Federalist Thought in Quebec: Actors, Stakes, and Points of View | 3 Antoine Brousseau Desaulniers and Stéphane Savard 1 Reflections by an Old Veteran of the Canadian Constitutional Debate | 16 André Burelle

part one Actors at the Heart of Politics: The Leaders and Their Parties 2 From Provincial Autonomy to Profitable Federalism: Quebec’s Special Status in the Eyes of Federalist Leaders during the Quiet Revolution | 31 Antoine Brousseau Desaulniers 3 The Equality Party: A Trudeauist Vision of Federalism at the National Assembly | 51 Jessica Riggi

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4 The Quebec Vision of Federalism and the Federal Ideal (1998–2008): Benoît Pelletier as a Barometer of Unresolved Tension | 72 François Rocher 5 Third-Option Federalism: A Dialogue between Federalism and Nationalism? Action démocratique du Québec and Coalition avenir Québec (1990–2018) | 93 Frédéric Boily

part two Intellectuals and the Search for a “Third Option” 6 “In seeking to digest us, the federation has become very sick”: Evolution of the Federalist Thought of Traditionalist Intellectuals in the Case of François-Albert Angers (1945–73) | 115 Jean-Philippe Carlos 7 “Paving the Boulevard of Fraternity”: The Federalist Thought of Solange Chaput-Rolland | 135 Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon 8 Charles Taylor’s Federalist Spirit Put to the Test of the Canadian Federation | 159 Bernard Gagnon

part three Civil Society in Action: Groups and Public Figures 9 The Search for a Third Option in a Time of Crisis: Constitutional Positions of Federalist Pressure Groups, 1977–81 | 183 Stéphane Savard

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10 Quebec Feminists’ Engagement during the 1980 Referendum: How Should the Yvettes Be Interpreted? | 205 Chantal Maillé 11 Community(ies), Nation(s), State(s): Nicole Laurin, Richard Desjardins, and Fragments of Pluralist Federalist Thought | 224 Jean-Charles St-Louis

part four “Schools” of Thought and Research 12 Historian Michel Brunet and Canadian Federalism: “If I were [an English] Canadian, I would be the most ardent and enthusiastic centralizer there could be” | 247 Serge Miville 13 The Quebec “School” of History and the Idea of Federalism | 269 François-Olivier Dorais 14 The Quebec School of Diversity: The Emergence, Unfolding, and Renewal of a Line of Authentic Federalist Thought | 290 Félix Mathieu

part five Legal Considerations in Federalist Thought 15 Federalism and Canadian Foreign Policy: The Conception of the Gérin-Lajoie Doctrine | 313 Stéphane Paquin

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16 Quebec and Constitutional Conventions: Precarious Safeguards in Unwritten Federalism | 330 Amélie Binette 17 The Root of the Deadlock: The Constitutional Veto in Federalist Thought in Quebec | 352 Patrick Taillon 18 Canadian Federalism since the 1982 Patriation: Advocating a Federalism of Empowerment | 374 Alain-G. Gagnon and Alex Schwartz

in conclusion: an overture The Pressing Need for Federalist Forward Thinking in Quebec and the Rest of Canada | 395 André Burelle Contributors | 405 Index | 411

Foreword

With the publication of this book in English, Anglophone Canadians are given a rare window into the deliberations of Quebec’s Francophone intelligentsia. They can follow all the twists and turns of a continuing debate among Quebecers about the nature of Canada and Quebec’s place within it. As well, the book clearly attests to the energy and professionalism of a new generation of Quebec historians which, in the pursuit of scientific enquiry, is quite able to step back from personal views and prejudices. All in all, this volume makes a giant contribution to the limited pool of analyses of Quebec politics written by Quebec Francophones but also available in English. To be sure, this publication comes at a time when Quebec’s place in the Canadian federation is hardly at the forefront of public debate in Canada. Instead, like many Quebec Francophones, most English-speaking Canadians are currently seized with such matters as how, and when, to recover from the covid pandemic, how to meet the challenges of global warming, and how to address the plight of Indigenous Peoples. Still, as the book observes, there was a time not that long ago when English Canada was very much preoccupied with the question: What does Quebec want? Then, it seemed to many English Canadians that Quebecers were focused on a single answer to the question: separation and independence. The 1995 referendum, and the razor-thin margin by which independence was rejected, caused a deep and lasting shock in much of Canada. In its wake, most Canadians had little interest in pursuing a dialogue with Quebec and seized on the Clarity Act’s promise to end, once and for all, the possibility of Quebec independence. However, through a careful demonstration of the strength and richness of federalist thought in Quebec, this book shows that Quebec’s intelligentsia was not as united around independence as it might have seemed from the outside. The book contains surprises for many English-speaking Canadians and even some Quebec Francophones. Some English Canadians will be surprised

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to learn that, in the recent past, many of Quebec’s Francophone intellectuals and political actors actually favoured federalism over independence and that they continue to do so. Yet, the book also shows that the many Quebecers who have wanted to remain part of Canada have done so for reasons that have little in common with English Canadians’ attachment to Canada and their rejection of Quebec independence. It demonstrates that, unlike English-speaking Canadians, most Quebec advocates of the Canadian federation have not been at all moved by Canadian nationalism, including the state nationalism through which Pierre Trudeau mobilized so much of the rest of the country. Indeed, in their search for a “third way,” Quebec federalists have tended to reject Canadian nationalism outright and even to fear its consequences for Quebec. Some readers will be surprised to learn that, as late as the 1950s, Canada’s staunchest defenders of federalism were conservative French-Canadian nationalists, as exemplified by François-Albert Angers and Richard Arès. These nationalists valued federalism as a means to prevent the federal government from expanding its activities in Quebec, and the other provinces; the Canadian federation constituted a bulwark within which traditional French-Canadian society could persist. Instead, at the time, the primary force decrying Canadian federalism was composed of leading English-Canadian intellectuals who claimed that federalism, at least as it had emerged in Canada, was preventing Ottawa from fulfilling its proper role as the state of the Canadian nation. Thus, it was only after the federal government did succeed in fulfilling a Canadian nationalist agenda, creating a modern welfare state in the process, that conservative nationalists such as Angers lost their faith in Canadian federalism and opted for independence. Of course, back in the 1950s, there was another, more liberal component of Quebec’s Francophone intelligentsia which rejected outright the conservatives’ vision of a traditional French-Canadian society, dismissing French-Canadian nationalism in the process. Pierre Elliott Trudeau, for one, sought to rally Quebecers against traditional French-Canadian nationalism and to persuade them to reject separatism for Canadian federalism. But Trudeau was not alone. Other liberals, such as Jean-Charles Harvey, were more vehement than Trudeau in attacking clerical leadership while also dismissing Quebec separatism. Still, the book clearly demonstrates that, even with the 1960s and the rise of a new Quebec nationalism that embraced state intervention, many Quebec Francophones persisted in seeing federalism as a better framework than independence for Quebec’s future. For some, as with André Burelle, a deep attachment to federalism came from adherence to personalism, a major stream in contemporary Catholic thought. Other Quebec federalists fully subscribed to the neo-nationalist vision of the Quebec government and its responsibility for Canada’s Francophonie, but insisted that Canadian federalism could be made to accommodate the Quebec government’s new role.

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They argued that Canadian federalism need not be constrained by Pierre Trudeau’s anti-nationalist vision. Thus, Solange Chaput-Rolland used her membership on the Task Force on Canadian Unity, co-chaired by Jean-Luc Pepin and John Robarts, to evoke André Laurendeau’s vision of a new partnership between Quebec and English Canada, while decrying the “constitutional absolutism” of Prime Minister Trudeau. Even nationalist historian Michel Brunet professed attachment to Canadian federalism, while dismissing Trudeau as an “anti-federalist.” While sympathetic to Quebec nationalism but fiercely opposed to independence, Claude Ryan was quick to defend Quebec’s autonomy and to challenge overreach by the federal government, especially when the government was led by Pierre Trudeau. After the turn of the century, leading Quebecers such as Benoît Pelletier, constitutional scholar turned minister of intergovernmental affairs, persisted in arguing that the Canadian federation could enable the Quebec government to have the status and powers that it needed. For Pelletier, Quebecers’ support for federalism was to be conditional on the rest of the country accepting that the Quebec government had distinct responsibilities as the government of the Quebec nation. Apparently, even the “national unity” action groups that sprang up in Quebec’s Anglophone community subscribed to the notion – heresy to Pierre Trudeau – that Canada is composed of founding partners, whether it be two or three, to take account of Indigenous Peoples. By the 1990s, Charles Taylor, McGill philosopher and major figure in federalist forces at the time of the 1980 referendum, had come to the conclusion that Quebec is indeed a nation. Finally, the book shows that federalism continues to frame the reflections of much of the intelligentsia in contemporary Quebec. In fact, several distinct strands are identified. One approach, the “Quebec school of diversity,” is really rooted in the ideal of multinational federalism. Another approach, calling itself “pluralist” federalism, seeks to go beyond the Ottawa-Quebec intergovernmental duel to comprehend forms of oppression and domination more broadly. A final approach, “pragmatic” federalism, focuses on the concrete terms of accommodation between Quebec and Ottawa. As such, “pragmatic” federalism is embraced by the current Coalition avenir Québec (caq ) government and enjoys widespread public support in Quebec. It has been seconded by the Bloc Québécois which, while formally committed to independence, is caught up with a pragmatic defence of Quebec’s “interests.” By and large, successive federal governments, even Justin Trudeau’s, have sought to avoid open conflict with the Quebec government. Whether such pragmatism will continue to guide both levels of government is, of course, an open question. Bill 96, with its expanded francization and its proclamation that Quebecers constitute a nation, may be quite consistent with the predominant understanding of federalism in Quebec, but not necessarily acceptable to the rest of the country. Appropriately, the book ends with a fervent plea from André Burelle to English-speaking Canadians, and

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Quebec Francophones, to abandon old ways of thinking about federalism and to address the implications of globalization for the Canadian federation and its multinationalism. In sum, for English Canadians, Contemporary Federalist Thought in Quebec constitutes a fascinating and rewarding read – and, for many, a most revealing one. For once, Canada’s eternal language barrier, the source of so much division and misunderstanding, has been broken and Englishspeaking Canadians are able to follow, at first hand, Francophone Quebecers grappling with the nature of Canada and its federation. Kenneth McRoberts Professor Emeritus of political science, York University

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the unwavering support of many people and organizations. We would like to begin by acknowledging the major financial support we received from the Secrétariat du Québec aux relations canadiennes (sqrc ) and the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program (aspp ) of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, without which this publication would never have seen the light of day. We would also like to express our thanks for the financial and moral support that we received from the Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur la diversité et la démocratie (cridaq ), the Centre d’analyse politique – Constitution Fédéralisme (cap-cf ), and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of History at the Université du Québec à Montréal (uqàm ). In addition, we extend our heartfelt gratitude to all of the contributors to this collective work, who met short deadlines with a degree of zeal that did them honour. Lastly, we cannot overlook the expert work done by McGill-Queen’s University Press (mqup ). We would like to extend special thanks to the following persons for their encouragement and assistance: Mary Baker and her team of translators, namely Judith Laforest, Lawrence O’Hearn, and Eric Rodrigue, who did a remarkable job; Joanne Pisano, editor at mqup , for her enthusiasm for the project; Alain-G. Gagnon, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Quebec and Canadian Studies (creqc ) and codirector of the mqup series Democracy, Diversity, and Citizen Engagement, who provided us with unconditional support; Jérémy Elmerich, PhD student in political science at uqàm , who worked on the layout of the manuscript submitted to the publisher and on the index; and Kenneth McRoberts, who enthusiastically agreed to write the foreword to the English edition.

Note on Translation

Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations of quoted French texts are by the translators of this volume. In cases where official English translations were available, the source is given in the corresponding endnote.

contemporary federalist thought in quebec

in t r o d u cti on

Historical Perspectives on Federalist Thought in Quebec: Actors, Stakes, and Points of View Antoine Brousseau Desaulniers and Stéphane Savard

“What does Quebec want?” There was a time when this question interested policy-makers in Ottawa and the intellectual and press elite in Canada. That was because nationalism had changed in Quebec and was causing unrest in politics and the public sphere. From the beginning of the Quiet Revolution until the 1995 referendum – with the proceedings of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism from 1963 to 1971, the election of the Parti Québécois in 1976, the first referendum in 1980, the constitutional negotiations leading to the patriation of the Canadian Constitution in 1982, the Meech Lake Accord in 1987, and the Charlottetown Accord in 1991 – the question of Quebec’s status as a nation caused much ink to flow and was a major topic of political discussion in Canada. All of the major political parties in Canada have offered answers to the question of French Canadians’ place in Canada and Quebec’s political and constitutional status in Confederation. At its founding convention in 1961, the New Democratic Party recognized that there was a FrenchCanadian nation and supported the principle of two founding peoples. The Liberal Party of Canada did likewise under the leadership of Lester B. Pearson, who was himself open to decentralized federalism.1 However, the Liberals changed their constitutional position under the influence of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. The Trudeau government considered Quebec to be “a province like the others,” channelling its plan to emancipate French Canadians through an institutional bilingualism policy accompanied by a strengthened rights regime (especially with respect to individual rights) that was defended by a Charter enshrined in the Constitution.2 The Conservative Party of Canada mainly showed reluctance with regard to institutional bilingualism and centralization of powers, which allowed Brian

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Mulroney to position himself as the champion of Quebec’s interests during the 1984 election, hoping to reintegrate the province into the Canadian Constitution with “honour and enthusiasm.”3 After the 1995 referendum and with the promotion of national unity by Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government,4 the national question ceased to be considered an important political issue in Canada. In 2006, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government adopted a motion recognizing that “the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada” but did not wish to open new constitutional debates and thereby give the symbolic recognition constitutional scope. For the Harper government, recognition was a political end in itself, not an opportunity to respond to Quebec’s historical demands. Canadian observers’ reactions to Quebec’s recent Bill 21 (An Act respecting the Laicity of the State) and to François Legault’s Coalition avenir Quebec government’s desire to “unilaterally amend the section of the Constitution on Quebec” by entrenching in it “Quebec’s linguistic specificity as a nation”5 cannot be associated with attempts to make the question of nation status a priority in Canada. On the contrary, the reactions are part of an oppositional attitude to Quebec, which some have described as “Quebec bashing.”6 The national question has also gradually disappeared from the radar in Quebec politics.7 The October 2018 Quebec election confirmed the extinction, long foretold, of the national question as the cornerstone of political debate. Both the tenor of the debates during the campaign – with the question of institutional laicity taking precedence over identity issues, for example – and the break in the alternation of power between the Parti Québécois and the Quebec Liberal Party in favour of Coalition avenir Québec, are eloquent illustrations of this. The very first words spoken by François Legault on the evening of his victory were revealing of a trend on the provincial political scene: “Today, we have made history. There are many Quebecers who have set aside the debate that has divided us for the last fifty years.”8 On one hand, the sovereignty movement has been on its last legs in Quebec since the “failed” 1995 referendum. The Parti Québécois, which acts as the main organ of the idea of independence, has seen its rate of support dropping inexorably, from one election to the next. The emergence and growth of the left-wing Québec solidaire party has contributed to breaking up the coalition that the Parti Québécois has been claiming to embody since its foundation. While Québec solidaire makes independence one component among many in its left-wing program, the Parti Québécois keeps putting off independence, its political raison d’être, until later. Every Parti Québécois leader since Bernard Landry has tried to outdo his or her predecessor by giving a new flavour to the “winning conditions” strategy centred on the formation of a “good government,” which, it is hoped, will rekindle the flame of sovereignty once again.9 The misfortunes of Quebec sovereigntists have also been observed on the federal political scene. The Bloc Québécois enjoyed support that gave it

Introduction

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the majority of the seats from Quebec in the 1997 and 2008 elections, but that was mainly because its strategy was to present itself as the champion of Quebec’s interests in the fight against the “corrupt” Liberals and the Conservatives, who were promoting values contrary to those of Quebecers. The 2011 elections revealed the limits of that strategy when Jack Layton’s New Democratic Party became an alternative that would have allowed Quebec to participate once again in making Canadian decisions.10 While it is true that the Bloc seems to be experiencing a resurgence under the leadership of Yves-François Blanchet, its success with Francophone electors can be explained not by new interest in the national question but by the Bloc’s ability to oppose pipelines and, especially, to align with Coalition avenir Québec by making defence of the French language and the popular Act respecting the Laicity of the State its main concerns. On the other hand, the demands of Quebec federalists gradually ceased under the Quebec Liberal Party after the “No” victory in the 1995 referendum, and especially under the Charest government in the 2010s. A number of “federalist” actors stopped debating the national question and limited themselves to making jokes about the Parti Québécois’ position for election purposes, which led to the end of a healthy discussion on that fundamental issue.11 The Policy for Quebec’s Affirmation and for Canadian Relations, released in June 2017, did bring Quebec’s historical demands back onto the agenda in a certain way12 but the document had little impact in the rest of Canada, especially since neither the Quebec Liberal Party nor Coalition avenir Québec wanted to spearhead new constitutional demands. Given all this, we as historians find that the weakening of the national question is closely related to a paradigm shift that has occurred in political culture in Quebec.13 It is therefore tempting to look to the past to gain a better understanding of the former model and the subtle steps leading to the new one. At the dawn of the 1960s, militant Quebec nationalism structured a change in Quebec’s political culture. The reforms of the Quiet Revolution were driven by a conception of the nation centred on Quebec’s territory and the idea that developing the nation state would ensure that its population would thrive.14 This point of view, which was shared by political leaders of all stripes in Quebec, made it possible to establish a degree of continuity with respect to their desire to build a strong Quebec state and, by the mid-1960s, to the constitutional demands they were determined to put to the rest of Canada. Although the territorial nationalism in question led to fierce rivalry between Parti Québécois sovereigntists and Quebec Liberal Party reformist federalists, it is nonetheless clear that, from that time on, all governments (whether Liberal, Union Nationale, or Parti Québécois) made, in one way or another, the redistribution of constitutional powers an essential condition for patriating the Constitution. From Lesage’s special status, in 1965–66, to Bourassa’s distinct society during the Meech Lake and Charlottetown

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negotiations, not to mention Johnson Sr’s “associated states” in his manifesto Égalité ou indépendance and Lévesque’s “sovereignty-association” around the 1980 referendum, the idea of revisiting the terms of a new agreement within a state, or between two states, influenced the actions and interventions of the political leaders in power. However, as we have said, the national question and the political action that derives from it have been struggling for more than twenty years now, which explains the interest in updating our understanding of constitutional issues and federalism. One observation is required a priori: the two broad options offered to the people of Quebec in the 1980 and 1995 referendums obscure the richness of the history of the constitutional thought of the political players in Quebec. Over the last four decades, a multitude of researchers in all disciplines – political science, history, sociology, law, etc. – have studied these options but, despite everything, the variety of federalist thought in Quebec seems to be the blind spot in the literature on the topic.

con s t it u t io n a l is s u e s and federali s m: t h e m a in s t r eam Over the last forty years, researchers have focused on the historical actors involved in constitutional discussions and have examined, in this regard, the thought of many of the most influential political leaders in Quebec.15 Others, especially political scientists, have scrutinized the role and achievements of Pierre Elliott Trudeau.16 These studies, combined with those on the political parties’ constitutional positions,17 are the common core of what we call the “major official constitutional options.” However, while they may cover a few “third ways” proposed by intellectuals such as André Laurendeau, they do not fully account for the diversity in the world of constitutional thought.18 Much research has also been centred on the biographical events and political history of “important (male) figures.” Some authors have sought to avoid these problems by looking at the constitutional positions set out by various groups and players in civil society.19 Work has been done in the history of ideas to try to situate the thought of historical actors in cultural, social, intellectual, and identity contexts in order to assess their ideas in relation to their era.20 Commissions of inquiry on constitutional issues,21 sovereigntist intellectual networks, and the ideological tensions that led to the revival of Quebec nationalism in the 1950s and ’60s22 have been, and remain, favourite research topics for historians. Supporters of a new political history23 have recently launched research into the values and representations that, with regard to constitutional issues, reveal changes in the political cultures of the Quebec and Canadian communities.24 To a certain extent, these studies have succeeded in recovering remnants of constitutional thought that have been left behind, in contrast to the ideas of the “important figures.”

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A second research approach offers a perspective on what can be called the “constitutional duel.” It looks at the issue as a confrontation between Quebec and the rest of Canada in which the latter would, through the central government, impose a symbolic and institutional order alien to Quebec’s interests. These studies sometimes take the form of analyses of Canadian federalism over the long term, and show Quebec’s constitutional positions through the times and conflicts it has experienced.25 Others have instead concentrated on specific events in Canada’s constitutional history. The more recent events – the 1982 constitutional patriation,26 the failures of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords,27 and the 1995 referendum28 – have received much closer attention from researchers. In contrast, studies on the periods prior to these events have been rare in the 2000s.29 Finally, a third research approach is characterized by a theoretical and normative turn taken by Quebec specialists on federalism. In a way, the change in perspective in the 2000s has come at the expense of historical and institutional analyses. This approach’s vision is of a multinational Canada that would favour the establishment of equitable policies, giving all groups in the federation the same opportunities. Such equality would be possible if peoples’ rights to self-determination and their demands for recognition and preservation of their culture were respected.30 Some are enthusiastic about the approach31 but others doubt that Canada will be able to recentre itself on these foundations.32 In any case, it is to be noted that the emergence of this perspective is a development in constitutional thought in Quebec that has unfolded in academia but also left its mark in the world of politics.

f or a h is t o r y o f f e d e r a l i s t thought i n quebec Seen as a whole, these three main historiographical currents offer interesting angles on the problem. It is fair to say that the sovereigntist option is the one that has been the most attractive to those who have studied Canadian constitutional discussions, and this is particularly true in the discipline of history. Federalist thought has been left by the wayside, except in a few key works by sociologists and political scientists, who have shone light on its complexity but have never provided a study covering most of its historical players. The primary purpose of this book is therefore to provide historical perspectives on federalist thought in Quebec from 1950 to the present day, to analyze the outcomes, and to present a picture of those who have engaged in such thought: political leaders, pressure groups, intellectuals, and academics. This book will also, and above all, focus on the variations in the perspectives, interventions, values, and representations of these actors. However, we do not claim this is a unified summary of these themes. Many historical players whom everyone would describe as pivotal, such as Robert Bourassa and Claude Ryan, are all but absent, and figures from Quebec,

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such as Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Jean Chrétien, and Stéphane Dion, whose actions as political leaders helped to define and orient centralizing federalism in Canada, remain in the background. However, this book makes up for these wants by bringing out of the shadows federalist perspectives held in Quebec that have until now received little attention from researchers. These choices open the way to subtler historical interpretations which can help decompartmentalize the rigid opposition between sovereigntists and federalists. Our goal is to make transparent the tensions between federalism and nationalism, and between managing diversity in a political community and the conception of a nation with its foundations in Canada, French Canada, or Quebec. Above all, this book is not the work of activists – far from it! We are neither nostalgic for strong Quebec federalism nor hoping to make ourselves the spokespersons of a new form of federalist thought in Quebec. As historians, we recognize that the national question, which was crucial during the Quiet Revolution and its immediate aftermath, did not concern sovereigntists alone. Federalists also had something to say about the future of Quebec and about French Canadians who had become Quebecers. There was a time when federalist thought flourished in Quebec and proponents of federalism made demands, bitterly opposing sovereigntist claims and dreaming about better tomorrows – perhaps naively, some might say. This history needs to be examined, if only because this line of thought spoke to thousands, even millions, of people, and we have to acknowledge that it contributed to winning two referendums. Whether or not this makes us happy, it is part of our history.

p r e s e n t a t io n o f the texts In our resolve to take a historical look at federalist thought in Quebec, we invited researchers from ten universities to help us examine this important facet of Quebec history in general, and federal-provincial relations in particular. This project is in continuity with the seminar held at the Université du Québec à Montréal (uqàm ) in November 2018, where the authors presented their preliminary reflections on the topic. The texts in this book are adjusted translations of much more detailed versions of the talks given at that event. After this introduction, the book begins with André Burelle, former constitutional advisor to the governments of Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Brian Mulroney, who shares his thoughts on his experience on the front lines of constitutional discussions over the last forty years. His communitarian personalist vision (diametrically opposed to the neoliberal individualism established by the central state) sets the tone for this work, which is divided into five main parts addressing different aspects of the issue in question. The first part examines political themes through the thought and discourse of leaders who crossed swords in the National Assembly of Quebec

Introduction

9

and the political arena. Antoine Brousseau Desaulniers opens the discussion with an analysis of the symbolic and identity-based representations conveyed by Quebec Liberal Party and Union Nationale mna s during the 1960s, and of the subsequent, subtle transformations in those ideas. Jessica Riggi looks at the Equality Party and sheds light on Trudeauist positions of the 1980s and ’90s. François Rocher concentrates on the vision of federalism espoused by Benoît Pelletier, legal scholar and intergovernmental affairs minister in Jean Charest’s Liberal government in the 2000s. Lastly, Frédéric Boily investigates the relationships between nationalism and the brand of federalism advanced by the Action démocratique du Québec and Coalition avenir Québec parties, and explains how that combination has become a constitutional “third way” proposal between independence and federalism. The second part scrutinizes the idea of a third way, in particular that put forward by the intellectuals who imagined it. Jean-Philippe Carlos performs a case study of François-Albert Angers to describe the journey taken by intellectuals who were at first in favour of traditional autonomist federalism but later moved toward sovereignty in the 1960s. Valérie LapointeGagnon chronicles the thought of Solange Chaput-Rolland, in particular her efforts to make the members of the Task Force on Canadian Unity (the Pepin-Robarts Commission) more aware of her specific vision of Canadian federalism. Lastly, Bernard Gagnon provides an exegesis of Charles Taylor’s writings and teases out the different ways Taylor has viewed Canadian federalism over the course of the various constitutional ups and downs since the 1960s. The third part broadens the perspective by examining civil society groups and certain public figures. Stéphane Savard studies federalist pressure groups after the Parti Québécois’ victory in 1976. Those groups’ interventions in the public hearings of parliamentary committees and the PepinRobarts Commission allow him to paint a picture of federalist thought “in action.” Chantal Maillé discusses the different meanings that were ascribed to the “Yvettes” phenomenon during and after the 1980 referendum campaign, identifies the federalist impetus, and also brings to light certain naive interpretations. Jean-Charles St-Louis concludes this part with an analysis of the artistic and sociological works of Richard Desjardins and Nicole Laurin, spotting fragments of pluralist federalist thought and showing how such thought has been manifested in unexpected places. The fourth part returns to the intellectuals and academia, with a focus on those grouped into schools, whether in the strong sense (as when researchers sharing ideas become united with an educational institution’s program) or the weak sense (as a cultural category). Serge Miville traces the evolution of the constitutional thought of Michel Brunet, the Montreal School of History’s “screamer,” through his public interventions and his opposition to Pierre Elliott Trudeau. François-Olivier Dorais assesses the ideas of the Laval “school” through the historiographical narratives of historians

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Marcel Trudel, Fernand Ouellet, and Jean Hamelin, in particular in Canada: Unité et diversité, which was published in 1968. Félix Mathieu looks at the “Quebec school of diversity” and provides a picture of its main characteristics, institutions, and activities, belying the idea that federalist thought has been on its last legs since the 1990s. The last part turns to law. Stéphane Paquin provides an overview of the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine on Quebec’s international relations, and discusses its legal foundations and the context in which it was formulated, as well as Ottawa’s reaction to it and the importance it retains, even today, in the eyes of governments. Amélie Binette examines the whys and wherefores of constitutional conventions and explains how, despite their flexibility, such events provide Quebec with very few guarantees in its dealings with the federal government. Supporting Binette’s thesis, Patrick Taillon draws attention to Quebec’s always-vigorous demand for a right of veto, even as such a proposal is unacceptable to the rest of Canada, has been turned down by the Supreme Court of Canada, and is likely an impediment to the achievement of Quebec’s other constitutional demands. Lastly, Alain-G. Gagnon and Alex Schwartz demonstrate the shortcomings of federalism since the patriation of the Constitution using the yardstick of normative criteria, namely the purposes of federalism and the means for putting pluralist federalism into practice. They conclude that Canada has not lived up to those expectations. This pessimistic judgment on the possibility of changing the Constitution through the legal route is followed by André Burelle’s dispatch, in which he describes the timid thinking on the part of political leaders responsible for constitutional issues, something that was already the case following the abandonment of the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission. Federalists in Canada and Quebec, and sovereigntists too, have remained locked into the same fixed paradigms of intergovernmental relations even as, at least since the 1970s, Canadian federalism has been subject to the pressures of globalization and neoliberalism. André Burelle concludes this book with an invitation to researchers and political leaders to find solutions that take into account the current path of Western societies. notes 1 Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon, Panser le Canada: Une histoire intellectuelle de la commission Laurendeau-Dunton (Montreal: Boréal, 2018). 2 Kenneth McRoberts, Misconceiving Canada: The Struggle for National Unity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 3 Jessica Riggi, “La question constitutionnelle chez les responsables politiques québécois 1985–1991: Un long désenchantement” (master’s thesis, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2016), 3–13. 4 The promotion of national unity was made possible thanks to the federal administrative and financial strategies and programs that led to the

Introduction

5 6

7

8

9 10 11 12

13

14

11

sponsorship scandal; and by the legislative and legal strategies conducted in parallel by Stéphane Dion, such as the request, in 1997, for a Supreme Court of Canada opinion on Quebec secession (which resulted in the Reference re Secession of Quebec judgment, in 1998, and the Clarity Act, in 2000). See: Marie Vastel, “Québec pourra amender sa part de la Constitution, reconnaît Trudeau,” Le Devoir, 18 May 2021. Patrick Moreau, “Quelle laïcité pour le Québec? (Réplique à Stéphane Courtois),” Argument: Politique, société, histoire, 2014, http://www. revueargument.ca/article/2014-04-08/605-quelle-laicite-pour-le-quebecreplique-a-stephane-courtois.html. This kind of observation has already been made by Stéphane Savard in an editorial in the Bulletin d’histoire politique. Stéphane Savard, “L’affaiblissement de la question nationale au Québec,” Bulletin d’histoire politique 25, no. 2 (2017): 7–13. The late Michel Sarra-Bournet made a similar observation in a posthumous publication. Michel Sarra-Bournet, “Les élections provinciales du 1er octobre 2018,” Bulletin d’histoire politique 27, no. 2 (2019): 5–9. Romain Schué, “‘Aujourd’hui, on a marqué l’histoire’, clame François Legault, élu premier minister,” Ici Radio-Canada, 1 October 2018, https://ici.radiocanada.ca/nouvelle/1127298/francois-legault-coalition-avenir-quebeclassomption-discours-resultats-elections. (Translated from the French. Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations of French texts are by the translators of this volume.) On this, see: Éric Montigny, Leadership et militantisme au Parti québécois (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2011). Martine Tremblay, La rébellion tranquille: Une histoire du Bloc québécois (1990–2011) (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 2015). Savard, “L’affaiblissement de la question nationale.” Quebecers, Our Way of Being Canadian: Policy on Québec Affirmation and Canadian Relations (Quebec City: Secrétariat aux affaires intergouvernementales canadiennes/Direction des communications, Government of Quebec, 2017). By “political culture,” we mean the set of representations and values that bring a human group together on the political level. Political culture is sensitive to the power struggles that lead from an aspiration to one form or another of political regime or socioeconomic organization, and also to definitions of the common good. See: Jean-François Sirinelli, “De la demeure à l’agora: Pour une histoire culturelle du politique,” in Axes et méthodes de l’histoire politique, ed. Serge Bernstein and Pierre Milza (Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France, 1998), 381–98, 391; Réal Bélanger, “Pour un retour à l’histoire politique,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 52, no. 2 (1997): 236. See: Louis Balthazar, Nouveau bilan du nationalisme au Québec (Montreal: vlb éditeur, 2013); Michael D. Behiels, Prelude to Quebec’s Quiet Revolution: Liberalism versus Neo-Nationalism, 1945–1960 (Kingston, on :

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McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1985); Denis Monière, Pour comprendre le nationalisme au Québec et ailleurs (Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2001), 113–4. 15 Jules Duchastel, “L’autonomie provinciale et la défense de l’État liberal,” in Duplessis: Entre la Grande Noirceur et la société libérale, ed. Alain G. Gagnon and Michel Sarra-Bournet (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 1997), 245–64; Gérard Boismenu, “La pensée constitutionnelle de Jean Lesage,” in Jean Lesage et l’éveil d’une nation: Les débuts de la Révolution tranquille, ed. Robert Comeau and Gilles Bourque (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université du Québec, 1989), 77–107; Jacques-Yvan Morin, “Jean Lesage et le rapatriement de la Constitution,” in Comeau and Bourque, eds, Jean Lesage et l’éveil d’une nation, 116–36; Alain-G. Gagnon, “Égalité ou indépendance: Un tournant dans la pensée constitutionnelle au Québec,” in Daniel Johnson: Rêve d’égalité et projet d’indépendance, ed. Robert Comeau, Michel Lévesque, and Yves Bélanger (Quebec City, Les Presses de l’Université du Québec, 1991), 173–81; François Rocher, “Pour un réaménagement du régime constitutionnel: Québec d’abord!”, in Comeau, Lévesque, and Bélanger, eds, Daniel Johnson, 211–36; François-Pierre Gingras, “La vision constitutionnelle de René Lévesque,” in René Lévesque: L’homme, la nation, la démocratie, ed. Yves Bélanger and Michel Lévesque (Quebec City, Les Presses de l’Université du Québec, 1992), 447–52; Caroline Labelle, “Claude Morin et la question constitutionnelle (1961–1981)” (master’s thesis, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2008); Michel Sarra-Bournet, “De Victoria à Charlottetown: Le ‘bon sens’ géopolitique de Robert Bourassa,” in Robert Bourassa: Un bâtisseur tranquille, ed. Guy Lachapelle and Robert Comeau (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2003), 238–47; Jean-Charles Panneton, Georges-Émile Lapalme: Précurseur de la Révolution tranquille (Montreal: vlb éditeur, 2000); Paul Lacoste, “André Laurendeau et la Commission sur le bilinguisme et le biculturalisme,” in André Laurendeau: Un intellectuel d’ici, ed. Robert Comeau and Lucille Beaudry (Quebec City, Les Presses de l’Université du Québec, 1990), 207–13; Jean-François Nadeau, Bourgault (Montreal: Lux, 2007); Michael Gauvreau, The Hand of God: Claude Ryan and the Fate of Canadian Liberalism, 1925–1971 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017). 16 James P. Bickerton, Stephen Brooks, and Alain-G. Gagnon, Six penseurs en quête de liberté, d’égalité et de communauté (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2003); André Burelle, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, l’intellectuel et le politique (Montreal: Fides, 2005); Guy Laforest, Trudeau et la fin d’un rêve canadien (Quebec City: Septentrion, 1992); McRoberts, Misconceiving Canada. 17 See: Bruno Bouchard, Trente ans d’imposture: Le Parti libéral du Québec et le débat constitutionnel (Montreal: vlb éditeur, 1999); Jean-Charles Panneton, Le gouvernement Lévesque, Vol. 1: De la genèse du pq au 15 novembre 1976 (Quebec City: Septentrion, 2016); Janie Normand, “La scission de la droite

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20

21

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13

traditionaliste: le Regroupement national (1964),” Bulletin d’histoire politique 22, no. 3 (2014): 23–33; Paul-André Comeau, Le Bloc populaire 1942–1948 (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 1982); Réjean Pelletier, “Le rin et son programme d’action en 1966: Indépendance et révolution nationale,” Bulletin d’histoire politique 22, no. 3 (2014): 60–71. See: Lapointe-Gagnon, Panser le Canada. Diane Lamoureux, L’amère patrie: Féminisme et nationalisme dans le Québec contemporain (Montreal: Les Éditions du remue-ménage, 2001); Chantal Maillé, Cherchez la femme: Trente ans de débats constitutionnels au Québec (Montreal: Les Éditions du remue-ménage, 2002); Micheline Dumont, “Les femmes entrent en politique,” in Thérèse Casgrain: Une femme tenace et engagée, ed. Lorraine Archambault and Anita Caron (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université du Québec, 1993), 195–202; Linda Cardinal, “Les mouvements sociaux et la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés,” International Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 7–8 (1993): 135–51; Michael D. Behiels, Canada’s Francophone Minority Communities (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005); Ralph P. Güntzel, “Pour un pays à la mesure des aspirations des travailleurs québécois: L’aile socialiste du mouvement syndical québécois et l’indépendantisme (1972–1982),” in Les nationalismes au Québec du XIXe au XXIe siècle, ed. Michel Sarra-Bournet and Jocelyn Saint-Pierre (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2001), 153–66; Flavie Trudel, “L’engagement des femmes en politique au Québec: Histoire de la Fédération des femmes du Québec de 1966 à nos jours” (PhD diss., Université du Québec à Montréal, 2009). As do sociologists Gilles Bourque and Jules Duchastel, concerning the first ministers’ speeches during the Canadian constitutional conferences in L’identité fragmentée: Nation et citoyenneté dans les débats constitutionnels canadiens, 1941–1992 (Montreal: Fides, 1996). Gérard Boismenu, “Politique constitutionnelle et fédéralisme canadien: La vision de la Commission Tremblay,” Bulletin d’histoire politique 16, no. 1 (2007): 22–3; Alain-G. Gagnon and Daniel Latouche, Allaire, Bélanger, Campeau et les autres: Les Québécois s’interrogent sur leur avenir (Montreal, Québec Amérique, 1991); Lapointe-Gagnon, Panser le Canada; Dominique Foisy-Geoffroy, “Le rapport de la Commission Tremblay (1953–1956), testament politique de la pensée traditionaliste canadienne-française,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 60, no. 3 (2007): 257–94; Valérie LapointeGagnon, “De ‘ménagère’ à commissaire: La trajectoire de Gertrude Laing, 1905–1971,” Canadian Historical Review 92, no. 2 (2017): 201–29. Behiels, Prelude to Quebec’s Quiet Revolution; Robert Comeau, CharlesPhilippe Courtois, and Denis Monière, eds, Histoire intellectuelle de l’indépendantisme Québécois, Vol. 1 (1838–1968) (Montreal: vlb éditeur, 2010); Robert Comeau, Charles-Philippe Courtois, and Denis Monière, eds, Histoire intellectuelle de l’indépendantisme québécois, Vol. 2 (1968–2012) (Montreal: vlb éditeur, 2012); François-Olivier Dorais, “Fernand Ouellet et Marcel

14

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24

25

26

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Trudel: Deux historiens face à la ‘crise du séparatisme,’” Bulletin d’histoire politique 25, no. 3 (2017): 124–44; Jean Lamarre, Le devenir de la nation québécoise selon Maurice Séguin, Guy Frégault et Michel Brunet (1944–1969) (Quebec City: Septentrion, 1993). By this we mean history that focuses on phenomena relating to politics rather than to policy; in other words, the question of decentralization and distribution of authority and power in a given human group and the study of the resulting tensions, antagonisms, and conflicts. See: Bélanger, “Pour un retour à l’histoire politique,” 223–5. Antoine Brousseau Desaulniers, “Les usages du passé comme marqueurs des transformations de la culture politique québécoise en regard des débats constitutionnels (1960–1971),” Politique et sociétés 37, no. 3 (2018): 3–24; Jessica Riggi, “Lutte de représentations et question constitutionnelle à l’Assemblée nationale, 1985–1991: Le passé en tant qu’arme rhétorique” Bulletin d’histoire politique 25, no. 2 (2017): 59–77; Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon, “Une commission aux voix discordantes: La commission royale d’enquête Laurendeau-Dunton et l’exercice de pression des Ukrainiens et des ‘séparatistes’ québécois,” in De la représentation à la manifestation: Groupes de pression et enjeux politiques au Québec, XIXe et XXe siècles, ed. Stéphane Savard and Jérôme Boivin (Quebec City: Septentrion, 2014), 292–313; Jules Racine St-Jacques, “Représentations et usages parlementaires du rapport de la Commission royale d’enquête sur les problèmes constitutionnels (1953 à 1962),” Bulletin d’histoire politique 23, no. 3 (2015): 60–81. Léon Dion, Le duel constitutionnel Québec-Canada (Montreal: Boréal, 1995); McRoberts, Misconceiving Canada; Eugénie Brouillet, La Négation de la nation: L’identité culturelle québécoise et le fédéralisme canadien (Quebec City: Septentrion, 2005); Jacques-Yvan Morin and José Woehrling, Les constitutions du Canada et du Québec du régime français à nos jours (Montreal: Éditions Thémis, 1992); Gil Rémillard, Le fédéralisme canadien, Vol. 2: Le rapatriement de la Constitution (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 1985). Frédéric Bastien, La bataille de Londres: Dessous, secrets et coulisses du rapatriement constitutionnel (Montreal: Boréal, 2013); Simon Langlois, “Le choc de deux sociétés globales,” in Le Québec et la restructuration du Canada, 1980–1992: Enjeux et perspectives, ed. Louis Balthazar, Guy Laforest, and Vincent Lemieux (Quebec City: Septentrion, 1991), 93–108. André Blais and Jean Crête, “Pourquoi l’opinion publique au Canada anglais a-t-elle rejeté l’accord du lac Meech?”, in L’Engagement intellectuel: Mélanges en l’honneur de Léon Dion, ed. Raymond Hudon and Réjean Pelletier (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1991), 385–400; Kenneth McRoberts and Patrick J. Monahan, eds, The Charlottetown Accord, the Referendum, and the Future of Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993); François Rocher and Gérard Boismenu, “L’Accord du lac Meech et le système politique canadien,” Politique 16 (1989): 59–86; José Woehrling, “La reconnaissance du Québec comme société distincte et la dualité

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28

29

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31

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linguistique du Canada: Conséquences juridiques et constitutionnelles,” Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de politiques 14 (1988): S43–S62. Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon, De fiel et de miel: Les représentations de la stratégie de gestion de la crise post-référendaire présentes dans la presse canadienne, 1995–1999 (master’s thesis, Université Laval, 2008); Kenneth McRoberts, ed., Beyond Quebec: Taking Stock of Canada (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995). Jean-Louis Roy, Le choix d’un pays: Le débat constitutionnel Québec-Canada: 1960–1976 (Ottawa: Éditions Leméac, 1978); Daniel Turp, “Révolution tranquille et évolution constitutionnelle: D’échecs et d’hésitations,” in La Révolution tranquille, 40 ans plus tard: Un bilan, ed. Yves Bélanger, Robert Comeau, and Céline Métivier (Montreal: vlb éditeur, 2000), 63–70; Gil Rémillard, “Historique du rapatriement,” Les Cahiers de droit 25, no. 1 (1984): 15–97. Alain-G. Gagnon, “Conjuguer communauté, autonomie et habilitation: La dure naissance d’une école de la diversité dans le monde occidental,” in Le fédéralisme multinational: Un modèle viable?, ed. Michel Seymour and Guy Laforest (Brussels: P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2011), 110–12. James Tully, introduction to Multinational Democracies, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon and James Tully (Cambridge, uk : Cambridge University Press, 2001), 1–34; André Lecours, “Multinationalisme et accommodement: Une analyse du succès canadien,” in Les conditions de l’unité et de la sécession dans les sociétés multinationales, ed. Jean-François Caron (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2016), 167–89; Charles Blattberg, “Fédéralisme et multinationalisme,” in Seymour and Laforest, eds, Le fédéralisme multinational, 229–47; Richard Simeon and Daniel-Patrick Conway, “Federalism and the Management of Conflict in Multinational Societies,” in Tully and Gagnon, eds, Multinational Democracies, 338–64. Michel Seymour, “L’autodétermination interne du Québec dans la fédération canadienne,” in Seymour and Laforest, eds, Le fédéralisme multinational, 295–318. See also: Michel Seymour, “La proie pour l’ombre: Les illusions d’une réforme de la fédération canadienne,” in Le fédéralisme canadien contemporain: Fondements, traditions, institutions, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon (Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2006), 211–36; Michel Seymour, Le pari de la démesure: L’intransigeance canadienne face au Québec (Montreal: Hexagone, 2001); François Rocher, “La dynamique QuébecCanada ou le refus de l’idéal federal,” in Gagnon, ed., Le fédéralisme canadien contemporain, 93–146; Réjean Pelletier, “L’asymétrie dans une fédération multinationale: Le cas canadien,” in Le fédéralisme asymétrique et les minorités linguistiques et nationales, ed. Linda Cardinal (Sudbury, on : Prise de parole, 2008), 33–50; Marc Chevrier, “Par-delà le fédéralisme multinational, l’empire,” in Seymour and Laforest, eds, Le fédéralisme multinational, 73–95.

1 Reflections by an Old Veteran of the Canadian Constitutional Debate André Burelle

As everyone probably knows, I am a philosopher who left the world of teaching in cegep s and private colleges to become, out of friendship, the French pen and political advisor of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. As interesting as that experience may have been, it was no bed of roses. So much so that, in deep disagreement with the repatriation of the Constitution imposed on Quebec against the will of its National Assembly, I accepted, in 1984, an appointment as a senior public servant in the FederalProvincial Relations Office (fpro ) to try to repair the damage. Since I had been closely involved in the Meech Lake Accord negotiations, I was subsequently appointed Assistant Secretary to the Privy Council, with a mission to lead an fpro research group based in Montreal tasked with thinking out a win-win partnership reform of the Canadian federation in response to the Bélanger-Campeau Report. It is thus as an old veteran of the Canadian constitutional debate that I am submitting a few reflections on the difficulties involved in reconciling the desirable and the possible when asked to provide advice on reforming our federal system, in particular, when the advice was for two prime ministers of Canada as dissimilar as Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Brian Mulroney, who were called upon, moreover, to govern the Canadian federation in very different national and international political contexts.

“if you want to be young when you are old, you must be old when you are young.”–german proverb For the young, and less young, university researchers who read this, I will therefore analyze, with the benefit of age and hindsight, the questions that weighed upon me during the many years I spent advising our leaders in Ottawa.

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17

1 How can one, as an intellectual and researcher, propose with integrity to our political decision makers “feasible” ideas that reconcile, without moral compromise, what is both desirable and in keeping with the art of the possible? 2 How, in a feverish political world that often spins in the wind of the latest poll, can one bring the people’s representatives to practise long-term thinking about doing good and palliating the inevitable compromises required by the art of governing? 3 On an even deeper level, how can intellectuals and academics concerned with serving their country propose what French philosopher Jacques Maritain called a “concrete historical ideal” to a political leader who has the power to give it flesh and life? By “concrete historical ideal,” I mean an encompassing vision of the Canadian federation that builds on the strengths of our time but remains rooted in the history and ethos of a Canada that is both open to the world and respectful of its regions’ and its founding peoples’ right to be different. To dispel any misunderstandings, let me begin by saying that, as a philosopher, I strongly believe that academia must remain, by vocation and for its honour, a place where all aspects of human ideas, even the most contradictory, must be examined with complete freedom in pure science, in human sciences as well as in philosophy and literature. However, while the obligation to be universally and unconditionally open to human knowledge is a sacred duty for any university as an institution, it is not necessarily the duty of individual researchers, who must freely follow their inner stars toward what seems to them to be the truth in complex fields and specific situations. We need to remember, today more than ever, Aristotle’s wise advice to those seeking to understand how humans should govern themselves: “one should study not only the best regime but also the regime that is possible.”1 As a veteran of the Canadian constitutional debate, I am deeply convinced that to avoid tangling oneself and our leaders up in untenable moral and intellectual contradictions, university researchers seeking to contribute to a deep reform of their mother country must imperatively adopt, from the start, a conception of humanity and political life that is compatible with the ethos and history of that country. To be clear, we are free to manufacture utopias in university settings, but in the real world of politics one does not advise the prime minister of a country like Canada, which is based on rejection of both the melting pot and survival-of-the-fittest doctrines, as one advises the president of the United States. The Canadian dream is not the American dream or the French dream, and what we learn on the campuses and in the books of our neighbours to the south, or of our French cousins across the ocean, cannot be applied to the Canadian federation without first being rethought on sui generis foundations.

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Therefore, if, in your research on federalism, you want to provide elected officials in Quebec and Canada with ideas that are both feasible and creative, you sometimes have to learn to take distance from the fashion of the day. You have to think “outside the box” and invent ways to modernize and manage the Canadian federation that are respectful both of the historical roots and the existential complexity not of only Quebec but also of Canada and our endangered planet.2

can a d a ’ s s o c ia l a n d p o l i ti cal contract: a t w o f o l d c ri si s As soon as we take this stance – as the fpro research group that I directed in Montreal tried to do – we see that Canada’s social and political contract3 has been in the throes of two major crises for decades. In truth, the very foundations for the collective will of the citizens and the founding communities of Canada have been shaken by two crises born from attempts to fit our country into ideological straightjackets that deny the spirit specific to the Canadian venture. The first of these crises, which was confirmed by the failure of the Meech Lake Accord, stems from Trudeau’s Charter of Rights, inspired by the American melting pot ideology. Rejecting that doctrine was and remains at the very heart of the Canadian confederation pact, but the strictly individualist reading of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that Pierre Elliott Trudeau dishonestly sold to the country in his fight against Meech succeeded in demonizing the very notion of collective rights. It led to the refusal to recognize, in the fundamental law of the land, that Quebec is clearly a distinct society within the Canadian federation. Moreover, making individual rights absolute and condemning the “community rights” recognized from the start as belonging to Canada’s founding peoples undermines the Canada’s ethos by reducing to ethnicism, even to shameful racism, the rightful defence of Quebec’s cultural and linguistic difference within the Canadian federation. The situation is even worse for Indigenous peoples, who have been criticized for upholding birth rights and community segregation as required by the Indian Act, a piece of legislation that the federal parliament itself has imposed upon them. The second crisis undermining the Canadian federation is related to the major social programs that Canada adopted after the Second World War. In this case, Canadian rejection of American-style survival-of-the-fittest doctrine has come under fire from free-trade proponents and neoliberalism devotees, for whom less government is better government. Such anti-statism, raised to the level of dogma by the Chicago School, spawned our governments’ all-out fight against over-indebtedness, to save their credit ratings on the financial markets. Even if there were often good reasons for the budget cuts decreed by the federal and provincial governments to whip our public finances back into shape, they deepened the crisis of a welfare state that

Reflections by an Old Veteran

19

was already suffering from globalization, a shift that cripples governments and puts Canada in direct competition with countries where “might makes right” reigns alongside systemic social injustice. The result is that rejection of American-style social Darwinism might not be dead in Canada, but the triumph of neoliberal individualism and the insidious privatization of health care in Quebec and elsewhere has undermined the Canadian ethos of mutual assistance between rich and poor citizens and regions across the land. Compounding the situation, these two crises stoke each other’s fires. Since the Second World War, all of the major pan-Canadian social programs have been set up through the federal government’s spending power in areas of jurisdiction that were originally reserved to the provinces so as to guarantee their right to cultural and regional difference. The result is that not only does the federal government trespass on the provinces’ turf, but the legitimacy of the “national” standards that the country has adopted in health care erodes when Ottawa cuts funding to the provinces but demands that they continue to meet the standards it has decreed.

t he

canadian malady:

a modern epi demi c

Given these strong and deeply rooted trends at work inside and outside Quebec, the research group I was heading in the wake of the BélangerCampeau Commission came to the conclusion that our federation was suffering from a kind of neverending soul searching that we called the Canadian Malady,4 and it made us realize that the two crises of the Canadian social and political contract that we had brought to light were clearly related to the most urgent political challenge of our time. That challenge was to reconcile individuals’ and communities’ vital need to preserve their languages and cultures through local self-government and the equally vital need for a central government endowed with the powers and resources required to tackle the most pressing problems of our planet. We soon realized that not just any conception of how humans should live together, and not just any type of federalism, can harmoniously reconcile, in Canada as well as on the international stage, these two crucial requirements: local self-government needed by nations and communities to preserve their roots, and the pooling of economic, social, and political resources to which those nations and communities must consent in order to solve the supranational problems of our time. Speaking more specifically of Canada, how can we defend the idea of “union without fusion” of our founding peoples, celebrated by thinkers such as Cartier, McGee, and Laurier, when we are asked to condemn the very notion of “cultural nation” or else risk being accused of ethnicism, or even irredeemable racism, by well-meaning Quebec and Canadian academics? How can we understand and defend Bill 101 when linguistic and cultural rights are reduced to simple individual rights by willfully ignoring

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the fact that language and culture are collective creations that can be sustained only if there is a territory-based community that lives, works, names, and celebrates the world in a shared idiom? And when the neoliberal doxa of someone like Milton Friedman has absolute rule in the world of business and invades our university campuses, how can we defend the government intervention that has made it possible to maintain broad socioeconomic solidarity in Quebec and Canada since the Second World War? We cannot cure the individualism of modernity and unchecked capitalism by further enshrining individual rights and enfeebling people’s responsibilities to the common good of the communities that sustain them materially and spiritually. By returning to the writings of George-Étienne Cartier and the sources of the Quebec Quiet Revolution, as well as to the origins of the European Economic Community, my colleagues at the fpro discovered the theory of “federalism for small nations” preached by proponents of personalism such as Emmanuel Mounier, Jacques Maritain, and Denis de Rougemont. As a philosopher, I have made the rounds of the great political thinkers, from Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, and Montesquieu to Hegel and Marx, not to mention Taylor, Kymlicka, Rawls, and Habermas. Yet, communitarian personalism is in my eyes the current of thought best able to deal with the multinational character of Canadian federalism and with the most urgent political challenge of our time: managing the planet’s most pressing supranational problems while respecting individuals’ and communities’ right to be different. Personalism was not taught at the Université de Montréal where, as a penniless student, I did all my studies in philosophy, but I discovered it on my own. After immersing myself in communitarian personalism at the age of twenty, I went on to teach it at Collège André-Grasset throughout the 1960s, and I thus found myself, by accident, in the company of the vast majority of returnees from Europe who imagined and shaped Quebec’s Quiet Revolution: André Laurendeau, Claude Ryan, Fernand Dumont, and Guy Rocher all professed Mounier’s personalism at one time, as did Gérard Pelletier and Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who created the journal Cité libre with the express ambition that it become a Quebec and Canadian equivalent of the journal Esprit.5 Since almost all the fathers of the European Community were members of Esprit’s communitarian personalist movement, I was quickly initiated into the “federalism for small nations” so dear to Mounier and his close collaborator, Denis de Rougemont.

t h e “ f e d e r a l is m f o r small nati ons” o f m o u n ie r a n d d e rougemont For those unfamiliar with the thought of Mounier, Maritain, and de Rougemont, I have provided a twenty-page summary of communitarian personalism in the introduction to Pierre Elliott Trudeau, l’intellectuel et le politique.6 Here, I will simply quote the key passages of that summary.

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Person versus Individual For Maritain, Mounier and the Esprit movement, the great failure of republican liberal individualism, and the root of why modernity has gone wild, is that it reduces humans to simple interchangeable individuals and, to provide a foundation for the equal, universal rights of such individuals, it paradoxically feels obliged to strip humans of everything that makes them individual. This it has done to the point of making them “simple legal abstractions with no ties, no fabric, no neighbours, no poetry.” Mounier and his collaborators contrasted the abstract, disembodied individual of lawyers and economists with persons as beings of relationships: cognitive and loving relationships with themselves, with their fellows and with the cosmos, for “the fundamental action of a person is not to become separate but to commune.” Concrete Universal versus Abstract Universal Denouncing republican, mercantile “false universality,” personalism insists that humanity is not a simple gathering together of abstract, disembodied, deterritorialized individuals. It is a broader, more far-reaching community of persons rooted in local communities that serve as living places for learning about others and about personal responsibility. These “small homelands under the larger one” are concrete paths toward a true form of universality that does not sacrifice persons to the community or the community to persons. This is how personalism leads to federalism, which Mounier considered to be the only system that could guarantee the sustainability and autonomy of human-scale communities within the large political wholes that humans need to manage the planetary problems of our time. Communitarian Personalist Federalism: A Regime for Small Nations Mounier wrote that “personalist democracy is a regime for small nations. Large nations can bring it about only by dissociating power so that each is constrained by the others.” Rejecting the sacrosanct principle of the nation-state that had put Europe to fire and sword, Mounier and Maritain argued that only a regime of federal inspiration could reconcile communitarian pluralism – which is indispensable for people to be rooted yet also responsible – with the need for an authority able to fairly and efficiently manage a common good that now transcends national borders. Community roots for persons and just, efficient management of a common good that is increasingly “supranational” are, in the eyes of personalists, the two contradictory imperatives that our time must

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reconcile, and that reconciliation demands the adoption of what Denis de Rougemont called a federal solution. De Rougemont wrote: “I propose to affix the label federalist problem to any situation in which two antimonic, but equally valid and vital, human realities compete against each other and where a solution cannot be found by negating one of these two realities or subordinating one to the other, but only by engaging in a creative endeavour that encompasses, satisfies, and transcends the requirements of both. I would therefore call federal solution any solution that takes as a rule to respect the two antinomic entities that are in conflict while bringing them together in such a way that the result of their tension is positive.” Founding Principles of Communitarian Personalist Federalism For de Rougemont, building a true federation means translating into political and institutional terms the personalist philosophy that he constantly defended, from the time of his first contributions to Esprit. Drawing lessons from the secular Swiss experience, he formulated on several occasions the six cardinal principles that must preside over the building of a true “multinational” federation.7 Reformulated and reduced to their essentials, these six principles of communitarian personalist federalism can be boiled down to four: 1 Equivalency rather than identity of rights and treatment as the foundation for equality of citizens and federated communities because treating unidentical beings identically denies their difference and rejects the doctrine of union without fusion of federated communities; 2 Subsidiarity as a principle of division of powers because, to keep the exercise of power as close as possible to local persons and communities, the central government of a federation must be responsible only for tasks that cannot be managed justly and efficiently at the local level; 3 Non-subordination as a principle of division of sovereignty because, to ensure that two orders of government live together peacefully and creatively within a single federation, neither of those orders can be in law or in fact subject to the other in its exercise of the sovereign powers it is given under the Constitution; and 4 Joint decision-making as a principle for managing the interdependency of the partners in a federation because, to respect the principle of non-subordination, any restrictions on the exercise of sovereign power of the central as well as of the local government must be decided upon jointly to solve problems that straddle their respective areas of jurisdiction.

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win - w in r e b a l a n c in g of the federati on in r e s p o n s e t o b é langer-campeau Taking inspiration from these four broad principles, the fpro research group I directed proposed to the Mulroney government a partnership renewal of the Canadian federation based on the following negotiation quid pro quo strategy: Formal constitutional recognition that Quebec and Indigenous peoples have a right to remain distinct societies within Canada and that all the provinces are entitled to protect and promote their regional differences, accompanied by the decentralization of powers and fiscal resources necessary for exercising these rights; In exchange for Signing a Pact on the Canadian economic and social union by which all the partners in the federation, including Ottawa, Quebec, and potential Indigenous governments, would undertake to coordinate the exercise of their sovereign powers through European-style joint decision-making in a council of First Ministers, in order to uphold the shared goals and minimum common standards needed to maintain and strengthen the Canadian union in the face of the technological and economic pressures of globalization and international free trade. I cannot summarize here all of the aspects of the win-win negotiation that we proposed at the time of the Mulroney government and which I tried to describe in detail in my book Le mal canadien. However, I can say that as soon as Indigenous peoples’ claims began to monopolize the messy discussions that led to the Charlottetown Accord, any rational debate on the means to consolidate the Canadian social and economic union against the disintegrating forces of globalization became impossible. Then, after the Accord was rejected in the 1992 pan-Canadian referendum, my superiors gave me a sabbatical to write a book destined to save from oblivion a win-win plan to rebalance the federation that had made its way to the top of the federal hierarchy, where it had been examined in ministerial committees by the most influential members of the Mulroney government. Le mal canadien was thus published in 1995 to keep open the future of a reform that was judged promising. In the summer of 1994, I gave a copy of my manuscript to Michel Bélanger and five other federalist leaders in Quebec, with the open aim of convincing them to incorporate the broad lines for rebalancing the Canadian federation described in my book into the “No” campaign’s manifesto during the referendum held by the Parizeau government. However, by the fall of 1994, it was already too late. The federal

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government had already forced the “No” campaign to adopt its hardball strategy of putting nothing on the table. Jean Chrétien was persuaded that if Quebecers were forced to choose between Parizeau’s uncompromising sovereignty and the Canadian status quo inherited from Pierre Elliott Trudeau, they would opt to remain in the “best country in the world,” which even René Lévesque said was not a gulag. In May 1995, when the organizers of the Association francophone pour le savoir (acfas , the Francophone-Canadian learned society) conference in Chicoutimi invited me to present my book to a group of hardline political scientists, the Parizeau government’s referendum on pure sovereignty was rushing headlong into disaster. Since it looked like the “No” camp was going to win, I suggested once again that its manifesto be amended to include the holding of a Quebec referendum proposing a reform of the Canadian federation based on the win-win negotiation strategy described in Le mal canadien. My primary goal was to prevent Quebec from becoming a prisoner of the status quo after a federalist victory, if no reform obligations were incorporated into the manifesto required under Quebec’s Referendum Act. My secondary objective was more proactive and pacifying, and involved putting a reform of the federation on the table such that moderate partisans of sovereignty-association would be basically satisfied if they lost the referendum. To my great surprise, the political scientists in the room, with Louis Balthazar in the lead, concluded that such a referendum would garner the support of 70 to 75 per cent of Quebecers, and that this was the winning referendum that should be proposed to the people of Quebec. The “No” campaign once again turned a deaf ear – but the sovereigntists understood that, by adding a Quebec-Canada partnership plan to the hardline sovereignty of the Parizeau government, they would have a chance of avoiding the defeat looming on the horizon. Everyone knows how that story ended. However, something that you may not know, but that might prevent you from giving up hope, is that after the near victory of the sovereigntists on 30 October 1995, a group of twenty-two leading figures in English Canada signed a manifesto written by John McCallum and Charles Taylor8 in favour of a reform of the Canadian federation in line with the win-win approach proposed in Le mal canadien. As if by chance, the Chrétien government scheduled a major press conference at the same time as the manifesto’s launch, and the Group of 22 found itself talking to an empty room. That did not prevent certain researchers in the rest of Canada from jumping on the bandwagon of the Pact on the Canadian Social and Economic Union while conveniently forgetting the other half of the equation set out in my book – namely, constitutional recognition of Quebec’s distinct nature at least equivalent to that offered in the Meech Lake Accord. Half a dozen studies were then published, including Tom Courchesne’s access ,9 in which he argued in favour of a new social and economic union determined jointly with the provinces, and Kathy O’Hara’s Securing the

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Social Union, published by the Canadian Policy Research Network.10 O’Hara’s study alluded vaguely to fundamental rules for managing intergovernmental cooperation, but did not state any. And then the little flame was snuffed out when the Chrétien government managed to strong-arm the provinces into accepting the Canadian Social Union Framework Agreement, which more or less placed them under custodianship. Only Quebec refused to sign the Agreement, which left it all alone in its corner. After Paul Martin’s 1995 budget and the massive cuts in transfer payments to the provinces, Ottawa regained control of its finances and the earlier interest, on the part of the Mulroney government, in taking a partnership approach to managing the interdependency of the governments practically disappeared. Likewise, formal recognition of Quebec’s distinctness, which a panicking Chrétien had promised on the eve of 30 October 1995, never became concrete, and then the Clarity Act put yet another nail in the coffin of constitutional change. It remains that, to the surprise of the Chrétien government, in 1998 the Supreme Court opened an unhoped-for avenue for Quebec’s claims when it ruled, in Reference re Secession of Quebec, that Ottawa and the rest of the country would have a legal obligation to negotiate in good faith if a constitutional reform proposal was approved by the majority of the population of Quebec. This was so heartening that I proposed, in newspapers11 and many other forums, the holding of a winning federalist referendum on the plan to rebalance the partnership in the federation outlined in Le mal canadien. At the risk of repeating myself, I remain convinced that such a referendum remains the only truly efficient lever still available to Quebec to get the rest of Canada to change its mindset. Will Quebec pass up this opportunity to re-engage with the multinational federalism of 1867 by proposing a viable modern alternative to the anti-communitarian “one nation” doctrine that was imposed on it in 1982? I would like to end this paper on an optimistic note, but I must say that our politicians seem to be short-sighted and subject to the overwhelming pressure of the postmodern ideology currently in fashion. This means that you, as university researchers, have the herculean task of rethinking, outside the box, the union, without fusion, of the founding peoples of Canada as well as the Canadian economic and social union, which are both threatened by anti-communitarian forces of globalization based on the cult of the individual and the law of “might makes right.” My hope is that environmental and climate crises will increasingly force our leaders to “think globally and act locally,”12  in order to prevent the planetary catastrophes that are threatening us. Since the survival of humanity hangs in the balance, I dare hope that these crises will open the hearts and minds of our leaders and our fellow citizens to the virtues of partnership federalism and European-style joint decision-making as ways to manage the interdependency of peoples while respecting their right to be different.

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Having said this, nothing is certain in this world, and it is up to you to decide whether you will have the wisdom and courage to go against the present flow of economic and legal individualism and engage in fresh thinking about the increasingly interdependent future of Quebec, Canada, and the planet as a whole. notes 1 Aristotle, Politics, IV, 1, 1288b37. 2 A famous opponent of intellectual trends, Péguy boasted of being a “miscontemporary,” that is to say, a critic of modernity. We need thinkers like him more than ever in this time of unfettered globalization. See: Alain Finkielkraut, Le mécontemporain Péguy: Lecteur du monde moderne (Paris: Gallimard, 1992). 3 I mean “social contract” in the sense given by the late political scientist Richard Simeon: “A settled understanding, a set of shared premises, that broadly defines common purposes, mutual obligations, and a sense of the appropriate roles of government.” Richard Simeon, In Search of a Social Contract (Toronto: C.D. Howe Institute, 1994), 8. 4 André Burelle, Le mal canadien: Essai de diagnostic et esquisse d’une thérapie (Montreal: Fides, 1995). 5 On this, see: Jean-Philippe Warren and E.-Martin Meunier, Sortir de la “Grande Noirceur”: L’horizon personnaliste de la Révolution tranquille (Quebec City: Septentrion, 2002). 6 André Burelle, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, l’intellectuel et le politique (Montreal: Fides, 2005), 25–45. (Translated from the French. Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations of French texts are by the translators of this volume.) 7 First formulated in 1948 in L’Europe en jeu, these guiding principles of federalism were reworked and enriched many times by de Rougemont, in particular in Denis de Rougemont, “Orientations vers une Europe fédérale,” Bulletin sedeis , 56 (1963). See the wording of these principles in Burelle, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 43–4. 8 Alan Cairns, David Cameron, Gretta Chambers, and Thomas J. Courchene, Réadapter le Canada/Making Canada Work Better, Manifesto of the Group of 22, 1 May 1996, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237577916_ Making_Canada_Work_Better. 9 See: Tom Courchesne, Assessing access : Towards a New Social Union (Kingston: Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, Queen’s University, 1997). 10 Kathy O’Hara, Securing the Social Union, Study No. 2 (Ottawa: Canadian Policy Research Networks, 1998). 11 See: André Burelle, “Le référendum gagnant qu’on refuse aux Québécois,” Le Devoir, 11 December 1998.

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12 Coined by Jacques Ellul, the phrase is attributed to René Dubos, who would have used it at the first un Conference on the Human Environment in 1972. It has been adopted since as a motto by attac , an international movement working toward social, environmental, and democratic alternatives to the globalization process.

pa rt one

Actors at the Heart of Politics: The Leaders and Their Parties

2 From Provincial Autonomy to Profitable Federalism: Quebec’s Special Status in the Eyes of Federalist Leaders during the Quiet Revolution Antoine Brousseau Desaulniers

The 1960s were a turning point in Canada’s constitutional history, in particular because patriation of the Constitution was inextricably tangled up with the matter of the harmonious coexistence of the two founding peoples. The time of the Quiet Revolution was also the time of rapid development of the Quebec State, driven by a new form of nationalism – a modernizing, territorial nationalism that was in opposition both to traditional French-Canadian nationalism and to the federal government’s centralizing initiatives, which had become increasingly frequent since the end of the 1930s.1 In the early 1960s, Lesage’s government began setting up institutions and programs that placed Quebec City in direct competition with Ottawa with regard to the exercise of certain powers.2 Years of political wrangling had led the various Quebec governments to adopt a position on the Constitution that no one would call “traditional.” It made obtaining new powers an essential condition for the province to consent to patriating the Constitution, and to amending it.3 The Quiet Revolution seems to have led to a change in political culture with respect to constitutional stakes.4 What we mean by “political culture” is the sum of the representations related to symbols and identity5 that hold a political community together.6 Political culture nonetheless involves tensions, fractures, and oppositions that, in the context of political struggle, result in clashes between different aspirations regarding the social and economic organization of society and even the political regime itself.7 The thesis of a change in political culture seems to be corroborated at first sight by studies addressing transformations of political culture in Quebec with respect to issues such as immigration, energy policy, trust in institutions, national identity in English Canada, and the social

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movements of the 1960s.8 The major changes of the 1960s are the focus of many specialized analyses and have been seen, variously, both as sudden and as resulting from a long evolution. The point of departure of this chapter is the observation that we need to gain a deeper understanding of the transformations in political culture through the prism of the constitutional issue. Most often, political scientists9 and historians10 have tended to analyze the issue from the perspective of a “constitutional duel” between Quebec and Canada. Other studies have instead concentrated on the constitutional positions of different voices in the debate, such as political leaders,11 political parties,12 and pressure groups.13 In consequence, the period following the patriation of the Constitution in 1982 has been given a degree of attention that seems inordinate in comparison with that given to the years before.14 Moreover, most studies focusing on those preceding years were written before 1995, and, in general, studies on the constitutional debates have not paid much attention to the symbolic and representational aspects of the political culture. Our understanding of the constitutional discussion in the 1960s needs to be brought up to date from this new angle. Our goal is to tell the story of the power relations among the sociopolitical players seeking to impose representations, references, norms, and symbols to determine the dominant values in Quebec politics.15 By studying the representations related to symbols and identity – both the representations on which there was a consensus and those giving rise to conflict – in the debate, a historian can give meaning to the decisions taken.16 The political field, as defined by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu,17 makes it possible for fringe representations to be expressed.18 They are taken up by players in the field who adapt them to the norms and practices of the political space, which brings them into conflict with the majority representations that they seek to overturn. Conflicts between representations therefore have obvious consequences on symbolism and identity, sometimes giving rise to political leaders’ new adherence, and that of civil society more generally, to what had earlier been a fringe representation, and thereby leading to changes in the community’s political culture. The question of the special status claimed by Quebec between 1960 and 1971 proves to be an excellent point of reference for exploring these changes.19 Politicians’ debates were always sprinkled with representations related to symbols and identity in connection with the future of Canadian federalism. To chart the transformations in these practices, we have examined the debates in Quebec’s Legislative Assembly (which became the National Assembly in 1968) and the speeches given by various Quebec politicians outside the Assembly over the course of the 1960s. Most of the interventions in question were by party leaders, but there are also records of the voices of ministers as well as members of the Assembly. The records make the conflicts among the representations in the political field in Quebec

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clear. Moreover, actors’ opinions on Quebec’s special status, and the resulting representations related to symbols and identity, reveal the shape of those actors’ ideas about federalism. The subject matter of this chapter is therefore the emergence and establishment of the contemporary line of federalist thought at the centre of Quebec politics. The analysis identifies deep transformations in the constitutional debate in Quebec following the political jousts of the 1960s. We will seek explanations for these changes by describing the nature of the conflicts in the representations of federalism at three points in the decade. We will begin by looking at the debates on provincial autonomy between 1960 and 1962. Next, we will study how political leaders came to articulate a new form of federalist thought in the context of the discussions on Canadian unity between 1963 and 1966. Lastly, we will see that this position was affirmed against an antithetical position, namely, that of the independence movement, between 1967 and 1971.

d e b a t e s a r o u n d provi nci al a u t o n o m y ( 1960–62) In 1960, the constitutional debate was in continuity with that of the late 1950s; in other words, the matter was seen through the lens of fiscal imbalance in favour of Ottawa. At the heart of the debate, there was the notion of Quebec’s autonomy, which Maurice Duplessis had been instrumentalizing for electoral purposes since the 1930s.20 Duplessis argued for strict respect of the 1867 text in the face of Ottawa’s efforts to change, de facto or de jure, the constitutional distribution of powers.21 The Liberals also said they were in favour of provincial autonomy, but they advocated cooperation with Ottawa in the implementation of its program. What was new in 1960 was that Jean Lesage’s Liberal government, armed with a resolutely nationalist platform, seemed to be more clearly committed to defending Quebec’s autonomy when it asked Ottawa for a substantial transfer of financial resources so that Quebec could develop its social and welfare programs.22 From the start, the Union nationale opposition considered the government’s demands insufficient to protect the province’s autonomy, and this was the theme of most of its attacks. mla Armand Maltais was especially eloquent: “As a minority group, we will always be faced with a hard choice between our rights and Ottawa’s millions. I consider that the French-Canadian people must never consent to yielding any shred of its rights, no matter how many millions tossed at it by the federal government.”23 Unionist mla Daniel Johnson feared that one day, owing to the provinces’ participation in the “joint federal” plans that Maltais referred to, the federal government would manage to impose its hegemony over provincial jurisdictions.24 Interim leader Antonio Talbot considered that “literal” autonomy, according to which the central government would be completely

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excluded from provincial jurisdictions, was the only doctrine that could ensure Quebec’s survival.25 Generally, when Quebec Liberal Party mla s responded to these attacks, they employed rhetoric contrasting the positive autonomy that they would practice against the negative autonomy that they accused the Unionists of defending. Paul Gérin-Lajoie, who was then Minister of Youth, said that he was “proud to belong to an autonomist province, but its autonomy no longer shuts it off from the rest of the nation. The Province of Quebec must defend its autonomy jealously, but not isolate itself from the rest of Canada.”26 Bernard Pinard, Minister of Roads, went further and blamed the Unionists and their approach to autonomy for the poverty of the province, in comparison with Canada as a whole. He said that “in 1961, the Province of Quebec must be in the Canadian confederation” and “joint plans cannot have a negative impact on provincial autonomy.”27  René Lévesque, then Minister of Hydroelectric Resources and Public Works, explained the government’s attitude in a similar manner: “The best way to accomplish positive autonomy is to occupy the areas that the Constitution of Canada places under the jurisdiction of the Province of Quebec. When we take care of the areas that belong to us, there is less danger that others will occupy them. It is normal for two powers to have to defend themselves against each other from time to time, but our defences are stronger when we occupy the area that belongs to us.”28 Although the two parties agreed on the need to protect this autonomy,29 their conceptions of it were fundamentally different. Whereas the Unionists were still attached to Duplessis’s model, which simply rejected federal intervention, the Quebec Liberal Party believed, as did René Lévesque, that true autonomy consisted in occupying the areas of jurisdiction that Quebec already had, and that this could be done by setting up programs. It should be noted that these conflicts were emblematic of the partisan approach to parliamentary debates, and that, despite apparently irreconcilable positions, the parties agreed on certain matters, in particular the mission that should be given to the new Department of Federal-Provincial Affairs, which was created in 1961.30 The positions may not have been completely irreconcilable, but very different conceptions of Canadian federalism were at play. The Liberals were promoting a much more integrated system, while the Unionists considered such an approach to be contrary to the Constitution and therefore against the interests of the French-Canadian nation. Lastly, the question of patriation of the Constitution is notable for its absence in these debates. In the Legislative Assembly, the political leaders simply did not debate the Fulton formula, which was the subject of negotiations among Canada’s governments. The purpose of that amending formula was to meet conditions so that the Constitution could be patriated, and it required the unanimous consensus of all provinces on matters that concerned their areas of jurisdiction. As soon as the formula was unveiled, the Union nationale

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judged its terms unacceptable and demanded a new agreement.31 The lack of deep debate can be explained by the fact that what was at stake in patriating the Constitution was not yet completely linked with other substantial changes that the Quebec government was seeking to make to the way Canadian federalism operated.32 The situation changed radically in the following years.

i n s e a r c h o f c o n s t ituti onal change By renewing the Liberals’ mandate through the 1962 election, the people of Quebec endorsed their liberal and nationalist reforms of the Quebec State. The rise of neonationalism prompted the central government to react, which it did the following year when Pearson’s federal Liberals came back into power in Ottawa and showed some openness to Quebec’s demands. The creation of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission) was the most concrete manifestation of the new attitude. That initiative and the debates that followed demonstrated the importance taken by the issue of how the two founding peoples were to live together.33 The repercussions of this chain of events were such that in the space of a few months, during the 1963 parliamentary session, dayto-day federal-provincial affairs and debates on Quebec’s autonomy gave way, at least in part, to discussions on the special status that Quebec should acquire through necessary constitutional reform. In the Union nationale, the perception that French Canadians did not have the freedom necessary to organize the economy in accordance with their specific requirements was exacerbated; what was needed was not simply for the Constitution to be respected: it had to be completely replaced. Already in 1963 (two years before Égalité ou indépendance was published), Daniel Johnson Sr had declared that “there are only two possible options, and a choice has to be made between them before 1967: either we will be the masters of our own fates in Quebec and equal partners in conducting the country’s affairs, or complete separation will occur.”34 For this, he proposed creating a constitutive assembly in which the “representatives of the two nations could prepare together, on perfectly equal footing, a new Constitution tailored to today’s needs.”35 Johnson repeated that proposal, which necessarily implied giving Quebec a special status owing to Canada’s binational nature – a status without which Quebec would have no choice but to separate – many times between 1963 and 1967.36 The Official Opposition also took this point of view when it moved a motion to hold the Estates General of French Canada. In support of this motion, most of the Unionist mla s repeated the core points made by their leader.37 They considered that more was needed than a simple “facelift” to save Canada from its impending fate, if the constitutional status quo remained. They presented their party as the “new Constitution” party.38

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The Liberals’ constitutional demands were not as extreme. Jean Lesage never demanded a new Constitution. Instead, he spoke of “the advent of a renewed Confederation in which Quebec will be considered by all Canadian citizens not only as a province that absolutely insists on its rights, but that is also, owing to history and demography, the political expression of French Canada.”39 By using the term renewed, the Premier was clearly taking distance from the Unionists’ position. He also did this in the House, when he expressed doubts that “holding a constitutive assembly is the best means in the immediate.” Even though he preferred not to commit himself regarding the conditions for such constitutional renewal,40 he nonetheless believed that the “success of such an undertaking depends, however, on decentralization of powers and the possibility for provincial governments to have access to sufficient financial resources.”41  Although he was vague on details, the Premier did not leave stakeholders completely in the dark. To begin with, he dismissed solutions on the extremes of the continuum of possibility, such as Quebec’s merger into a unitary Canadian state and Quebec’s complete separation from the rest of Canada.42 In the latter case, his position was notably different from Johnson’s Égalité ou indépendance, and he hinted that arrangements, such as the possibility to opt out of joint programs, would eventually enable Quebec to acquire all the leeway it needed to achieve its objectives and, in the end, to have a distinct regime.43 Jean Lesage’s idea was openly endorsed by most Liberal mla s, including Paul Gérin-Lajoie and Ernest Godbout.44 However, the positions taken by other Liberal political leaders, such as Pierre Laporte, then Minister of Municipal Affairs and Minister of Cultural Affairs, indicated there were conflicts of ideas within the party.45 Laporte went much further than his leader when he said of the Committee on the Constitution that its task would be to “prepare the foundations of this largely independent Quebec that will adhere, on its own free will, to a federation of the independent states of Canada.”46 He stood out even more when he said before the Canadian Institute of Public Affairs that there were two constitutional solutions that had to be left off the table completely: merger into the Canadian whole and the status quo. In this respect, his position resembled Daniel Johnson’s: if all else failed, separation had to be considered.47 Despite the differences, the political leaders’ proposals revealed relatively similar ideas about federalism, in which the Quebec state was seen as the expression of the French-Canadian nation, which was in an economically inferior situation in relation to its partner, the other founding people. The strategy underlying the proposals was related to the fact that the party leaders were appealing to the rest of Canada much more than they were trying to persuade their political adversaries of the grounds for Quebec’s demands. This line of thought ramified, however, into many branches, and the lines and divides that were already present reached extremes with the crisis surrounding ratification of the Fulton-Favreau formula.

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In 1964, the federal government and the provinces began negotiations on the Fulton-Favreau constitutional amendment formula, which stipulated that constitutional amendments would require the agreement of two thirds of the provinces, comprising at least 50 per cent of the population of Canada.48 The Quebec government put ratification of the formula on its 1965 legislative agenda. At that time, discontent bubbled up in Quebec society and a true opposition movement emerged. Major figures, such as the director of Le Devoir, Claude Ryan, and constitutional expert Jacques-Yvan Morin, were dead set against the formula, which they considered too rigid in the sense that it made it improbable that Quebec would gain new powers.49 In a debate held at the Université de Montréal between Morin and star ministers Pierre Laporte and René Lévesque, who had been sent to defend the government’s position, Laporte and Lévesque suffered complete defeat and were even booed by the students.50 Even within the Quebec Liberal Party, dissent gradually appeared, in particular in various Liberal clubs on university campuses.51 To explain the strong contestation, we need to look at the problems in federal-provincial relations that had been cropping up since the beginning of the Liberals’ mandate, as well as the tabling of the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission’s preliminary report. This backdrop contributed greatly to the powerful rise of neonationalism and its ability to rally the broader population to its tenets.52 The preliminary report, which the commissioners published in early 1965, contained devastating conclusions: Canada was in the throes of the worst crisis in its history and a deep reform was needed so that both of the majority cultures, especially the French-speaking culture, would be able to thrive.53 Those opposed to the amending formula doubted that, as Daniel Johnson put it, “having one veto for Quebec and ten for the provinces and an English-majority government would give us any special status advantage.”54 In other words, the critics of the formula considered that it would be impossible for Quebec to obtain a new distribution of powers if the process was left up to the goodwill of the rest of Canada. Naturally, the Unionists were especially active in such contestation. Daniel Johnson intended to conduct an outright “suicide attack” on the formula. His thought, more explicit than ever, was laid out in 1965 in his book Égalité ou indépendance, in which his arguments were based on the points we have already identified: Canada needed a new Constitution and therefore patriating the old Constitution was a waste of time.55 Of course, that did not mean that the Unionist leader considered the process inoffensive. On the contrary, he believed that the “major flaw of the Fulton-Favreau formula is that it insists, against the most obvious reality, on recognizing provinces as if they were absolutely similar to one another … it subordinates any possible expansion of Quebec’s powers to the consent and legislative agreement not only of Ottawa but of each and every other province.”56 Johnson’s words showed his disenchantment with the federalism of the preceding years.

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According to him, the Fulton-Favreau formula would enshrine such federalism and be a “straitjacket” that Quebec would never be able to get out of without the goodwill of English Canada.57 Inversely, most Liberal mla s said that Quebec’s advances since 1960 were proof that negotiation had been fruitful. For example, Jean Lesage said that if “one day Quebec demands a status different from that of the other provinces, it will be a consequence of its political power, its determination and the agreement of the other provinces. This is the situation we find ourselves in today, and it is where we will find ourselves tomorrow – no matter what the legislative texts [say] or where the Constitution is located.”58 The political debate was heated in the weeks prior to the 1966 elections. The Liberals were forced to set aside the Fulton-Favreau formula and state, increasingly vigorously, their desire to exact a special status for Quebec.59 Galvanized by a victory that discredited the approach that the Liberals had been promoting until then, the Unionists boldly stated the “equality or independence” doctrine.60 Although the pre-election context probably had something to do with the situation, it is clear that events at the pan-Canadian level forced political leaders to state their demands more firmly and to stand out against their competitors to win votes. This was particularly true of the Liberals: the general reaction to the FultonFavreau formula episode surprised them and forced them to deal with the rise in nationalist sentiment in Quebec, even among their ranks. By opening the door to the idea of independence, which until then had been a fringe idea, the Official Opposition made a strong contribution to legitimizing it. The Liberal government’s defeat on the Fulton-Favreau formula issue gave ascendancy to the values promoted by Daniel Johnson, which certainly helped him win the election.

t h e s p e c t r e o f in dependence However, the new government opened a door it was not ready to go through. General de Gaulle’s visit in July 1967, when he shouted “Vive le Québec libre!” from the balcony of Montreal’s City Hall, electrified pro-independence activists and many of the most nationalistic components of Quebec society. In parallel, Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s power was expanding and his special conception of national unity was spreading. By 1968, that conception was predominant at the federal level. The Unionists were in power in Quebec, but their bluff was called. Overwhelmed by events, the party found itself defending a third way that seemed increasingly impossible to take.61 At the February 1968 first ministers’ conference, during which the Constitution revision process truly got underway, Johnson reiterated his vision of the Constitution and specified Quebec’s demands, at the heart of which was a new, clear distribution of powers in the areas of social security, international relations, education, health, and residual powers. Moreover,

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it was essential that the new Constitution recognize Canada’s linguistic, cultural. and political duality.62 While not directly brandishing the threat of independence, the Premier of Quebec nonetheless said: “it is in no way necessary to destroy the Canada of ten to make a Canada of two, but it has become indispensable and urgent for two to create Canada in order to maintain the Canada of ten.”63 It is remarkable how unchanging the Unionist leaders’ position remained while they were in government. In 1970, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Marcel Masse, insisted on these same aspects and added that if “there is no new distribution of jurisdictions, the provincial governments will soon be nothing more than simple municipal governments and the central government will be the only ruler of Canada. When that happens, Quebec will consider that it no longer has the means necessary to protect its identity and that it will have to take those means on its own initiative.”64 Various Unionist mla s wielded this kind of threat throughout the mandate, even after Daniel Johnson’s death.65 While less quick than his predecessor to insist on dualism, Jean-Jacques Bertrand was not shy about denouncing the “arrogant and imperialistic”66  attitude of Trudeau’s central government. At federal-provincial conferences, he did not mention independence but on several other occasions he did – for example, at a benefit dinner for the party.67 It should be said that Bertrand probably had no choice but to maintain the same line given his party’s militants, who were apparently divided into centralist and nationalist wings.68 While the Unionists found themselves between a rock and a hard place, the Quebec Liberal Party’s internal debates also showed a shift toward unequivocal maintenance of federal ties. In September 1967, a group of mlas led by René Lévesque prepared a document proposing that the party adopt sovereignty-association as its constitutional policy during the congress of the Quebec Liberal Federation, to be held the following month.69 In parallel, Paul Gérin-Lajoie, while rejecting Lévesque’s separatism, was drafting the special status that the Liberals would demand from Ottawa.70 At the Congress, the party delegates approved Gérin-Lajoie’s proposal and definitively rejected Lévesque’s. The result was that Lévesque and a few other members slammed the door on the Quebec Liberal Party and founded the Mouvement souveraineté-association a few weeks later. Many Liberal Party members who had until then been considered to belong to the party’s nationalist wing, such as Pierre Laporte, rallied to Gérin-Lajoie’s proposal: “I also seconded Paul Gérin-Lajoie’s motion in the name of the future … I believe in this future within a new Canada and I hope you share this collective faith.”71 The unconditionally federalist turn72 was thus well along, and in his closing remarks at the congress, Jean Lesage said that “separation under all its forms is a sign of weakness, weakness that I cannot accept because it is not worthy of the epic struggles that the people of my language have undertaken in America over the last two hundred years.”73

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Despite the loss of a powerful player like René Lévesque, the Liberals came out of the ordeal with renewed vigour. In the parliamentary debates of the months to follow, they boasted of having a clear constitutional position in comparison with the Unionists. Gérard D. Lévesque provided a good summary of the Liberal discourse as a whole: “Does our federal system need to be improved? Yes. Is there room for improvement in federal-provincial relations? Yes. Is there a distribution of powers more appropriate to our century, more appropriate to 1968? Probably. However, when we have chosen a system, when we enjoy one of the best systems in the world, we must not undermine it. We must support it.”74 The upswing in the popularity of sovereigntist ideas, which from then on had voices in the House with François Aquin and René Lévesque, were reasons for this change in tone. In other words, the Liberals made an issue out of the fact that the Union nationale was sitting on the fence between federalism and independence, and they decried the irresponsibility of a doctrine such as “equality or independence,” which they portrayed as containing equal measures of high theatre and horror show.75 The main reason the Union nationale was accused of being irresponsible was because of the economic uncertainty that would allegedly be caused by the government’s ambiguity on the Constitution. Despite these incessant attacks and his party’s difficult position at a time when both the Liberal Party and the Parti Québécois had wind in their sails, Jean-Jacques Bertrand fully committed himself to the third option. In a pre-election speech at a fundraiser for his party, he declared: “Between risk and servitude there lies the great way of reason. It is no narrow corridor. It is broad and vast, like Quebec’s thought. It does not creep along the edges of precipices; it avoids them. It does not flirt with risk or disaster, nor with abandonment or servitude. It is neither the way of renunciation nor the way of intolerance. It is the broad path of the Quebec tradition of understanding, perseverance, and freedom.”76 The Liberal victory in the 1970 election, in which the Union nationale lost many of its supporters to the Parti Québécois and in which the Ralliement des créditistes77 also won seats in Parliament, crystalized the new paradigm of political culture that had been looming since the beginning of the decade.78 The Quebec Liberal Party increasingly became the voice of Quebec federalists. The expression that the new premier, Robert Bourassa, used to describe his position was “profitable federalism.” It is interesting to note that the foundation of that idea lies in giving priority to economic matters. Bourassa himself said the “federalism can be profitable for Quebec because we consider one of federalism’s raisons d’être to be redistribution of wealth.”79 During examination of the expenditure estimates for his department in July 1970, Gérard D. Lévesque, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, discussed the objectives of this policy: “We believe in a form of federalism in which we can engage in dialogue, in which we can improve our position, in which we can take, for Quebec, its rightful benefits and, at the same time,

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in which we can try, in a renewed Constitution, to clarify everyone’s areas of jurisdiction so as to avoid disagreements and fait accompli situations, while wielding a policy of presence and dialogue firmly, setting aside all fruitless, useless battles and wars on matters that are absolutely secondary.”80 The Quebec Liberal Party’s hope to obtain constitutional and administrative arrangements for Quebec that would allow it to flourish, while maintaining federating ties at all cost, survived the party’s move to the other side of the House. At the constitutional conference in September 1970, Quebec’s government made demands that were in line with those of preceding governments, stating that priority had to be given to the distribution of powers and to reconsideration of the central government’s spending power in federal areas of the provinces.81 This position, which was ambiguous to say the least, can be explained by the fact that the Liberals remained in the throes of an internal conflict regarding federalism. Powerful ministers, such as Jean-Paul L’Allier (Communications) and Claude Castonguay (Health and Social Services), belonged to the nationalist wing. The parliamentary debates that followed the October Crisis revealed the fissures. For example, Castonguay took a position in direct opposition to that of his leader when he said that the issues raised by the constitutional question could not be resolved by simple economic development, even though that might make solving them easier.82 Léo Pearson went even further, asserting that “Quebecers, Mr. President, are looking for a country. That country may be the confederation or Quebec alone. So long as this problem is not solved, we will suffer upheavals.”83 Despite the discord, it seems that, in the end, the Liberals proved to be the party par excellence that designed and changed Quebec federalism. On the side of the opposition, the presence of a more substantial sovereigntist contingent, with six Parti Québécois mna s, nonetheless helped to exacerbate the precariousness of the Union nationale’s situation in the early 1970s. The Unionists’ rhetoric remained much the same, but greater emphasis was placed on criticizing the Liberal government. For example, mna Marcel Masse said that Minister Gérard D. Lévesque “has implied that, if the government in Ottawa advocates changes, the government of Quebec will be able to take a position. From this I conclude that the passiveness of the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs is extremely dangerous. I find it rather surprising that he holds this position of constant waiting with respect to constitutional matters.”84 The lack of explanation as to what Quebec was expecting, in regard to the Union nationale’s “third option,” was in itself eloquent inasmuch as it was the Liberal vision of Quebec federalism that was adopted. However, the Union nationale and the other opposition parties managed to force the Quebec Liberal Party to accept the need to negotiate the distribution of powers prior to adopting an amending formula.85 Indeed, after initially agreeing to the Victoria Charter – without having obtained satisfactory

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agreement on the question of distribution of powers – Bourassa ended up rejecting it, once he had returned to Quebec and was confronted with a civil society protest movement.86

c o n c l u s ion The period spanning 1960 to 1971 was the scene of a little revolution in Quebec political culture with respect to federalist thought, which went from an old “autonomist” paradigm to the establishment of a new constitutional spectrum running from extreme federalism to extreme sovereignty. Federalist politicians’ ideas about symbols, identity, and future politics changed and, especially among the leaders of the Quebec Liberal Party, became much more clear-cut. This began in the 1960s, with the entry on stage of federalist players who had different conceptions of Canadian federalism and were seeking to improve it. From 1963 to 1965, in other words, during the Laurendeau-Dunton period,87 political leaders promoted a non-partisan vision of federalism centred on duality. Subsequently, changes in federal politics that were to Quebec’s disadvantage led to a rise in independentist sentiment. The terms of the debate changed very rapidly and, from then on, the voices to which Quebec federalists responded were those of the new independentist option. In this new discursive dynamic, the Union nationale was unable to show that its “third option” was a viable alternative, and it became so marginalized that it disappeared in the 1970s. The redefinition of the political scene in accordance with fundamental constitutional concerns is an eloquent demonstration of how new values reconfigured Quebec politics. We have shown this here by bringing to light the circumstances in which the changes occurred. The conflicts that erupted went beyond simple partisan quarrels typical of parliamentary dynamics, in which the opposition’s role is to find alternative solutions to government plans that it almost always finds defective. Moreover, the changes occurred extremely quickly whereas, in general, this kind of cultural phenomenon is slowed by inertia over the short term. While we would not want to say that it was generated spontaneously by the political leaders, it is no exaggeration to say that a veritable revolution occurred in Quebec political culture in the 1960s. notes 1 See: Michael D. Behiels, Prelude to Quebec’s Quiet Revolution: Liberalism versus Neo-Nationalism, 1945–1960 (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1985); Denis Monière, Pour comprendre le nationalisme au Québec et ailleurs (Montreal: pum , 2001), 113–14. 2 Concerning pension plans, communications, and international relations, see: Dale C. Thomson, Jean Lesage et la Révolution tranquille (Montreal: Trécarré, 1984), 486–94; Bruno Bouchard, L’échec des politiques constitutionnelles du

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4

5

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7 8

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Parti libéral du Québec de 1966 à 1982 (master’s thesis, Université du Québec à Montréal, 1996), 49–71; David Meren, With Friends Like These: Entangled Nationalisms and the Canada-Quebec-France Triangle, 1944–1970 (Vancouver: ubc Press, 2012). Alain-G. Gagnon, “Le dossier constitutionnel Québec-Canada,” in Québec: État et société, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon, vol. 2 (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 2003), 151–74. Political scientist Nelson Wiseman described the Quiet Revolution as nothing less than a revolution in Quebec political culture. See: Nelson Wiseman, In Search of Canadian Political Culture (Vancouver: ubc Press, 2007), 271–2. This means a structured set of facts, opinions, attitudes, and beliefs about a given object or subject that reflects the values of the individual or group that states them. A representation has the power to articulate a complex reality and to integrate individuals into or exclude them from divisions of the social world, as well as providing them with means for interpreting it. See: JeanClaude Abric, “La recherche du noyau central et de la zone muette des représentations sociales,” in Méthodes d’étude des représentations sociales, ed. Jean-Claude Abric (Ramonville-Saint-Agne, France: Érès, 2005), 59–60; Denise Jodelet, “Représentations sociales: Un domaine en expansion,” in Les représentations sociales, ed. Denise Jodelet (Paris: Les Presses Universitaires de France, 1997), 52–4; Martin Pâquet, “Prolégomènes à une anthropologie historique de l’État,” Journal of History and Politics/Revue d’histoire et de politique 12, no. 2 (1996–97): 1–26; Roger Chartier, Au bord de la falaise: L’histoire entre certitudes et inquiétude (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 1998), 2, 78–9. Réal Bélanger, “Pour un retour à l’histoire politique,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 52, no. 2 (1997): 236; Jean-François Sirinelli, “De la demeure à l’agora: Pour une histoire culturelle du politique,” in Axes et méthodes de l’histoire politique, ed. Serge Bernstein and Pierre Milza (Paris: puf , 1998), 391. Martin Pâquet, Tracer les marges de la cite: Étranger, immigrant et État au Québec, 1627–1981 (Montreal: Boréal, 2006), 16–18. See: Martin Pâquet, Tracer les marges de la cité; Stéphane Savard, Hydro Québec et l’État québécois, 1944–2005 (Quebec City: Septentrion, 2013); Ralph Heinztman, “The Political Culture of Quebec, 1840–1960,” Revue canadienne de science politique 16, no. 1 (1983): 3–59; José E. Igartua, The Other Quiet Revolution: National Identities in English Canada, 1945–71 (Vancouver: ubc Press, 2006); Lara Campbell et al., eds, Debating Dissent: Canada and the Sixties (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012). Léon Dion, Le duel constitutionnel Québec-Canada (Montreal: Boréal, 1995); Kenneth McRoberts, Un pays à refaire: L’échec des politiques constitutionnelles canadiennes (Montreal: Boréal, 1999). See: Eugénie Brouillet, La Négation de la nation: L’identité culturelle québécoise et le fédéralisme canadien (Quebec City: Septentrion, 2005); Alain-G. Gagnon, “Le dossier

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constitutionnel Québec-Canada,” in Gagnon, ed., Québec: État et société, 151–74; Gérard Bergeron, “The Québécois State under Canadian Federalism,” in Quebec Since 1945: Selected Readings, ed. Michael D. Behiels (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1987), 178–95; François Rocher, “Le Québec et la Constitution: Une valse à mille temps,” in Bilan québécois du fédéralisme canadien, ed. François Rocher (Montreal: vlb éditeur, 1992), 20–57. Frédéric Bastien, La bataille de Londres: Dessous, secrets et coulisses du rapatriement constitutionnel (Montreal: Boréal, 2013); Valérie LapointeGagnon, De fiel et de miel: Les représentations de la stratégie de gestion de la crise post-référendaire présentes dans la presse canadienne, 1995–1999 (master’s thesis, Université Laval, 2008); Jean-Louis Roy, Le choix d’un pays: Le débat constitutionnel Québec-Canada: 1960–1976 (Ottawa: Éditions Leméac, 1978). Gérard Boismenu, “La pensée constitutionnelle de Jean Lesage,” in Jean Lesage et l’éveil d’une nation: Les débuts de la Révolution tranquille, ed. Robert Comeau and Gilles Bourque (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université du Québec, 1989), 77–107; Michel Sarra-Bournet, “De Victoria à Charlottetown: Le “bon sens” géopolitique de Robert Bourassa,” in Robert Bourassa: Un bâtisseur tranquille, ed. Guy Lachapelle and Robert Comeau (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2003), 238–47; Alain-G. Gagnon, “Égalité ou indépendance : un tournant dans la pensée constitutionnelle au Québec,” in Daniel Johnson: Rêve d’égalité et projet d’indépendance, ed. Robert Comeau et al. (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université du Québec, 1991), 173–81; Éric Bélanger, “‘Égalité ou indépendance’: L’émergence de la menace de l’indépendance politique comme stratégie constitutionnelle du Québec,” Globe: Revue internationale d’études québécoises 2, no. 1 (1999): 117–38. Réjean Pelletier, “Le rin et son programme d’action en 1966: Indépendance et révolution nationale,” Bulletin d’histoire politique 22, no. 3 (2014): 60–71; Janie Normand, “La scission de la droite traditionaliste: Le Regroupement national (1964),” Bulletin d’histoire politique 22, no. 3 (2014): 23–33. Chantal Maillé, “Les groupes de femmes et la question nationale au Québec,” in Les nationalismes au Québec du XIXe au XXIe siècle, ed. Michel Sarra-Bournet and Jocelyn Saint-Pierre (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2001), 145–52; Ralph P. Güntzel, “Pour un pays à la mesure des aspirations des travailleurs québécois: L’aile socialiste du mouvement syndical québécois et l’indépendantisme (1972–1982),” in Sarra-Bournet and Saint-Pierre, eds, Les nationalismes au Québec, 153–66; Pascale Dufour and Christophe Traisnel, “Aux frontières mouvantes des mouvements sociaux, ou quand les partis politiques s’en mêlent: Le cas du souverainisme au Québec,” Politique et Sociétés 28, no. 1 (2009): 37–62; Sean Mills, Contester l’Empire: Pensée coloniale et militantisme politique à Montréal, 1963–1972 (Montreal: Hurtubise, 2011). Guy Laforest, Trudeau et la fin d’un rêve canadien (Quebec City: Septentrion, 1992); Peter H. Russell, Constitutional Odyssey: Can Canadians Become a

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16 17

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Sovereign People?, 3rd ed. (Toronto: utp , 2004); Jessica Riggi, La question constitutionnelle chez les responsables politiques québécois 1985–1991: Un long désenchantement (master’s thesis, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2016); Dion, Le duel constitutionnel Québec-Canada; McRoberts, Un pays à refaire. Charles D. Elder and Roger W. Cobb, The Political Uses of Symbols (New York: Longman, 1983), 28–9; Savard, Hydro Québec et l’État québécois, 26; Pâquet, Tracer les marges de la cité, 11–12. Marc Abélès, Anthropologie de l’État (Paris: Armand Colin, 1990), 85; Pâquet, Tracer les marges de la cité, 11–12. “The political field is the site in which, through the competition between the agents involved in it, political products, issues, programmes, analyses, commentaries, concepts and events are created – products between which ordinary citizens, reduced to the status of ‘consumers,’ have to choose, thereby running a risk of misunderstanding that is all the greater the further they are from the place of production.” Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, trans. Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 172. Many specialists propose a broader vision of what constitutes the political field. That vision favours, to an even greater extent, taking such fringe representations into account. See: Jean-Philippe Warren, “Penser l’histoire politique au Québec avec Pierre Bourdieu: Précisions conceptuelles et défis pratiques,” Bulletin d’histoire politique 22, no. 2 (2014): 7–21; Stéphane Savard, “Rethinking the Quiet Revolution: The Renewal of Political History through the Expansion of the ‘Political Field,’” Canadian Historical Review 100, no. 4 (2019): 572–87. This period coincides with Jean-Lesage’s first mandate up until Quebec’s rejection of the Victoria Charter, which was the end of an important stage in the history of attempts by the partners in the federation to patriate the Constitution. Christian Blais, “1934: Un vent de changement,” in Histoire parlementaire du Québec, 1928–1962: La crise, la guerre, le duplessisme, l’État providence, ed. Christian Blais (Quebec City: Septentrion, 2015), 145. Jules Duchastel, “L’autonomie provinciale et la défense de l’État liberal,” in Duplessis: Entre la Grande Noirceur et la société libérale, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon and Michel Sarra-Bournet (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 1997), 248–52. The main point of the Lesage government’s tax demands, which was the major stumbling block in federal-provincial relations, was greater control over taxation: 25 per cent of personal income tax, 25 per cent of corporate tax, and 100 per cent of estate taxes. See: Boismenu, “La pensée constitutionnelle de Jean Lesage,” 82. National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 26th Legislature, 2nd session, 16 November 1960, p. 46. (Translated from the French. Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations of French texts are by the translators of this volume.)

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24 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 26th Legislature, 2nd session, 1 June 1961, p. 1463. 25 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 26th Legislature, 2nd session, 15 November 1960, p. 30. 26 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 26th Legislature, 2nd session, 17 November 1960, p. 69 (translation). 27 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 26th Legislature, 2nd session, 1 June 1961, p. 1463 (translation). 28 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 26th Legislature, 2nd session, 8 March 1961, p. 746 (translation). 29 As was the case when the following motion was unanimously adopted on 23 May 1962: “That this House is of the opinion that the government of Quebec should continue the constitutional struggle to obtain, as the next step in the reconquest of our taxation freedoms, that it be explicitly recognized that the provinces have a priority right with respect to direct taxation, beginning with corporate income tax applying to companies that exploit natural resources, and an exclusive power to tax estates” (translation). 30 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 26th Legislature, 2nd session, 28 February 1961, pp. 675–6. 31 Jacques-Yvan Morin, “Jean Lesage et le rapatriement de la Constitution,” in Comeau, ed., Jean Lesage, 126. 32 Antoine Brousseau Desaulniers, “Le débat constitutionnel chez les responsables politiques québécois à l’aube de la Révolution tranquille (1960–1966),” Bulletin d’histoire politique 23, no. 1 (2014): 177–93. 33 McRoberts, Un pays à refaire, 60–1; Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon, Panser le Canada: Une histoire intellectuelle de la commission Laurendeau-Dunton (Montreal: Boréal, 2018). 34 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 27th Legislature, 1st session, 17 January 1963, p. 36 (translation). 35 Daniel Johnson, Allocution prononcée sur le réseau français de télévision au sujet de la politique provinciale, 4 February 1963, Fonds Daniel Johnson (hereinafter fdj ), ch 045/031, Centre d’histoire de Saint-Hyacinthe, SaintHyacinthe, Quebec (translation). 36 See, for example: Daniel Johnson, Allocution prononcée au congrès des affaires canadiennes à l’Université Laval, 9 November 1963, Catalogue cubiq, http://www.cubiq.ribg.gouv.qc.ca; National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 27th Legislature, 1st session, 23 April 1963: 924; National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 27th Legislature, 3rd session, January 16, 1964: 46; Daniel Johnson, Causerie prononcée devant les membres du Club Fleur de lys à Québec, March 18, 1964, Catalogue cubiq , http://www. cubiq.ribg.gouv.qc.ca, visited on 12 December 2019; National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 27th Legislature, 3rd session, 30 April 1964, pp. 2971–2; Daniel Johnson, Égalité ou indépendance (Montreal: Éditions de l’homme, 1965).

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37 For example, Jean-Jacques Bertrand and Albert Gervais. See: National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 27th Legislature, 1st session, 8 May 1963, pp. 1278–83; National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 27th Legislature, 1st session, 22 May 1963, pp. 1609–15. 38 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 27th Legislature, 3rd session, 30 April 1964: 2971–2. 39 Jean Lesage, Discours prononcé devant la Chambre de commerce de la province de Québec, 6 September 1963, Catalogue cubiq , http://www.cubiq. ribg.gouv.qc.ca (translation). 40 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 27th Legislature, 3rd session, 16 January, 1964, p. 70. 41 Jean Lesage, Discours prononcé à l’occasion de la réception d’un doctorat d’honneur de l’Université du Nouveau-Brunswick, 10 October 1963, Catalogue cubiq , http://www.cubiq.ribg.gouv.qc.ca (translation). 42 Jean Lesage, Discours prononcé devant l’Empire Club et le Canadian Club à Toronto, 16 November 1964, Fonds du Parti libéral du Québec (hereinafter fplq), ch107/004.001, Centre d’histoire de Saint-Hyacinthe, SaintHyacinthe, Quebec. 43 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 27th Legislature, 3rd session, 16 January 1964, p. 70; Jean Lesage, Discours prononcé devant l’Empire Club et le Canadian Club à Toronto, 16 November 1964, fplq , ch107/004.001, Centre d’histoire de Saint-Hyacinthe. 44 For Gérin-Lajoie, see: National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 27th Legislature, 1st session, 23 April 1963, p. 933. For Ernest Godbout, see: National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 27th Legislature, 1st session, 22 May 1963, pp. 1606–7. 45 Although we have not identified remarks on the matter made in the House by Liberals other than Laporte, Jean-Charles Panneton has placed René Lévesque and Georges-Émile Lapalme, in particular, in the nationalist camp. See, respectively: Jean-Charles Panneton, Pierre Laporte (Quebec City: Septentrion, 2012): 242–3; Jean-Charles Panneton, Georges-Émile Lapalme: Précurseur de la Révolution tranquille (Montreal: vlb éditeur, 2000), 160–1. 46 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 27th Legislature, 1st session, 15 May 1963, p. 1464 (translation). 47 Pierre Laporte, Discours prononcé devant les membres de l’Institut canadien des affaires publiques, 12 September 1964, fplq , ch 107/006, Centre d’histoire de Saint-Hyacinthe. 48 Roy, Le choix d’un pays, 43–4; Gérard Boismenu et François Rocher, “Une réforme constitutionnelle qui s’impose …”, in L’ère des libéraux: Le pouvoir fédéral de 1963 à 1984, ed. Yves Bélanger and Dorval Brunelle (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université du Québec, 1988), 75; Gil Rémillard, “Historique du rapatriement,” Les Cahiers de droit 25, no. 1 (1984): 43–4. 49 Roy, Le choix d’un pays, 47–8. 50 Thomson, Jean Lesage et la Révolution tranquille, 444.

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51 Ibid., 442. 52 Boismenu and Rocher, “Une réforme constitutionnelle qui s’impose …”, 76. 53 Lapointe-Gagnon, Panser le Canada, 188; Boismenu and Rocher, “Une réforme constitutionnelle qui s’impose …”, 77–9; Marcel Martel and Martin Pâquet, Langue et politique au Canada et au Québec: Une synthèse historique (Montreal: Boréal, 2010), 142–3. 54 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 27th Legislature, 4th session, 3 March 1965, p. 978 (translation). 55 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 27th Legislature, 4th session, 28 January 1965, p. 158. 56 Daniel Johnson, Allocution prononcée à la 34e Conférence Couchiching sous les auspices de la src et The Canadian Institute of Public Affairs, 5 August 1965, fdj , ch 045/031, Centre d’histoire de Saint-Hyacinthe (translation). 57 Daniel Johnson, Allocution prononcée à la Chambre de commerce de Québec, 7 April 1965, fdj , ch 045/031, Centre d’histoire de Saint-Hyacinthe. 58 Jean Lesage, Discours prononcé à la Chambre de commerce de Québec, 10 March 1965, fplq , ch 107/004.003, Centre d’histoire de Saint-Hyacinthe. 59 Jean Lesage, Discours prononcé devant la Chambre de commerce des jeunes du district de Montréal, 12 March 1966, fplq , ch 107/004.004, Centre d’histoire de Saint-Hyacinthe; Jean Lesage, Discours prononcé devant la Société américaine des rédacteurs de journaux, Montréal, 17 May 1966, Fonds Jean Lesage (hereinafter fjl ), P688, S1, SS1/21, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (banq ), Quebec City. See also the remarks by Daniel Johnson, Jean-Jacques Bertrand, Ernest Godbout, Jean Lesage, and Yves Gabias during the proceedings of the Committee of Supply for Federal-Provincial Affairs, which were sometimes stormy and occasionally descended into insult-throwing. National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 27th Legislature, 6th session, 9 March 1966, pp. 1130–55 and National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 27th Legislature, 6th session, 10 March 1966, pp. 1181–223. 60 Ibid.; Daniel Johnson, Discours prononcé devant le Canadian Club de Toronto, 14 February 1966, Catalogue cubiq , http://www.cubiq.ribg.gouv. qc.ca; Daniel Johnson, Causerie prononcée devant les membres de l’Association des hebdomadaires de langue française du Canada, 29 July 1966, Catalogue cubiq , http://www.cubiq.ribg.gouv.qc.ca; Daniel Johnson, Causerie prononcée devant les membres du Club Richelieu-Montréal, 19 May 1966, Catalogue cubiq , http://www.cubiq.ribg.gouv.qc.ca. 61 That is to say, a third option that sought a path between the sovereignty of the Parti Québécois and the unconditional federalism of the Quebec Liberal Party. In this respect, the Union Nationale seems to have been the instigator of the “autonomist” tradition that Frédéric Boily speaks about in this work. 62 Opening statement given by Daniel Johnson at the Constitutional Conference held in Ottawa, 5 February 1968. Available in Quebec City, National

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65

66

67

68

69

70 71 72

73

74 75

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Assembly, Journal des débats, 28th Legislature, 3rd session, 28 March 1968, pp. 31–3. Ibid., 32 (translation). Marcel Masse, Allocution prononcée au College Glendon de Toronto, 9 February 1970, Fonds Marcel Masse, P787, 5, banq , Quebec City (translation). Notably by mna s Marcel-R. Plamondon and Philippe Demers, during the debate on the address in reply to the speech from the Throne in 1969. See: National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 28th Legislature, 3rd session, Comité de la Constitution, 4 December 1968, p. 24; National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 28th Legislature, 4th session, 13 March 1969, p. 351. Jean-Jacques Bertrand, Déclaration prononcée à la conférence fédéraleprovinciale de novembre 1968, 4 November 1968, Fonds Jean-Jacques Bertrand (hereinafter fjjb ), P669, 15/9, banq , Quebec City (translation). Jean-Jacques Bertrand, Allocution prononcée lors d’un dîner-bénéfice de l’Union nationale au Château Frontenac, 30 March 1969, fjjb , P669, 13/8, banq, Quebec City. Bélanger, “Égalité ou indépendance,” 128; Mario Cardinal, Vincent Lemieux, and Florian Sauvageau, Si l’Union nationale m’était contée... (Montreal: Boréal Express, 1978), 47–52. François-Pierre Gingras, “La vision constitutionnelle de René Lévesque,” in René Lévesque: L’homme, la nation, la démocratie, ed. Yves Bélanger and Michel Lévesque (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université du Québec, 1992), 449. Bruno Bouchard, Trente ans d’imposture: Le Parti libéral du Québec et le débat constitutionnel (Montreal: vlb éditeur, 1999), 27. Pierre Laporte, cited in Panneton, Pierre Laporte, 344–5 (translation). This means that the Liberals were no longer questioning membership in Canada prior to the events following the failure of the Meech Lake Accord in 1990. François Rocher calls this position “loyalist” in his contribution to this book. Jean Lesage, Discours prononcé à la clôture du congrès de la Fédération libérale du Québec, 14 October 1967, fjl , P688, S1, SS1/22, banq , Quebec City (translation). National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 28th Legislature, 3rd session, 14 March 1968, p. 580 (translation). Jean Lesage, Discours prononcé devant le Club Richelieu-Hull, Montréal, 30 May 1967, fjl , P688, S1, SS1/22, banq , Quebec City. (In French: “qui [tient] à la fois de l’Opéra-Comique ou du Grand-Guignol.”) Jean-Jacques Bertrand, Allocution prononcée au dîner-bénéfice de l’Union nationale à l’hôtel Reine-Élizabeth, 22 February 1970, Catalogue cubiq , http://www.cubiq.ribg.gouv.qc.ca (translation). The Ralliement des créditistes rarely took a position on constitutional debates. This was because, according to Jacques Hamel and Yvon Thériault, unlike the

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other two opposition parties, members of the Ralliement des créditistes felt they had a tribunician function in the National Assembly, as the spokespersons of the “average person” powerless before the “bureaucratic monster” of the Quebec state. The Ralliement des créditistes therefore gave priority to speaking on a variety of matters that did not necessarily concern federal-provincial relations. See: Jacques Hamel and Yvon Thériault, “La fonction tribunitienne et la députation créditiste à l’Assemblée nationale du Québec: 1970–3,” Revue canadienne de science politique 8, no. 1 (1975): 6–7. While Jean-Jacques Bertrand’s party retained its Official Opposition status thanks to the perverse effects of the electoral system, it nonetheless received fewer votes than the Parti Québécois: 19.65 per cent versus 23.06 per cent. National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 29th Legislature, 1st session, Commission permanente des Affaires intergouvernementales, 7 July 1970, p. B-707 (translation). Ibid., pp. B-701–B-702 (translation). The traditional areas of intervention were social policy, international relations, immigration, and communications. See: Robert Bourassa, Déclaration de Robert Bourassa à la conférence constitutionnelle de septembre 1970, 14 September 1970, Fonds Robert Bourassa, P705, 103/50, banq , Quebec City. National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 29th Legislature, 1st session, 17 November 1970, p. 1595. National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 29th Legislature, 1st session, 20 November 1970, p. 1706 (translation). National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 29th Legislature, 1st session, Commission permanente des Affaires intergouvernementales, 7 July 1970, p. B-703 (translation). This was the main concern apparent in the interventions of the Union nationale, the Ralliement des créditistes, and the Parti Québécois in the weeks leading up to the Victoria Conference. Regarding Jean-Jacques Bertrand, see: National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 29th Legislature, 2nd session, Commission permanente de la Constitution, 18 May 1971, p. B-1273. Regarding Fabien Roy, see: National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 29th Legislature, 2nd session, 8 June 1971, p. 2254. Regarding Camille Laurin, see: National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 29th Legislature, 2nd session, Commission permanente de la Constitution, 18 May 1971, p. B-1279. Antoine Brousseau Desaulniers, “L’évolution du débat politique québécois en regard de la question constitutionnelle (1960–1971)” (master’s thesis, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2016), 40–4. See: Lapointe-Gagnon, Panser le Canada.

3 The Equality Party: A Trudeauist Vision of Federalism at the National Assembly Jessica Riggi

Created on 7 April 1989 and officially disbanded on 11 May 2012, after the Chief Electoral Officer withdrew its authorization, the Equality Party is not well known in Quebec politics. It succeeded in getting four of its nineteen candidates elected on the Island of Montreal in the September 1989 provincial election,1 but rifts appeared within the party before the end of its only mandate2 and it would never manage to win another seat in the National Assembly. Although the party was active in Quebec politics for only a short time, it revealed the emotions arising from the constitutional and language issues in the aftermath of the Meech Lake Accord, signed in June 1987, and Bill 178 on commercial advertising, passed in December 1988.3 The Equality Party was formed specifically in response to Montreal Anglophones’ dissatisfaction with the language policies of Robert Bourassa’s Liberal government. On 15 December 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld a Superior Court decision striking down the sections of the Charter of the French Language that made French the sole language for public advertising.4 The Liberal government then used the notwithstanding clause to apply Bill  178, which allows bilingual commercial advertising indoors but requires outdoor advertising to be unilingually French. In so doing, the Liberal government prevented linguistic minorities from invoking the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to institute legal proceedings. The government’s decision is considered the main reason for the Equality Party’s creation, which Josée Legault has described as a true “collective self-defence reaction”5 by Montreal’s West Island Anglophone community. It is important to note that the use of the notwithstanding clause had a serious impact on the outcome of the 1989 election for the Quebec Liberal Party. The Anglophone vote, traditionally in the Quebec Liberal Party’s pocket, shifted massively to the Equality Party in the Montreal region, and

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to the Unity Party6 in the ridings where it was running candidates. As an analysis by sociologist Pierre Drouilly shows, there was a dramatic shift in the Anglophone vote in the 1989 election: “In highly Anglophone ridings where the Equality Party or the Unity Party ran candidates, the Liberal vote literally collapsed (D’Arcy-McGee –55.9%, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce –42.5%, Jacques-Cartier  –41.2%, Westmount  –38.7%, Robert-Baldwin  –35.4%, Pontiac  –25.5%, Nelligan  –25.3%, etc.).”7 Drouilly’s findings show that passing a new law asserting the French face of Quebec was not risk-free for the Quebec Liberal Party because such a move deprived it of a significant part of its electoral base. Although the language issue was pivotal in the Equality Party’s foundation, since the party’s political platform consisted mainly in a call for the abolition of Bill 101 and the recognition of English as one of Quebec’s official languages,8 the party was established at a time when constitutional debates were raging in both Quebec and Canada.9 During their only mandate, from 25 September 1989 to 11 September 1994, the Equality Party’s mnas witnessed a real Quebec-Canada constitutional saga: the negotiations on the Meech Lake Accord, which had come to a close on 30 April 198710 and had been intended to address Quebec’s dissatisfaction with the constitutional patriation of 1982; the Accord’s official demise on 22 June 1990; the setting up of the Commission on the Political and Constitutional Future of Quebec (the Bélanger-Campeau Commission) in September 1990; the passage, in June 1991, of Bill 150, providing for a referendum on sovereignty; and the holding of a referendum on a new constitutional agreement (the Charlottetown Accord) instead, in October 1992.11 In this chapter, we will analyze, from the angle of political culture,12 Equality Party mna s’ representations13 on these many constitutional issues and, more broadly, on Canadian federalism and a number of its facets, including the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the notwithstanding clause. Our analysis of speeches on the constitutional question recorded in the National Assembly’s proceedings, parliamentary committee proceedings, and the report of the Commission on the Political and Constitutional Future of Quebec will also show how Equality Party Members became true standard bearers of the Trudeauist vision of Canada.14 This vision can be defined as that of a multicultural, unitary country with founding principles that include strict equality of the provinces and the precedence of individual rights and freedoms over collective rights, with the former being protected by a charter enshrined in the Constitution.15 As this conception of the country was marginalized in the National Assembly following the adoption of Bill  178 – an event that purged the Quebec Liberal Party of its most Trudeauist mna s16 – the Equality Party became the key advocate of the Trudeauist vision within the institution. We argue, moreover, that having the Equality Party as a political player made it possible for the Liberal government to take a more nationalist stand in its constitutional claims, an

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approach the Liberals adopted to satisfy the Francophone electorate, seeing that Anglo-Quebecers had turned massively to the Equality Party and the Unity Party. This study is an incursion into the symbolic universe of Quebec-Canada federalist thinking and, more specifically, into the universe of the Equality Party. In passing, we will also analyze the stances adopted by the Quebec Liberal Party and the Parti  Québécois so as to gain a better idea of the context in which the Equality Party advanced its values and representations. In chronological order, we will discuss representations of the Meech Lake Accord and then those of the distinct society clause. Lastly, we will look at representations of the Charlottetown Accord and, more generally, of Canadian federalism.

t h e m e e c h   l a k e accord: t o o m u c h f o r quebec! The Meech Lake Accord was, in the words of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, an attempt to convince Quebec to endorse the Constitution “with honour and enthusiasm” following its 1981–82 patriation, which had left a great number of Quebecers bitter. The Accord, duly negotiated between the various partners in Canada to satisfy some of Quebec’s constitutional claims,17 was therefore of paramount importance for Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa. The opening speech Bourassa delivered in the National Assembly, on 28 November 1989, set the tone for the constitutional challenges to be met during his second mandate.18 He dedicated a third of the speech to explaining how important the Meech Lake Accord was, not only for Quebec but also to maintain Canadian unity: “The Meech Lake Accord is undoubtedly the most important agreement in the constitutional history of our country. It has taken us 122 years to get here. Therefore, one can seriously wonder how long it will take before such an agreement will be reached again if this one fails … Not ratifying the Meech Lake Accord would be, without a shadow of a doubt, a historic mistake with unforeseeable consequences. However, it is clear that Quebec will not passively and calmly accept rejection of its political will to rejoin the Canadian federation when its conditions are so moderate.”19 For the Liberals, ratification of the Meech Lake Accord meant the renewal of federalism, a renewal which, in their eyes, comprised the resurgence of a more decentralized, cooperative form of federalism. Already in June 1987, Bourassa had been claiming that the Meech Lake Accord would “put the brakes on unilateral federalism and replace it with cooperative federalism,”20 and he was not the only one to put forward such arguments. Quebec Liberal mna Claude Trudel associated the Meech Lake Accord “with the asymmetrical federalism recommended by the Pepin-Robarts Commission21 in 1979, a happy swing of the pendulum back toward provincial power

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and a necessary step in the direction of a true confederation; that is, a lesscentralized federalism where regions carry more weight and small provinces more influence.”22 In fact, ever since the Meech Lake Accord took concrete shape in April 1987, there had been consensus in the Quebec Liberal Party that the agreement would be able to change the face of Canadian federalism in a way that would satisfy Quebec’s constitutional demands.23 Moreover, situated at the centre on constitutional issues, the Quebec Liberal Party considered itself the only party capable of meeting most Quebecers’ and all Canadian first ministers’ expectations. While the Liberal government saw the agreement as fair and reasonable and thought it would correct the historic mistake of  1982,24 the Equality Party had a quite different vision of it. In the debate that followed the opening speech, the party’s leader, Robert Libman, stated: If the Liberal Government is so committed to federalism, certainly the Premier of this province can find common ground that will satisfy his five demands. They are not unreasonable demands, but they are unacceptable in the form expressed in the Meech Lake Accord, which must be rejected if major amendments are not made … If the Premier of this province wants to save the Accord, if he wants to show his commitment to the Accord and federalism, is he prepared to support an amendment to the Accord that will protect all of the Charter from the influence of the distinct society clause? ... We must all know whether we are being governed by a Liberal Party committed to Quebec remaining within Canada. Otherwise, the Equality Party mna s, the four of us, as duly elected representatives of one of the major components of what our Premier calls the fundamental characteristic of Canada, we will shout from the rooftops that the Meech Lake Accord must be rejected.25 Thus, in his very first speech in the National Assembly, the Equality Party’s leader stated that his party was resolutely opposed to the Meech Lake Accord. The Equality Party defended the Trudeauist version of Canadian federalism, which served them well since it provided minority groups with a legal tool to contest democratically elected governments’ political decisions: the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.26 Therefore, it does not come as a surprise that the party was against any constitutional reform that might narrow the scope of the Charter. This opposition to the Meech Lake Accord prevailed within the Equality Party until the Accord’s failure appeared imminent. In March 1990, speaking during the debate on a Parti  Québécois motion that the government reject the amendments drafted by the province of New  Brunswick,27 Libman reiterated that the Accord had to be amended because it granted too many concessions to Quebec: “During the

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constitutional negotiations, the Premier of Quebec presented five demands – five reasonable demands, five absolutely viable conditions – but the Meech Lake Accord has given him more than he asked for. The Premier has since acted in bad faith by invoking the “notwithstanding” clause to suspend individual freedoms in December 1988 … Now the government of Quebec must negotiate with an open mind to reach a fair agreement that will not compromise individual rights or Canadian unity.”28 As we can see here, a few months before the Meech Lake Accord had to be ratified by all legislative assemblies in Canada, Libman became a champion of Canadian unity. According to him, Canadian unity would be preserved only if Quebec agreed to water down its demands since, from his point of view, the rest of Canada was already conciliatory enough in this respect. However, the Equality Party sometimes changed its stance slightly, depending on the political context. On 14 June 1990, a few days after the so-called “last supper,”29 Richard Holden, Member for Westmount, implored the premier of Newfoundland, Clyde Wells, to endorse the Meech Lake Accord to avoid splitting up the country: Mr. Speaker, I am rising today because I wish, through you and through this Assembly, to speak to the Premier and the people of Newfoundland. I speak as a Canadian first and as a Quebecker second. I speak with great sympathy for Newfoundland’s concerns and as one who was elected as a result of a protest against the Quebec Government’s trampling of minority rights in Bill 178 … I say to you, Mr. Speaker, and I say to the people of Newfoundland: if you say no to Meech Lake, you are saying no to Quebec. You may not believe that that is the case, but that is how Quebeckers will perceive it. I am asking the people of Newfoundland to make a leap of faith for the sake of our beloved country. I cannot foretell the future, but I will say this: my colleagues and I in the Equality Party stand for a strong, united, bilingual Canada which respects individual rights and freedoms over all other concepts … Mr. Speaker, when the history of this period is written, the name of Clyde Wells will be predominant. He will be remembered either as a man who acted honorably during the final crucial days leading up to the proclamation of the Meech Lake Accord, or as the only political leader in Canada who risked breaking up the country by playing fast and loose with his political and personal principles. We look to Premier Wells and the tenacious people of Newfoundland to do what is morally and historically right.30 Was all of this said for fear that the sovereigntist movement might be strengthened if the Accord were rejected and that the Canadian federation would implode if there was so much discord over its constitutional future? It is hard to say. However, while the speech may give the impression that the

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Equality Party had changed its mind and was endorsing the faltering Meech Lake Accord, it in fact conceals the party’s fierce opposition to a major component of the agreement: the distinct society clause. The clause, which was the core element of the Meech Lake Accord and to which many have ascribed the agreement’s failure,31 triggered a controversy that had major symbolic import both in Canada and in the National Assembly.

t h e d is t in c t s o c i ety claus e The distinct society clause included in the Meech Lake Accord32 was without a doubt the main focus of the constitutional debate that rocked the country between 30 April  1987 and 22 June  1990. According to Patrick J. Monahan, who served as a constitutional policy consultant for the government of Ontario during the negotiations, “the symbolic meaning of the Meech Lake Accord revolved around the debate over the significance of the ‘distinct society’ clause. For Quebecers, the distinct society clause and Meech itself was a symbol of belonging … [and] a promise that their identity could be accommodated within Canadian federalism. Outside Quebec, on the other hand, the Accord had become a negative symbol, a symbol that one province was being granted special privileges not accorded to all provinces or to other constitutionally significant groups.”33 The distinct society clause ignited strong controversy in Canada, especially owing to the antagonism between Canadian nationalism and Quebec nationalism,34 and that controversy was also alive in Quebec. In the National Assembly, the distinct society clause sparked a battle of symbolic and identity-based representations between the leaders of the Parti Québécois, the Quebec Liberal Party and the Equality Party, who disagreed on both the value of the clause and its significance for Quebec. For the Parti Québécois, the clause was a hollow shell since it did not provide any definition of the distinct character of Quebec, namely that Quebec was a predominantly French society.35 In contrast, the government considered that the clause meant the pendulum was swinging back toward the true founding principles of the Canadian federation – that is to say, toward duality, a principle that would give Quebec enough autonomy to thrive as a distinct society within the Canadian federal system. In fact, during its first mandate, the Liberal government promoted the benefits of the clause for the protection of French culture in Quebec; but, during its second mandate, the question of the clause’s impact on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms took priority.36 Bringing into conflict the proponents of the Charter’s supremacy and advocates of greater recognition of collective rights, the question gave rise to controversy in the National Assembly. Unsurprisingly, in the Assembly, the Equality Party was the foremost defender of the individual rights guaranteed by the Charter. As soon as the new parliamentary session began, Libman tried to persuade the Liberal government to have the

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Meech Lake Accord amended in such a way that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms would take precedence over the distinct society clause.37 In the eyes of the Equality Party, Canada was one single nation wherein all individuals and all provinces should be equal. Under no circumstances should Quebec be granted privileges that other Canadian provinces could not enjoy, let alone a special status. The party vehemently defended its stance until, following the “last supper” in June 1990, the Premier consented to append to the Accord a legal notice establishing the connection between the distinct society clause and the Charter.38 After that, Libman refused to say he was against the clause, but he did not hesitate to demand that its scope be reduced.39 Obviously, the Liberal government and the Parti  Québécois opposed his demand, considering that supporting the Equality Party’s position – and that of the reluctant provinces – would be a step backward for Quebec.40 Speaking to English Canada following the release of the Charest Report – which recommended “that First Ministers affirm in a Companion Resolution that the operation of the fundamental characteristic clause, recognizing the linguistic duality/distinct society, in no way impair the effectiveness of the Charter”41 – Premier Bourassa exclaimed: “How can English Canada ask Quebec to have its government introduce in the National Assembly an amendment that would further threaten the status quo?”42 For the Quebec Liberal Party, it was therefore essential that the distinct society clause remain an interpretation clause applying to the Constitution Act, 1982, in its entirety, even if English Canada seemed to be objecting more and more vigorously to Quebec being granted any form of recognition under Canada’s Constitution. Despite the Liberal government’s many efforts to find a way out of the impasse, as the deadline approached, it became more and more evident that the position defended by Quebec and those defended by the rest of Canada were irreconcilable. Whereas recognizing Quebec as a distinct society was a minimum condition for the Quebec Liberal Party and the Parti Québécois (this was also the prevailing opinion among the Quebec population), for the Equality Party (and public opinion in Anglo-Quebec and Anglo-Canada in general) any clause that would reduce the scope of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was unacceptable. The Charter, as well as the enshrined equality of provinces and citizens, and the primacy of individual rights over collective rights, became the token of Canadian nationalism after the patriation of 1982 and a sacred symbol in the struggle between the supporters of duality federalism and those advocating a form of unitary federalism faithful to Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s vision.43 It bears noting that Trudeau remained in the media spotlight throughout the debate on the Meech Lake Accord to express his opposition to the project,44 thereby giving political credibility to a number of political leaders who were against the Accord. With that as a background, it is not surprising that the failure of the Meech Lake Accord, on 22 June 1990, put an abrupt end to the Quebec

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Liberal Party’s duality dream. To them, there was no doubt that the province needed to obtain some form of recognition in the Canadian federal system. In their eyes, the five conditions set out in the Accord, especially the distinct society clause, would give Quebec such recognition and be a substantial gain for its society to develop and thrive as part of the Canadian federation. The Parti Québécois saw the failed Accord – which they considered clearly insufficient to give proper recognition to the only French nation in North America45 – as proof that the constitutional negotiations with the rest of Canada had reached an impasse and that sovereignty was the only solution for Quebec’s future. The Equality Party looked upon the failure as confirmation that the centralizing version of Canadian federalism brought in with the 1982 patriation of the Constitution was more than satisfactory for the provinces as a whole, Quebec being the only exception. The day the Meech Lake Accord died, Libman said: “In closing, it is imperative, Mr. Speaker, that all federalists in the province continue to remind Quebec citizens of the undeniable benefits of having a strong, united Canada with Quebec.”46 He ended his speech in English: “You could take Quebec out of Canada maybe, but you would never take Canada out of Quebec.”47

f r o m t h e s t a t us quo t o t h e c h a r l o t t e t own accord Unlike the other two parties holding seats in the National Assembly, the Equality Party was against any form of change to the Canadian federation. The Equality Party leaders, who did not share the Quebec Liberal Party’s and the Parti Québécois’ visions of Canada as bicultural, were largely satisfied with the constitutional status quo. When the Commission on the Political and Constitutional Future of Quebec was set up in September  1990, Libman said: “It [the Canadian federal system] has served Quebec well for the last 123 years, and the quality of life we enjoy today remains our strongest argument for the need to preserve the nature of this system to maintain the quality of life, pride, and confidence we have today, which was created in the federal system.”48 In the same speech, Libman added, “the aftermath of the Quiet Revolution has shown that Quebec already has all the powers necessary to flourish.”49 Despite the major crisis that erupted in Quebec following the Meech Lake Accord’s failure, Libman minimized the importance of setting up a commission on Quebec-Canada constitutional issues. During the debate on the establishment of the Bélanger-Campeau Commission, he said: “From what I have seen, the people of Quebec are more concerned with material and economic issues than with constitutional issues … Quebecers expect the federal, provincial, and municipal governments to put an end to all of this, and that our constitutional struggle will be over next year so that we can move on to their real, everyday concerns. Our caucus will be focusing all of

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its energy on leading the Commission to the conclusion that the Canadian federation will, in the end, better serve our province in the years to come.”50 According to Libman, the constitutional question was not a priority for Quebec citizens, and he believed that the crisis resulting from the failed Accord would be nothing more than a squabble to be put behind us. In his opinion, the main problem with the 1982 Constitution of Canada was that it made it possible for the federal and provincial legislatures to use a derogation clause likely to limit the scope of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: “It is unacceptable for minorities not to be respected and protected in our privileged country. The ‘notwithstanding’ clause, which I will talk about in a moment, is a dangerous instrument that could threaten the survival of French-speaking communities outside Quebec and all minority communities … Freedom of conscience, speech, association, and life51 cannot be violated, and they are guaranteed by the highest courts in the land. Everyone has a right to these freedoms, but it is as though the Charter of Rights and Freedoms did not exist. Our rights and freedoms can be suspended at will. The derogation clause in both charters makes it possible to disregard fundamental freedoms, fundamental rights.”52 Interestingly, Libman chose to bring up the situation of French speakers outside Quebec to denounce the use, and even the existence, of derogation clauses in the Canadian and Quebec charters of rights. However, although the fate of minorities seemed to be of great concern among the members of the Equality Party, the party was against any form of recognition of Quebec society under the Constitution even though Quebec society is a minority within Canada as a whole. In addition, while the province was the home of the French-speaking minority in Canada, the Equality Party fiercely opposed any measure – notably Bill 101 – supporting the survival of the French language in Quebec. mna Richard Holden, who was the Equality Party representative on the Bélanger-Campeau Commission (the Commission on the Political and Constitutional Future of Quebec), submitted the following “specific recommendations” in an addendum to the Commission’s final report: •

• •

•

To make as a priority of the political agenda of Quebec the support of Francophones outside of Quebec and to cease the practice of judicial interventions on the part of the Attorney-General of Quebec against Francophone minorities in cases involving minority rights in other provinces. Repeal of the “notwithstanding” clauses of the Quebec and Canadian Charters of rights … Constitutional entrenchment of the right of all Quebec residents to freely choose the language of instruction for their children from the two official languages of Canada … Constitutional entrenchment of both English and French as the official languages of Quebec.53

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Holden outright refused to sign the report since his party did not at all agree with the conclusions drawn by Bélanger and Campeau, who stipulated: “Only two solutions are open to Quebec in redefining its status: firstly, making a new, last attempt to redefine its status within the federal system; and, secondly, achieving sovereignty.”54 The fact that the Equality Party rejected the conclusions in the report is not surprising. Their opposition to the Meech Lake Accord had already revealed their opposition to any type of renewed federalism, particularly if there were to be a decentralization of power in the provinces’ favour.55 The idea of independence was simply not an option. In the days following his election, Libman said: One of the three cornerstones of the Equality Party is that Quebec remains an integral part of a strong and unified Canada. Independence will not be the saviour of the French fact. On the contrary, it will lead, as far as we are concerned, to the demise of Quebec. We will suffer irreparable harm, economically, socially and culturally. Canada will lose without Quebec and Quebec will suffer miserably without Canada … Events of the last 18 months have indicated that if the independence option is chosen, individual freedoms and minority rights would be compromised even more. We have to look no further than statements that have been made by both of the other parties in this House. One party brags of suspending fundamental rights; the other complains that these measures do not go far enough.56 Libman had absolutely no doubt that independence would be detrimental to Quebec in all respects, economically, socially, and culturally. He believed that individual freedoms and minorities’ rights would be compromised in a sovereign Quebec, since he considered that Bourassa’s provincial government had already jeopardized them when it decided to use the notwithstanding clause to apply Bill 178 with respect to the prevalence of French in commercial advertising. In view of this, it is not surprising that the Equality Party was against Bill 150 (An Act respecting the Process for Determining the Political and Constitutional Future of Quebec). Neil Cameron described the bill (which provided for the holding of a referendum on sovereignty no later than 26 October  1992)57 as “one of the most dangerous laws to be considered by a ‘provincially’ elected legislature.”58 When all Canadian provinces and territories officially reached a new constitutional agreement – the Charlottetown Accord – in August 1992,59 the three remaining Equality Party mna s,60 although still adamantly opposed to independence, showed greater willingness to support the government’s approach. They supported Bill 44, which provided that the referendum on Quebec sovereignty to be held under Bill 150 be replaced by a referendum on the Charlottetown Accord on 26 October 1992.61 Then, marking a massive about-face from the time of the Meech Lake Accord, they voted in

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favour of the Charlottetown Accord, which, in their opinion, would advance Canadian federalism. In this regard, when the motion on the question to be used for the public consultation on a new constitutional partnership was debated, Gordon Atkinson, Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, said: Our Constitution has been in constant evolution since its birth 125 years ago. The proposals that are before the whole of Canada are for the renewal of our confidence in this nationality. I believe in the evolutionist theory and, to that effect, the first ministers of Canada, together with the First Nations and with the contribution and energy of the Premier of Quebec, have come up with acceptable offers that all Canadians and Quebecers should and must support.62 The Prime Minister of Quebec, along with the Intergovernmental Affairs Minister, acted and negotiated in a responsible manner for the good of Quebec and our nation. That every detail of the negotiated constitutional concept can and will be accepted by all the people would be patent nonsense, to even suggest such a concept is unattainable. Some aspects of this package, I cannot agree with totally, but we are not in the process of nit-picking, either in Quebec or the rest of Canada.63 Neil Cameron, Member for Jacques-Cartier, even went so far as to condemn the “No” side arguments, which invoked the importance of maintaining the constitutional status quo, even though his party leader had defended the status quo at the time of the Meech Lake Accord:64 But at this moment, as an Anglophone Member and advocate of individual rights, I think something has to be said about the Anglophones who have not yet decided whether to support the Charlottetown Accord proposals. Mr. Speaker,65 probably the most powerful single criticism that has been made of the Charlottetown proposals, one that at least partially unites the very motley assemblage of forces attempting to gather behind the “No,” is that we have been well served by something rather vaguely described as the constitutional status quo, it sometimes even being argued that this status quo has been a source of strength for a century and a quarter. This argument will not hold water, even if we ignore the exceptional developments of the most recent years. If the status quo means the entire evolutionary process by which Canada has gradually modified and interpreted its constitutional structure, then we are talking about an immense long wave that embraces British common law and criminal law.66 There is a threefold explanation for such an about-face. First, the Charlottetown Accord was a toned-down version of the Meech Lake Accord. Quebec would lose influence within the Senate (which required, according

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to Quebec, a reform based on Triple-E – equal, elected, and effective – principles); and its recognition as a distinct society, which the Equality Party still opposed,67 would remain a strictly interpretative principle inserted into a “Canada Clause” encompassing Canada’s other fundamental characteristics, namely the equality of the provinces.68 Second, with the Quebec Liberal Party reaffirming its strong federalist position – choosing to go back to the constitutional bargaining table in August 1992 and giving up the holding of a referendum on sovereignty as provided for under Bill 150 – the Equality Party might have feared it would lose support if it were not more open to compromise. Third, and above all, the change in the Equality Party’s stance could be explained by the fact that they were afraid of seeing a rise in the popularity of the independence option if the Charlottetown Accord were to be rejected. After all, the 21 June 1990 crop -La Presse poll had shown a record high of 57 per cent of the popular vote for sovereignty, right after the deadline for ratifying the Meech Lake Accord had passed.69 The need to settle the constitutional issue was becoming more of a necessity for the Equality Party mna s because they did not want to see the sovereigntist movement prepare for battle if a new constitutional accord failed. During the debate on the public consultation (to allow Quebec citizens to express their opinions on the terms of the Charlottetown Accord), Libman delivered a speech conveying the same message: I think that everyone in this House, regardless of what political stripe they are, has to recognize the fact that the country Canada is seen by many in this world as the model country for the 21st century … But, the only way that we can assume this enviable position on the world stage is to leave this constitutional bickering behind us. We have to become, in the next six weeks, not necessarily defenders of a complicated deal of constitutional principles, but we have to become ambassadors for Canadian unity to show to as many Quebeckers as possible why it is in their best interest, why it is in our best interest to remain part of this country that the United Nations has recognized as the No. 1 country in the world in which to live … It is only by helping Quebeckers understand the real implications of the alternative to this deal, the potential separation of Quebec, it is only by helping Quebeckers understand these consequences and the real implications and by attacking separatist arguments head-on that we will be able to convince the majority of Quebeckers to choose this constitutional deal on October 26th and to choose a renewal of the Federation.70 It is important to note that endorsement of the Charlottetown Accord by the Equality Party and, more broadly, by Quebec’s English-speaking minority was in stark contrast to the public opinion that prevailed among Anglophones in the rest of Canada, since in the other provinces the majority of citizens

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opposed the Accord. In fact, even though the “Yes” side was leading in Canada (but not in Quebec) at the beginning of the referendum campaign, in the end, seven of the ten Canadian provinces, including Quebec, voted against the new constitutional agreement’s proposed renewal of federalism.71 Pierre Drouilly attributes this sudden turn to Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s public speech against the Charlottetown Accord,72 which gave credibility to the “No” side and thus contributed to its rise.73 In short, the fact that the sovereigntist movement growing in Quebec was increasingly difficult to ignore led the Equality Party to take a stance that departed from the position defended by both their ideological father and their Anglophone rest-of-Canada fellows. This is despite the fact that they remained loyal advocates of the Trudeauist vision of Canadian federalism in Quebec throughout their mandate.

c o n c l u s i on On 29 March 1994, due to internecine struggles74 that prompted the other two Equality Party mna s’ resignations before the end of their only mandate, Neil Cameron became the only Equality Party mna still sitting in the National Assembly.75 No Equality Party candidates were elected in the general election of 12 September 1994, which put an end to its short-lived representation in the National Assembly. Despite its fleeting existence, the Equality Party’s stint in the institution demonstrated the growing dissatisfaction among Anglophones in Quebec, not only with the Liberal government’s language policies but also with its management of constitutional affairs. While the supporters of the Trudeauist vision of the Canadian federation had been marginalized in the Quebec Liberal Party after the Bill 178 episode, the Anglo-Quebec community, most of which shared that vision of federalism, sought a new champion for their collective interests. Paradoxically, it was to oppose Quebec Francophones’ collective rights that they aimed for an official voice in the National Assembly. As we have seen in our analysis, this voice allowed them to express different views on various constitutional issues and to put forward conceptions that diverged from those of the Liberal government and the Parti Québécois opposition. As the Equality Party was against any form of renewed federalism likely to grant Quebec some type of recognition or to promote decentralization of power to the provinces’ benefit, it became the advocate of, as Libman put it at the time, “a vision of Quebec and Canada that is fundamentally different than either of the two parties that occupy 121 of the 125 seats in this House”76 – which confirms that the Equality Party was indeed a Trudeauist exception in the National Assembly. Moreover, the fact that the Equality Party was on the scene made it possible for the Liberal government to make more demands during constitutional negotiations and be seen as a moderate defender of Quebec’s interests, or even as the only party open to compromise. The Quebec Liberal Party was, in fact, the only party to put forth the idea of renewed

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federalism, an option somewhere between the Parti  Québécois’ calls for independence and the Equality Party’s status quo. In addition to driving the Quebec Liberal Party to develop a new federalist approach giving more power to Quebec, the Equality Party’s presence in the National Assembly shows that Trudeauist federalist thought, though marginalized, was very much alive in Quebec77 and not unique to the rest of Canada.

notes 1 In the 1989 election, the Equality Party won precisely 3.69 per cent of the popular vote. Robert Libman, the leader of the Equality Party, was elected as Member for D’Arcy-McGee, and Richard Holden, Gordon Atkinson, and Neil Cameron as Members for Westmount, Jacques-Cartier, and Notre-Dame-deGrâce, respectively. Élections Québec, “General elections September 25, 1989: Results by political party,” accessed 12 December 2019, https://www. electionsquebec.qc.ca/english/provincial/election-results/general-elections. php?e=34&s=2. 2 Richard Holden, Member for Westmount, was expelled from the Equality Party caucus and became an independent Member on 11 October 1991. He then joined the Parti Québécois on 13 August 1992. He ran as a Parti Québécois candidate in the 1994 election but lost his seat. See: National Assembly of Quebec, “Biographie de Richard Holden,” January 2012, http:// www.assnat.qc.ca/fr/deputes/holden-richard-b-3647/biographie.html. Robert Libman, the party leader and Member for D’Arcy-McGee, quit the Equality Party to become an independent member on 2 December 1993. See: National Assembly of Quebec, “Biographie de Robert Libman,” November 2017, http:// www.assnat.qc.ca/en/deputes/libman-robert-4223/biographie.html. Gordon Atkinson, Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, quit the Equality Party to become an independent Member on 29 March 1994. See: National Assembly of Quebec, “Biographie de Gordon Atkinson,” January 2012, http://www. assnat.qc.ca/fr/deputes/atkinson-gordon-1775/biographie.html. 3 Note that these issues became key questions in Quebec following the passage of Bill 101, in 1977, and the unilateral patriation of the Constitution, in 1982. To find out more on the extent of the debates on language in the National Assembly, see: Pierre-Luc Bilodeau, “Impacts de la loi 101 sur la culture politique au Québec de 1977–1997” (master’s thesis, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2016). Concerning the 1982 patriation, see: Guy Laforest, Trudeau et la fin d’un rêve canadien (Quebec City: Septentrion, 1992); Kenneth McRoberts, Un pays à refaire: L’échec des politiques constitutionnelles canadiennes (Montreal: Boréal, 1999); Frédéric Bastien, La Bataille de Londres: Dessous, secrets et coulisses du rapatriement constitutionnel (Montreal: Boréal, 2013). 4 The Supreme Court of Canada confirmed the Superior Court of Quebec’s decision of 28 December 1984, to strike down sections 59 and 69 of Bill 101.

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5 Josée Legault, L’invention d’une minorité: Les Anglo-Québécois (Montreal: Boréal, 1992), 53. (Translated from the French. Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations of French texts are by the translators of this volume.) 6 Note that the Unity Party and the Equality Party were formed for the same reasons, but the Unity Party represented Anglophones living in regions and ran candidates in sixteen ridings outside Montreal, so as to avoid competing with the Equality Party. The Unity Party won 0.99 per cent of the popular vote in the 1989 general election, but none of its candidates were elected. The party then merged with the Equality Party, in May 1990. Élections Québec, “General elections September 25, 1989: Results by political party,” accessed 25 April 2019, https://www.electionsquebec.qc.ca/english/provincial/ election-results/general-elections.php?e=34&s=2. 7 Pierre Drouilly, “L’élection du 25 septembre 1989: Une analyse des résultats,” in L’année politique au Québec 1989–1990 (Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1990), https://pum.uMontréal.ca/apqc/89_90/drouilly/ drouilly.htm (translation). 8 The Equality Party platform took up barely half a page. See the party’s electoral leaflet: “Pour un Québec meilleur/For a Better Québec,” accessed 25 April 2019, http://www.bibliotheque.assnat.qc.ca/guides/fr/ programmes-et-slogans-politiques-au-Québec/3826-parti-egalite-19892012?ref=486. 9 It bears noting that language and constitutional debates were often closely connected because the Quebec government had hoped, since the 1982 patriation, to have greater powers in the federation with respect to language and culture. Also noteworthy, in the present case, is the government’s decision to fall back on the notwithstanding clause to make its language policies applicable in Quebec. That decision was much criticized by the rest of Canada and tarnished the negotiations surrounding the Meech Lake Accord. 10 The agreement-in-principle was reached during Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s secondary term. The final agreement, which included the five conditions set out by the Quebec Liberal Party, was signed by all eleven Canadian first ministers on 3 June 1987, in the Langevin Block in Ottawa. 11 The Charlottetown Accord was negotiated in August 1992 and resulted in the amendment of Bill 150, An Act respecting the Process for Determining the Political and Constitutional Future of Quebec. The bill had provided that a referendum on sovereignty was to be held no later than 26 October 1992. It was amended so that the referendum would be on this new constitutional agreement. See: “Loi modifiant la Loi sur le processus de détermination de l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec,” in National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 2nd session, vol. 32, no. 46, 8 September 1992. 12 Political culture can be defined as “a set of conceptions binding a human group together politically, that is, a shared vision of the world, a common understanding of the past, and a collective projection into the future”

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(translation). See: Jean-François Sirinelli, “De la demeure à l’agora: Pour une histoire culturelle du politique,” Vingtième Siècle: Revue d’histoire 57 (January–March 1998): 126–7. Regarding the definition of political culture, see also: Nelson Wiseman, In Search of Canadian Political Culture (Vancouver: ubc Press, 2007). By “representations,” we are referring to key elements of political culture such as “values, beliefs, images, opinions, behaviours, or symbols” (translation). See: Stéphane Savard, Hydro-Québec et l’État québécois, 1944–2005 (Quebec City: Septentrion, 2013), 26. Note that other organizations defended the Trudeauist vision outside the National Assembly. Alliance Québec was one of them. See: Legault, L’invention d’une minorité, 33–59. The precedence of individual rights over collective rights set out in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a key element of the Trudeauist vision of the federation. In his Charter, Trudeau relegated language and cultural rights to a question of individual choice, discrediting at the same time the concept of the “collective right” enshrined in the Quebec Charter of the French Language (Bill 101). See: Eugénie Brouillet, La négation de la nation: L’identité culturelle québécoise et le fédéralisme canadien (Quebec City: Septentrion, 2005), 323–78. On the role of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the building of Canadian nationalism, see: Laforest, Trudeau et la fin d’un rêve canadien, 173–205. The Bill 78 episode sowed discord within the Quebec Liberal Party and caused it to lose some of its members. On 21 December 1988, three Liberal ministers resigned, not only to protest against the bill but, especially, to denounce the Bourassa government’s use of the notwithstanding clause to apply it. The ministers in question were Richard French, Minister of Communications, Herbert Marx, Minister of Justice, and Clifford Lincoln, Minister of the Environment. Richard French and Clifford Lincoln kept their seats until the end of their mandates but did not run in the 1989 Quebec general election. Herbert Marx stepped down as an mna on 30 June 1989, after he was appointed a judge to the Superior Court of Quebec. The five conditions for the Meech Lake Accord are constitutionalization of the Cullen-Couture Agreement on immigration matters, restoration of Quebec’s veto regarding institutions, limitation of federal spending power, appointment by Quebec of three of the nine judges to the Supreme Court of Canada and, lastly – the central clause of the Accord – recognition of Quebec as a distinct society within Canada. Note that the deadline for ratification of the Accord was June 21, 1990. National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 3, 28 November 1989 (translation). National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 33rd Legislature, 1st session, vol. 29, no. 127, 18 June 1987, p. 8672 (translation).

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21 On the federalism promoted by the Pepin-Robarts Commission and, more specifically, on the Quebec vision put forward by Commissioner Solange Chaput-Rolland, see Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon’s contribution to this book. 22 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 33rd Legislature, 1st session, vol. 29, no. 127, 18 June 1987, pp. 8715 (translation). 23 See: National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 33rd Legislature, 1st session, vol. 29, no. 127, 18 June 1987, p. 8744; Gil Rémillard, National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 33rd Legislature, 1st session, vol. 29, no. 128, 19 June 1987, pp. 8786–7; Serge Marcil, National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 33rd Legislature, 1st session, vol. 29, no. 130, 23 June 1987, p. 9013. 24 In his 28 November 1989 opening speech, Robert Bourassa said: “The main purpose of this agreement is to correct historic mistakes, the first of which was made in 1981 when Quebec’s right of veto over the reform of federal institutions, in particular the Senate and the Supreme Court, was clumsily dropped. Correcting this mistake means recovering that right. The second mistake was made in 1982, when the Canadian Constitution was patriated unilaterally without Quebec’s consent. It is worth recalling that all the parties in the National Assembly, including the federalist ones, disapproved of that decision.” National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 1, 28 November 1989 (translation). 25 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 3, 30 November 1989. 26 On the tendency to refer political issues to the courts in Canada, see: Michael Mandel, La Charte des droits et libertés et la judiciarisation du politique au Canada (Montreal: Boréal, 1996). 27 In March 1990, New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna proposed to amend the Meech Lake Accord so as to reduce the scope of the distinct society clause while at the same time giving precedence to the Canadian duality clause. 28 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 23, 28 March 1990 (translation). 29 A meeting was held 3–9 June 1990, for the purpose of persuading the three recalcitrant provinces (New Brunswick, Manitoba, and Newfoundland) to get their respective houses of assembly to ratify the Meech Lake Accord. Bourassa agreed to appending a toned-down version of the distinct society clause to the Accord. According to political scientist Guy Laforest, Bourassa then “consented to including a letter by experts establishing the connection between the distinct society clause and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms” (translation). See: Laforest, Trudeau et la fin d’un rêve canadien, 113. All of that was to be in vain since, after the meeting, only New Brunswick ratified the Accord (on 15 June 1990). See: National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 60, 20 June 1990. See also: Andrew Cohen, “The Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” in A Deal Undone: The

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Making and Breaking of the Meech Lake Accord (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1990), 183–207; Andrew Cohen, “Seven Days in Ottawa,” in A Deal Undone, 233–56; Patrick J. Monahan, “This Dinner Has Seven Days,” in Meech Lake: The Inside Story (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 198–237. National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 56, 14 June 1990. Note that Richard Holden was a dissenting voice within his party. See: Legault, L’invention d’une minorité, 181–2. See: Monahan, Meech Lake: The Inside Story, 238–59. The first section of the Meech Lake Accord reads as follows: “(a) the recognition that the existence of French-speaking Canadians, centred in Quebec but also present elsewhere in Canada, and English-speaking Canadians, concentrated outside Quebec but also present in Quebec, constitutes a fundamental characteristic of Canada; and (b) the recognition that Quebec constitutes within Canada a distinct society.” Monahan, Meech Lake: The Inside Story, 4. McRoberts, Un pays à refaire, 10. See, among others: National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 33rd Legislature, 1st session, Committee on Institutions, vol. 29, no. 53, 8 May 1987, p. 2073; National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 33rd Legislature, 1st session, vol. 29, no. 127, 18 June 1987, p. 8728; National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 33rd Legislature, 1st session, vol. 29, no. 129, 22 June 1987, p. 8911. National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 5, 5 December 1989. See also: National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 9, 12 December 1989. National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st  session, vol. 31, no. 7, 7 December 1989. National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 56, 14 June 1990. Note that Richard Holden was a dissenting voice within his party. See: Legault, L’invention d’une minorité, 181–2. National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 52, 8 June 1990; National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 40, 16 May 1990. National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 7, 7 December 1989; National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 40, 16 May 1990. See also: National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 40, 16 May 1990. Special Committee to Study the Proposed Companion Resolution to the Meech Lake Accord, Report (also referred to as the Charest Report), Ottawa, 17 May 1990, p. 9.

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42 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no.42, 22 May 1990 (translation). 43 Laforest, Trudeau et la fin d’un rêve canadien, 187. 44 On 27 May, one month after the Meech Lake Accord was signed, Trudeau strongly criticized the proposed provisions in an article he sent to La Presse and the Toronto Star. He accused Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of, among other things, weakening the central government and steering Canada toward sovereignty-association. See: Pierre Elliott Trudeau, “L’accord du lac Meech rendra le Canada impotent,” La Presse, 27 May 1987, and “Say Goodbye to the Dream of One Canada,” Toronto Star, 27 May 1987. He reiterated his position on 27 August 1987, before the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and of the House of Commons. See: Michel Vastel, Trudeau le Québécois (Montreal: Éditions de l’Homme, 1989). On 30 March 1988, he expressed anew his outrage over the Accord before the Senate Committee of the Whole, claiming that it was threatening the rights guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Lastly, through a collection of texts titled Lac Meech: Trudeau parle, released on 26 October 1989, Trudeau argued that the Accord had to be rejected because it would lead to nothing less than the breakup of Canada. Increasingly virulent opposition to the Accord followed this public intervention. 45 See, among others, National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats of the Committee on Institutions, 33rd Legislature, 1st session, vol. 29, no. 53, 8 May 1987, p. 2055; National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 33rd Legislature, 1st session, vol. 29, no. 127, 18 June 1987, pp. 8694, 8731, and 8742. 46 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 62, 22 June 1990 (translation). 47 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 62, 22 June 1990. 48 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, Extraordinary Sitting, 4 September 1990 (translation); National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 145, 20 June 1991. 49 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, Extraordinary Sitting, 4 September 1990 (translation). 50 Ibid. (translation). 51 It is interesting to note that the ep considered the right to advertise in the language of one’s choice to be a fundamental freedom, just like the freedoms mentioned above. 52 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 17, 14 March 1990 (translation); National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, Extraordinary Sitting, 4 September 1990.

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53 Tony Kondaks, Why Canada Must End: Human Rights in Exchange for an Independent Québec, accessed 22 January 2021, http://www.whycanadamustend.com/Appendix%20D.htm. Note that these are only four of the nine specific recommendations made by the Equality Party. 54 Commission on the Political and Constitutional Future of Quebec, L’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec: Report (also referred to as the Bélanger-Campeau Report), Quebec City, March 1991, p. 81. A translated version is available at: https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/36-2/ CLAR/meeting-6/evidence. 55 Following the failure of the Meech Lake Accord, the five conditions put forward in the agreement were deemed lacking by most Quebec policy-makers. While the Bélanger-Campeau Report proposed a thorough renewal of federalism, the Quebec Liberal Party’s Allaire Report recommended that the government of Quebec be granted exclusive power over twenty-two jurisdictions. See: Constitutional Committee of the Québec Liberal Party, A Québec Free to Choose: Report (also referred to as the Allaire Report), Quebec City, 28 January 1991. 56 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 3, 30 November 1989. For similar views on sovereignty, see: National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 71, 30 October 1990; National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 139, 12 June 1991. 57 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 139, 12 June 1991; National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 140, 13 June 1991. 58 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 139, 12 June 1991 (translation). 59 For details on the negotiations that led to agreement on the Charlottetown Accord, see: Jean-François Lisée, Le naufrageur: Robert Bourassa et les Québécois, 1991–1992 (Montreal: Boréal, 1994). 60 Richard Holden had then joined the ranks of the pq (see note 2). To justify his decision, he claimed: “The Québec Liberal Party did a complete about-face in August, and so did I! The difference is, Mr. Speaker, that the Liberals looked at the past while I chose to look towards the future. The Liberals took refuge in their big brother’s home in Ottawa, whereas I chose to stay in Quebec” (translation). See: National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 2nd session, vol. 32, no. 45, 4 September 1992. 61 “Loi modifiant la Loi sur le processus de détermination de l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec,” in National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 2nd session, vol. 32, no. 46, 8 September 1992. 62 Note from the translators: The first part of this quote is translated from the French, but the second part is the English original.

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63 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 2nd session, vol. 32, no. 47, 9 September 1992. 64 See notes 57 and 58. 65 Note from the translators: The first part of this quote is translated from the French, but the second part is the English original. 66 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 2nd session, vol. 32, no. 50, 15 September 1992. 67 On the distinct society clause, Neil Cameron said: “I will admit I continue to dislike this clause, not because I am convinced that it is either the toothless fraud that the Péquistes claim it is, nor because I am entirely persuaded that it represents, in its present form, a serious practical danger for the minority p opulation of Quebec. It seems to me to retain the ambiguity that has generated so much heat over the last five years.” Ibid. 68 Benoît Pelletier, “La clause Canada dans la défunte entente de Charlottetown,” Les Cahiers de droit 35, no. 1 (1994): 66–7. 69 Denis Monière, “Les débats idéologiques,” in L’année politique au Québec 1989–1990 (Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1990). 70 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 2nd session, vol. 32, no. 50, 16 September 1992. 71 Pierre Drouilly, “Le référendum du 26 octobre 1992,” in Indépendance et démocratie (Montreal: L’Harmattan, 1997). 72 Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Ce gâchis mérite un gros non ! (Montreal: L’Étincelle éditeur, 1992). 73 Drouilly, Indépendance et démocratie. 74 Libman’s leadership began to be contested in 1991. mna Richard Holden criticized him for his lack of experience as a leader and his inability to curb the party’s radicalization, which was promoted by some of those in favour of civil disobedience and partition of Quebec, if the province were to become sovereign. See: Legault, L’invention d’une minorité, 181–2. 75 See note 2. 76 National Assembly of Quebec, Journal des débats, 34th Legislature, 1st session, vol. 31, no. 3, 30 November 1989. 77 See François-Olivier Dorais’s text in this book for further details on the decline of the Laval School’s Trudeauist theses in the late 1960s.

4 The Quebec Vision of Federalism and the Federal Ideal (1998–2008): Benoît Pelletier as a Barometer of Unresolved Tension François Rocher

Since the adoption of a federal state structure in 1867, the Quebec government’s position on federalism has changed with the times and transformations that have marked Canadian and Quebec society demographically, economically, culturally, and politically. Federalist thought, insofar as there is such a thing, has also adapted to these changes. Generations of intellectuals have studied these issues, as have political parties. Recent decades have brought their share of adjustments to the relations between the federal government and the provinces. More specifically, the outcome of the 20 May 1980 referendum, followed by the 1982 patriation of the Constitution, the series of failed reform attempts at Meech Lake (1987–90) and Charlottetown (1990–92), and also the “Yes” camp’s defeat in the 30 October 1995 referendum, have led Quebec’s political groups to redefine and readjust their thoughts on the role Quebec should play in the Canadian federation. With the exception of the 1984 beau risque episode, the Parti Québécois stands out for the continuity of its position on the need for Quebec to gain political independence, despite strategic shifts and tactics with regard to how to achieve it. In contrast, the policies of the Quebec Liberal Party on reviewing Quebec’s political and constitutional roles and status have varied in accordance with real or presumed constraints, and, during the period on which we will focus, it seems that Action démocratique du Quebec embraced neo-autonomism, a position now espoused by the Coalition avenir Québec. In this chapter, we will look at the vision defended by the Quebec Liberal Party from the late 1990s to the end of the 2000s through the positions and reflections of its principal spokesperson on the matter, Benoît Pelletier. Until now, little effort has been put into identifying the themes that fed the political debate within the Quebec Liberal Party on Quebec’s place in Canada

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over the course of that decade. When the topic has been broached, it has often been done simplistically, painting a very imperfect portrait of that complex period. In fact, there is little consensus on how it should be viewed. For example, in a recent text, journalist Antoine Robitaille verged on caricature when he described the Charest decade as the time of “irradiated fruit.” He said: “At the time, when constitutional and national issues were raised, the catchword was ‘the fruit is not ripe.’ You will recall that former cabinet minister Benoît Pelletier used it all the time.”1 Legal scholars Patrick Taillon and Alexis Deschênes have a slightly different take on the matter: they speak about federalists’ inertia with regard to constitutional change.2 However, political scientist Guy Laforest says that Pelletier helped to deeply transform federalist discourse in Quebec.3 Others, such as jurist Joseph E. Magnet and historian Stéphane Savard, portray him as one of the last federalists interested in the national question and the reform of federalism.4 In Canada, in contrast, the decade in question has been described as one of appeasement and harmonious coexistence between the federal and Quebec governments, despite persisting disagreement on constitutional issues.5 This means that perceptions about Pelletier’s contributions are diverse, to say the least. Yet, Pelletier was particularly well equipped to draft the Quebec Liberal Party’s plan for handling Quebec-Canada relations in the context of federalism. Prior to entering politics, he taught constitutional law at the University of Ottawa and published widely on the issue.6 Elected for the first time on 30 November 1998, he became the Quebec Liberal Party’s critic for intergovernmental affairs, chairing the party’s Special Committee on the Political and Constitutional Future of Quebec Society and developing the parliamentary group’s position on Quebec-Canada relations. Pelletier went on to prepare the Quebec Liberal Party’s strategy document “Quebec’s Choice: Affirmation, Autonomy and Leadership,” released in 2001. It was during that period that he came up with the idea of a Council of the Federation. When the Liberals won the election in 2003, Pelletier was appointed Minister of Canadian Intergovernmental Affairs and Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, and was later Minister responsible for Francophone Canadians and Minister for the Agreement on Internal Trade. In short, he inspired, designed, and incarnated the Quebec Liberal Party’s position on federalism for a decade. This alone makes it relevant to study his thought, which had a strong influence on the Premier and his colleagues in the Cabinet, despite the fact that they sometimes made things difficult for him. The period was marked by a realignment of political forces in Canada and Quebec. At the federal level, the “No” side’s narrow victory in 1995 translated into willingness to make certain adjustments (which were not to be onerous for the federal government) to respond to some of Quebec’s demands. More specifically, one month after the referendum, Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government tabled a motion in the House of Commons recognizing

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that “Quebec constitutes within Canada a distinct society.” That resolution defined Quebec’s distinct society in terms of its French-speaking majority, unique culture, and civil law tradition.7 In 1996, the same government passed the Act respecting Constitutional Amendments, which gave the right to veto constitutional amendments to Quebec (and to Ontario, British Columbia, at least two of the Atlantic provinces having combined populations of at least 50% of the population of all the Atlantic provinces, and, on the same terms, at least two prairie provinces). In 1998, the Supreme Court of Canada gave its opinion on the constitutionality of unilateral secession of Quebec. That was followed two years later by the passage of the Clarity Act, which made any negotiation of possible secession conditional on a clear majority on a question determined to be sufficiently clear by Canadian political players, in particular the party in power in Ottawa.8 At the same time, the House of Commons was undergoing a partisan reconfiguration. In 2003, the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party merged to form the Conservative Party of Canada. That right-wing union resulted in a minority Liberal government in 2004, led by Paul Martin. In the 2006 general election, Martin lost to Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, who formed a minority government. In November 2006, the House of Commons adopted a motion supported by all the parties (although fifteen Liberal mp s voted against it) that recognized that “the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada.”9 Throughout the decade, the Bloc Québécois managed to maintain a strong presence in Ottawa, winning between thirty-eight and fifty-four seats in elections. In Quebec at the time, the Parti Québécois was led by Lucien Bouchard, who had succeeded Jacques Parizeau when the latter resigned following the “Yes” side’s loss in the 1995 referendum. The Parti Québécois won the 1998 provincial election with seventy-six seats, even though the Quebec Liberal Party captured more of the popular vote. During this period, the autonomist Action démocratique du Québec party was rising in popularity. It promised a moratorium on constitutional debates and garnered 12 per cent of votes in 1998, 18 per cent in 2003, and 35 per cent in 2007. This return to a threeparty system divided the vote and placed pressure on the Quebec Liberal Party, which had to redefine its position between the conservative autonomist adq ’s third way and the pq ’s sovereignty movement. (On this, see the chapter by Frédéric Boily in this book.) The situation was marked by the gradual marginalization of the sovereignty movement in Quebec politics; by a certain openness to Quebec on the part of the federal government, so long as no formal constitutional amendments would result; by the strong presence of a political group devoted to defending Quebec’s interests in Ottawa; and by partisan consolidation of the right. The Quebec Liberal Party therefore had to re-evaluate how it saw the ties uniting Quebec and Canada. Pelletier devoted himself to this task.

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Our analysis of Pelletier’s thought follows three complementary themes. The first concerns his conception of Quebec identity in Canada; the second focuses on why he believed that federal ties should be maintained; and the third looks at his proposed reforms of federalism. Studying these themes provides an opportunity to put forward two arguments. The first is that Pelletier, and, more broadly, the Quebec Liberal Party, dug into the tradition that had marked the federal-provincial relationship established, at the beginning of the Quiet Revolution, by political actors whom we will describe as “loyalists” because they did not question whether or not Quebec should remain in the Canadian federation.10 That tradition is characterized by four elements: (1) affirmation of French-Canadian nationalism, (2) overinvestment in the notion of “autonomy” from a largely legal-political point of view, (3) attachment to Canada justified by economic functionality, and (4) deep criticism of the nature and functioning of federalism, giving rise to demands for reform. The second argument is that Canada remains largely “unthought” insofar as it is apprehended exclusively through the lens of Quebec’s presumed interest in maintaining federal ties. In other words, Canada is chosen less for what it has to offer than for what it would cost to break federal ties. This means that cooperation and partnership are judged according to the benefits and advantages for Quebec. From this perspective, there is a hierarchy between, first, Quebec identity and, second, the feeling of belonging to Canada, which flows less from a feeling of attachment than from a cost-benefit analysis. In other words, the benefits, in and of themselves, justify maintaining federal ties. Federalism is therefore seen as an adequate political structure if it has the potential to recognize and strengthen Quebec identity, at least theoretically. Our analysis is, in essence, based on Pelletier’s book, which contains many of his speeches, articles, and presentations from his days as a government minister,11 as well as new texts, such as the introductions to the book’s various sections and some whole chapters and sections. It thus brings together the elements that Pelletier considers particularly important and wishes to leave to posterity. We have not used his academic work, because the focus of this chapter is his approach as a federalist political actor. In a review of Pelletier’s book, historian François-Olivier Dorais noted that “the amalgam of short texts, most of which have been published previously, is an impediment to summarizing his thought and makes it difficult to identify an overall perspective or common thread.” Dorais nonetheless concluded that Pelletier had succeeded in presenting “a daring, renewed vision of Canadian federalism and Quebec’s place in it.”12 Our intention here is to put a little order in this “daring, renewed” thought.

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a s t r o n g q u e b e c id e nti ty, but i n t h e f r a m e w o r k o f french canada In Quebec politics, claiming to be a federalist does not automatically mean strongly endorsing the organizational principles specific to a federal system. Being a federalist means being Canadian: it is simply a way of expressing the desire to remain within the Canadian political system. However, this choice also relates to Quebec’s “national question” and it cannot be made without at least some reflection on the relationship between the Canadian and Quebec identities, which can have various hierarchical configurations.13 This configuration will inevitably have an impact on the way an individual, especially a politician, apprehends the roles that Canadian and Quebec political institutions must play in the constitution, promotion, and preservation of one national identity in relationship to the other. Pelletier says he is a federalist and he is well aware of the political and institutional implications of that position. By force of circumstance, he therefore says he is Canadian but his primary sense of belonging is to Quebec society. He is thus not a disembodied Canadian, detached from his land and his community. One of the missions of the Canadian political system is thus to ensure the preservation and development of that identity. According to him, the fundamental features of Quebec identity are based on a combination of five intertwined elements: (1) the French language, (2) the culture conveyed by that language, (3) a shared history, (4) the territory, and (5) institutions. Although Quebec society is pluralist, its Frenchness is its principal distinguishing mark. In other words, taking into account the diversity that constitutes Quebec society must not compromise its characteristic Francophone vocation, cultural vitality, or the respect owed to the majority. He therefore recognizes “that Quebec is a nation because of its history, language, culture, territory, and institutions. A nation is a community characterized by a high degree of solidarity and cohesion among its members. Such solidarity and cohesion are based both on the ideas that the members of a nation have about themselves and on what other communities think about them. For this reason, I consider that Quebec must seek recognition in Canada for its specificity, based on the fact that it is a nation, since that is a fact, and who could be against purely and simply acknowledging reality?”14 However, for this dimension of Quebec’s French heritage to really be able to be fully expressed and developed, it is important for (French-speaking) Quebecers to work together with minority Francophone and Acadian communities in Canada and elsewhere in the Americas. The reason Quebec must be the leader and unifier of this big Francophone family is because that family shares a culture expressed through the French language. In other words, according to Pelletier, the most important, if not determining, cultural marker is linguistic. In this spirit, if there is a Quebec nation (“since that is a fact”), it must be inclusive and stand in solidarity with Canadian

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citizens who share its language and culture. The Quebec government must “work more closely with the federal government to defend the cause of Canadian Francophones while respecting the governments’ respective areas of jurisdiction.”15 This means that Pelletier adheres to a definition of Quebec identity that is cultural, first and foremost. There is some distance between this position and the vision promoted by former Premier Jean Charest, who subscribes more to an exclusively civic approach to the nation.16 It is not that Pelletier rejects Charest’s approach, since he makes explicit reference to it. In fact, he neither comments on it nor rejects it, but finds it incomplete. He simply recalls the open, pluralist nature of the political community in Quebec, and then immediately underlines the deep historical roots of his belonging to Quebec, a province with a population that is seen as “a community that has a history” but that is also a community for which “the feeling of belonging goes beyond its historical existence.”17 According to him, a nation is a “state of mind” and a collective identity to be transmitted from generation to generation “as much as, if not more than, our personal values.”18 In this way, a nation can be seen in terms of kinship, like a family. This recognition of Quebec’s truly national character is not at the expense of Indigenous peoples, which are not ethnic minorities but full-fledged nations: “Quebecers are well placed to understand that, in democracy, perfectly equal individual rights sometimes sign a minority’s death warrant.”19 It is therefore important for the relationship between Quebec and Indigenous Peoples to be nation to nation. Their rights are different from those of other Canadians, based on undeniable historical foundations and enshrined in the Constitution. He recognizes that Indigenous communities “can carry out specific activities, in particular with regard to their precolonial customs and distinctive cultures.”20 From this perspective, Pelletier holds that Quebec’s politics are multinational, but he also gives a paramount role, if not precedence, to the Quebec nation itself. The way the rights of the First Nations and the Inuit are enshrined in the Constitution makes them a shared jurisdiction. In fact, in this matter, the Canadian Parliament and government play a leadership role owing to their fiduciary duties, but the provinces have a duty to improve the conditions in which Indigenous people live off reserve. It would be better if the two orders of government cooperated, even though the Quebec government can demand that the federal government live up to its responsibilities with regard to Indigenous people. In sum, Pelletier embodies the form of Quebec nationalism that emerged out of the Quiet Revolution. The foundations of that nationalism are French-Canadian in that they have deep roots in a history and in values shared by French-Canadian people across Canada, but its vitality is tied to the land of Quebec. Quebec must lead French Canada, but the members of the Quebec nation are sensitive to pluralism of identities, on the condition

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that the identity of the Quebec majority remains front and centre. It will be impossible to understand the reasons justifying belonging to Canada if we do not grasp the importance of a Quebec national identity, which must be preserved, developed, and transmitted.

f o r “ t r u e f e d erali sm” b y a “ t r u e f e d erali st” For a battle-hardened federalist like Benoît Pelletier, the notion of federalism necessarily refers to a specific political and institutional arrangement circumscribed by law and enshrined in a constitution. His understanding of the Canadian political system is strongly coloured by a legal reading and interpretation of that system’s basic texts. From this perspective, when he calls himself a “true federalist,” he expresses a sincere conviction concerning the virtues specific to the pact that the Canadian system of government represents. He endorses federalism first and foremost as a Quebecer who sees it as a political means of dealing with the diversity that constitutes Canada. In this regard, he subscribes to a multinational conception of the Canadian political community. In politics, Pelletier portrays himself as a federalist in the public sphere, but only rarely, or never, as a Canadian because his identity is anchored primarily in Quebec, as we have seen above. He believes that this vision is shared widely with most Quebecers: In fact, Quebecers adhere to many of the same basic values as other Canadians and to a certain conception of life in society shared with them. Quebecers are even deeply federalist. It may seem surprising, but I sincerely think that they are the most federalist of all Canadians. The evidence I can cite to support this view is that they always argue in favour of respecting the Constitution, the division of powers, and the federal principle. I think that Quebecers, of which I am one, see themselves in the main features of federalism. Democratic at heart, Quebecers appreciate the fact that federalism provides for a division of powers and gives them two autonomous spheres, two sites of democratic legitimacy. Since, in its very essence, it is designed to prevent the concentration of powers in the hands of a single order of government, the federal system provides better protection and more respect for human rights and freedoms than other political systems. These are characteristics that we especially like, and rightly. In sum, federalism is the system that is best adapted to the needs of the contemporary world, today’s challenges, and those of the future, for it makes it possible for federated partners to take action together without renouncing their distinctive features.21

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Pelletier’s Quebec roots led him to suggest a new way of reading the federation’s foundation. It would be based on three essential elements, linked concomitantly to the principle of respect: respect for the Constitution and the distribution of powers, respect for the fact that it is crucial that no order of government be subordinate to any other, and respect for the partners’ differences. This would justify choosing a federal system of government. Pelletier’s reading is in contrast with the mainstream reading, which is that the “federal pact” is a centralized political model granting most of the important powers to the federal government. Instead, he holds the provincialist thesis that, “as constituting bodies, the provinces are the foundation of the federal system. They, and the territories, have the power to change the dynamics and to signal clearly to Ottawa that they desire to re-establish balance in Canadian intergovernmental relations.”22  The provinces are therefore not delegates of the federal government. They have full sovereignty in their spheres of competency, just as does the federal government in its own. Pelletier does not speak explicitly about the idea of a pact between the two founding peoples. When the question of a pact arises, it is always in terms of a “federating pact” between the federal authorities and the provinces. The principle of non-subordination is, therefore, the linchpin of the federal regime, and respect for the federal balance and the very nature of the foundations of the political system depend on it: In the case of the Canadian federation, there can be no question of delegation of federal state powers to federated entities, for that would be contrary to the federal principle. The provinces are not delegates. In their respective spheres, the Constitution Act, 1867, gives the provincial legislative assemblies sovereignty that is just as full and complete as that enjoyed by the Parliament of Canada. In Canada as in France, state sovereignty is one and indivisible, except that in Canada its exercise is divided between the central parliament and the provincial legislatures. The division of legislative powers between two sovereign orders of government is a fundamental principle of federalism as defined by Professor Kenneth C. Wheare. In a regime of this type, the federal government and the provincial governments must be able to act without the latter being subordinate to the former. Federal balance is based on this principle, and any analyst who forgets to take it into account cannot boast of painting a faithful portrait of Canadian federalism.23 Understood in this way, federalism would make it possible for Quebec to progress, while also ensuring its specificity is respected and reconciling the need for unity with the need for diversity. The federal regime is appropriate for a complex country such as Canada; it ensures that Quebec can develop without compromising its distinctiveness. It is thus on behalf of “true federalism,” and as a “true federalist,” that Pelletier advocates “greater respect

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in Canada for the federating spirit, the distribution of powers between the federal and provincial governments and the autonomy of both orders of government … [and he also pleads] in favour of greater participation by the federated entities in the taking of the principal decisions concerning national and pan-Canadian interests.”24 It is also from the same stance that he invites the Canadian regime to maintain its true federal nature, which is “the condition sine qua non for Quebec to opt into the Canadian system voluntarily.”25 In sum, Quebecers’ attachment to Canada is conditional on it reconnecting with the federating spirit, rejecting the impulses that favour concentration of power and means in the hands of the central government and taking distance from a standardizing vision of a unitary Canada propelled by “a desire to defend supposedly superior ‘national’ interests.”26  Pelletier recognizes the persistence of the opposition between centralizing conceptions and those that value respect for the provinces’ autonomy. His reading of the Constitution of Canada is autonomist, which means that he is part of a tradition that has influenced the actions of all political groups in Quebec. It is therefore within this tradition that Pelletier situates the position of the government to which he belonged, a position of which he was the leading architect. He recalls that: Recognition of Quebec’s identity gives full meaning to three key words which remain at the heart of the Quebec government’s official position on intergovernmental affairs: affirmation, autonomy, and leadership. Affirmation, because Quebec is justified in wishing to establish its identity and assert its distinctness in Canada and the world. Autonomy, because Quebec is autonomous in the Canadian federal context and has to defend its autonomy resolutely, and even try to expand that autonomy, by giving preference, for now, to means that do not require reopening constitutional negotiations and do not bring back into question Quebec’s non-adherence to the changes to the Canadian Constitution made without its consent in 1982. Leadership, because Quebec has to win back its place at the forefront of intergovernmental relations in Canada.27 Endorsing the Canadian system is therefore a free choice (which means it can be challenged), but it requires something in exchange. It entails that federalism must also be an instrument that will guarantee the affirmation of Quebec. This choice goes hand in hand with a political imperative, a mission, if not a struggle, that is structured around three things: promoting the recognition of Quebec’s distinctness and having that distinctness enshrined in the Constitution; reconciling Canadians with Quebec’s identity; and securing recognition that Quebecers have a right to choose their future freely. This means that Benoît Pelletier states his allegiance to Canada

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and to federalism less for what it is and more in terms of the possibilities for recognition that it offers. In this spirit, he says: “For me, Quebec is also a nation that chooses to participate, of its own free will, in the great Canadian adventure, and it still wants to be recognized for what it is by the rest of Canada. This is why I champion recognition of Quebec’s distinctness in Canada and the enshrining of that recognition in the Constitution. The primary motivation for my political career is the assertion and recognition of Quebec as a nation.”28 In the end, the form of federalism that he adheres to is based on respect for the principles of autonomy, non-subordination, and recognition of the distinctive aspects of the constituting parties. The Quebec nation is nested in the Canadian nation, and those two realities are not incompatible. It is therefore important to facilitate their coexistence. The refusal to recognize the Quebec difference officially and to assume the multinational dimension of Canada is brandished by secessionists, who could be countered by better mutual understanding of the sociohistorical identities and national realities that co-exist within Canada.29 That recognition must imperatively be enshrined in the Constitution, not only to reconcile Quebecers with Canada, but also to make it possible for Canada to rediscover its roots and put an end to the lack of understanding (or misunderstanding) of the deep nature of federal association. Pelletier salutes the motion adopted in the House of Commons in 2006, seeing it as going in the direction of including Quebec’s national nature in the Canadian identity; but he nonetheless points out that it is essentially symbolic. It has had no legal impact because it is not enshrined in the Constitution and cannot be used by the courts as an interpretive principle, as would have been the case with the distinct society clause provided for in the Meech Lake Accord.30 It seems to Pelletier that Quebec is free to decide to remain in Canada, but also to leave it. However, the latter option is never presented as a solution or even as a foreseeable choice in the face of federalism’s failures. While belonging to Canada can be justified by the advantages offered by respectful integration of Quebec into a federal framework that is well understood and put into practice, those advantages are not sufficient. In fact, other reasons are also given to explain why Quebec must remain in the federation. According to Pelletier, “Canada is an extraordinary country that enjoys a well-established reputation.”31  Secession would result in the loss of a number of significant advantages, and this would explain the hesitation of many Quebecers. There are many benefits, in particular with respect to the federal government’s promotion of Quebec culture and the French language in Canada through Radio-Canada and the National Film Board. Such support is added protection against the pressure exerted by globalization, which the English language and American culture dominate. Belonging to Canada also ensures that Quebec is integrated into a domestic market free of tariff barriers and border controls, and, at the same time, that it benefits from

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international trade agreements signed by Canada. Moreover, federal equalization transfers help the Quebec government maintain and even increase government services. Pelletier also recognizes that belonging to Canada is not to be assessed uniquely in terms of numbers, economic advantages, and instrumental considerations. He notes that Quebecers have been frequenting other Canadians, and sharing a common destiny with them, since the conquest. Ties have been made that have given rise to sincere attachment to Canada on the part of a significant number of Quebecers. This past cannot be denied; neither can the freedom offered by Canada: “It would be very difficult to break these ties. This is one of the main reasons for our ambivalence, especially when there are no serious, obvious causes that could justify a break between Quebec and the Canadian federation. Quebecers do not feel oppressed. On the contrary, they have held all the important positions in Canada, including that of prime minister, on many occasions. This country is not yet perfect, but it remains a place where the quality of life proves to be one of the best in the world. We are well aware of this, so any discourse that exploits the resentment of the colonized leaves us indifferent because it is so far from our everyday experience.”32 In sum, Quebecers’ allegiance to Canada draws on many sources. To begin with, the adoption of a federal form of government allows Quebec to preserve its distinctiveness in the framework of a larger whole that delivers undeniable advantages. Federalism and autonomy go hand in hand. Next, maintaining ties with Canada concerns more than a political system, numbers, and security. In other words, Pelletier admits that the strength of this relationship is not simply rational but can also be explained by powerful emotional bonds.

f e d e r a l is m in n e e d of reform Federalism is a system for organizing political life that meets Quebec’s needs well, on the condition that the system’s basic principles are understood and shared correctly by all federated partners. This is not always the case. Pelletier advocates a deep reform of federalism even though he argues that there is no other viable alternative to maintaining Quebec in Canada. He rejects radical autonomism while militating for a transformation of the understanding that political actors have of federalism. He also proposes adjustments designed to correct the dysfunctional aspects of the Canadian political regime. To gain a better understanding of the reasons for and the scope of the reforms in question, let us begin by recalling the substantive arguments addressing the lack of understanding of the political system prevailing in Canada. Next, we will look at a set of complementary criticisms that are institutional in nature and concern the many anomalies that create obstacles to the functioning of “true federalism.”

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With regard to substantive criticism, first and foremost, the federal government, if not all of the other federal partners, including their citizens, must show a better understanding of and greater respect for the federal principles that inspired the Fathers of Confederation. The mononational vision, according to which Canada would be composed of a mosaic of cultures scattered across many territories and justifying that the federal government should play a preponderant role, is in opposition to a flexible conception according to which the federation is made up of two equal and autonomous orders of government and includes one specific nation: Quebec. These two visions clash, and the result is that Canada is drawn into an existential debate. Yet, “by taking as a foundation the principle of asymmetry, we would be able to take differences into account and thereby meet the needs of all Canadians, no matter where they come from.”33 This conflict in perceptions urgently needs to be resolved because the present approach, which gives a big role to the principle of subordination, increases the risk of breakup. The federal government’s interventions in provincial areas of jurisdiction undermine constitutional norms. This is not without risk: “However, this current of thought closes its eyes to the teachings of history because the constraints placed by one order of government on another, the perpetual conflict between partners in the federation, and the unequal distribution of political power and financial resources have most often led federations to break up. This was the case in the ex-ussr . This is why the centralizing tendencies of some Canadian political forces should never justify evading constitutional rules.”34 To resolve this conflict, “true federalists” must use some imagination, which seems to be woefully lacking, try to gain a better appreciation of the specific differences of the Quebec nation, and attack the deficit of affiliation with and allegiance to Canada. Pelletier’s judgment is harsh and categorical: “I take as proven the Canadian federation’s inability to take Quebec’s identity into account until now and to respond to its specific needs.”35 Canada has been unable to integrate Quebec’s specificity in a positive manner or to secure Quebec’s endorsement of the 1982 Constitution. The dominant line of thought has translated into institutional practices that are dysfunctional with respect to the mode of operation expected of a “true federation.” There are many such practices. Like his predecessors, Pelletier denounces the many cases in which the federal government has used its regulatory power to interfere in provincial areas of jurisdiction. He gives examples such as federal initiatives with respect to assisted human reproduction, protection of personal information (a matter that concerns private, not criminal law), etc. He notes that, in addition to such abuses of regulatory and legislative power, there is a major fiscal imbalance between the two orders of government, and that this impedes the provinces’ ability to exercise their constitutional competencies freely. He places this concern in the framework of the unending quest of all Quebec governments since the

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1950s: “In 1956, the Tremblay Commission Report already said that ‘the solution to the tax problem demands, above all, a return to the Constitution and the philosophy on which it is based.’ The Report recommended returning to the ‘spirit of federalism.’”36 This imbalance produces two undesirable effects. First, it gives the central government financial means that go beyond its constitutional responsibilities. Second, and more importantly, it accentuates the central government’s propensity to interfere in matters that are not under its jurisdiction, in particular by transferring funds directly to individuals and organizations and by offering financial support to the provinces to make up for their fiscal impediments when they want to develop initiatives under their responsibility on the condition that the initiatives meet goals that it often sets unilaterally. This approach does not respect the provinces’ needs, priorities, preferences or special characteristics.37 It is the federal government’s use of its spending power that has, in fact, never been formally recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada, which undermines the federal principles of autonomy and non-subordination. This undermining is deepened by the inflexibility of the Canadian Constitution and political reticence to adapt it to contemporary challenges – or even by the impossibility of doing so. Owing to the difficulties inherent in any constitutional reworking, the central government, often with the implicit agreement of the provinces, has used paraconstitutional procedures – in particular, administrative agreements – to bend in its favour the ability of the two orders of government to intervene. It has also adopted resolutions and passed legislation to change the way the courts can interpret that ability, as was the case in December 1995, when the House of Commons adopted a resolution recognizing Quebec as a distinct society, and in 1996, when it passed the Act respecting Constitutional Amendments. According to Pelletier, “it can become problematic to apply paraconstitutional procedures if there are too many of them and if their implementation leads to a simple evasion of constitutional realities or a relativization of the principles on which the Canadian system of government is founded.”38 There is something more serious: the courts can also change the federal principles without the consent of the federated partners, given the major asymmetry of power between the orders of government: “In a context where the quest for balance would cease to be an essential concern, case law could damage federalism, especially if it encourages one order of government to give itself legal levers strong enough to change the borders of the areas of jurisdiction or even compromise the major principles presiding over the division of powers.”39 He also notes the effects of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which not only tends to put the accent on relations between individuals and the state, thereby attenuating the federal paradigm, but also sees the relationship between French-speakers and English-speakers in an equal, symmetrical manner, which is not an accurate portrait of the relationship between Canada’s two major linguistic communities.40 According

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to Pelletier, “it would be better to try to reconcile the 1982 Charter with the federal principle than to use it to weaken provincial powers or deprive Quebec of the legislative and other means it needs to ensure that the French language survives in North America.”41 In other words, there is a set of political and legal mechanisms that, when combined judiciously, can modulate the interpretation and implementation of the Constitution. Those mechanisms take the form of asymmetries in constitutional, financial, and legal application, as well as administrative agreements. The institutional architecture of federalism is also problematic. Pelletier maintains that the Senate, given that its members have long been appointed on a partisan basis, does not give the provinces a voice. Yet, the institution was originally designed as the equivalent of a “house of the regions.” The Senate’s legitimacy has been undermined because the current situation makes the federal government the sole protector of the common good and further centralizes power. Given these mechanisms, which accentuate the federal-provincial imbalance and allow the central government to impose its views, Pelletier took up a wish expressed in 1956 by the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Constitutional Problems (the Tremblay Commission) and became an advocate for setting up an interprovincial institution to act as a counterbalance. This is the origin of the Council of the Federation, established in July 2003. Pelletier notes that the Commission “deplored the fact that there was no organization that carried out the role of interprovincial coordination and that, according to the Commission, ‘the provinces should discuss, without the federal government’s intervention, problems that fall properly under their jurisdiction.’”42 The Council’s mission is to strengthen the ties between the provinces and territories, and to become an instrument for intergovernmental cooperation, a forum for discussion, cooperation, and common policy-making.43 The Council’s creation made it possible to consolidate interprovincial relations and to provide a flexible, but institutionalized, framework for the provinces and territories to promote collaboration, solutions to shared problems, and coordination of approaches. Ultimately, it made it possible for its members to “adopt a shared vision of the evolution of the Canadian federation and the role they [the provinces] should play within that federation.”44 In light of all these criticisms, Pelletier has proposed a set of ambitious reforms of federalism, in order to make it compatible with the principles that govern how it should be understood and how it should function. The key to all these reforms is asymmetry, which is already a federal practice. It is in the distribution of powers under the 1867 Constitution,45 but also stems from a multitude of administrative agreements (including the 1954 agreement that Quebec would collect taxes, the agreement for the creation of a Quebec pension system, and the 2006 agreement on Quebec’s participation in unesco ) and the application of laws and financial arrangements

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within the federation (notably the equalization payments program). By putting things into perspective in this way, Pelletier shows that this principle is not incompatible with federalism and is even one of the fundamental characteristics of Canada’s political regime: “Most Canadians readily recognize that the diversity of the components and identities that make up the Canadian whole enriches Canada. Placing value on the fact that there are many different realities in Canada, and many different ways to achieve shared goals, is federalism’s reason for being. Asymmetry is indeed part of this country’s personality; it is an obvious consequence of Canada’s history and geography, and an expression of its aspirations.”46 It is therefore the flexibility and adaptability of the federal formula that makes it possible, and even highly desirable, to bring about changes that could better take Quebec’s specificity into account in the Canadian context. Pelletier considers it essential to enshrine recognition of Quebec’s difference in the Constitution. He favours a more systematic recourse to the principle of asymmetry in the application of laws; in the signing of new administrative agreements that would include provisions granting the right to opt out of certain federal programs with financial compensation; and in the interpretation of the Constitution by the courts. Ultimately, this should lead to reopening the Constitution, to achieve a better balance in the distribution of powers between the two orders of government. The federated entities would also have to be given a say in how the federation is to be governed, such as through a second federal chamber (which would replace the Senate) with the ability to exercise real power and make decisions on the federation’s future. He also wants to see more efficient mechanisms established to promote intergovernmental cooperation. Lastly, he considers it necessary for each order of government to have the financial resources necessary to meet its responsibilities fully without being dependent on the central government.47 In sum, he calls for a major rebalancing in the federation of powers, responsibilities, and means. It is a vast program if there ever was one, and one that the Charest government was unable to carry out.

c o n c l u s ion In the introduction to his book, Pelletier writes that he believes that “he has no intellectual debt to anyone, no mentor on whom to count, no one who has been more of an inspiration than anyone else.”48 There is no reason to doubt that this is what he believes.49 Pelletier may belong to the Quebec federalist tradition, but he has been able to make his intellectual personality felt by putting into perspective concerns that skilfully combine political and legal considerations. To understand his thought and the scope of his contribution, we have to situate them in the post-referendum context of the 1990s, which was not at all favourable to political and constitutional revision of the conditions for better integrating Quebec into the political sphere

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in Canada. At the time, the notions of “affirmation” and “autonomy” were receiving bad press. The former brought to mind the approach promoted by former Parti Québécois leader Pierre-Marc Johnson (1985–87), which discredited it in federalist circles. The latter was unwelcome because Quebec federalists did not think that the stars were aligned in a way that would allow them to demand greater margin of manoeuvre for Quebec. They feared that rejection by the political players in Canada would feed Quebec discontent, since the vote in the 1995 referendum on sovereignty had been 49.4 per cent in favour (with a 93.5 per cent participation rate). Collaboration seemed to be what was needed. Pelletier’s great achievement is to have succeeded in linking together three principles – affirmation, autonomy, and collaboration – in a coherent manner and to have given them credibility in the public sphere. What was original in his approach, and required true political courage, was that he proposed non-constitutional means to strengthen Quebec’s role in the federation. This approach could translate into constitutional changes, but that was not the focus. Trying to sum up his approach with the phrase “the fruit is not ripe” does justice neither to the complexity of his thought nor to the efforts taken to rebuild the credibility of Quebec federalists’ arguments during this period. Pelletier’s thought excludes any arguments that could justify Quebec sovereignty. Thus it comprises part of a reckoning as to a certain dynamic in Canada, more than a hundred years old, which pits the centralizing wishes of the federal government against Quebec’s desire for autonomy. In this respect, it is part of an intellectual tradition that predates the dichotomy between federalism and sovereignty that has marked Quebec politics since the late 1960s. Pelletier’s arguments are an updated form of arguments made by those who came before him – arguments which we may find, in their initial form, in the work of the 1956 Royal Commission of Inquiry on Constitutional Problems. However, he has reformulated those arguments and relieved them of their conservative and French-Canadian baggage, which was part of the ethnic perspective of the Tremblay Commission. Even if he denies it, Pelletier’s reasons for keeping Quebec in Canada are not much different from those of Claude Ryan before him: primary allegiance to Quebec, of course, but without minimizing the many advantages of belonging to the federation, such as immense natural resources, a strong economy, the underlying values of freedom, sharing, and solidarity, and the enviable reputation that Canada enjoys abroad.50 This similarity should not surprise us. The reasons in favour of keeping Canadian ties are shared by all Quebec federalists, from all times and all political contexts. In fact, this is what makes a true Canadian loyalist, but with a Quebec twist. On some points, he insists on the same federating features and shares the same observations as the Tremblay Commission report: (1) there must be two equal, coordinated orders of government, (2) each order of government’s actions must be limited to its sphere of competency, within which

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it must be independent vis-à-vis the other, (3) the understanding and mode of functioning of federalism must not depart from the principle of nonsubordination, (4) there must be recognition of the multinational nature of both the federal pact and the sociopolitical reality of Canada, (5) the centrality of preserving Quebec’s autonomy must be acknowledged, (6) the federal government’s intrusion into the provinces’ areas of exclusive jurisdiction must be denounced, and (7) the choices available to Quebecers are limited to three possibilities: accept the unilateral approach of the federal government, consider secession (an option that Pelletier rejects), or declare allegiance to federal principles.51 This is the approach he has chosen and strongly defended in all forums, including within the Quebec Liberal Party. It was also the approach partly taken by the Liberal government of Philippe Couillard,52 although Couillard’s allegiance has always been to Canada first whereas Pelletier’s is first and foremost to Quebec.53 Like those of his predecessors, Pelletier’s position places great value on the principle of autonomy while opening the door to the principles of interdependence and cooperation, which are at the heart of the functioning of every federation that seeks to reconcile unity and diversity. However, unity and diversity are understood in relation to the Canadian context, in which federalism has historically been highly centralized (first with regard to the distribution of powers and then in the way it has been practised, in light of the federal government’s many intrusions into provincial jurisdictions). This interdependency makes it necessary to create mechanisms for communities to be able to coordinate and cooperate with each other, which is the reason for the Council of the Federation. Cooperation can therefore take different forms and be embodied in different contexts. In Canada, it is necessary because the federated communities must collaborate to limit the central government’s desire to evade constitutional constraints so as to influence provincial priorities. The problem nonetheless remains that subscribing to a federal ideal that gives greater importance to vertical interdependency may simply be utopic. The Quebec interpretation refers to the idea of the original pact (between the provinces or between two founding peoples, depending on the reading) and to respect for the initial, constituent diversity. This idea has always been problematic and has been rejected for reasons that include the fact that it has a mythical aspect and is incompatible with the dominant representation that has been accepted by the rest of Canada, which measures the success of federalism in terms of its efficiency in solving pan-Canadian problems. In sum, Canada’s foundation is based on an original ambiguity that should be clarified. In 1958, historian Arthur R.M. Lower proposed that these many different interpretations, coupled with the arrogance demonstrated by many English-speaking Canadians, were the source of tension and animosity that could only endanger Canada.54 More than half a century later, Pelletier has come to the same conclusion.

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notes 1 Antoine Robitaille, “1992–2017: Le marais des deux impasses,” Bulletin d’histoire politique 26, no. 1 (2017): 28. (Translated from the French. Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations of French texts are by the translators of this volume.) 2 Patrick Taillon and Alexis Deschênes, “Une voie inexplorée de renouvellement du fédéralisme canadien: L’obligation constitutionnelle de négocier des changements constitutionnels,” Les Cahiers de droit 53, no. 3 (2012): 464. 3 Guy Laforest, “What Canadian Federalism Means in Québec,” Review of Constitutional Studies 15, no. 1 (2010): 29. 4 Joseph E. Magnet, “A New Vision: Quebec’s Most Important Federalist Voice Describes the Province’s Future within Canada,” Literary Review of Canada 19, no. 4 (2011), https://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2011/05/a-new-vision; Stéphane Savard, “L’affaiblissement de la question nationale au Québec,” Bulletin d’histoire politique 25, no. 2 (2017): 10. 5 Nadine Changfoot and Blair Cullen, “Why is Quebec Separatism off the Agenda? Reducing National Unity Crisis in the Neoliberal Era,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 44, no. 4 (2011): 781. 6 He holds two doctorates in law, one from the Université de Paris 1 (PanthéonSorbonne) and one from the Université d’Aix-Marseille, and has published a number of academic texts on constitutional law, including La modification constitutionnelle au Canada (Toronto: Carswell, 1996). 7 Brian O’Neil, Distinct Society: Origins, Interpretations, Implications (Ottawa: Political and Social Affairs Division, Library of Parliament, 1995). 8 François Rocher, “Les incidences démocratiques de la nébuleuse obligation de clarté du Renvoi relatif à la sécession du Québec,” in La démocratie référendaire dans les ensembles plurinationaux, ed. Amélie Binette and Patrick Taillon (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2018), 205–47. 9 House of Commons of Canada, Hansard, 39th Parliament, 1st session, vol. 141, no. 86, 24 November 2006, p. 5299. 10 In this regard, see Antoine Brousseau Desaulniers’s chapter in this book, which traces the parties’ positions on constitutional issues during the Quiet Revolution. 11 Benoît Pelletier, Une certaine idée du Québec: Parcours d’un fédéraliste – De la réflexion à l’action (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2010). 12 François-Olivier Dorais, “Compte rendu du livre de Benoît Pelletier, Une certaine idée du Québec: Parcours d’un fédéraliste – De la réflexion à l’action, Quebec City, pul , 2010,” Revue canadienne de science politique 45, no. 3 (2012): 720–2. 13 Pollsters generally deal with the question of Quebec and Canadian identities by asking respondents whether they consider themselves to be only Canadian,

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mainly Canadian but also Quebecer, equally Canadian and Quebecer, mainly Quebecer but also Canadian, or only Quebecer. Pelletier, “Conclusion générale,” in Une certaine idée, 288 (translation). Pelletier, “L’avenir en français,” in Une certaine idée, 53–4 (translation). Ibid., 63–4. Ibid., 64 (translation). Ibid. (translation). Pelletier, “Les mythes et les réalités de l’approche commune,” in Une certaine idée, 181 (our translation). Ibid., 199 (translation). Pelletier, “Le Québec et le fédéralisme canadien: Où en sommes-nous?”, in Une certaine idée, 121–2 (translation). Pelletier, “Une perspective québécoise sur les enjeux fédératifs,” in Une certaine idée, 75 (translation). Pelletier, “La centralisation et la décentralisation,” in Une certaine idée, 92–3 (translation). Pelletier, “Un Québec qui fait la promotion d’une nouvelle dynamique fédérale,” in Une certaine idée, 69 (translation; Pelletier’s emphasis). Pelletier, “Le retour aux fondements fédératifs,” in Une certaine idée, 83 (translation). Ibid. (translation). Pelletier, “Une nouvelle vision, une nouvelle approche,” in Une certaine idée, 89 (translation). Pelletier, “Introduction générale,” 8 (translation). Pelletier, “Conclusion générale,” 293. Pelletier, “Un Québec qui s’affirme,” in Une certaine idée, 62–63. Pelletier, “Le Québec et le fédéralisme,” 120 (translation). Ibid., 121 (translation). Pelletier, “Le passé garant de l’avenir: Le fédéralisme canadien,” in Une certaine idée, 102 (translation). Pelletier, “Une perspective québécoise,” 77 (translation). Pelletier, “Conclusion générale,” 293 (translation). Pelletier, “Le bilan de la problématique fiscale au Canada,” in Une certaine idée, 142 (translation). Pelletier, “Le pouvoir fédéral de dépenser: Des fondements discutables,” in Une certaine idée, 128–9. Pelletier, “La centralisation et la décentralisation,” in Une certaine idée, 98 (translation). Ibid. (translation). Pelletier, “Conclusion générale,” 294. Pelletier, “Introduction générale,” 7–8 (translation). Pelletier, “Le Conseil de la fédération: Une institution au service de la collaboration intergouvernementale,” in Une certaine idée, 103 (translation). Pelletier, “Une perspective québécoise,” in Une certaine idée, 74.

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44 Pelletier, “Conclusion générale,” 296 (translation). 45 Benoît Pelletier lists them: “To begin with, there is constitutional asymmetry. It can be seen in the Constitution Act, 1867, in particular in section 133 on the use of the French and English languages in Québec and at the federal level, in section 93 on denominational schools, section 94 on uniformization of the property and civil laws of all provinces except Québec and in paragraph 6 of section 23 on the appointment of senators. Asymmetry can also be found in section 23 of the 1870 Manitoba Act on institutional bilingualism in the province and in sections 16.1(1) to 20(2) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms concerning the French and English communities in New Brunswick. It is also recognized that certain aspects of paragraph 1 of section 23 of the Charter concerning instruction in the minority language are not in application for now. Constitutional measures applying in particular to Indigenous people, specifically paragraph 24 of section 91 of the Constitution Act, 1867, and sections 25 and 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, are also among the provisions that enshrine a form of constitutional asymmetry. Many other constitutional and purely legislative measures can be added to this list, in particular section 6 of the Supreme Court Act, which provides that one third of the judges of that court must be from Quebec.” Pelletier, “L’éloge de la diversité et de la souplesse,” in Une certaine idée, 79 (translation). 46 Ibid. (translation). 47 Pelletier, “La centralisation et la décentralisation,” 94. 48 Pelletier, “Introduction générale,” 3 (translation). 49 It should be noted, however, that there is a certain similarity between the ideas formulated by Pelletier and those put forward, among others, by André Burelle. See, in particular: André Burelle, Le mal canadien: Essai de diagnostic et esquisse d’une thérapie (Montreal: Fidès, 1995). 50 Claude Ryan, Regards sur le fédéralisme canadien (Montreal: Boréal, 1995), 193–203. 51 For a reminder of the main conclusions of the Tremblay Commission, see: François Rocher, “La dynamique Québec-Canada ou le refus de l’idéal fédéral,” in Le fédéralisme canadien contemporain: Fondements, traditions, institutions, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon (Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2006), 93–146. See also: Dominique Foisy-Geoffroy, “Le rapport de la Commission Tremblay (1953–1956), testament politique de la pensée traditionaliste canadienne-française,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 60, no. 3 (2007): 257–94. 52 Quebecers: Our Way of Being Canadian: Policy on Québec Affirmation and Canadian Relations (Quebec City: Secrétariat aux affaires intergouvernementales canadiennes/Direction des communications, Government of Quebec, 2017). The title of this publication borrows, without acknowledging it, Benoît Pelletier’s words during the proceedings of the Committee on Institutions on 2 May 2006, in which he stated his “firm belief that most Quebecers want to be Canadian, but they want to be Canadian in their own way; they do not

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want a single and unique way of being Canadian to be imposed on them, and so they want Canadian federalism to be flexible enough for the singularity of Quebec, the specificity of Quebec, to be able to be expressed within a larger whole, obviously, which is Canada.” National Assembly of Quebec, Journal de la Commission des institutions, 37th Legislature, 2nd session, vol. 39, no. 5, 2 May 2006 (translation). 53 Éric Montigny and Marie Grégoire, “Philippe Couillard: Volonté de rupture et mandat en deux temps,” in Bilan du gouvernement de Philippe Couillard: 158 promesses et un mandat contrasté, ed. Lisa Birch and François Pétry (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2018), 27. 54 Arthur R.M. Lower, “Theories of Canadian Federalism – Yesterday and Today,” in Evolving Canadian Federalism, ed. A.R.M. Lower and F.R. Scott (Durham, nc : Duke University Press, 1958).

5 Third-Option Federalism: A Dialogue between Federalism and Nationalism? Action démocratique du Québec and Coalition avenir Québec (1990–2018) Frédéric Boily

With the Quebec Liberal Party and the Parti Québécois clashing over federalism and sovereignty from the 1970s up until the 2014 election, we lost sight of the fact that there is another way to conceive of Quebec’s political future within the Canadian federation. As we will see here, the third option is an old “storyline”1 that, although rooted in French-Canadian nationalism, went underground, in a way, in the 1960s. In the 1970s, the Créditistes tried to revive a third option between the federalist and sovereigntist approaches (not between the constitutional status quo and sovereignty), but they failed.2 The third-option political storyline later re-emerged in the years following 1995, particularly from the time of the 2007  Quebec election. However, trapped between the two sides of the major alternative entrusted to Quebec voters in the 1980 and 1995 referendums, it was hard to grasp. This has left important questions unanswered with regard to the very essence of the option that has been defended both by Action démocratique du Québec and Coalition avenir Québec. Moreover, since the caq has been in power, examination of the autonomist third option has taken on a completely different dimension. For example, how does the constitutional form of the third option3 contrast with federalism, and to what extent does it differ from the “federal status quo,” to use the oft-repeated expression? What is its relationship to nationalism? Above all, is the autonomist third option more than a mere stance – a defiant attitude perhaps – but without any real substance? It is important to recall what André Laurendeau said of Maurice Duplessis and his “spectacular autonomism”: “After all, what is autonomy? Is it a

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smokescreen that provincial governments can hide behind when passing bad laws, resorting to patronage, rejecting the best social legislation, and filling their election fund coffers?”4 The Quebec Liberal Party also expressed similar criticism at that time. (See the text by Antoine Brousseau Desaulniers in this collection.) Naturally, Laurendeau formulated his criticism at a very specific point in time, and we would be wrong to think that all those who have spoken of autonomy – such as Mario Dumont in the past and François Legault today – are as cynical as Duplessis. However, the question of whether it is a “smokescreen,” that is, a political marketing ploy designed solely to meet the electoral needs of the day, still remains relevant in some respects. During the spring of 2018, Premier Philippe Couillard criticized Coalition avenir Québec and accused its leader, François Legault, of not being a “real” federalist.5 Others have made the opposite accusation (since Coalition avenir Québec’s earliest beginnings, in fact),6 claiming that Legault has “sold” himself to federalism, albeit late in his career, after many years as a sovereigntist.7 In both cases, he is portrayed as a deceitful defender of federalism and of weak protections for Quebec against Ottawa, and a “straw autonomist.” Coalition avenir Québec’s third option would be a political chimera. It is against this backdrop that we will attempt to paint a clearer picture of the third option put forward by Coalition avenir Québec (and by Action démocratique du Québec before it). That third option is, according to political scientist Louis Balthazar, a thread running through Quebec’s political history. Balthazar argues that autonomist nationalism has been an integral part of Quebec’s political history since the 1960s, with the attempt to reconcile the development of an “autonomous Quebec with the maintenance of Canadian unity.”8 Here, we will attempt to identify the nature of the autonomist option advocated by Coalition avenir Québec and Action démocratique du Québec, a third option that would navigate a way between federalism and sovereignty. We will begin by reviewing some theoretical approaches to federalism, in order to situate the autonomist formula. We will then take a closer look at the third option as advocated by Action démocratique du Québec and its leader, Mario Dumont. From there, we will examine how Coalition avenir Québec and François Legault have tried to mould the third option to their vision, while giving it a special flavour – if that is indeed possible. We will conclude with an analysis in the form of three propositions that will help us better understand the third option.

t hre e t h e o r e t ic a l c o n c e pti ons of federali s m Before turning to the heart of the matter, it is worth establishing a few conceptual distinctions with respect to federalism. There are several ways of portraying federalism. For example, some insist on the distribution of

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powers within federations and on the resulting fiscal aspects, whereas others focus on the relationship between federalism and nationalism (in the context of a multinational federation).9 One of the classical lines of investigation focuses on the centralization-decentralization dichotomy and examines whether federalism meets the requirements and aspirations of the constituent entities. The question about the extent to which a federation should be centralized, and how much control the central government should exercise over the most important directions taken in jurisdictional spheres such as education and health is, naturally, crucial for federated entities. Here, we will adopt the analytical framework proposed by political scientist Dimitrios Karmis, which is based on three conceptions of federalism: “universalist,” “communitarian,” and “pluralist.”10 We will use these three conceptions as sorts of paradigms to characterize the third option. According to Karmis, the first approach is universalist federalism, in which the foundation of authority is individualistic and federal power takes the form of a strong central government. This means a central government capable of imposing political, economic, and social standards upon all constituents. It is strong, yet its prerogatives are controlled by a system of checks and balances that acts particularly on an individual level (the courts of justice, including the Supreme Court) and protects the rights of individuals against abuses by the state. In this liberal vision, embodied by Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Frank Scott,11 the federated entities have a part to play, but they are in a position of legal and constitutional subordination with regard to individuals and the central government, which must play a pre-eminent role in deciding Canada’s key social and political directions.12 This conception of federalism is characterized by the centralization-decentralization opposition. Communitarian federalism fully recognizes the importance of the federated entities and leaves room for an egalitarian relationship between them, in which their status is not second but nearly first, at least from a moral standpoint if not on the constitutional and political levels. According to Karmis, this American tradition was embodied in French Canada by the intellectual Father Richard Arès and by the Parti rouge (Red Party). Later, it was also embodied, in a way, in the Tremblay Report. However, it did not find its place in the dichotomy that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s between federalists and sovereigntists, because it was part of a paradigm in which centralizing federalism opposed autonomist nationalism, as historian Dominique Foisy-Geoffroy points out: “Before diving straight into the subject, let me clarify that the federalism-sovereignty dichotomy that characterizes the constitutional debate in Quebec today does not accurately reflect the debates of the 1950s. On the contrary, it confuses the issue by tending to associate federalism with centralization, without acknowledging any nuances. The French-Canadian nationalists of the 1950s were dedicated Quebec autonomists but also considered themselves the true defenders of federalism in Canada – this is very clear when you read the Tremblay

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Report. It would be more appropriate to characterize the constitutional debate in Quebec at that time as an opposition between centralization and autonomism (or province-centredness).”13 Again according to Foisy-Geoffroy, based on the second volume of the Tremblay Report, Arès was the intellectual authority on federalism. Another such authority is François-Albert Angers, whose work is analyzed elsewhere in this collection.14 In Arès’s eyes, Confederation is a pact and not just a law between provinces. This would make Canada a true confederation.15 This is also in line with André Laurendeau’s emphasis on the idea of a pact between the two founding peoples.16 It was in this spirit that Gérard Filion wrote, in an editorial published in Le Devoir in 1947: “By autonomy, one must understand the right for a country to govern itself, i.e., to pass its own laws and enforce them … Sovereignty, or autonomy, to use the better-known term, is the fundamental question in provincial politics.”17 This could lead one to believe that “autonomism” and “sovereignty” are synonymous. However, Filion considered that autonomy was not reserved exclusively for nations; he considered it a “provincial matter.” The distinctive characteristic of the third conception (which makes it different from the other two) is that pluralist federalism makes it possible to think that there are, within federated entities, other federal layers or strata that require recognition that the political community is made up of a number of groups. Pluralist federalism views the community as being comprised of many partners. Based on this approach, developed in particular by James Tully and Joyce Green, Indigenous peoples (and even immigrant communities) could have the right to a form of institutional or governmental autonomy allowing them to develop as they wish.18 In the eyes of pluralist federalists, communitarian federalism remains a prisoner of a binary equal relationship between a central government and the federated entities, which would actually have a higher degree of legitimacy with respect to managing their affairs. Pluralist federalism, in contrast, is not seen in terms of a dyad but rather as an assembly of partners with different jurisdictions trying to attain a complex federal modus vivendi. We can now examine how the third option of Action démocratique du Québec and Coalition avenir Québec fits in with communitarian federalism. By definition, the third option is a patchwork and, as we will see, can be modified according to the evolving political context; it is not anchored in any specific content.

a c t io n d é m o c r a t iq ue du québec’s au t o n o m is t t h ir d o p t i on (1990–2008) In the tradition of French-Canadian federalism, of which Arès is one of the last icons, the supporters of the third option demand their due or, to put it like Duplessis, they consider that Quebec needs to claim its share of

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the “booty.” Nevertheless, at the end of the 1960s, there were scarcely any intellectuals who promoted that specific option in the intellectual and political arena. Afterward, as we will see, autonomism borrowed new content: the discourse no longer focused on retrieving booty but rather on a distinction to be protected in order to ensure the vitality of Quebec society. After the “Yes” side lost in the 1995 referendum, the federalism-sovereignty dichotomy gradually took the form of a federalism-autonomism dichotomy. The transformation was gradual and there was no abrupt shift, as can be seen by how Action démocratique du Québec distanced itself from the first dichotomy. Quebecers accepted the Clarity Act and appeared not to want to see constitutional matters “bounce back,” to borrow one of Lucien Bouchard’s expressions.19 After Bill 99, Quebecers “remained surprisingly unmoved,” as Bouchard put it. They did not want to have the national question resurge any more than they wanted to juggle with identity issues.20 This impassibility or indifference led some political actors, particularly Action démocratique du Québec, to slowly take a different direction. Therefore, at the beginning of the 2000s, when the ashes of the 1995 referendum were still warm and the Supreme Court had ruled on the federal government’s Reference re Secession of Quebec (1998), Action démocratique du Québec spent a few years reworking its autonomist position. According to journalist Denis Lessard, the “autonomist label” was the work of former Parti Québécois member Guy Leroux who, having moved over to Action démocratique du Québec, believed (in 2003) that the party should be more present in the national debate.21 In fact, and Leroux himself has confirmed it, the idea of autonomy was the result of teamwork that also involved Guy Laforest and adq leader Mario Dumont himself.22 It was very likely part of the party’s startup “business capital.” It was there from the start, with the “very autonomist” Allaire Report, which led to the schism between Jean Allaire, Mario Dumont, and Robert Bourassa’s Liberals.23 In addition, when Guy Laforest made the leap to Action démocratique du Québec, it was partly to widen the “sphere of its political autonomy,” and also that of Quebec, naturally.24 The idea of autonomy later appeared in certain documents, such as in a brief on the development of a form of multicultural citizenship: “It is with this [the outcome of the 1995 referendum] in mind that Action démocratique du Québec has introduced in the National Assembly a bill on constitutional peace in order to integrate the Canadian dimension into a process for Quebec’s autonomy. We are proposing a strong Quebec, with consolidated spheres of autonomy, as the core element of a vast endeavour to decentralize the Canadian political system. To achieve this, Quebec cannot isolate itself and ignore the Canadian reality. Quebec must reach out in good faith, clearly and solemnly, to its primary partners, the various members of the Canadian federal union.”25 In the brief, Action démocratique du Québec sought to fit the autonomist approach into a Canadian approach in which decentralization was the

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political target. In the same vein, in 2001, Action démocratique du Québec’s constitutional committee published an article in Le Devoir expressing the need for a Quebec charter that would, in a way, consolidate the province’s juridical and political personality: “By adopting a fundamental law in the form of a Quebec Charter, our society would also join numerous other autonomous political communities that have freely chosen to delineate, in a similar manner, their juridical and political personalities: the cantons of Switzerland, the German Länder, the states within the great American republic and, recently, the autonomous political communities in the Spanish state as well as the provinces in the new constitutional structure of the Republic of South Africa.”26 Action démocratique du Québec thought it was necessary to draw inspiration from the experiences of foreign countries to put an end to what was presented as “trusteeship” or “imperialist” federalism. The party claimed that the Secession Reference gave Quebec “power of initiative” that would force the rest of Canada to negotiate, whereas, according to Dumont, the Quebec Liberal Party was proposing a “beggar’s federalism.”27 This was possibly a reference to section 46(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982, which provides that procedures for amendment may be initiated by the legislative assembly of a province. According to some constitutional experts, this means that the other federal partners would have an obligation to engage in negotiations.28 Nonetheless, in the two excerpts quoted above, we can detect overtones of communitarian federalism since Action démocratique du Québec was seeking to promote a more equal relationship between the federal government and Quebec. To achieve that goal, they also looked for models, referring to the situation in other federated states and reiterating the need to “reach out” to federal partners. In a way, Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party would be the one to answer that call for decentralization with the notion of open federalism, a Canadian version of the third option. After the 2007 election, the national question seemed to be less present in the electorate’s concerns, but this does not mean that autonomism had gained a clear foothold within the parties. The autonomist third option appeared to be a state of mind rather than a clearly defined goal to be achieved through specific demands. This is precisely what Mario Dumont said in reply to two journalists, shortly after Quebec electors had made Action démocratique du Québec the official opposition. In an interview with L’Actualité, the journalists asked the new leader of the official opposition to define his conception of autonomism. His answer (after a long but revealing silence, if we are to believe the journalists) involved four propositions: 1 The first was that it was necessary to “assert ourselves without separating”; it was a “guideline.” As a result, it would no longer be possible to hold referendums.

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2 The second was that “the model of a real confederation would be the ideal.” 3 The third was that, in the absence of a real confederation, it would be necessary “to limit the federal spending power of the federal government, inherited from the 1867 Constitution.” 4 Lastly, the fourth was that it was “necessary to build alliances and do things to make Canada work as a whole.”29 Clearly, the autonomist third option as proposed by Dumont did not revolutionize federalist thinking. It was a classical approach based on the principle that, post-1995, it was possible for Quebec to assert itself without resorting to a referendum. In this sense, Dumont appears to have been correct in writing that autonomism is a “guideline” and not a federal theory of Quebec’s place within Canada. One of the reasons third-option autonomist federalism remains relatively little conceptualized is that Action démocratique du Québec’s political priority in the early years of the twenty-first century was not so much about Quebec’s place within a federation from which it needed to exit, but rather about reconfiguring the parameters of the Quebec state.30 This probably explains the “long silence” referred to by the two journalists. In the early 2000s, what Dumont was mainly worried about revolved around modernization of the Quebec state.31 This is why, in an interview with Policy Options in February 2003, he remained silent on Quebec’s place within Canada. The “responsible change”32 that he wished for was not so much about reworking Quebec’s role within Canada as about revisiting the Quiet Revolution. The concern of the moment was “Quebec’s demographic shock,” with the aging population putting greater pressure on “public services.” Action démocratique du Québec’s priorities focused on the province, and one would be right to note that its discourse on identity was at odds with the “nationalistic” approach characteristic of Quebec sovereigntists.33 However, the divergence was not complete. The third option therefore implied a form of autonomist nationalism that applied, first and foremost, to the Quebec provincial scene and not on a Canadian stage. For Action démocratique du Québec, it was a guideline to be adapted to the imperatives of the moment. This brings us to today, with Coalition avenir Québec newly elected to power.

co a l it io n a v e n ir q u é bec’s autonomi s t, id e n t it y - b a s e d t hi rd opti on In the introduction, we saw that Legault’s federalist, and even his nationalist, convictions have often been questioned. Like Action démocratique du Québec, Coalition avenir Québec tries to embody the third option; that is, to borrow Legault’s words, it tries to find a way between “the Parti Québécois’

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referendum obsession and the Liberal Party’s spineless federalism.”34 Yet Legault and Coalition avenir Québec do not seem very comfortable discussing issues around the Constitution or federalism. In contrast with Action démocratique du Québec, which was born in a context of constitutional and national ferment, Coalition avenir Québec took off in a very different political environment – at “the end of the cycle,” as Mathieu Bock-Côté put it.35 Coalition avenir Québec’s primary interest is government reforms to catch up with Ontario’s supposed advance.36 That said, between the elections of 2012 and 2014, Legault attempted, with his book Cap sur un Québec gagnant,37 to give his party’s platform a little more substance by showing that Coalition avenir Québec’s ideas and propositions were more than just economics-based illusions empty of any other content. For our purposes, it is Chapter 2, with the Johnsonian title “Le Québec d’abord” (Quebec First), that is most instructive because it provides insight into Legault’s view of Quebec’s evolution within Canada and outlines what he (perhaps) plans to demand of Ottawa and the other partners in the federation. First, the very title of the chapter reveals the caq leader’s will to oppose both what he perceives as the Quebec Liberal Party’s “Canada first” and the Parti Québécois’ “Quebec only” policies. The formula is debatable, but the title was quite well chosen because it allows Legault to reaffirm his belief in Quebec’s potential while minimizing that of the Quebec Liberal Party and implying that the Parti Québécois is a little too absolutist. It also places Coalition avenir Québec in the orbit of communitarian federalism by emphasizing the pre-eminence of the Quebec community, even though the party’s entrepreneurial approach stipulates that entrepreneurs are responsible for realizing their own full potential in a Quebec freed from the poor economic situation that has prevented it from performing as well as its Ontarian nemesis. However, the formula was only one piece: Legault has also adopted Bock-Côté’s diagnosis, in La  dénationalisation tranquille,38 that the federalism-sovereignty dichotomy is on its last legs (or nearly). From this perspective, he proposes to set aside the debate on the national question (a uselessly divisive debate) and take on another – domestic – task consisting in increasing the collectivity’s wealth, which he believes will give more weight to Quebec within Canada and make it less dependent, financially speaking, on Canada.39 Legault’s book, published in 2013, gives the rather tenacious impression that the autonomy Coalition avenir Québec is hoping for is not so much a matter of powers that must be recovered or a constitutional issue related to the division of powers, but a question of financial autonomy: for example, that Quebec should become autonomous with respect to the Canadian equalization system. However, he also wrote, “the National Assembly of Quebec today has less power than it had in 1976, when the Parti Québécois

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first came into power.”40 This is true if we consider that, since the advent of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Quebec government’s, and other provinces’ governments’, room for manoeuvre has been subject to multiple constraints. Yet, for Coalition avenir Québec, this is not really where the battle for autonomy is to be fought; autonomy’s fight is on terrain other than that of the Constitution. The third option has become economic, provincial, and identity-based (and less purely national). “Quebec First” involves overcoming what Legault describes as “the greatest challenge: integrating immigrants into the French-speaking majority.”41 Coalition avenir Québec’s version of the third option abandons external affairs (the relationship between the Quebec majority and the EnglishCanadian majority) for domestic concerns (the Francophone majority versus immigrants and “laicity”) by focusing first on the identity question – that is, by paying special attention to integration. It is a question of taking care of Francophones’ autonomy in Quebec vis-à-vis identities deemed different. According to Legault, in order to meet this great integration challenge, the use of French had to be adopted more fully in the labour market, particularly in companies in the greater Montreal area. It is also necessary to ensure the state’s neutrality and reaffirm the secular character of Quebec.42 By focusing on aspects of integration, Coalition avenir Québec is following in the footsteps of communitarian, rather than pluralist, federalism. The party sees Quebec as the primary community where one’s identity should be asserted. The province is not, as mentioned above, composed of a plurality of identities that should enter into dialogue on the same footing; it is a Francophone community that can be a magnet and attract integration, as does English Canada. In short, Coalition avenir Québec is operating in a dualist universe, but where the dualism no longer pits Quebec against Canada but rather nationalists against multiculturalists, regardless of whether they are from Quebec or Ottawa.43 From there, in his book Legault turns toward the outside, that is, “toward the question of the relationship between the federal government and the government of Quebec.”44 He puts forward a series of demands that were fairly limited in number at the time (but later became more numerous). He had, in fact, three main propositions. The first was classic: to put an end to costly overlap. The second was to ask for greater federal government involvement in management of the St  Lawrence River. The third was to present the federal government with a “historic compromise” entailing a “significant expansion of Quebec’s responsibilities with respect to language and the promotion of Quebec culture.”45 Legault portrayed his propositions as not purely defensive, and he was not entirely wrong. However, the question of integration remains primary and the relationship with Canada secondary, which shows that, for Coalition avenir Québec, the third option unfolds as something internal to Quebec. This timidity may have led Coalition avenir Québec to take a nationalist turn after the 2014 election.

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The Third Option: A Nationalist Turn In November 2015, Coalition avenir Québec began to take what has been described as a nationalist turn. In a document somewhat pompously titled “Un nouveau projet pour les nationalistes du Québec”46 (A new plan for Quebec’s nationalists), also referred to as the “Laval Declaration,” the party sought, first, to tie itself to a tradition of Quebec autonomy beginning with Honoré Mercier, the “first Quebec politician to embody provincial autonomy.”47 By trying to identify, albeit reservedly, an autonomist tradition, Coalition avenir Québec was looking to reintegrate itself into a current that would have deep roots in Quebec’s history. Note, however, the omission of certain key figures: for example, Maurice Duplessis is not mentioned, and this immediately sticks out. Coalition avenir Québec prefers to skip from Honoré Mercier to Daniel Johnson and his “first loyalty” to Quebec, while also bringing in Robert Bourassa and “cultural sovereignty” (but without mentioning Mario Dumont) in an effort to devise an approach that would be – as always with the caq – “pragmatic” and would emphasize “increased fiscal autonomy” (tax points, zero equalization, and a single tax return).48 In the document, Coalition avenir Québec seems to attach the greatest importance to the question of fiscal autonomy, which would be achieved through administrative agreements. Of course, that document also specifies that “a new agreement between Quebec and Canada must ultimately lead to the full and complete constitutional recognition of Quebec as a nation”; but it also says that “major constitutional manoeuvres, particularly those requiring the unanimity of the provinces, are not to be favoured,” suggesting that Coalition avenir Québec does not believe that such an agreement can be reached. This seems to be a position reminiscent of “spectacular autonomism,” as Laurendeau would call it. For the time being, it appears that increased provincial autonomy for Quebec will revolve around the issue of a single income tax return, which Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole, like Andrew Scheer before him, has said he would be ready to negotiate with Quebec.49 One could very well imagine that Coalition avenir Québec’s version of autonomism will continue along this path – that is, making economic gains for Quebec bit by bit. While some would call this “entrepreneurial autonomism,” others have described it as a simple economic project linked to the ideology of catching up, as earlier theorized by sociologist Marcel Rioux.50 In an article published in 1968 (“Sur l’évolution des idéologies au Québec”), Rioux used the notion of catching up to describe the ideology of the years 1945–60, when the prevailing conservative ideology was being challenged as it was no longer able to deal with the social and economic transformations that were shaking Quebec’s society.51 During the 2018 election campaign, Coalition avenir Québec showed similar unease regarding whether or not to force the federal government to enter into negotiations. At first, Legault suggested that he would go to Ottawa to

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seek powers regarding immigration, but even before the campaign began, he was quite vague and refused to describe precisely what he would do.52 Then, when the debate on immigration began to escalate and he seemed not really on top of the issue, he watered down his position again by suggesting that, in the end, he would not begin talks with the federal government right away.53 Beyond the question of whether or not Legault would embark on negotiations with Ottawa immediately after his election, it is important to remember that the third option is part of a pragmatic process of ad hoc demands that can be negotiated without bringing all the federal partners to the bargaining table. This is all the more pragmatic since the partners in question seem to have no desire to talk about Quebec’s distinct society, particularly because they belong to a political generation that did not participate in the major constitutional debates. Outside Quebec, the premiers of both Ontario (Doug Ford) and Alberta (Jason Kenney, first elected in 1997 for the Reform Party) have shown little interest in reopening this debate. Within Coalition avenir Québec itself, the key figures had likewise not been socialized in the constitutional debates of the 1980s and 1990s. In short, it would be very surprising if anyone in Canada had any intention of reopening the constitutional debate. Even Indigenous peoples are not interested, since it is to their advantage to negotiate directly with the federal government on a nation-to-nation basis. In this context, even if there is no reason to doubt Legault’s nationalist sentiments, one must ask whether there is real willingness to enter into constitutional negotiations. Reluctant Federalists I am not defending sovereignty or federalism; I side with Quebec. François Legault54

Coalition avenir Québec is a party of reluctant federalists. Following the nationalist turn in 2015, it even sought, through its former president, to dispel the idea that the party was federalist. In an interview with Le Devoir, former Coalition avenir Québec president Stéphane Le Bouyonnec said his party did not want to be labelled as “federalist.” Although he conceded that Quebec’s future would be within Canada, he immediately added that this did not make his party federalist: “I believe that there are many Quebecers who think that a third option is possible between secession and the status quo of today’s federalism.”55 Legault himself justifies his conversion to the third option as a pragmatic decision. He said in an interview: “We still have to take into account what Quebecers want. I believed in the sovereignty of Quebec, but I am a businessman, I am a pragmatic man … Quebecers want a Quebec with more powers, but they want to remain within Canada.”56 This is why, according to Legault, the autonomy he seeks for Quebec could also apply to other

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provinces: “Some of the powers we are requesting would also be good for other provinces.”57 Of course, Coalition avenir Québec still states on its website that it seeks “more autonomy for Quebec within Canada” as well as “full and complete recognition as a nation under the Constitution.”58 However, there is reason to think that, in the party’s first year in power, concerns about the evolution of federalism will not be a priority, in line with what the party has always proclaimed. Instead, as we have seen in this section, Coalition avenir Québec plans to persuade all partners in the federation to accept greater control over immigration. It remains to be seen whether Legault’s position in the National Assembly will allow him to set such a process in motion or whether he will simply pass the buck to the federal government, as he suggested at the end of the campaign.59 However, clashes between the Coalition avenir Québec government and Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government on the questions of immigration and secularism cannot be ruled out. For now, with Bill 9, Coalition avenir Québec has proposed to eliminate 18,000 unprocessed immigration files and to review the immigrant admission and selection criteria, which have been contested in Quebec.60 At the same time, the federal government has announced an increase in the number of immigrants admitted to Canada.61 In addition, a conflict is emerging with Trudeau’s government over Bill 21 (An Act respecting the Laicity of the State), which will prohibit the wearing of religious symbols by certain government employees in positions of authority as well as by public school teachers (except those to whom a grandfather clause applies, so long as they do not change schools). Simon Jolin-Barrette, Minister of Immigration, Diversity, and Inclusiveness, has already expressed his intention to use the notwithstanding clause to ensure that the bill is not challenged.62 Indeed, that clause was used both for Bill 21 and Bill 96 (An Act respecting French, the Official and Common Language of Quebec).63 Pragmatic and determined, Jolin-Barrette is on the front line, testing the limits of the third option as he is managing projects that go against federal Liberal positions.64 All in all, it is likely that the Coalition avenir Québec government and its federal counterpart will gradually build their relationship on specific issues, case by case, rather than through broad negotiations.

t h e t h ir d o p t io n from pas t t o p r e s e n t : t h r e e proposi ti ons Autonomism, that was Duplessis’s position! Éric Montigny65

The third option is not really defined by any specific content or constructed approach to federalism, nor can it be closely identified with any specific intellectuals or thinkers, so it is not an intellectual current with well-defined boundaries.66 Yet, according to Balthazar, whom we quoted in this chapter’s

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introduction, autonomism is, in fact, the dominant approach. However, it has not always received good press from intellectuals, and some see it as a resurgence of Duplessisism, as suggested by the quote above, which apparently dates from when Action démocratique du Québec took a more openly autonomist direction. That version of third-option federalism is characterized by three propositions. The first proposition is the idea that Quebec’s distinctiveness justifies granting it autonomy so that it can keep its uniqueness alive and thriving. While other provinces may also play the autonomy card, as Alberta has occasionally done, only French-Canadian or Quebec autonomism has a cultural character that gives it a national dimension. Although the FrenchCanadian or Quebec nationalist dimension is still a component, the third option remains an approach that, in attempting to create a dialogue between nationalism and federalism within autonomism, can lean toward either the sovereigntist or the federalist camp, as Balthazar saw clearly.67 This is not to say that the third option advocates for a return to the fundamentals of French-Canadian nationalism. We are merely pointing out that the federalist spirit driving the third option has its intellectual roots in pre-1960 politics. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the context was conducive to a return of neoautonomism. For this reason – and this is the second proposition – we must distinguish between yesterday’s and today’s autonomism: in the autonomism of both Dumont and Legault, the question of Francophones outside Quebec is not taken into account. This is in contrast to traditionalist French-Canadian thinkers and federalists like Claude Ryan, who would not have repudiated autonomism. For Ryan, and for Laurendeau as well, the question of the French-speaking minorities was a barrier and an impediment to any adhesion to sovereignty.68 However, this is not the case for Dumont and Legault. Their adherence to the third option has been more for reasons of realpolitik; in other words, because it has been impossible to use referendums to acquire (economic) autonomy. As far as we know, neither Dumont nor Legault has paid any real attention to Francophones outside Quebec, even though the new Coalition avenir Québec government will be forced to take an interest in them.69 For example, in November 2018, Legault, as Quebec’s premier, had to react to the crisis that arose when Doug Ford, his Conservative counterpart in Ontario, announced the cancellation of southern Ontario’s French-language university. Legault’s interest in Francophones outside Quebec may end up being minimal, at least in the early days of a newly elected government looking to find its bearings, but a new reality to be expected is that, with issues of immigration and laicity on the table, the third option may focus even more strongly on identity. As we have seen, this shift began in the early 2000s and is a reminder that the third option is not confined to a narrow conception of federalism. However, Legault’s government has now taken on a leadership role in favour of Canadian Francophone communities by holding,

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in June 2021, the Sommet sur le rapprochement des francophonies canadiennes (summit on bringing together Canadian Francophone communities) under the aegis of the Minister responsible for Canadian Relations and the Canadian Francophonie. This is a major turning point in Coalition avenir Québec’s approach because it gives autonomism a pan-Canadian scope. As for the third proposition, the autonomism of the 2000s appears to be more of an approach than a constructed line of thought or trend, a contrast to the 1960s and 1970s, when a more extensive intellectual articulation was attempted by André Laurendeau, Léon Dion, and Solange ChaputRoland, as Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon shows in her chapter in this collection. For example, when Chaput-Roland was participating in the Pepin-Robarts Commission (1977), she put forward a number of recommendations, notably in her correspondence with constitutionalist Gérald Beaudoin, and she also spoke about the idea of associated states as a way to achieve true equality among the provinces. At the time in Canadian political debates, the third option was a core question for Quebec intellectuals who wanted to create a space for autonomy that would be distinct from both sovereigntist ideas and a type of federalism that was seen as centralizing. Today, as a “guideline” (Mario Dumont), the autonomist approach is in a different context in which the feeling of constitutional urgency has certainly faded. However, the question of context is crucial for the advocates of a third option insofar as the goal is not so much to change the course of things as it is to adapt to them. This is what Gilles Bourque rightly remarked about Action démocratique du Québec: “For Action démocratique du Québec, it seems that a political party, discourse, or ideology must embody public opinion rather than attempt to transform it, an aim of all modernity’s avant-gardes.”70 Bourque’s comments on Action démocratique du Québec also apply to Coalition avenir Québec: both political parties go with the flow; they do not aim to radically change the course of events. This approach may be criticized, but it leads us to cast a normative, not a historical, eye on the autonomist third option. In this sense, the autonomist third-option approach is positioned to make significant symbolic gains, notably with Bill 96, which proposes to amend the Constitution Act, 1867, to enshrine in it two sections: one to the effect that Quebec forms a nation and the other stating that French is Quebec’s common language. Constitutional scholar Benoît Pelletier has described this as “a unilateral assertion of nationhood.”71 This shows that the third-option approach can give results if it is used judiciously.

c o n c l u s ion The third option involves a relationship to politics which, yesterday, claimed to be a form of communitarian federalism associated with a French-Canadian national tradition but, today, claims to flow from Coalition avenir Quebec’s

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entrepreneurial pragmatism. What unites these two approaches within the third option is that both converge on the desire to find a space of autonomy for the national French-Canadian and Quebec community within the Canadian federation. In this sense, the third option rejects categorical answers. Although this might often be seen as a weakness, it can also be considered a form of flexibility, even though what some see as flexibility others may see as synonymous with compromise. To claim that the third option catch-up ideology (as Marcel Rioux might put it) “is not necessarily linked to an existential aim”72 would once again cast a negative, pejorative shadow on this political option. Although it is not as thrilling as sovereignty, those who defend it nevertheless consider it to be a positive plan with some degree of internal consistency. Its positive dimension, if we can speak in this way, is embodied in the plan and desire to make Quebec a major economic player. Action démocratique du Québec and Coalition avenir Québec have offered, each in its own manner, an answer to the problem framed more than sixty years ago by Senator Maurice Lamontagne, who wrote in Le Fédéralisme canadien: Évolution et problèmes (1954) that the situation in Quebec had to be resolved: “Quebec’s actual position is hybrid and ambiguous and cannot last. One member of a federation cannot cling indefinitely to a bygone phase of federalism while all other members desire to evolve to new forms. The way in which Quebec currently participates in the life of the Canadian federation is that of a province submitting to the drawbacks of the federation without benefiting from all its advantages, while the rest of Canada is in a hurry to attain new objectives.73 The Action démocratique du Québec–Coalition avenir Québec autonomist third option answer consists in saying that we must move on from the sovereigntist period and enter a new era that is not yet defined. Today, it remains to be seen whether Coalition avenir Québec will be able to stay the course it has set for Quebec at a time when Canadian sovereignty is being undermined by the US government, energy issues (such as pipeline construction) are driving provinces apart, migration flows are far from over, and the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau is engaged in a complex process of national reconciliation that is likely to take longer than anticipated. In short, it seems that the third option is condemned to steer in the dark and go with the flow of changing tides in Ottawa and elsewhere in Canada. notes 1 The third option can be said to be an offshoot of the nationalistic storyline about which Yvan Lamonde and Claude Corbo wrote in their introduction to the collection Le rouge et le bleu: Une anthologie de la pensée politique au Québec de la Conquête à la Révolution tranquille, ed. Yvan Lamonde and Claude Corbo (Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1999), 19.

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2 Frédéric Boily, “Le Ralliement créditiste de Camil Samson et la tentation de la troisième voie,” Bulletin d’histoire politique 2, no. 2 (2014), 176–88. 3 By “constitutional form,” we are referring to the third option of finding a way between federalism and sovereignty while also maintaining the possibility of left-right neutrality. 4 André Laurendeau, “La lutte pour l’autonomie provinciale” (8 April 1947), in Lamonde and Corbo, eds, Le rouge et le bleu, 462. (Translated from the French. Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations of French texts are by the translators of this volume.) 5 Caroline Plante, “Philippe Couillard doute que François Legault soit un vrai fédéraliste,” La Presse, 23 May 2018. Incidentally, Philippe Couillard ended his last campaign stating that Legault was not a nationalist. See: Canadian Press, “François Legault n’est pas nationaliste, selon Philippe Couillard,” Radio-Canada, 29 September 2018, https://ici.radio-canada.ca/ nouvelle/1126946/accaparement-terres-agricoles-culture-gestion-offreattaque-coalition-avenir-quebec. 6 For more information, see: Frédéric Boily, La Coalition Avenir Québec: Une idéologie à la recherche du pouvoir (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2018), 48–50. 7 Gilles Toupin, Le mirage François Legault (Montreal: vlb éditeur, 2012). 8 Louis Balthazar, “Le nationalisme autonomiste des Québécois,” in Les nationalismes au Québec du XIXe au XXIe siècle, ed. Michel Sarra-Bournet and Jocelyn Saint-Pierre (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2001), 197 (translation). 9 Jean-François Tremblay, “Le déséquilibre fiscal et le fédéralisme canadien,” in Le fédéralisme asymétrique et les minorités linguistiques et nationales, ed. Linda Cardinal (Sudbury, on : Éditions Prise de Parole, 2008), 157–70; Alain-G. Gagnon, La Raison du plus fort: Plaidoyer pour le fédéralisme multinational (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 2008). 10 Dimitrios Karmis, “Les multiples voix de la tradition fédérale et la tourmente du fédéralisme canadien,” in Le fédéralisme canadien contemporain: Fondements, traditions, institutions, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon (Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2006). 11 For Scott’s position, see: Michiel Horn, “Frank Scott, The League for Social Reconstruction, and the Constitution,” in Canadian Constitutionalism: 1791–1991, ed. Janet Ajzenstat (Ottawa: Canadian Study of Parliament Group, 1992), 213–23. 12 See: Gordon DiGiacomo and Maryantonett Flumian, eds, The Case for Centralized Federalism (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2010). 13 Dominique Foisy-Geoffroy, “Le rapport de la Commission Tremblay (1953–1956), testament politique de la pensée traditionaliste canadienne-française,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 60, no. 3 (2007): 276 (translation). 14 See the next chapter, by Jean-Philippe Carlos, in this collection.

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15 Richard Arès, “La confédération: Pacte ou loi?”, in Vers la Confédération: La construction du Canada, 1867, ed. Jacqueline Kirkorian et al., vol. 1 (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2017), 277–98. The text was first published in L’Action nationale in 1949. 16 Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon, Panser le Canada: Une histoire intellectuelle de la commission Laurendeau-Dunton (Montreal: Boréal, 2018). 17 Cited in Gilles Gauthier, “La généalogie de la position fédéraliste de Claude Ryan au Devoir,” Politique et Sociétés 29, no. 3 (2010): 80 (translation). 18 Proponents of the first view would say that universalist federalism and decentralization make it possible to meet this need for self-determination through administrative agreements in various areas deemed crucial to the development of communities. This, for example, is the kind of approach Stéphane Dion favoured when he was minister of intergovernmental affairs. 19 “The federal government underestimates Quebecers’ ability to bounce back. We are not far from the day when this will all bounce back” (translation). This was the response of Lucien Bouchard, then premier of Quebec, to those (Jean-François Lisée, for example) who opposed the idea of proposing a partnership after a referendum. Michel Corbeil and Jean-Marc Salvet, “Bouchard en confiance,” Le Soleil, 25 March 2000. 20 Jean-Marc Salvet, “L’idée de la souveraineté est mise en berne,” Le Soleil, 30 December 2009. 21 Denis Lessard, L’instinct Dumont (Quebec City: Les Éditions Voix parallèles, 2007), 359. 22 Guy Mathieu Leroux, “S’affirmer sans se séparer,” Le Soleil, 17 December 2011. 23 Guy Laforest, Pour la liberté d’une société distincte: Parcours d’un intellectuel engagé (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2004), 308. 24 Ibid., 313. 25 Action démocratique du Québec, “Mémoire: Une citoyenneté québécoise multiculturelle,” presented at the Forum national sur la citoyenneté démocratique du Québec, September 2000, p. 3 (translation). 26 Comité constitutionnel de l’Action démocratique du Québec, “Charte du Québec,” Le Devoir, 1 June 2001 (translation). 27 Robert Dutrisac, “Position constitutionnelle,” Le Devoir, 15 May 2001. 28 See: Patrick Taillon and Alexis Deschênes, “Une voie inexplorée de renouvellement du fédéralisme canadien: L’obligation constitutionnelle de négocier des changements constitutionnels,” Les Cahiers de droit 53, no. 3 (2012): 461–522. 29 Carole Beaulieu and Michel Vastel, “Le nouveau pouvoir de Mario,” L’Actualité 32, no. 8, (2007): 18–20 (translation). 30 Frédéric Boily, Mario Dumont et l’Action démocratique du Québec: Entre populisme et démocratie (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2008), 60–5. 31 Olivier de Champlain, “L’Action démocratique du Québec: Un tiers parti en quête de pouvoir,” Le Devoir, 11 July 2002.

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32 Mario Dumont, “La fin du modèle québécois,” Policy Options/Options politiques, 1 February 2003, https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/ canada-us-relations/la-fin-du-modele-quebecois. 33 Gilles Bourque, “Un duplessisme postmoderne et néolibéral?”, in À droite toute! Le programme de l’adq expliqué, ed. Jean-Marc Piotte (Montreal: Hurtubise, 2003), 201. 34 Sébastien Lévesque, “Legault, ou la difficile troisième voie,” Le Devoir, 14 November 2014 (translation). 35 Mathieu Bock-Côté, Fin de cycle: Aux origines du malaise politique québécois (Montreal: Boréal, 2012) (translation). 36 See: Boily, La Coalition Avenir Québec. 37 François Legault, Cap sur un Québec gagnant: Le projet Saint-Laurent (Montreal: Boréal, 2013). 38 Mathieu Bock-Côté, La dénationalisation tranquille (Montreal: Boréal, 2007). 39 Legault, Cap sur un Québec gagnant, 67. 40 Ibid. (translation). 41 Ibid., 69 (translation). 42 Ibid. 43 Benoit Charette, “Coalition Avenir Québec – Agir maintenant pour le Québec,” L’Action nationale, JuneSeptember 2018, https://action-nationale. qc.ca/tous-les-articles/auteur/355-numeros-publies-en-2018/juinseptembre-2018/elections-2018-le-tournant/1280-coalition-avenirquebec-agir-maintenant-pour-la-nation. 44 Legault, Cap sur un Québec gagnant, 71 (translation). 45 Ibid., 72 (translation). 46 Coalition avenir Québec, “Un nouveau projet pour les nationalistes du Québec,” submitted to Coalition avenir Québec’s general council, Laval, November 2015. 47 Ibid. (translation). 48 Ibid. (translation). 49 Charles-Émile L’Italien-Marcotte, “Erin O’Toole propose un ‘contrat’ aux Québécois,” Radio-Canada, 18 August 2021, https://ici.radio-canada.ca/ nouvelle/1817674/erin-otoole-contrat-quebecois-federalisme-partenariat. 50 Alexandre Poulin, “François Legault ou l’idéologie de rattrapage,” Le Devoir, 2 August 2018. We will come back to the normative side of the catching-up ideology in our conclusion. 51 This text can be found in Marcel Fournier, Jacques Hamel, and Julien Forgues Lecavalier, La culture comme refus de l’économisme: Écrits de Marcel Rioux (Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2010). 52 Tommy Chouinard and Denis Lessard, “Un échéancier à préciser,” La Presse+, 14 August 2018. 53 On 7 September, Legault said that once he was elected, he would have “full legitimacy to negotiate with Ottawa” and that he had “repeated often enough that [he] wanted to go and obtain powers from Ottawa.” Yet a few days later,

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in an interview with Le Téléjournal, he told journalist Céline Galipeau that he did not want to negotiate with Ottawa in the “short term.” Marc-Antoine Ménard, “Immigration: Legault ne veut pas négocier ‘à court terme’ avec Ottawa,” Radio-Canada, 18 September 2018, https://ici.radio-canada.ca/ nouvelle/1124733/immigration-legault-caq-negociations-federal-ottawacoalition-avenir-quebec (translation). Legault, Cap sur un Québec gagnant, 68 (translation). Robert Dutrisac, “Être dans le Canada sans être fédéraliste,” Le Devoir, 8 November 2016 (translation). Patrick Bellerose, “Le chef de la caq François Legault explique son virage nationaliste,” Huffington Post, 9 November 2015, https://quebec.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/11/09/entrevue-le-chef-de-la-caq-francois-legault-explique-sonvirage-nationaliste-videos_n_8513946.html (translation). Ibid. (translation). Coalition avenir Québec, “Identité et culture,” n.d., accessed 25 September 2018, https://coalitionavenirquebec.org/wp-content/ uploads/2019/06/coalitionavenirquebec-org-fr-blog-enjeux-2018.pdf (translation). Marco Bélair-Cirino, “Immigration: Legault refilerait la facture à Ottawa,” Le Devoir, 28 September 2018 (translation). However, an injunction was obtained from the Superior Court, forcing the Coalition avenir Québec government to process the files rather than delete them. In the end, the government agreed to continue processing the files until the bill was passed. Romain Schué, “Immigration: Québec accepte le maintien de l’injonction forçant le traitement des 18 000 dossiers,” Radio-Canada, 4 March 2019, https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1156332/ gouvernement-legault-quebec-immigration-entente-justice. An increase of 40,000 over the next three years, from 310,000 (2018) to 350,000 (2021). Canadian Press, “Canada to Increase Annual Immigration Admissions to 350,000 by 2021,” cbc News, 31 October 2018, https://www. cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-immigration-increase-350000-1.4886546. Jocelyne Richer and Caroline Plante, “Projet de loi 21: Québec interdit les signes religieux aux enseignants,” Canadian Press, 28 March 2019. Hugo Pilon-Larose, “Québec propose une réforme tentaculaire,” La Presse, 13 May 2021, https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/politique/2021-05-13/projetde-loi-96-sur-le-francais/quebec-propose-une-reforme-tentaculaire.php. The fact that Simon Jolin-Barrette, as Minister of Immigration, Diversity and Inclusiveness, was given the file on laicity and that mna Sonia Lebel was appointed Minister Responsible for Canadian Relations and the Canadian Francophonie (in addition to being Minister of Justice and Minister responsible for the Status of Women) seems to reflect the idea that Premier Legault has placed pragmatists in key positions. Had he really wanted to appoint a minister with a different vision, he could have looked to mna Jean-François Simard, the author of a work that somewhat resembles a third-option

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manifesto. For an analysis of Simard’s book, see: Boily, La Coalition avenir Québec, 95–7. Éric Montigny, quoted in Lessard, L’instinct Dumont, 360 (translation). That said, it is probably possible to identify a group of thinkers who are both federalist and autonomist – for example, setting aside partisan affiliations, Guy Laforest, André Burelle, and perhaps even Benoît Pelletier. Indeed, while they have been closely associated with different political parties (Action démocratique du Québec, in the case of the first, and the Liberal Party of Canada and the Liberal Party of Quebec, in the case of the other), they have been driven by a common goal: ensuring Quebec’s autonomy within the federation. Laforest’s chapter in Un Québec exilé dans la fédération: Essai d’histoire intellectuelle et de pensée politique, in which he quotes Burelle and Pelletier in support of his remarks on the divisibility of the Crown (138), is an example of this kinship between the three authors. Guy Laforest, “Fondements, complexité et ampleur du déficit fédératif au Canada,” in Un Québec exilé dans la fédération: Essai d’histoire intellectuelle et de pensée politique (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 2014), 127–66. However, we will not push the idea too far since, in his text for this collection, François Rocher describes Pelletier as a typical federalist who, while defending Quebec’s autonomy, sees only two possible options: federalism or sovereignty. Naturally, Pelletier does not advocate the status quo, and he hopes for a communitarian-inspired federalism allowing for asymmetrical arrangements based on Quebec’s unique character. Balthazar, “Le nationalisme autonomiste des Québécois,” 195–202. Here, again, we quote Gilles Gauthier: “For him, Quebec, in its very uniqueness, belongs to the larger ensemble of French Canada, of which it is the ‘fulcrum,’ ‘primary political expression,’ ‘foundation stone’ or ‘political lever.’ The existence of a French Canada outside of Quebec will, unsurprisingly, be one of the reasons that will always prevent Ryan from embracing sovereignty.” Gauthier, “La généalogie,” 83 (translation). For example, while still premier-designate, François Legault was required to attend the Francophone Summit in Yerevan, Armenia. He took the opportunity to talk about economics, stating that “better use must be made of the Francophonie to develop trade between French-speaking countries.” Christian Rioux, “Deux visions de la Francophonie au sommet d’Erevan,” Le Devoir, 12 October 2018 (translation). Bourque, “Un duplessisme postmoderne et néolibéral?”, 200 (translation). Benoît Pelletier, “Une modification de la Constitution,” Le Devoir, 29 May 2021, https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/idees/605514/ projet-de-loi-96-une-modification-souhaitable (translation). Poulin, “François Legault ou l’idéologie de rattrapage.” (translation). Quoted in Guy Laforest, “One never knows … Sait-on jamais?”, in Quebec and Canada in the New Century, ed. Michael Murphy (Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2007), 61.

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Intellectuals and the Search for a “Third Option”

6 “In seeking to digest us, the federation has become very sick”: Evolution of the Federalist Thought of Traditionalist Intellectuals in the Case of François-Albert Angers (1945–73) Jean-Philippe Carlos Federalism makes it possible to break a political body down into homogenous social groups and provide each of those groups with a form of legislation tailored to its characteristics. It is better than pure and simple separation since, with respect to certain sectors, there may be some benefits to be gained from undivided leadership of a wider group or territory, and it also makes it easier for the groups to work together towards common goals. This is why a federal system was chosen in Canada in preference to a unitary system. François-Albert Angers1

In Quebec, the intellectual history of the national question has long been studied as a dichotomy. Historians have focused mainly on key figures associated with various trends in the nationalist and sovereigntist movements; few have looked at federalist thinkers. There are many reasons for this. First, “high-flying intellectual Quebec federalists are in short supply”2 and purely federalist thinkers are rare. In addition, very few autonomist intellectuals have deeply analyzed the origins of their commitment to the federal system.3 Moreover, owing to historiographical trends, Quebec historians have been little inclined to study federalist thinking, which is why our knowledge of this facet of Quebec’s intellectual life remains little developed today.4 Yet, from an intellectual point of view, Quebec federalist thinking is a historiographical seam with untapped potential. For example, in the early twentieth century, many thinkers, in particular in traditionalist circles, advocated

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both provincial autonomy and commitment to the united Canadian whole.5 This means there was an intellectual milieu open to political ideas based on goodwill, and that there is a historiographical avenue that could teach us more about the historical roots of the federalist discourse in Quebec in the 1960s and the decades that followed. In this chapter, we will begin by looking at the traditionalists, who dominated the French-Canadian intellectual scene from the 1910s to the 1960s.6 That milieu, and its shifting stances on the national question, provides a portrait of the typical ideological restructuring that took place in the years following the Second World War. This will lead us to an analysis of the foundations and evolution of traditionalist political discourse in order to better understand how, from the 1940s to the 1970s, this ideological family gradually moved away from an orthodox conception of the 1867 Confederation Pact to an increasingly firm nationalist stand.7 This gradual abandonment of the federalist thesis can be explained by the fact that it was mainly a reaction to the centralization process undertaken by the Canadian government after the Second World War. Many intellectuals saw centralization as a betrayal of the federalist spirit, which was rooted in peaceful coexistence and the provinces’ autonomy. The traditionalist milieu reacted to increased centralization by taking a stronger nationalist stance, until a breaking point was reached at the dawn of the 1970s. For the purposes of our analysis, we will focus our attention on L’Action nationale, the magazine and organ of the Ligue d’action nationale. More specifically, we will study the thought of François-Albert Angers, director of the Ligue from 1954 to 1985 and editor of its magazine from 1959 to 1968. An icon of traditionalism, Angers played a pivotal role in reorienting the traditionalist movement in the second half of the twentieth century.8 We have done a qualitative analysis of some twenty-five texts and editorials, which he wrote between 1940 and 1970, that deal directly with the theme of our study.9 After providing a brief sketch of Angers, himself and his ideas, this chapter will discuss three periods in chronological order: the 1940s and 1950s, when the federalist thesis and the ideal of the pact between two nations were in vogue; the turn of the 1960s, when the traditionalist milieu juggled different constitutional options for the renewal of the political ties between French and English Canada; and, lastly, the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the federalist option was shelved in favour of the indépendantiste thesis.

f ran ç o is - a l b e r t a n g e r s : a li ttle-known f i g u r e in q u e b e c ’ s in t e llectual hi s tory François-Albert Angers was born in 1909 and died in 2003. He lived through most of the twentieth century and witnessed the events in Quebec over all those many years. He was also one of Quebec’s most committed and influential intellectual figures.10 The holder of a Quebec government Boursier

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d’Europe scholarship,11 he was involved in the nationalist movement’s fight against conscription in the early 1940s, and then, in the 1950s, became a leading figure in the struggle against federal centralization, in particular as special advisor to the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Constitutional Problems (1953–56). Highly regarded as a leader, Angers led the Ligue d’action nationale as its director from 1954 to 1985, and edited its magazine from 1959 to 1968. He also took an active part in the Estates General of French Canada (1965–69) and served as president of the Société Saint-JeanBaptiste de Montréal (1969–73), founding president of the Mouvement Québec français (1972–80), and vice-president of the Mouvement national des Québécois (1973–77). In addition to his exceptional involvement in the nationalist movement, Angers was a professor of economics at the Montreal School of Higher Commercial Studies (known today as hec Montréal) from 1938 to 1974. His expertise made him a valued member of various boards of directors, such as at the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal (1948–53), the Institute of Applied Economics (1949–69), the Quebec Board of Trade’s Economic Advisory Council (1955–59), and the Canadian Society of Economic Science (1968–71). Over the course of his prolific career, Angers accumulated many titles, becoming known as a fighter, leader, polemicist, missionary, intellectual, professor, and economist.12 Quebec’s national question and Angers’s training as an economist commanded his intellectual and activist engagement for almost half a century. Angers also took a strong interest in the great societal debates of his time, and French-Canadian intellectual circles were attentive to what he had to say. His intellectual engagement took several forms. For example, he disentangled the various political, cultural, social, and economic options, participated in public discussions (via magazine and newspaper articles, conferences, and radio and television interviews) and set up pressure groups to force governments to legislate on specific issues. He was also involved in various forms of political action and activism. There is no doubt that Angers had a clear grasp of the significance of intellectuals’ status in the polis! Angers had two intellectual guides: Abbé Lionel Groulx and sociologist Esdras Minville.13 Groulx’s influence on Angers can be seen in three aspects: first, the need to engage in public debate through sustained, wide-ranging national action; second, an organicist conception of the nation; and, third, political discourse rooted in defending the cultural foundations of the FrenchCanadian nation, the intellectual foundation of which was membership in a French-speaking Latin civilization devoted to the Catholic Church. Minville was Angers’s professor in the 1930s. He instilled a sense of awareness of the duties incumbent on a Catholic intellectual, which Pierre Trépanier has described as “the duty to give witness to one’s faith, to become a better person, to tell the truth, to spread the word.”14 Minville also raised Angers’s awareness of the Catholic social doctrine, which became the cornerstone

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of Angers’s intellectual engagement and activism, and of his economic theory.15 His political thought can be understood from the standpoints of both nationalism and Catholicism, a duality intrinsic to the evolution of his federalist thought. Thanks to his acute mind and deep political thinking, Angers became one of the pillars of the intellectual community of twentieth-century French Canada, and his thought spread through the world of ideas as well as that of politics, since he was often called upon as an expert. Angers is the perfect example of a traditionalist intellectual. Although his discourse would change over the years during which he engaged in public debates, certain values remained immutable.16 Moreover, his thinking evolved in harmony with French-Canadian society’s changing needs. This is why this period is interesting: it was a major stage in the evolution of traditionalism and in the overall direction of French-Canadian nationalism.17 However, to begin our analysis, we need to go back in time and look at the mid-1940s, when Angers was an autonomist nationalist and a supporter of the 1867 federating formula.

t h e f o u n d a t i ons of a u t o n o m is t f e d e r a l i s m (1945–57) At the end of the Second World War, François-Albert Angers was considered by his peers as a promising young intellectual. Even then, he already had an organicist political conception of Canadian federalism. To begin with, Angers had inherited the ideas prevalent among early twentieth-century nationalists, who saw federalism as the system that would preserve FrenchCanadian culture.18 His position was that of an autonomist, who interpreted the Canadian federation as resulting from a pact between two nations established by the Fathers of Confederation; and federalism as a system that delimited the field of action of each order of government and gave each province strict control over its own sociocultural affairs, while providing the benefits of a common economic market, a Canada-wide defence system, and a standardized monetary system.19 Angers considered that the Fathers of Confederation had intended to establish a “pluralist and non-unitary”20 mode of governance. Nevertheless, his point of view reflected a nationalist, regionalist, non-interventionist position according to which the central government was required to respect provincial autonomy to ensure that the two founding nations would flourish culturally.21 This form of federalism would be consistent with the subsidiary prerogatives of the Church’s social doctrine, according to which the preferred system of governance had to be as close as possible to the people in order to make individuals and those who govern them more politically responsible.22 His conception was also influenced by Emmanuel Mounier’s communitarian personalism,23 which, in the context of federalism, encompasses four principles: “Equivalent treatment rather than symmetrical equality for all individuals and groups; subsidiarity

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as a guiding principle for distribution of powers; non-subordination as a guiding principle for the sovereignty of orders of government; and, lastly, joint decision-making as a principle for how to govern the interdependency of partners in a federation.”24 Communitarian personalism therefore “gives moral primacy to human beings as individuals without neglecting the communities that are essential to the full development of the human personality.”25 It was largely this philosophical vision, inspired by Christian humanism, that nurtured Angers’s thought at the beginning of his career.26 Decentralization and provincial autonomy are consistent with this specific conception of community life and were among the basic foundations of Catholic intellectuals’ commitment to the federal system. It should be noted that Minville’s influence also played a role regarding the need to decentralize the Canadian political system: There are two key elements that justify decentralization of Canadian federalism. First, there are the “physical boundaries,” since Canada’s geography is highly diverse, and it is a country made up of regions with diverging and even contradictory economic aims. For example, Western Canada is mainly agricultural, while Central Canada is mostly industrial. In such conditions, it is difficult to frame an economic policy for all of Canada that would be flexible enough to take into account every region’s specific conditions and needs. Second, decentralization of the Canadian federation is necessary because of its “moral boundaries,” which stem from the sense of regional attachment and, most importantly, from the biethnic character of the country. Not only do both distinct identities manifest themselves through a legitimate aspiration to have some control over what makes up their political, cultural, social, and economic environment, but they are sometimes embodied in distinct institutions.27 Angers was also influenced by Groulx’s thought on the decentralization of the Canadian system, which was based on implacable criticism of “the attempt to achieve cultural standardization” of the two founding nations’ characters: “The political system that is in the process of being implemented in our country will not lead to unity but straight to uniformity. The ideas that currently prevail at the seat of the central government tend to limit the French language more each passing year, while remaining deaf to and ignoring the autonomy of our social, religious, and even political institutions … In most of the provinces where Anglophones are in the majority, the state has proved to be the same as in all other federations: it has tended toward uniformity, using any means, including arbitrary power.”28 In this way, Angers’s federalist thinking at the time was also marked by a kind of idealism, since he saw the Canadian federation’s formation

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not as a compromise but, truly, as a pact. For instance, Angers referred to Henri Bourassa’s famous formulation, “a pact between the two founding peoples,”29 which was the conceptual cornerstone of a number of FrenchCanadian nationalists’ commitment to federalism at the beginning of the century.30 It is interesting to note that Bourassa was one of the first great figures whose personal magnetism had an effect on Angers as a young man, when he was an activist for the Association catholique de la jeunesse canadienne-française in the La Malbaie region, in the 1920s.31 In short, traditionalist intellectuals thought that provincial autonomy would allow the French-speaking community to preserve its responsibilities and freedom of action in the tradition of the Catholic social doctrine.32 At the same time, it would ensure the survival of French-Canadian cultural and sociopolitical traditions, anchored in Catholicism and derived from a Franco-Latin civilization. In addition, federalism would make it possible to maintain social solidarity within the community since “pluralism, autonomy of the members of the society, and their joining together is a source of strength and true freedom.”33 According to Dominique Foisy-Geoffroy, this system synthesizes “Catholic anthropology, managing to reconcile the primacy of individual autonomy with the necessity of giving the society’s destiny a rational direction.”34 Until about the 1930s, Angers believed that the Canadian government had complied with the terms of the 1867 pact fairly well. However, following the Great Depression and the Second World War, the Canadian government began establishing a real welfare state that would contradict the autonomist views of French-Canadian nationalists, leading some of them to reconsider their commitment to federalism.

w h a t a u t o n o m y ? d if f erent opti ons f o r r e n e w e d f e d e r a l i s m (1957–67) In the three decades following the Second World War, the Canadian government, like the governments of all major Western powers, decided to provide the country with a strong welfare state. The goal was to raise Canadians’ standard of living by setting up social programs, which were made available by reconfiguring the tax system to give the central government considerable financial means.35 Designed following inquiries by federal commissions such as the Rowell-Sirois Commission and the Massey Commission, the social security programs targeted many different sectors.36 For example, there were programs for old-age pensions (1927), assistance for blind persons (1937), unemployment insurance (1940), family allowance (1945), hospital insurance (1961), and medical care insurance (1971), which were intended to guarantee all citizens a right to security in the event of unemployment, illness, disability, widowhood, or old age. Although those policies were appropriate in the postwar context, which was marked by a demographic explosion and unprecedented economic growth, traditionalist intellectuals

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interpreted them in a completely different manner. To them, the advent of the welfare state was a big move toward centralization and would ultimately constitute a threat to the very foundations upon which the survival of French Canada depended. At the time of Duplessis, traditionalists definitely perceived the advent of the Canadian welfare state negatively. But why? In fact, the root of the problem was ideological in nature, rooted in Christian and conservative beliefs that social issues are not the concern of those who govern. Many of those who witnessed that period, including Angers, believed that “the emphasis placed on identifying social security with the State, on there being a right to social security and on centralizing social services to some degree,”37 profoundly altered the conception of social security that had prevailed until then. It is true that, previously, the state had a rather supplementary role in organizing and funding social measures, leaving the field clear for private initiatives and charitable organizations. It is no coincidence that the Catholic Church played such a major role in the French-Canadian society until the 1960s, since it assumed a large part of the responsibility for social security.38 From that point of view, the federal government’s massive intervention went against the spirit of the pact of 1867, because its “coercive” policy penalized French Canadians economically (from a tax perspective) and jeopardized the autonomist subsidiary ideal of French-Canadian culture by introducing social programs that removed citizens’ sense of individual responsibility.39 For traditionalists, there was more to centralization than a mere administrative process intended for efficient management; it was about “eliminating” the Catholic soul of French Canada.40 Centralization was thus seen as a movement that affected the political, administrative, sociological, and economic spheres all at the same time: “Centralization is only one side of the problem with the growth of organizations. Simplistic reasoning leads us to believe that the bigger a thing is, the stronger, more resistant, and more efficient it is. On the political and administrative levels, concentrating all powers in the hands of a single person seems more efficient. It would ensure greater freedom of action as well as more timely, more coherent, better-integrated action … whereas decentralization is, on the contrary, better suited for the most immediate requirements of life. Diversity is the rule in nature … On the social level, centralization seems like a rather abstract element, an a posteriori rationalization of the way of governing human relationships so as to achieve a higher degree of efficiency.”41 The arguments in favour of greater efficiency in government administration looked like the basis of a counterintuitive discourse that would mask what was really at stake in the redesign of the Canadian state’s management model. In an article published in March 1952, Angers argued that the federal government’s plan was henceforth to “infiltrate very gradually into the rights of others in such a way that the victim can find no reason to revolt because the action will concern such a small fraction of the whole set of rights involved.

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It will keep playing this game until, through successive and cleverly measured steps, the substance of the rights has been whittled away enough so that the last bit removed leaves the people with nothing, with absolutely no recourse, and subject to ridicule were they to revolt against what will have become so little compared to what it previously conceded voluntarily.”42 In other words, the government had “switched tactics and accepted that brutal methods of assimilation should be abandoned. In the future, winning the new game would require strategy.”43 In the period in which the Canadian welfare state was being created, Angers was waging his own “war on centralization.” The series of reforms carried out by Ottawa led Angers and the traditionalists at L’Action nationale to reconsider the bases of their commitment to federalism. In 1957, influenced especially by the proceedings of the Tremblay Commission, the magazine took a different constitutional stance and began demanding special status for Quebec. The notion of special status was centred around obtaining Ottawa’s constitutional recognition of Quebec’s political and sociological distinctiveness in the Canadian federation.44 French Canadians were to be seen as a distinct nation that needed to be recognized politically in order to thrive.45 In addition, the demands for special status focused on the necessity to return areas of social, fiscal, and cultural jurisdiction to the provincial order, in line with an autonomist perspective. Although a number of French-Canadian conservative thinkers – particularly on the editorial teams of the Cahiers de Nouvelle-France and Tradition et progrès46 – also shared the desire for a special status, the proposal had little influence on the federal government’s policies, mainly because it would have been difficult to implement from a constitutional point of view.47 The traditionalist family already seemed to be losing influence by the end of the Duplessis period, but its difficulties would become even more acute during the Quiet Revolution.48 Things began changing rapidly in the 1950s. That decade saw the emergence of new intellectual factions, such as those at the political journal Cité libre and the neo-nationalists at the newspaper Le Devoir, which forced L’Action nationale to clarify its positions on the political status of Quebec. Angers debated time and again with the Cité libre contributors during this period, in particular Pierre Elliott Trudeau. The sticking point between the two concerned the fact that Trudeau had a positive view of centralization and a negative opinion of traditionalist ideology.49 With the election of the Lesage government in 1960, the appropriation of nationalist political culture at Quebec’s highest levels of decision-making, in particular within the Unionist government of Daniel Johnson,50 and the dawn of the Quiet Revolution, Angers was forced to find an original way to compensate for traditionalism’s lack of popularity. This became his responsibility as several of the leading activists for

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the traditionalist ideology had retired, and he found himself at the head of the ideological family. At the same time, in the 1960s, the federal government was continuing to expand the Canadian welfare state and create new areas of government intervention. These included retraining for the unemployed, the creation of the Department of Industry (which would include regional development agencies), federal contributions to municipal financing through the establishment of a municipal loan program, the creation of the Economic Council of Canada, the foundation of the Canada Development Corporation, federal intervention in natural resource development, and the establishment of a universal, contribution-based old-age pension plan.51 Angers saw those reforms as evidence that the centralization movement was gearing up following the death of Duplessis, who had managed to limit the Canadian government’s intervention in Quebec affairs for a time. The negotiations surrounding the patriation of the Constitution and the proposed Fulton-Favreau formula prompted Angers to strengthen his position, because the federal government’s political actions demonstrated its desire to enshrine the principle of centralization in the Constitution.52 That is how, in 1964, L’Action nationale came to take an avant-garde stance in favour of the associated states formula, defining it as: “The means to reach a true pact in which the two nations must be associated as equals to form one single country and in which the legal foundations of the association, and the Constitution of the country, must reflect its nature. In the framework of Canada’s history, it can only be the association of two states: one, the expression of the national will of French Canadians, and the other, the expression of the national will of English Canadians.”53 Angers’s conception of associated states was in line with the definition of renewed federalism described by Richard Arès in the Tremblay Commission’s report. The definition was based on three key principles: 1 Establishing an order that, to the full extent justified by the underlying philosophical concepts, avoids concentration of powers; 2 Organizing social life to maximize freedom of initiative; and 3 Creating political associations able to carry out certain tasks together without sacrificing the distinctive identity of the associates, especially when they have different conceptions of life and social organization.54 In a nutshell, the associated states formula was aimed at ensuring Quebec’s sovereignty politically, socially, and culturally while giving it access to a common market and a unified monetary system. This position became popular in various intellectual and political circles in the 1960s, in particular among the Union nationale and the Parti Québécois milieux.55

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t he e n d o f a n id e a l : f e d e rali sm abandoned f o r i n d é p e n d a n t i s m e (1967–73) Although L’Action nationale promoted the associated states option until the end of the 1960s, many factors led the traditionalists to abandon it at the turn of the 1970s. There were a number of reasons for the decision. First, the proceedings of the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission revealed the serious political crisis that Canada was experiencing on the eve of its centenary.56 In the Commission’s preliminary report, issued in 1965, the concerns of its members were tangible: Canada is in the most critical period of its history since Confederation. We believe that there is a crisis, in the sense that Canada has come to a time when decisions must be taken and developments must occur leading either to its break-up, or to a new set of conditions for its future existence … The previous conflicts did not seriously threaten the fundamentals of the state. The crisis today is of a different order … The chief protagonists, whether they are entirely conscious of it or not, are Frenchspeaking Quebec and English-speaking Canada. And it seems to us to be no longer the traditional conflict between a majority and a minority. It is rather a conflict between two majorities: that which is a majority in all Canada, and that which is a majority in the entity of Quebec.57 When the report was published, it had a major impact all across the country, but especially in French-Canadian intellectual circles, since the commissioners supported the thesis of a historical disaccord between French and English Canadians. The Commission’s preliminary conclusions, which stated that the federal government’s inaction with regard to Quebec’s demands only widened the gap between the two solitudes,58 were not much of a surprise to Angers. The Estates General of French Canada’s assizes of 1966 and 1967 confirmed the crisis. During the sittings, French-speaking Quebecers expressed a strong desire for self-determination in order to ensure their future as a collectivity.59 Angers himself made the preliminary declaration at the sitting of 24 September 1967,60 asserting on behalf of the constituent assembly that 1 French Canadians constitute a nation; 2 Quebec constitutes the national territory and the basic political environment of this nation; and 3 The French-Canadian nation has the right to self-determination and to freely choose the political system under which it wishes to live.61 By supporting the assembly’s stance, Angers took a crucial step in his intellectual evolution. Though he was not quite yet an indépendantiste, his

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reflections nevertheless brought him to strongly consider that option, like many conservative nationalists at the time.62 Angers’s views started changing in 1967. He who had once envisioned that French Canada would extend to the whole of North America now redirected his focus to Quebec alone. He eventually “abandoned” the French-speaking minorities outside Quebec, as did many activists of his time. In the end, Angers’s preliminary declaration was a final warning to the federal government to rebuild bridges between the two solitudes. As there was no real consideration of Quebec’s demands, the independence option became the only way out. Another important element to consider, with respect to the traditionalists’ constitutional position in the 1960s, is their fear of seeing the nationalist ideal taken over and hijacked by left-wing separatist movements. Starting at the beginning of the decade, many groups formed to advance the cause of an independent Quebec, such as the Rassemblement pour l’indépendance nationale, the splinter group Front de libération du Québec, and Parti pris magazine, to name only the most prominent. In fact, these groups, the leaders of which were mainly young baby boomers, embraced fashionable theories associated with postcolonialism, Marxism-Leninism, and existentialism. Angers considered that the young activists’ demands betrayed the historical spirit of nationalism because they were based on realities extrinsic to Quebec, tended toward utopian ideals, and showed a certain contempt for traditional French Canada: “We are faced with a faction that does not accept French Canada on the ideological and social levels any more than Anglo-Canadians accept it with regard to political equality. The independence the faction is looking for is that of a country that does not yet exist and whose policies have no roots; it is a country that would be created under foreigners’ fire, fighting for its independence.”63 Three elements finally managed to convince the traditionalist family to embrace the indépendantiste plan in the late 1960s. First, a number of young economists, including Jacques Parizeau and Pierre Harvey, demonstrated the relative economic viability of the independence option, and this had the effect of comforting many nationalists who had been skeptical about complete separation from the rest of Canada.64 Like any economist worth his salt, Angers also ended up using economic arguments to justify taking a stand in favour of independence. That certainly reassured many activists, who worried what might happen if the province separated from the rest of Canada: Quebec is not thriving economically within the Confederation. One may argue that it would not thrive outside it either, but considering the resources at its disposal and the example of what other countries can do with much less, there is some reason to seriously doubt that argument. If Quebec were to stay, it would be its very presence within the great whole that is Canada that would inevitably condemn it to decline, whereas if it were a free state, it would find a whole range of opportunities to do better, like other countries that are free to manage

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their resources with no other concern than their own interest. In this case, and in contrast to what we hear, what makes independence necessary and urgent is – even more than the political concern – the economic concern. It is claimed that the economy should be considered as a major concern and not be sacrificed to supposedly “bourgeois” ideals (freedom, dignity, independence). Concern for the economy would be even more of a reason if we are worried about injuring the much less noble interest in personal success. In the end, considering the economic situation Canada has placed us in, achieving independence as soon as possible is crucial for the economic future of Quebec.65 Second, the rapid growth of the Parti Québécois, which had tens of thousands of members and supporters by the end of the 1960s, was also proof of the popularity of the independence option among the younger generation. Although Angers was initially unenthusiastic about the Parti Québécois’ proposals, he nevertheless changed his tune when he realized how strongly the party appealed to nationalist activists from all walks of life. Third, Ottawa refused to consider Quebec’s political grievances seriously, despite the insistence of various stakeholders and politicians. This finally convinced Angers and the nationalists at L’Action nationale to turn their backs on Canada and embrace the indépendantiste cause at the beginning of the 1970s.66 In their eyes, “proponents of federalism in Canada have only backward arguments against Quebec’s separation.”67 Angers came to the conclusion that “Quebec is necessarily central in the considerations that affect us all, whatever party or social class we belong to: our distinctive identity, language, way of life, and desire to be governed accordingly.”68 This shift in position was logical. It drew on the idea that a pro-independence plan anchored in the nation’s cultural traditions would have good chances of winning over a significant number of conservative nationalist activists, who remained reluctant to endorse the independence option because of its radical orientation. This position was also in line with that of the Parti Québécois’ conservative wing, which had been born out of the former Ralliement national and Union nationale parties, and shared the conservative views of L’Action nationale.69 The ties between these two factions became very important when the magazine officially started supporting the Parti Québécois at the time of the 1973 election, which reflected a form of continuity of the traditionalist ideal that would be partly integrated into the Parti Québécois’ great separatist family.70

c o n c l u s ion For a long time, intellectual traditionalists held an original but little-known federalist position which demonstrated conservative circles’ commitment to the Canadian political plan. The traditionalists’ position, better known as

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“autonomism,” was consistent with both French-Canadian nationalism and Canadian federalism. With Ottawa’s refusals to negotiate a new constitutional status for Quebec and the rise of more radical nationalist and separatist groups, part of the traditionalist movement gradually turned away from federalism. In the space of about two decades, traditionalist political thinking underwent a surprising transformation, reflecting the “acceleration of history” that is so frequently referred to in historiography when discussing the 1960s in Quebec and the West.71 It seems to us that French-Canadian and Quebec conservatism is an area of research that has great potential for learning more about federalist thinking in Quebec. It is a field of historiography that is worth exploring to better understand the Quebec community’s attachment to Canada as a greater whole. Over the last twenty years, a number of specialists of the “new sensitivity” have studied conservatism as it was manifested in the first half of the twentieth century, but few studies have focused on the various trends in that ideology in the second half of the century. This is in some ways related to the persistence of the myth that there was a break in the 1960s, and that all traces of conservatism were wiped out in Quebec. There certainly would be scientific interest in revisiting this historical period, the better to understand the ascent of the various conservative groups and political parties in the early twenty-first  century. The electoral success that Mario Dumont’s Action démocratique du Québec enjoyed in the 2000s, and the fact that the Coalition avenir Québec won a majority government in both the 2018 and 2022 general elections, are indicative of enduring federalist and autonomist discourse that clearly rests on conservative foundations.72 We believe that these political phenomena are far from recent and that they are deeply rooted in the political and intellectual history of post–Quiet Revolution Quebec. This is food for thought for scholars, especially those who wish to gain a better understanding of the recent evolution of issues related to constitutional matters. notes 1 François-Albert Angers, La sécurité sociale et les problèmes constitutionnels (Province of Quebec: Royal Commission of Inquiry on Constitutional Problems, 1955), vol. 1, app. 3, p. 20. 2 Quoted in Louis Cornellier, “Grandeur et misère de l’ambivalence,” Le Devoir, 4 November 2006. (Translated from the French. Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations of French texts are by the translators of this volume.) 3 André Laurendeau, Lionel Groux, and Henri Bourassa are the figures historiography most commonly associates with twentieth-century French-Canadian autonomist discourse. See: Denis Monière, André Laurendeau et le destin d’un peuple (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 1983); Donald J. Horton, André

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Laurendeau: La vie d’un nationaliste, 1912–1968 (Montreal: Les Éditions Bellarmin, 1995); Charles-Philippe Courtois, Lionel Groulx: Le penseur le plus influent de l’histoire du Québec (Montreal: Éditions de l’Homme, 2017); and Réal Bélanger, Henri Bourassa: Le fascinant destin d’un homme libre (1968–1914) (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2013). For example, Yvan Lamonde only scratches the surface of the ideological foundations of Quebec federalist thinking in his overviews of intellectual history. In the second volume of La modernité au Québec (1939–1965), Lamonde limits himself to a (rather succinct) study of “Cité-libriste” thinking as an example of Quebec federalist thinking in the 1960s. He also shows no interest in the intellectual foundations of autonomist thinking, which is based on attachment to the federal system. Lamonde mainly explores the intellectual territory of French-Canadian and Quebec nationalism, which has a significantly greater number of representatives. See: Yvan Lamonde, La modernité au Québec: La crise de l’homme et de l’esprit, 1929–1939 (Montreal: Fides, 2011); Yvan Lamonde, La modernité au Québec: La victoire différée du présent sur le passé, 1939–1965 (Montreal: Fides, 2016). The main historiographical currents and schools that began to emerge in Quebec in the 1970s also did not give much room to Quebec federalist thinking, aside from some exceptions related, in particular, to the “Nouvelle sensibilité” (Dominique Foisy-Geoffroy, Xavier Gélinas). Some advocates of that approach took into account – to varying degrees – the political foundations of French-Canadian traditionalism and conservatism. On this, see: Dominique Foisy-Geoffroy, “Les idées politiques des intellectuels traditionalistes canadiens-français, 1940–1960” (PhD diss., Université Laval, 2008); Xavier Gélinas, La droite intellectuelle québécoise et la Révolution tranquille (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2007). Pascale Ryan, Penser la nation: La Ligue d’action nationale, 1917–1960 (Montreal: Leméac, 2006). Pierre Trépanier associates traditionalism with a system of thought inherited mainly from nineteenth-century French Catholic ultramontane currents reshaped according to the French-Canadian cultural and historical context. Nevertheless, he emphasizes that “every national experience leads to a specific type of traditionalism” and that every nation has a tradition that is unique in itself, a specific and distinctive tradition that varies from a national system to another. Xavier Gélinas argues that traditionalism is not only a form of s ensitivity, but also a system of thought based on a specific structure of values. From this angle, intellectual traditionalists believed in both a superior divine order and also a natural order of things. In their eyes, humans are fundamentally flawed and came into the world neither free nor equal to their fellows; hence the need for harmony and authority, and for ruling classes (an elite) whose duty was to guide society’s development. Intellectual traditionalists also preferred “settling at the expense of venturing,” and tradition to “the blank slate of the past.” This sensitivity was combined with fundamental cultural

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values, which makes it possible to identify clearly the characteristics of the traditionalist doctrine. French-Canadian intellectual traditionalists were deeply attached to the Catholic religion and believed in a superior spiritual order that acted as a guide in temporal concerns. This form of traditionalism was also founded on the paramount importance of the family structure, which “re-creates, on a smaller scale, the ideal society through a hierarchy of competencies and rights held by parents and children, with the principle of authority embodied in the father, the mother as pacifying, and the transmission of traditions and values.” Importance was also given to survival of the French language, considered as a true vehicle for transmitting and spreading FrenchCanadian culture, and also as a reflection of that culture. In addition, the Laurentian territory, seen as French Canadians’ “national homeland,” was also integrated into the traditionalist collective imaginary. Lastly, the primacy given to rural areas, which were, according to the traditionalist doctrine, the “nation’s stronghold,” an impenetrable defence against the influence of the United States and the guardian of the nation’s ancestral ideals (all quotes translated from the French). See: Pierre Trépanier, “Qu’est-ce que le traditionalisme?”, group discussion, Club du 3 juillet, Montreal, 8 June 2002; Gélinas, La droite intellectuelle québécoise. Note that François-Albert Angers and L’Action nationale defended similar political and constitutional positions during the period in question. We have also taken into consideration the appendices signed by Angers – mainly concerned with centralization, taxation, and social security – in the three-part report by the Tremblay Commission. Despite the fact that Angers’s intellectual career spanned the 1930s to the 1980s, very few specialists have turned their attention to it. The main studies regarding Angers are the following: John Grube, Bâtisseur de pays: La pensée de François-Albert Angers (Montreal: Action nationale, 1981); Pascale Ryan, “La pensée économique de François-Albert Angers de 1937 à 1960: La recherche de la troisième voie” (master’s thesis, Université du Québec à Montréal, 1993); Stéphane St-Pierre, “François-Albert Angers et la nation confessionnelle (1937–1960)” (master’s thesis, Université de Montréal, 2006). Note that the PhD dissertation of the author of this article examines Angers’s intellectual path. Jean-François Nadeau, “Perspectives: Le pays d’Angers,” Le Devoir, 16 July 2003. Ibid. European and American thinkers also clearly influenced Angers’s federalist thinking, even though they cannot be considered as having shaped his thought, strictly speaking. Emmanuel Mounier was of them. He was a great inspiration to Angers, who was drawn to personalism when he was studying in Paris in the 1930s. Angers also regularly quoted Russell Gordon-Smith, George Homans, Lewis Mumford, and Adolph Wagner in his writings – in particular, in the texts published in the Tremblay Commission Report. Trépanier, “Qu’est-ce que le traditionalisme?”, 18–21 (translation).

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15 “Entretien avec François-Albert Angers,” in Jean-Marc Léger, “Présentation du dossier François-Albert Angers, l’économiste et le combattant,” Les Cahiers d’histoire du Québec au XXe siècle, no. 5 (Spring 1996): 60–2. 16 In particular, because of his attachment to the Catholic religion, which can be seen in his writing all the way up to the very end of his working life as an intellectual, in the late 1980s. Much like Lionel Groulx, Angers strongly believed that if French Canada was not Catholic, it would not exist (“le Canada français sera catholique ou ne sera pas”). 17 A number of researchers have shown that Quebec nationalism was “apolitical” until the mid-twentieth century because of its essentially cultural ambitions. In that regard, see the well-known study by André-J. Bélanger, L’apolitisme des idéologies québécoises: Le grand tournant de 1934–1936 (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1974). 18 Michel Bock, “Des braises sous les cendres: L’Ontario français et le projet national canadien-français au lendemain des États généraux (1969–1991),” in Retour sur les États généraux du Canada français: Continuités et ruptures d’un projet national, ed. Jean-François Laniel and Joseph-Yvon Thériault (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2016), 150. 19 François-Albert Angers, La centralisation et les relations fédérales-provinciales (Province of Quebec: Royal Commission of Inquiry on Constitutional Problems, 1955), app. 11, p. 19. 20 Ibid., 101 (translation). 21 François-Albert Angers, “Les antécédents du rapport Massey-Lévesque: Deux modèles d’inconscience: Le Premier Saint-Laurent et le Commissaire Lévesque,” L’Action nationale, November 1951, 202. 22 The Catholic Church’s social doctrine is a set of principles defined in the encyclicals by Leo XIII (Rerum Novarum, 1891) and Pius XI (Quadragesimo Anno, 1931). Overall, they are the Catholic Church’s response to the challenges of industrial modernity. They show concern, in particular, for the fate of the working class, which was then considered the victim of rampant capitalism. Pius XI preached in favour of Christian humanism, denounced the uncontrolled abuses of the capitalist economy, and drew attention to the dangers of the socialist system, which promoted the class struggle and overthrow of the established order. The Church advocated for better collaboration between employers and workers, insisted that everyone had moral and social responsibilities, and stressed the state’s necessary role in providing assistance. In short, it was a philosophy focused on respect for human dignity. On the Catholic social doctrine, see: Charles Maignen, La doctrine sociale de l’Église d’après les encycliques de Léon XIII, Pie X, Pie XI, de 1891 à 1931 (Paris: Téqui, 1933); Pierre Bigo, La doctrine sociale de l’Église: Recherche et dialogue (Paris: Les Presses Universitaires de France, 1965); Roger Beaudoin, Doctrine sociale de l’Église: Une histoire contemporaine (Paris: Cerf, 2012). 23 Emmanuel Mounier, Le personnalisme (Paris: Les Presses Universitaires de France, 1949).

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24 Guy Laforest and Rosalie Readman, “Plus de détresse que d’enchantement: les négociations constitutionnelles de novembre 1981 vues du Québec,” in Le nouvel ordre constitutionnel du rapatriement de 1982 à nos jours, ed. François Rocher and Benoît Pelletier (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2013), 62–3 (translation). See also André Burelle’s “Reflections by an Old Veteran of the Canadian Constitutional Debate” in this collection. 25 Laforest and Readman, “Plus de détresse que d’enchantement,” 62 (translation). 26 François-Albert Angers, “Pour servir la personne humaine,” L’Action nationale, October 1944, 81–100. 27 Esdras Minville, quoted in Dominique Foisy-Geoffroy, Esdras Minville: Nationalisme économique et catholicisme social au Québec durant l’entredeux-guerres (Quebec City: Septentrion, 2004), 138–9 (translation). 28 Lionel Groulx, quoted in Frédéric Boily, La pensée nationaliste de Lionel Groulx (Quebec City: Septentrion, 2003), 86–7 (translation). 29 François-Albert Angers, “La situation ce soir … sur le front fédéralprovincial,” L’Action nationale, March 1947, 183; François-Albert Angers, “L’Ontario a signé,” L’Action nationale, November 1952, 147. 30 Boily, La pensée nationaliste de Lionel Groulx, 85. According to Boily, Bourassa referred to a pact with two components: a “national contract between two founding peoples and a political contract between two provinces” (translation). On the notion of a “pact” between the two founding peoples of Canada, see also: Stéphane Paquin, L’invention d’un mythe: Le pacte entre deux peuples fondateurs (Montreal: vlb éditeur, 1999). 31 François-Albert Angers, “Mesure de l’influence du chanoine Groulx sur son milieu,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 32, no. 3 (1978): 358. Angers said, “as I was from the Charlevoix region, and not from Montreal, I did not take part in all the nationalist activity that was associated with the rising popularity of Abbé Groulx from 1917 on, and I knew little about it. I was involved in my region’s acjc ’s activities, but there was little talk of Groulx in those remote parts of Québec. Henri Bourassa was the great prophet” (translation). 32 François-Albert Angers, “Catholicisme et centralisation,” L’Action nationale, June 1948, 425–36. 33 Foisy-Geoffroy, Les idées politiques, 168 (translation). Angers wrote substantially on the growth of community bonds and social solidarity through the prism of decentralizing federalism. He was influenced by the work of historian Louis Lachance, who studied the relationship between Catholic philosophy and political democracy. In this regard, see: Angers, La centralisation, 19. 34 Ibid. (translation). 35 Michael J. Prince and James J. Rice, Changing Politics of Canadian Social Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 40–51. 36 Ibid., 54. See also: Mireille McLaughlin, “Par la brèche de la culture: Le Canada français et le virage culturel de l’État canadien, 1949–1963,”

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International Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue internationale d’études canadiennes, nos 45–6 (2012): 141–61. Angers, La sécurité sociale, 10 (translation). On this, see: Amélie Bourbeau, Techniciens de l’organisation sociale: La réorganisation de l’assistance catholique privée à Montréal (1930–1974) (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015). Angers, La sécurité sociale, 203. François-Albert Angers, “Les solutions du rapport Massey – III: À qui la faute?”, L’Action nationale, May 1952, 270–2. Angers, La centralisation, 7, 18 (translation). François-Albert Angers, “Un problème mal posé,” L’Action nationale, March 1952, 107–8 (translation). Angers, “Les solutions du rapport Massey,” 262 (translation). In an article published in 1965, Jesuit Richard Arès provided a very clear, relevant explanation of the conceptual foundations of special status. See: Richard Arès, “Le statut particulier, minimum vital pour le Québec,” L’Action nationale, June 1965, 979–98. François-Albert Angers, “Pierre Elliott Trudeau et La grève de l’amiante (première partie): Réflexions préliminaires,” L’Action nationale, September 1957, 10–22. Gélinas, La droite intellectuelle québécoise, 316. Gustave Lamarche and Albert Roy were the intellectuals associated with these periodicals who most explicitly expressed their commitment to the special status formula. This can also be seen with the failed Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords of the 1980s and 1990s, which shows how hard it is to implement special status from a constitutional point of view. This was especially clear during the ideological crisis, when neonationalists and traditionalists conflicted within the Ligue d’action nationale itself and its magazine. The crisis lasted from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s and remained a lasting burden on the movement, which struggled to heal its wounds and make its voice heard publicly during this period. On this, see Ryan, Penser la nation. See: Angers, “Pierre Elliott Trudeau et La grève de l’amiante (première partie),” 10; François-Albert Angers, “Pierre Elliott Trudeau et La grève de l’amiante (deuxième partie): Confusion et généralisations hâtives,” L’Action nationale, October 1957, 87; François-Albert Angers, “Pierre Elliott Trudeau et La grève de l’amiante (troisième partie): Les défauts de notre société,” L’Action nationale, November 1957, 299. Nevertheless, it is surprising to note that Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s interpretation of personalism led him to adopt a centralizing conception of federalism as opposed to Angers’s decentralizing view. It seems ideologies can sometimes be interpreted in different ways, depending on one’s intellectual background. In his 1965 book Égalité ou indépendance, Daniel Johnson argued for the associated states thesis, which Angers endorsed for a time. Johnson claimed

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there was a right to “equality both for Canada’s French-speaking minorities and for Quebec’s English-speaking minority, Quebecers’ right to selfdetermination and to develop normally according to their distinct ethnic and cultural identities within a clearly defined legal, political and institutional framework, a right to real recognition of French Canadians as one of the two founding peoples of Canada and, as a result, of Quebec’s special status and of their national homeland, and broader recognition of French as one of the two official languages” (translation). This position appealed to nationalist activists like Angers. See: Daniel Johnson, Égalité ou indépendance (Montreal: Éditions Renaissance, 1965), 105. For a historical study of the constitutional stances of the Union nationale under Johnson, see: Éric Bélanger, “‘Égalité ou indépendance’: L’émergence de la menace de l’indépendance politique comme stratégie constitutionnelle du Québec,” Globe: Revue internationale d’études québécoises 2, no. 1 (1999): 117–38. François-Albert Angers, “La phase du mouvement dans les relations fédérales-provinciales,” L’Action nationale, November 1964, 226–7. Note that a number of these political initiatives by the federal government clashed with Quebec’s desires because the province was already legislating in the same sense. On this, see: David Meren, With Friends Like These: Entangled Nationalisms and the Canada-Quebec-France Triangle, 1944–1970 (Vancouver: ubc Press, 2012). The Fulton-Favreau formula involved amending the Constitution to give all provinces the right to reject any amendment that would expand the power of any one of them. Quebec’s nationalist elite saw it as stratagem to hamstring Quebec’s claims, making it unable to change its status. While the Lesage government initially supported the formula, it was forced to back off due to public outcry. In January 1966, Lesage withdrew Quebec’s support, causing it to fail. All across Canada, the failure caused dissent and deepened the divide between the orders of government. Regarding Angers’s position on the Fulton-Favreau formula, see: François-Albert Angers, “Rapatriement ou dépaysement?”, L’Action nationale, February 1962, 453–65. François-Albert Angers, “Les États associés, formule d’indépendance,” L’Action nationale, June 1965, 964 (translation). Richard Arès, cited in Angers, La sécurité sociale, 13 (translation). The associated states thesis was promoted by Daniel Johnson’s Union nationale party in the mid-1960s. In its first political platforms, the Parti Québécois drew inspiration from L’Action nationale’s theorizations of associated states. On this, see: Jean-Philippe Carlos, “‘Le temps des revues est peut-être passé?’: Les réseaux intellectuels indépendantistes face au Parti québécois (1967–1971),” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 72, no. 1 (2018): 5–29. On the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission, see: Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon, Panser le Canada: Une histoire intellectuelle de la commission LaurendeauDunton (Montreal: Boréal, 2018).

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57 André Laurendeau and Davidson Dunton, eds, A preliminary report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1965): 133–5. 58 François-Albert Angers, “Le premier rapport Laurendeau-Dunton,” L’Action nationale, April 1965, 830–2. 59 Regarding the Estates General of French Canada, see: Laniel and Thériault, Retour sur les États généraux. 60 Sources on the subject are scarce, but it is reasonable to assume that Angers was chosen to speak because of his stature as an intellectual and his influence on the political and economic scenes. His symbolic and social capital was also very strong in the nationalist movement in the late 1960s. 61 Reproduced in Jean Genest, “Les États généraux,” L’Action nationale, January 1968, 488–502. English translation: Marc Chevrier, Selected Texts on Québec Democracy (Quebec City: Ministère des Relations internationales, 2000), 82. 62 On this, see: Michael D. Behiels, Canada’s Francophone Minority Communities: Constitutional Renewal and the Winning School of Governance (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004), 55. 63 François-Albert Angers, “Encore un parti indépendantiste,” L’Action nationale, November 1964, 288 (translation). 64 Pierre Duchesne, Jacques Parizeau, Tome 1: Le croisé (1930–1970) (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 2001), 481. 65 François-Albert Angers, “Le Québec est acculé à l’indépendance,” L’Action nationale, September 1973, 20–1 (translation). 66 It must be said that when Pierre Elliott Trudeau, an antinationalist centralizing federalist, came to power in April 1968, it did nothing to reassure nationalist activists about the chances of seeing a new constitutional agreement between Quebec and Ottawa. 67 François-Albert Angers, “Le fédéralisme canadien: Une théorie non seulement par les faits, mais théoriquement retardataire,” L’Action nationale, March 1974, 524 (translation). 68 Ibid. (translation). 69 Janie Normand, “L’indépendance à droite: L’histoire politique du Regroupement national et du Ralliement national entre 1964 et 1968” (master’s thesis, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2010). 70 Note also that several members of the Ligue d’action nationale and the various Sociétés Saint-Jean-Baptiste joined the Parti Québécois in the 1970s. 71 On the acceleration of history in the 1960s, see: Jean-François Sirinelli, Les baby-boomers: Une génération (1945–1969) (Paris: Fayard, 2003). 72 On this, see the text by Frédéric Boily in this collection.

7 “Paving the Boulevard of Fraternity”: The Federalist Thought of Solange Chaput-Rolland Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon And if one day I am certain that there is no third way,1 that my fellow citizens do not wish to change their mindset and political behaviour at all, then I will go back home, having nonetheless acquired considerable experience, and I will say, with the same voice, strong and clear: Sirs, we are taking leave of one another now. You take the Canadian Road, because you do not want any other one, and I will take the Chemin du Québec, because I have not succeeded in paving the boulevard of fraternity. Solange Chaput-Rolland2

Written just before she began serving as a member of the Task Force on Canadian Unity (the Pepin-Robarts Commission), this passage, from the conclusion to Lettres ouvertes à 13 personnalités politiques, proclaims Solange Chaput-Rolland’s persevering hope to find a compromise between centralizing federalism and Quebec sovereignty. A proponent of this “third way” solution, Chaput-Rolland was not alone in thinking about and framing the foundations of what it could look like if there were asymmetrical federalism giving Quebec special status. Throughout Quebec’s history, there have been many forms of this third way, advocated by intellectuals such as André Laurendeau, Gertrude Laing, and Léon Dion, and in the work of commissions of inquiry, such as the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission (1963–71) and the Pepin-Robarts Commission (1977–79). In 1940, the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations submitted its report (the Rowell-Sirois Report), recommending greater intervention by the federal government. As the federal welfare state developed, in an effort to create a social safety net after the Great Depression in the 1930s, people spoke out to challenge this form of federalism, which they considered centralizing and as infringing

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on provincial jurisdictions. Through the creation of the first unemployment insurance program in 1940, the monopolization of income tax from 1941 to 1954, and federal funding given to the provinces during the postwar period in areas of social assistance, health care, and higher education, the federal government began behaving more and more like a national government. That government, in which almost all the high-profile positions were held by Anglophones and which communicated publicly in English only,3 did not represent all citizens. This led many people to begin imagining a form of federalism that would be more respectful of Canada’s linguistic, historical, and cultural duality. While Quebec’s independence seemed to some to be the only way to gain emancipation from Anglo domination, others believed in a deep reform of federalism that would make it possible for the distinct society embodied by Quebec to express itself. These proponents of the third way based their hopes on the constitutional negotiations that were at the heart of Canadian political life from the 1960s to the years of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords. Unable to bring themselves to leave Canada even though they considered it deeply imperfect, they were supported by many who believed firmly in the possibility of fixing Canadian federalism. Revision of the 1867 compromise, distinct society recognition, asymmetrical federalism, new sharing of powers, abolition of the disallowance and reservation rights: the reformers considered many solutions. Here, we will look at the contribution of one of the most enthusiastic believers in the third way: Solange Chaput-Rolland. We will analyze both her federalist thought and her engagement in the field, in particular, as a member of the Pepin-Robarts Commission.4 As historian Olivier Lemieux has shown in his article on Léon Dion and the third way, this position was sometimes difficult to defend against those who preached the status quo as well as those who promoted the separation of Quebec. Lemieux says the following of Dion: “Constantly seeking a way to tie his liberal ideals to his homeland, Quebec, he was one of the rare intellectuals able to look at the Ancien and Nouveau regimes fairly and in an informed manner. However, contrary to other intellectuals of his generation, he chose a way that was neither the constitutional status quo nor Quebec independence.”5 Unlike Lemieux, we think that Dion was representative of his generation, which was marked by the work of two landmark inquiries – the LaurendeauDunton and Pepin-Robarts commissions – which brought intellectuals together around the quest for a third way. By taking Chaput-Rolland as an example, we will also be able to see the aspirations of those who placed Quebec at the heart of their priorities while not wishing to abandon federal ties. Few works and studies have focused on Chaput-Rolland’s thought and writings.6 In fact, political and intellectual history has long had little room for the women whose thought helped shape Canada. It is therefore time to revisit the contributions of this committed intellectual, who devoted her career to thinking about ways to amend the federation.

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s o l a n g e c h a p u t - r o l land, her ti me, a n d t h e n e e d f o r reconci li ati on Born in Montreal in 1919, into a milieu that she herself described as “bourgeois,” Solange Chaput fell in love with reading when she was very young.7 She dreamed of becoming a writer despite the misgivings of her father, who did not consider it appropriate for a young woman to seek such a career. In 1955, following studies at the Sorbonne and the Institut catholique de Paris, she and journalist Andréanne Lafond founded the anti-Duplessis, anticlerical, nationalist, pro-union monthly magazine Points de vue.8 Unable to remain on the sidelines in the face of the events that were shaking Quebec at the time of the Quiet Revolution, she dove into action. Her pen quickly became one her weapons. In Points de vue, she addressed topics that were to mark modern-day Quebec – in particular, the struggles for laicity and freedom of expression.9 When the Points de vue adventure ended in the early 1960s, Chaput-Rolland remained committed and found other outlets. Wishing to understand the new Quebec nationalism at the dawn of the decade and to establish a dialogue with Anglophone Canada before it was too late, Chaput-Rolland began corresponding with English-Canadian author Gwethalyn Graham. Their exchange of letters led to the 1963 publication of Dear Enemies.10 According to journalist Judith Jasmin, their dialogue on the issues of the day, such as biculturalism, duality, and bilingualism, was intended as the preamble to the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism,11 which was created in 1963 to inquire into the tense relations between the “two founding peoples.”12 The work done by ChaputRolland and Graham, who were trying to understand their differences and prejudices in order to transcend them, was part of a reconciling movement characteristic of the decade.13 Faced with the rise of Quebec nationalism and the Canadian quest for identity, many intellectuals were worried about the fate of the country and wanted to bring the “two solitudes” closer together before the federation fell apart. In addition to Chaput-Rolland and Graham’s efforts at understanding, there was a multitude of initiatives, such as those of the Congress on Canadian Affairs, a series of conferences held and publications undertaken by Université Laval students to re-examine the Canadian experience and find ways to move forward that would integrate Canada’s linguistic and cultural duality.14 It was a time of exchange and of more self-aware interaction between French and English Canada. For many, changes were required in order to renew the initial compromise of 1867. The Constitution was studied and rethought. In his 1963 watershed article “L’esprit de 1867,” historian and constitutional expert Jean-Charles Bonenfant called for going beyond the spirit of 1867 and modernizing institutions so that they would adapt to the context of the 1960s

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and French Canada’s desire to be recognized. According to Bonenfant, the reason the British North America Act was passed in 1867 was because English Canadians could not do without French Canadians, and vice versa. He noted: “Despite appearances, the situation has not changed very much. Without us, English Canadians have very little reason not to transform into Americans; and, as for us, we French Canadians, it seems that, since we live in an America dominated by British culture and the English language, we must be tied to our neighbours by some federal bonds, although they do not necessarily have to be the ones we have today. Most nations have been formed not by people who intensely desired to live together, but by people who could not live apart. That was the spirit of 1867; it may perhaps be that of 1967.”15 The debates on Quebec’s place in Canada proliferated owing to repeated offences by Ottawa, which was having trouble integrating bilingualism and making room for French Canadians. Quebec intellectual André Laurendeau was one of the most passionate champions of a middle-way solution. A highly respected figure, he wrote many articles, notably in L’Action nationale and Le Devoir, denouncing the constant affronts by the federal government against his people. He felt that Canada was a country with a resolutely British fibre,16 but this did not prevent him from believing it was possible to amend federalism so as to rethink the place of Quebec and French Canada. After repeated demands from Laurendeau, Lester B. Pearson set up the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism in 1963. Laurendeau was to be its soul and co-chair. This is about when Chaput-Rolland began her great tour of Canada to meet Canadians “in the field” and speak to them about Quebec and nationalism, and also to hear what they had to say about “their” Canada. Funded by a Centennial Commission grant, the project was supposed to be carried out with Gwethalyn Graham, but Graham’s death in 1965 interrupted the dialogue. Chaput-Rolland decided to continue the project on her own, and the result was My Country, Canada or Quebec?, the first in a long series of political journals titled Regards, some of which were translated into English as Reflections. Through her interactions with other women, in particular Anglophones such as Gwethalyn Graham and Gertrude Laing, and her participation in a myriad of events that marked her time (the Estates General of French Canada, political party conventions, the United Nations Economic and Social Council),17 Chaput-Rolland fine-tuned her conception of an ideal Canada, which she went on to describe in those journals. Her tone was direct and her analysis of the news unfiltered. As Judith Jasmin noted: “There is something of Saint-Simon in Solange Rolland. Her language is sometimes that of our intelligentsia, punctuated by the terminology of the social sciences, but her best pages are those very natural ones which have sprung spontaneously from her typewriter.”18 Chaput-Rolland wanted

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to get close to the public, inform it, resonate with it. For her, the pen was above all a means of taking action, on the same level as her interventions in the media (she was a commentator at Telemedia and hosted a public affairs program at Télé-Métropole). She wanted to remain at the heart of the action and, especially, to do work in the field on the problem that preoccupied her most: Quebec’s place in Canada. In other words, she sought to engage in the art of reconciling her nationalism with federalism. Chaput-Rolland was a keen follower of the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission proceedings and the constitutional conferences that lent a cadence to the decade. Like many intellectuals of her generation, she bathed in the spirit of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. Indeed, Laurendeau was one of the intellectuals who had the greatest influence on her conception of Canada. Chaput-Rolland did not hide her admiration for him, affirming: “Nobody in Quebec has ever written like him.”19 Like Laurendeau, she wanted to place Quebec at the heart of the remedy for the Canadian crisis. Like him, she believed in a different form of federalism. In her writing, she borrowed some famous turns of phrase from Laurendeau’s column in Le Devoir. On 20 January 1962, Laurendeau wrote an editorial demanding the creation of an inquiry on bilingualism, in which he said: “Paris was worth a mass; perhaps Canada is worth an inquiry.”20 In 1977, Chaput-Rolland paid homage to Laurendeau in a letter to Pierre Elliott Trudeau: “If Paris is worth a mass, Mr. Trudeau, is Canada not worth a new constitution that recognizes that there are two nations, even if in your eyes Canada remains a single, indivisible national entity?”21 What was it about the Laurendeau-Dunton spirit that inspired ChaputRolland? It may be difficult to grasp because it is composite, but it can nonetheless be summarized as a desire to explore constitutional avenues coupled with rejection of the status quo. The Commission was set up in response to this bright new Quebec. Early in the proceedings, the idea emerged of creating an equal partnership between the two groups: Francophone and Anglophone. At the time, Francophones’ opportunities seemed to be blocked because they were poorly represented in Ottawa and unable to hold powerful positions in federal politics and the corporate world. Owing to the balance of power between French and English, Francophones and Anglophones did not enjoy the same chances of success. Guided by Laurendeau’s conception of Canada, the Commission sought to come up with a remedy that would make it possible for French Canadians to reach their full potential. In the eyes of many, it would be impossible to find an efficient remedy without constitutional reform and revision of the distribution of competencies between the federal government and the province of Quebec. At the heart of the Commission, a vast reflection on the “political dimension” of equality began, creating strong tension but

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also making it possible to draft several plans for constitutional reforms that sketched out the contours of this third way between centralizing federalism and Quebec separation.22 The solutions that were explored included a new distribution of powers and a rewriting of the Constitution that would shed it of aspects that were considered outdated and tied to Canada’s colonial past. Commissioner Paul Lacoste, special consultant on research Léon Dion, and constitutional scholars Jacques-Yvan Morin and Marc Brière were among those who sketched out the most precise model of this form of renewed federalism. According to Lacoste, Canada was not the Constitution. In the 1960s, the situation had become intolerable for French Canadians and major reflection was required. To maintain social peace, deep revision of the 1867 agreement was required. Lacoste pointed out that the approach that had to be favoured was one that “would give a ‘province’ (which would have to be called something else) a status much closer to that of a state than what we have known until now.”23 For that, there would have to be a new distribution of powers in accordance with the needs of the new Quebec. He called for full control over the jurisdictions of immigration, marriage, divorce, and other matters concerning persons. Marriage is a jurisdiction that straddles two orders (the celebration of marriage is provincial but all the rest is federal) and this prevents Quebec from legislating as it wishes. According to observers at the time, the fuzzy distribution of powers led to harmful constitutional inertia, especially for women, who were not considered men’s equals in civil law.24 Lacoste also wanted to get rid of constitutional anachronisms such as the powers of disallowance and reservation, which gave too much power to the federal order because they allowed it to invalidate provincial laws. In addition, he asked for a review of the appellations “province” and “lieutenant governor,” which were remnants of a colonial past that Canada needed to leave behind. Lacoste’s arguments, which were taken up by others, both in the Commission and outside of it, reveal the diversity of the scenarios imagined for rethinking the desired political equality. The first book of the Commission’s final report focused on official languages. In that book’s (blue) introductory pages, the importance of the collective nature of equality is highlighted. Such equality would ensure that each of the two communities would have complete control “over its government or governments.”25 No scenario was excluded: unitary regime, federalism, special status, associated state, or independent State. The search for a political framework able to embrace Canada’s dualism was at the heart of the Commission’s discussions. There was a plan to devote a book of the final report to this, but, in the end, this was not done because there was neither consensus nor sufficient time. Laurendeau’s death in 1968 and Trudeau’s election the same year are some of the reasons the plan was abandoned.

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t h e f e d e r a l is t thought of s o l a n g e c h a p ut-rolland Solange Chaput-Rolland fine-tuned her conception of federalism to the rhythm of the constitutional debates that shook the 1960s. She did not devote essays to it, but her journals are marked by reflections on the topic and sketches of solutions. She tried to reconcile her involvement “in the field” with realistic proposals for a better federal compromise. In continuity with the thought of those such as Laurendeau and Dion, her conception of Canada was infused with humanism. The reason she endorsed federalism was because she believed that Canada’s success hinged on Anglophones and Francophones living together. She condemned the “two solitudes” point of view and, in order to help deconstruct prejudices, she began a dialogue with Anglophone author Gwethalyn Graham, whom she met in 1962 following a Voice of Women peace demonstration on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. The purpose of their book, Dear Enemies, was to show that it was possible to meet the Other and that the “lack of love” that characterizes Canada harms the general atmosphere. To remedy this, people would have to accept each other.26 Chaput-Rolland wanted to get her Anglophone counterparts to discover Quebec and all it had to offer. In Dear Enemies, she recalled her travels in Canada and Canadians’ clear ignorance of the realities of the Francophone province: “Beyond Winnipeg, for example, the very existence of Quebec becomes a sort of myth, a folklore of trappers and traders. Please don’t think I am exaggerating; between one city and the next I was obliged to rewrite my lectures, to change my speeches so as to talk not about a revolution in Quebec, but literally about the fact that Quebec is there.”27 Through her visits and her writings on her experiences, Chaput-Rolland wanted to change attitudes in Canada. She wrote: “I was distressed to realize the extent to which our country is made up of islands, each with its own identity, each with its own personal concerns. When will we build bridges to unite us at last in some real community of thought?”28  The humanist ideal translated into a desire to embody and initiate dialogue, a national conversation shedding light on the elements that bring the disparate “islands” together. According to Chaput-Rolland, the situation was dire. She understood why her people were angry and she explained it in Regards 1968: Une ou deux sociétés justes?: “Our frustration with living in a country that no longer belongs to us explains our desire to repatriate to our Terre-Québec as much power as possible so that we can once again enjoy the illusion of being masters in our own house.”29 She believed that contemporary French Canada could dictate the tone and inspire English Canada to open up to other points of view. Contrary to what others thought, there was nothing artificial about the crisis in Canada, and it would not be resolved without major constitutional transformations giving Quebec a special status. Chaput-Rolland

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often spoke harshly, and even with exasperation, about Anglophones who were closed to French30 and to Quebec’s demands. However, she was in favour of maintaining the partnership because breaking away was scarcely any brighter an option. She feared that American imperialism would undermine French Canada’s distinctiveness and deal a fatal blow to its soul: “If one day the United States were to overpower English-Canadian nationalism, annexation would not cost our English-speaking fellow Canadians their primary language, and thus their souls. But if French Canadians were to allow themselves to be gobbled up by the American giant, they would have to renounce their French distinctiveness for the second time in their history, and this time, already worn down by one hundred years of resistance twice proven futile, they would die.”31 She felt that to counteract this influence, French Canadians would have to finally be recognized by English Canadians as full-fledged citizens and form a fair alliance making it possible for there to be “economic stability” and “political freedom.”32 If Chaput-Rolland was an uncompromising nationalist, why did she keep her faith in Canada when it constantly disappointed her? Why did she not embrace the option defended by René Lévesque? Although she admired Lévesque, she could not join a movement that, in her eyes, included extremists. As she said in Une ou deux sociétés justes?: “Which of the traditional political leaders could hold a candle to René Lévesque? The man is sincere, honest, and the Quebec parliament needs his gifts as a legislator, his courage as a man of the left. Will the fanatical elements in the Parti Québécois force him to say dangerous things?”33 Chaput-Rolland came back to this more than ten years later in De l’unité à la réalité, writing in the context of the first referendum: “The independence of Quebec in itself frightens me less than some of today’s independentists.”34 She considered that the Parti Québécois served the independence movement poorly because some of its members seemed little inclined to pay attention to the rest of Canada since they were too entrenched in their positions and not very open to dialogue. She noted: “I am fairly comfortable with ferociously Québécois nationalism on the condition that it not be closed to the Canadian societies in Canada.”35 She believed that Quebec had more to gain than to lose from its partnership with the other provinces. She gambled on the hope for a compromise. She also connected with André Laurendeau’s point of view. In his journal, Laurendeau mentioned that he had separatist yearnings when he was confronted with mulish English Canadians, but that when he got back home, he was disappointed by the separatists’ discourse, which was too naive and divorced from reality.36 Both he and Chaput-Rolland felt that separation could not be the best solution because it would not solve the American problem.37 The spectre of American imperialism and aversion to the factions of the Parti Québécois that were considered extremist were not the

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only reasons that prevented Chaput-Rolland from endorsing the plan to make Quebec a country. In a number of places in her journals, she invoked the economic argument because she feared that independence would harm Quebec’s economy. Her middle-way position, marked by strong Québécois nationalism and a desire, which some considered contradictory, to remain tied to Canada, remains poorly understood. For the generation of Parti pris, inspired in particular by Frantz Fanon’s writings on colonialism, it was too late to think about Canada in any other way.38 Anglophones were traitors, colonizers. As Chaput-Rolland pointed out, that generation criticized Laurendeau: “They [Quebec youth] couldn’t forgive Laurendeau for what they called his ‘defection.’ Many of them attacked him with vulgarity and inconceivable cruelty.”39 Chaput-Rolland also sometimes found it difficult to defend her constitutional positions between two options: “These things are difficult to say and for several months I have felt a certain malaise when I have tried to express them. I am tired of turning into a critic of English Canada, tired of being called a separatist by federalists and a ‘distinguished’ federalist by separatists who are no less distinguished!” She said that her option was to be neither “a federalist, or an independentist; but rather a realist.”40 According to Chaput-Rolland, the way to create political equality involved the status of associated states: “I hope for the day when the currently repudiated formula of associated states is the political structure of Canada. Then it would no longer be a question of the association of two states (that is nine provinces and one) but of the union and interdependence of several autonomous states.”41 Thus, for her, the two nations thesis had to be expressed in a new framework that would give Quebec, but also the other provinces of Canada, much more margin of maneuvre. She stated that her position was halfway between René Lévesque’s and Daniel Johnson’s.42 According to her, Johnson did not go far enough when he demanded equality, and Lévesque went too far with the idea of independence. In her eyes, Canada would have no soul if it was unable to reconcile itself with its duality because that was the distinctive element that made the country neither American nor British: “Some comedian said that Canada is a railroad in search of a nation. That nation will forge its collective soul if it respects not only its cultural duality but also the political dimension of its second majority.”43 She applauded the first volume of the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (the B&B Commission), which spoke of the need for such political equality, but she feared Trudeau’s arrival as the country’s leader because she was not convinced of his desire to go beyond a linguistic remedy. On this point, time was to prove her right. She had good things to say about the B&B Commission report’s second book, on education, but also found it lacking: “Beyond my great admiration for the excellence of this second book, I am waiting impatiently for the book on the Constitution. I am placing all my Canadian hope in those final pages.

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I believe they will define the Canada of tomorrow.”44 Unfortunately, those pages were never to be:45 the Commission remained an unfinished work. However, Chaput-Rolland, and others, would take up the torch. She was disappointed by the 1969 Constitutional Conference. Economic discussions prevailed instead of there being negotiations on the parameters of a new form of federalism. Chaput-Rolland decried Trudeau’s attitude: “Convinced more than ever, it seems, that Quebec is a province like the others, the Prime Minister of Canada refuses to recognize that we have a special status. He postpones the distribution of powers between the federal and provincial; why not wait for the complete revision of the Constitution and make the bill on official languages the major argument for this new Canadian pact?”46  Even though her hopes were dashed, Chaput-Rolland continued to believe in a reworked, decentralized form of federalism. According to her, an open, democratic country such as Canada had to be respected: “But everywhere I go I will remind people with a clear, strong voice that when a country is sufficiently democratic and open to permit a political party to militate for its dismemberment, then that country is worth protecting and merits that we serve and protect it.”47 In 1977, she therefore did not hesitate to serve her country and embarked on the Pepin-Robarts Commission adventure, seeing it as an opportunity to give life to Laurendeau’s legacy. Here is how she explained her involvement: To my readers … you now know that I have left my positions as commentator at Télémédia and as public affairs host at Télé-Métropole to become, with the eminent legal expert Gérald Beaudoin of the University of Ottawa, a member of the Task Force led by John Robarts, former Conservative Premier of Ontario, and Jean-Luc Pepin, former Liberal minister in Trudeau’s cabinet. Why? Because I could not continue to criticize my fellow countrymen in the National Assembly and the House of Commons and shirk the duty to go “a little further” to defend an idea of this Canada, so dear to my heart, and another idea of Quebec, to which I am attached by with every fibre of my soul … Giving up a career that has been so important to me is not easy. The honour of defending convictions that millions of Quebecers and people elsewhere share is a consolation to me for all the hardship that the Pepin-Robarts Commission will certainly face during its perilous mission.48 The tone was solemn. Chaput-Rolland was bringing into play the sacrifices that she would have to make, and that merited making, to “save the country” after the first Parti Québécois government was elected in Quebec, on 15 November 1976. Created by the Liberal government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau on 5 July 1977, the Task Force’s mandate was “to obtain and to publicize the views of Canadians regarding the state of their country, and to provide the ideas and initiatives of the members of the Task Force on the

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question of Canadian unity.”49 In a way, it took up where the LaurendeauDunton Commission had left off, describing a crisis not unlike the one depicted in the 1965 preliminary report. This, at least, was the way ChaputRolland interpreted it in a working document, sending a barb in Trudeau’s direction, since his “constitutional absolutism” was not at all to her taste: The Laurendeau-Dunton Commission had the merit of already sensing, in 1965, the crisis now facing the Pepin Robarts Commission, which was created by Prime Minister Trudeau in July 1977. Laurendeau’s death spelled the end of inquiries into constitutional avenues that could indicate to Canadians of both “majorities” (the expression is Laurendeau’s) how to get to the crossroads of political equality. Their recommendations were linguistic and, above all, cultural, but it is false to claim that the Commission was unable to find that crossroads; the truth forces us to say that it was prevented from doing so, first by the death of one of its co-chairs, and then by the will of the Prime Minister, who has made constitutional matters his personal purview ever since his election in 1968.50

t he p e p in - r o b a r t s c o m m is si on and the s truggle t o p ut q u e b e c a t t h e h e art of the soluti on Appointed as a commissioner to her great surprise – because she had never hesitated to criticize Trudeau and his government – Chaput-Rolland continued the fight of the members of the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission who wanted to place Quebec at the heart of the solution.51 Although all of the Laurendeau-Dunton commissioners were bilingual, this time five of the eight commissioners were unilingual Anglophones, which made the Pepin-Robarts Commission more hostile to Quebec’s claims. This was a significant factor that led the two commissioners from Quebec (Chaput-Rolland and Gérald Beaudoin)52 to write their contributions in English. As Chaput-Rolland noted, “most of the time we work in English; if Professor Beaudoin and I write a text, and if we want our colleagues to look at it soon, we are forced to write it in English, which ultimately becomes tiring for us and, from my point of view, very dangerous. Bilingualism often warps thought.”53 Chaput-Rolland therefore felt that she could not be completely herself when she was on that English-dominated Task Force. Moreover, the lack of bilingualism was only one of the obstacles she encountered when trying to promote her conception of Canada. The other obstacles included the Task Force’s operation and the personalities involved. The leading role taken by Co-chair Pepin bothered ChaputRolland. Moreover, she and he were the only ones who devoted themselves exclusively to the Task Force’s work. Although he was a workaholic, Pepin did not share André Laurendeau’s conception of what a commission was,

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and this displeased Chaput-Rolland, who wished, like Laurendeau, to address citizens’ hearts. For that, the B&B Commission had created spaces to exchange ideas on the ideal Canada, the Canada that would make its citizens dream and would bring them together around a shared goal. ChaputRolland aspired to reconnect with those broad discussions, but Pepin proved to be a pragmatic man who, according to Chaput-Rolland, did not seem concerned with creating that team spirit among the Task Force members and such bridges between the Task Force and the public. According to Chaput-Rolland, Pepin centralized the work too much and did not give his colleagues enough information about what he was doing: “Jean-Luc Pepin is on the ship’s bridge and he works furiously on revising entire chapters without any of us knowing exactly what he is doing, why he is doing it, and in what direction he is taking us.”54 Pepin’s work methods adversely affected the Task Force’s team spirit. Swamped in briefs, expert reports, and paperwork, the commissioners lacked direction and cohesion. Chaput-Rolland complained: “For months I have been wondering what the main thread of our work is. Beaudoin talks about a ‘red thread’ and, when we met our three advisors, professors Léon Dion, John Meisel, and Edward McWhinney, in April 1978, they were frank and criticized us for the lack of cohesion in our thought. They told us: ‘You have to spend many hours together talking in order to come to a consensus.’ I have been constantly asking for such a meeting ever since I joined the Task Force in September 1977. Pepin does not want one and does not see any use in that kind of a think tank.”55 Chaput-Rolland was nostalgic for Laurendeau’s approach, recalling: “Laurendeau would never have imposed experts on his commissioners without their consent and without their advice.”56 She felt like she was revising Pepin’s work or acting as his secretary. When she joined the Task Force, she was hoping for something better, for more collegiality and more collective thought. Like Laurendeau, she wanted to address her fellow citizens and bring warmth to the “frozen prose of so-called Royal commissions.”57 Like him, she believed in the depth of the Canadian crisis and the damage that it could cause. This is why she wanted to warn citizens and seek their participation. In a letter dated 8 April 1978, she also pointed out to her colleagues: “We must deal with facts, with people, with bold recommendations, with imagination, with passion for Canada and compassion for our compatriots.”58 However, she faced her greatest battle when trying to bring Quebec to the centre stage of the commissioners’ concerns and make it the touchstone of the recommendations. For Chaput-Rolland, the Task Force became a battleground where she fought to promote the conception of Canada that she had developed in the 1960s. Between 1977 and the end of August 1978, she submitted more than two hundred pages of work and reflections to the Task Force. On 28 August 1978, she complained in a letter to Pepin that her work had not been taken into consideration. Pepin replied, rather paternalistically, that her pages were not part of a report but rather observations

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that she should put down in her political journals: “I am not saying anything about your literary talent. I am saying that you do not want to write for a report. It’s not the same thing. In fact, I wholeheartedly hope that you will publish all your observations from 77 and 78 one day very soon … I have read in Monseigneur Grente that there is a style for each purpose and occasion, ‘a eulogy requires a different approach than an awards ceremony speech or a toast,’ etc. (La Composition et le Style, 141).”59 The documents submitted by Chaput-Rolland revealed her desire to shine a spotlight on Canada’s failings in order to prepare readers for the future. She wanted the report to be a sequel to the blue pages of the LaurendeauDunton Commission Report and hoped that it, like those pages, would resonate with “Canada’s spiritual fibre.” To win readers’ sympathies, she even militated for a fourth volume, which would be the sequel to those blue pages and would relate the commissioners’ experiences in the field and their observations on Canada. In her notes for Beaudoin, she said: “Where are we going to provide our readers with observations that I feel are much more in accord with our mandate than the transportation policies and economic changes that we are proposing?”60  The request for a more personal, resolutely Québécois book that would create a bridge between the commissioners and their readership did not result in anything. However, it was consistent with the philosophy of dialogue that had been cherished by Chaput-Rolland ever since Dear Enemies. In the documents containing her observations to the Task Force, ChaputRolland plunged deeply into history to recall the important founding episodes (the Durham Report, the conscription crises) and the reasons for the distance between Anglophones and Francophones in Canada. She was not the only one to do so, but she revisited all the evidence which showed that the British North America Act was a British plan and that Francophones’ rights, which were denied in particular during the school crises around the turn of the twentieth century, had been violated. In her eyes, duality, despite its denial by some Anglophones, was a historical reality that had to be expressed in Quebec’s distinct status.61 She called on people to reassess their winner-loser conception of history and create a new, equal partnership: “We therefore propose that all citizens of Canada take the time to reflect on their country not in terms of owners or of winners of battles fought on the plains of a history that has largely gone beyond the requirements of the descendants of generals Wolfe and Montcalm.” She denounced the moralizing attitude of Anglophone Canadians, who still thought they were always superior: “Canada could have learned a little humility since 1970; it still boasts about how well it was able to swat flies during the Quebec tragedy.”62 Condescending and moralizing, Canada was not open to ideas about a different country that would include a special place not only for a province but for all Francophone communities. Indeed, Chaput-Rolland worried about Francophone minorities, which had to struggle for survival

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every day. She therefore proposed not only that people engage in civic introspection in order to change attitudes, but also that there be a better distribution of powers. She suggested in a discussion paper on the Commission’s report that the legislatures of all the provinces become bilingual, echoing the recommendations tabled by the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission:63 “With regard to distribution of powers, wealth, and also poverty in Canada, the citizens of both societies will be more ready to recognize themselves when they will be able to see themselves as Francophones and Anglophones with the same status in the Parliament of canada and in the provinces’ legislatures. Federalism will be renewed if it is spoken with two voices; it will die enclosed in its ten parts if they remain divided amongst themselves.”64 As the Commission’s work went on, Chaput-Rolland wrote letters to her colleagues to ensure that Quebec would remain at centre stage. On 24 March 1978, she wrote to Beaudoin to tell him about her doubts regarding the probity of the Task Force’s findings. She felt that the work had been concentrated in the hands of a small number of Anglophone scholars who were unfamiliar with the real situation in Quebec and were not concerned with seeking a unifying tone. She wrote: “I am increasingly in disagreement with the way the reports have been designed. I do not feel there is any provision for making them saleable in Quebec … chapters written, and I am sorry to have to underline it, by people who are not Quebecers and not even Francophones. I would like to see Ontarians’ faces if their province were dominated by the Parti Québécois, and you and I had written the description of their frustrations. Heintzman [Ralph Heintzman, historian and researcher] has a writing style that is pretentious, ‘sententious,’ … The report lacks heart, love of country, and compassion for citizens.”65 She pointed out that she was a Quebecer above all and also a Quebec nationalist. She rejected Trudeau’s style of federalism and held him responsible for the tensions in Canada owing to his rejection of biculturalism. As a commissioner representing Quebec, she felt a strong responsibility to act as the province’s spokesperson on the Task Force: “I want to stand up before my fellow citizens and tell them that I have not betrayed their trust.”66 She returned to the same argument in a letter dated 14 May 1978, again addressed to her colleague Beaudoin: “But I would never consent to compromising my reputation and my fellow citizens’ future by refusing to fight openly against the P.M. and against Mr. Pepin, if it was necessary in order to serve Quebec and not render it subservient … I am not on this Task Force to allow [Commission researchers] Heintzman and Cameron to showcase their gifts; I am not on it to calm down the tensions between the Yukon and Canada, but to find a way to reconcile Quebec with Canada, Francophones with Anglophones. This dimension gets lost in the deluge of words spewed out by team of workers, who are talented but who do not really understand the French dimension, not only of Canada but also of the report we must deliver.”67

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Chaput-Rolland used the letter as an opportunity to make recommendations. She wanted a preamble on historical duality. She came back to the idea that the French minority’s rights are historical and should be constitutionalized. She called for the creation of a constitutional court in which duality would be respected. To address Francophones’ thirst for equality and their desire no longer to have to make excuses for themselves, she recommended institutionalizing the concept of “equality” in certain institutions, such as the Supreme Court. She wanted “Quebec’s supremacy with regard to education, communications, immigration.” She emphasized that for Quebec to be “master of its own house,” they would have to “paralyze, in a sense, federal spending power,” “eliminate the right of disallowance once and for all,” and “proclaim biculturalism once again to put an end to multiculturalism.” She invited Beaudoin to join forces with her to put Quebec and Francophone communities at the heart of the solution and asked him to help buttress her constitutional proposals. She knew that she was not an expert on constitutional law. Chaput-Rolland’s propositions were in line with the third way and the work done on how to achieve it. They were not especially original. However, her actions are interesting because of her strong resistance to the Anglophone Task Force and her virulent criticism of how it did its work. Her letters and working documents reveal her desire to democratize the Task Force’s proceedings and make them accessible to the public. She felt it was dangerous to have the report written by a handful of Anglophone scholars who did not have the same experience in the field as the commissioners. Chaput-Rolland’s contribution was manifested resolutely in action and in the networks that she deployed to ensure the organization would remain faithful to her convictions. Feeling that her voice was not being heard, Chaput-Rolland sometimes used alternative means to influence Beaudoin and Pepin, as is revealed in a 17 August 1978 letter to Michel Roy, publisher of Le Devoir. She asked Roy to intervene with respect to her colleagues: “I will try to continue fighting the publication schedule; if you have any influence on Beaudoin and Pepin, then, Michel, take the risk of letting them know, discreetly of course, that you understand my position. Humbly, I need your help.”68 A few days before sending her letter to Roy, Chaput-Rolland had decided to step down from the Task Force. As she herself said, she was “the most emotional commissioner and the one with the most misgivings about unconditional federalism.”69  She came back to her desire to abandon ship in her political journal, De l’unité à la réalité. She mentioned that she felt too constrained in that Anglophone Task Force, where even Pepin went “along his merry English way” and where Beaudoin was writing the dictionary of the Task Force’s key terms in English.70 She stated that she did not think in English and recalled her Québécois nationalism. She was angry that an effort was being made to deform reality so that people would not be shocked:

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I do not accept the definition of history that our team is proposing because it does not correspond to my idea of what has happened since 1763. If we are not able to at least analyze the crisis with honesty and probity, what point is there in daring to make recommendations? The chapters that describe and report what citizens told us have been ‘ironed out,’ in other words, laundered to avoid shocking: all the emotions and fire of the wild nights are missing. Jean-Luc Pepin is convinced that commission reports must remain dull, passionless. If we do not propose a vision of Canada that can inspire as much passion as the Parti Québécois vision of Quebec proposed by Lévesque’s government, we are condemned to indifference from the start.71 The root of her indignation lay in the team’s lack of vision and the Task Force’s treatment of Quebec. Chaput-Rolland considered that the Task Force spoke as if Quebec were simply one part of the North American Francophonie, like any other. Duality was therefore diluted. She was not alone in her strong reaction to the desire to bury a certain form of duality so as to promote recognition of Canada’s regions. A letter to David Cameron of 1 December 1978 from legal expert Robert Décary, co-director of the research team, also shows deep exasperation with the Task Force’s inability to depict history and the country as they were: Since, then, however, I, personally, as a Quebecer, have been unable to live with the general concept of “duality,” as expressed in Section I, and I now realize [my efforts] (along with those of Mrs Chaput-Rolland, Mr. Beaudoin, Mr. Dion and others) to convince the staff and the majority of the Board that the Task Force’s approach was wrong, have failed … Can I repeat how disturbing it is to read such things as “FrenchSpeaking” communities of North America (p. 3)! What does that refer to? To Louisiana and to French restaurants in New York and San Francisco? Do we need, because English-Canada has problems of identity of its own, to submerge Quebecers and other French Canadians in the North American continent? … Who is kidding whom with that kind of statement? Is someone trying to hide the fact that Quebec’s society (or community or whatever) has achieved a degree of cohesion and dynamism that no other society (or community or whatever) has achieved elsewhere in Canada? … You will need other Quebecers than myself to finish this Report. I have lost faith, and I cannot write without faith … [W]hy aren’t we brave enough to face the fact that this Report was written and thought in English and that the French text will be a mere translation? … I, for one, certainly do not intend to hide the fact that the language of efficient work, in Ottawa, is presently English. It may change, but if the

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Task Force itself is afraid to ask for a change and quote from its own experience, who will?72 This heartfelt appeal was consistent with those made, frequently, by Chaput-Rolland. They show how difficult it was for the Quebecers to make their voices heard in a federal task force in which one official language – theirs – was not considered to have the same status as the other. ChaputRolland and Décary were against the smooth vision of Canada that the report tried to project, a vision in which differences were pacified and Quebec’s importance was only half recognized. Despite the tensions, Chaput-Rolland finally decided to remain on the Task Force. She resolved to swallow her pride and to take up “Quebec’s struggle with the firm intention to carry it until the last day of the mandate.”73 The obstacle course described by Chaput-Rolland was not unlike the one André Laurendeau had had to negotiate when fighting in the B&B Commission to protect the collective rights of Quebecers and to give life to biculturalism. The Pepin-Robarts Commission’s recommendations were inspired by those of the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission. In fact, the same crisis was described in the report: “Yet more than a decade after the warning of the B&B Commission about a national crisis, the country has moved to an even graver and more critical stage in its history, symbolized by the election of a secessionist government in Quebec.”74 To address the crisis, the Pepin-Robarts Commission went further than its predecessor in its constitutional recommendations, while taking into account changes in the context, including the other provinces’ growing dissatisfaction with federalism, the rise in Indigenous claims, and multiculturalism as a factor in opposition to duality.75 The recommendations included a renewed Constitution giving each province the possibility to have a certain distinct status, clarifying legislative and executive competencies and entrenching the government of Quebec’s role in preserving and “strengthening of the French heritage in its own territory.”76 In the new Constitution, residual power would belong to the provinces and the rights of reservation and disallowance would be abolished. The Task Force provided for the Senate to be replaced by a Council of the Federation that would ensure harmony in federal-provincial relations. It also recommended enshrining language rights in the Constitution. While it is difficult to measure the impact that Chaput-Rolland had on the Pepin-Robarts Commission’s final recommendations, it is nonetheless clear that she did not fight in vain.77 Moreover, she appeared satisfied by the final report and sought to defend it, even if the idea of distinct status for all provinces diluted the duality that she had hoped would be stated clearly. However, as she observed, although the commissioners may have won a battle when their report was saluted by the press and the people, they lost “the war because Mr. Trudeau buried us in a way that was worse than mean-spirited.”78 In the 1960s, Trudeau did not believe in the collective dimension of equality and the rise of sovereignty had not made him change his mind. The

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Pepin-Robarts Commission, which tried to breathe life into federalism’s third way in order to cement national unity, saw itself benched. Trudeau had raised the curtain on the great show of public consultation but he had little regard for the hopes that some placed in asymmetric federalism. In 1985, Chaput-Rolland wrote the introduction to an issue of Cahiers de droit devoted to the reform of federal institutions. She recalled her allegiance to an open form of nationalism less dogmatic than that promoted by the Parti Québécois and far from the clichés that Trudeau was trying to convey: It is important to recall here that the nationalism that has been our political strength since 1763 is not dead; it is on the back burner because we do not know where or by what government it is to be expressed. The nationalism of Mr. Lévesque makes it a condition for his race toward sovereignty. That dreamed of by Robert Bourassa is reduced to the promotion of the economic theses so dear to the new leader of the Quebec Liberal Party. However, as soon as an election shakes the lethargy out of our fellow citizens, alarmed and mute before the loss of our historical powers and scarred by our weakness as an essential partner in linguistic, legal, confessional, and federalist duality, Quebec will raise up its head and rediscover the strength that has always come from open nationalism that has nothing to do with the tribalism described by Mr. Trudeau. We will recover our place at the constitutional table.79 She reiterated her conception of Canada, a country that would never have been what it is without Quebec: “Quebec spearheaded the federation; if not for it, the English provinces, controlled by the federal state, would probably have resigned themselves to rapid assimilation into the American melting pot. It is precisely because the only Francophone province in Canada is not like the others that it has given Canada its federal nature, despite the unitary thought of most of Canada’s prime ministers.”80 Rejecting uniformity, believing in the real possibility of a partnership, Chaput-Rolland continued to defend the need for openness and dialogue in a wide range of platforms and venues. Often disappointed, both by independentists and by federalists, she resolved never to stop believing in the third way. Outraged by how Trudeau treated the Pepin-Robarts Commission’s report, she decided to go into active politics. Some thought she would join the Parti Québécois, believing that she now had proof, given her experience as a commissioner, that Canada would not be able to accept its duality; but instead she joined the Quebec Liberal Party and was elected in 1979, joining Claude Ryan’s troops to try to bring to life the Pepin-Robarts recommendations. She joined the Liberals not because of the party itself but because of her friendship with Claude Ryan, despite the fact that she never held back from criticizing him. She noted: “I am working in the Quebec Liberal Party because of him, not because of the Liberal Party, with which,

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I admit, I am not often in agreement.”81 Here we find again the passion that characterized Chaput-Rolland and that fuelled the arguments of her detractors. A woman with a heart, she took some surprising decisions. She did not always enjoy her time among the Liberal troops, during which she tried to get the party put some distance between itself and the Liberal Party of Canada, not always very successfully. The fact that she was a woman had a negative effect on her experience. In 1980, she wrote: “Politics is a man’s world. When a male Member is in a bad mood, everyone feels badly for him; when a female Member allows her irritation to show, she is to be pitied because she immediately becomes the target of heavy-handed teasing from her colleagues.”82 She felt that she did not have the same freedom and latitude as men and that her ideas were undervalued because of her gender.

c o n c l u si on Solange Chaput-Rolland’s experiences on the Pepin-Robarts Commission are revealing in many ways. To begin with, they show how difficult it is for Francophones to get their voices heard in federal commissions, since their language is not respected even though bilingualism should reign. Her experiences also testify to the legacy of the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission, which concluded abruptly, without giving life to its constitutional recommendations in favour of the equality of what we used to call the “two peoples.” They also recall how difficult it is to be a woman in commissions, which remain boys’ clubs. As a woman and a Francophone, Chaput-Rolland did not always feel she was respected, and she criticized the fact that she was not asked to work on issues but merely to do proofreading. Lastly, her experiences shed light on the fact that Trudeau was not very open to constitutional exploration that deviated from his own conception of Canada, a fact that is already well documented, in particular by political scientists Kenneth McRoberts and Guy Laforest.83 Chaput-Rolland’s political career also shows that a certain Canadian dream endures, a dream carried by intellectuals, political leaders, and individuals who have imagined a different form of federalism that would allow Quebec, and the French fact, to flourish. As a nationalist, Chaput-Rolland never ceased to believe in the possibility that federalism could be redeemed, despite the times when she was disappointed. While she was sometimes attracted to the idea of independence, she did not see the Parti Québécois as the right means to achieve it: “But frankly, in Quebec, the situation reflected by certain Parti Québécois militants and writings strengthens my convictions about such an ideology, which has unfortunately become a rigid, authoritative religion, harmful to all Quebecers. They will be encouraged in their tendency to live inside their own bubble and for themselves, and to isolate themselves from those in the world who do not think like they do.”84 She constantly tried to be open to Canada’s reality and to convey it to Quebecers, and she formulated a line of federalist thought that was based

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on an ideal of moderation, which might perhaps succeed in reconciling opposing positions. She was persuaded that Canada would one day appreciate the French dimension of its heritage and would want to re-examine the foundations of its partnership with Francophones and with Quebec. She believed, moreover, that without its link with Canada, Quebec would not have the economic stability necessary to resist Americanization. This is why she tenaciously tried to set an example and pave the boulevard of fraternity. notes

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I would like to express my warm thanks to the editors of this book for their valuable comments, which made it possible for me to improve the first version of this article. The third way to which Chaput-Rolland refers caused much ink to flow in the 1960s, which were marked by the rise of Quebec nationalism and groups militating for independence, in particular the Rassemblement pour l’indépendance nationale (rin ). The third way was at the heart of the discourse of many intellectuals and political leaders, who were proponents of a compromise between centralizing federalism and Quebec separation. Some of them engaged in advocacy within political parties at the federal and provincial levels, and others promoted this option in the public arena. As can be seen from ChaputRolland’s example, many considered joining the Parti Québécois, but instead opted for the Quebec Liberal Party. The third way was not necessarily associated with one political party in particular. However, as political scientist Frédéric Boily has shown in his article on Action démocratique du Québec and Coalition avenir Québec, some parties have tried to embody this way in Quebec politics. Solange Chaput-Rolland, Lettres ouvertes à 13 personnalités politiques (Ottawa: Le Cercle du livre de France, 1977), 208–9. (Translated from the French. Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations of French texts are by the translators of this volume.) Quebec intellectual André Laurendeau used many forums to denounce Canada’s hypocrisy. Canada portrayed itself as a bilingual country but communicated with its citizens in only one language. See, in particular: André Laurendeau, “Alerte aux Canadiens français!”, L’Action nationale, November 1940, 177–8. For this, we have analyzed Chaput-Rolland’s political journals and examined her fonds at Library and Archives Canada (mg 30, D397), which is full of personal papers written during the Pepin-Robarts Commission. Olivier Lemieux, “Léon Dion et sa nation ou La dernière voix d’une troisième voie,” Mens 16, no. 2 (2016): 101 (translation). Francine Lemieux and Francine Harel Giasson are the authors of Solange Chaput Rolland: La soif de liberté, which is not, in fact, a biography but allows Chaput-Rolland’s words to speak for themselves by placing excerpts

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from her works into context. In a different article, we documented ChaputRolland’s political engagement in the 1960s and the reasons why her commitment did not leave a mark. See: Francine Richer and Francine Harel Giasson, Solange Chaput Rolland: La soif de liberté (Montreal: Les Éditions Transcontinental, 1997); Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon, “‘Plonger au cœur de la crise canadienne’: La pensée politique de Solange Chaput-Rolland dans les années 1960,” Bulletin d’histoire politique 25, no. 3 (2017): 78–101. See: Solange Chaput-Rolland, My Country, Canada or Québec? (Toronto: Macmillan, 1966), 3. She married pulp-and-paper magnate André Rolland in 1941. Chaput-Rolland’s political journals were printed on Rolland paper. Ibid., 4. Judith Jasmin, “Forward to the French Edition,” in Solange Chaput-Rolland, Reflections: Quebec Year One, trans. Gretta Chambers (Montreal: Chateau Books, 1968), 13. Solange Chaput-Rolland and Gwethalyn Graham, Dear Enemies (Toronto: Macmillan, 1963). Ibid. For the complete mandate of the Commission, see: “Appendix I. Terms of Reference,” in Canada, Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. Book I: The Official Languages (Ottawa, Queen’s Printer, 1967), 179–80. On this, see: Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon, “Les origines intellectuelles de la commission Laurendeau-Dunton: De la présence d’une volonté de dialogue entre les deux peuples fondateurs du Canada au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, 1945–1965,” Mens 14–15, no. 2–1, (2014): 131–73; Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon, Panser le Canada: Une histoire intellectuelle de la commission Laurendeau-Dunton (Montréal: Boréal, 2018). For Congress on Canadian Affairs publications, published by the Association générale des étudiants de l’Université Laval, see: The Canadian experiment, success or failure? (1962), The Canadian economy: where is it going? (1963), Les nouveaux Québécois (1964), and La dualité canadienne à l’heure des États-Unis (1965). Jean-Charles Bonenfant, “L’esprit de 1867,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 17, no. 1 (1963): 37–8 (translation). Laurendeau, “Alerte aux Canadiens français!” She looked back at her role as an observer in Solange Chaput-Rolland, The Second Conquest: Reflections II (Montreal: Chateau Books, 1970). Jasmin, “Foreword,” 14. Chaput-Rolland, Reflections: Quebec Year One, 42. André Laurendeau, “Pour une enquête sur le bilinguisme,” Le Devoir, 20 January 1962 (translation). Chaput-Rolland, Lettres ouvertes, 38 (translation). On these plans, see: Lapointe-Gagnon, Panser le Canada.

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23 Paul Lacoste, Mémoire concernant le premier volume du rapport final, remarques préliminaires (Quebec City: Centre d’archives de l’Université Laval, 1966), p. 6, Fonds Léon Dion, P435/F1, 2, 4/9 (translation). 24 Edith Guilbert, “Mariage et divorce: Compétence bipartite préjudiciable,” Les Cahiers de droit 10, no. 1 (1969): 43–60. 25 Canada, Report of the Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, XIV. 26 Chaput-Rolland and Graham, Dear Enemies, 5–6. 27 Ibid., 32. 28 Ibid., 35. 29 Solange Chaput-Rolland, Regards 1968: Une ou deux sociétés justes? (Ottawa: Le Cercle du livre de France, 1969), 17–8 (translation). 30 As she said in Dear Enemies (p. 6), she was “incapable of forgiving English Canadians who have been living in Quebec for 100 or 200 years for not having learned French.” 31 Chaput-Rolland, Regards 1968, 18 (translation). 32 Ibid. (translation). 33 Ibid., 207 (translation). 34 Solange Chaput-Rolland, De l’unité à la réalité (Ottawa: Le Cercle du livre de France, 1981), 80 (translation). 35 Ibid. (translation). 36 André Laurendeau, Journal tenu pendant la Commission royale d’enquête sur le bilinguisme et le biculturalisme (Montreal: vlb éditeur, 1990), 75. 37 Ibid. 38 Chaput-Rolland discusses the rupture between young people and federalism in Reflections: Quebec Year One, 42. 39 Ibid. 40 Chaput-Rolland Reflections: Quebec Year One, 43. 41 Ibid., 43–4. 42 Ibid., 116–17. 43 Chaput-Rolland, Une ou deux, 207 (translation). 44 Ibid., 203 (translation). 45 On the reasons for this impasse, see: Lapointe-Gagnon, Panser le Canada. 46 Chaput-Rolland, La seconde conquête, 34–5 (translation). 47 Chaput-Rolland, Lettres ouvertes, 207 (translation). 48 Ibid., 205–6 (translation). 49 Task Force on Canadian Unity, A Future Together: Observations and Recommendations (Hull, qc : Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1979), 3. 50 Solange-Chaput-Rolland, Fonds Solange-Chaput-Rolland (hereinafter fscr ), mg30, D397, 8-19, p. 43, Library and Archives Canada (hereinafter lac ), Montreal (translation). 51 A letter of 21 August from Chaput-Rolland to co-chair Jean-Luc Pepin reveals that Pepin seems to have insisted on Chaput-Rolland joining the team. That, at least, was how Chaput-Rolland read it: “Jean-Luc, I know now how hard you

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had to fight when the P.M. learned I had decided to join your team. I can imagine very well that in his eyes a nationalist like me would look like a monster moving into the heart of his fiefdom.” Letter from Solange ChaputRolland to Jean-Luc Pepin, 21 August 1978, fscr , mg 30, D397, 8-25, p. 2, lac (translation). Whereas Canada’s regions each had one representative on the Pepin-Robarts Commission, Quebec had two, a sign that a solution had to be found that would satisfy Quebec above all. Chaput-Rolland, De l’unité, 22–3 (translation). Ibid., 20 (translation). Ibid., 30 (translation). Letter from Solange Chaput-Rolland to Gérald A. Beaudoin, 24 March 1978, fscr, mg30, D397, 8-25, lac (translation). Letter from Solange Chaput-Rolland to Michel Roy, 27 August 1978, fscr , mg30, D397, 8-25, lac (translation). Letter from Solange Chaput-Rolland to her colleagues, 8 April 1978, fscr , mg30, D397, 8, lac. Letter from Jean-Luc Pepin to Solange Chaput-Rolland, 24 August 1978, and Solange Chaput-Rolland’s response, 28 August 1978, fscr , mg 30, D397, 8-24, lac (translation). Notes for Gérald Beaudoin, n.d., fscr , mg 30, D397, 8-23, lac (translation). Drafts for the report, fscr , mg 20, D397, 8-20, lac . Ibid. (translation). In the first volume of the final report, the commissioners recommended “that the provinces other than Quebec, New Brunswick, and Ontario declare that both English and French may be used in the debates in their legislatures and that these provinces provide appropriate services in French for their Frenchspeaking minorities.” Canada, Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, 147. Drafts for the report, fscr , mg 30, D397, 8-20, lac (translation). Ibid. (translation). Letter from Solange Chaput-Rolland to Gérald A. Beaudoin, 24 March 1978, fscr, mg30, D397, 8-25, lac (translation). Letter from Solange Chaput-Rolland to Gérald A. Beaudoin, 14 May 1978, fscr, mg30, D397, 8-25, lac, 4 (translation). Letter from Solange Chaput-Rolland to Michel Roy, 27 August 1978, fscr , mg30, D397, 8-25, lac (translation). Chaput-Rolland, De l’unité, 22 (translation). Ibid., 36 (translation). Ibid., 36–7 (translation). Letter from Robert Décary to David Cameron, 1 December 1978, fscr , mg30, D397, 8-25, lac. Chaput-Rolland, De l’unité, 39 (translation).

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78 79 80 81 82 83

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Task Force on Canadian Unity, A Future Together, 13. Ibid., 15–17. Ibid., 134. To measure her impact, we will have to continue the archival work in the Task Force’s fonds, and in those of the other commissioners, to get a better idea of the reception of the working documents and briefs that Chaput-Rolland sent to her colleagues. Chaput-Rolland, De l’unité, 43 (translation). Solange Chaput-Rolland, “Introduction,” Les Cahiers de droit 26, no. 1 (1985): 11 (translation). Ibid., 12 (translation). Chaput-Rolland, De l’unité, 85 (translation). Ibid., 84 (translation). Kenneth McRoberts, Misconceiving Canada: The Struggle for National Unity (1997) (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2018); Guy Laforest, Trudeau et la fin d’un rêve canadien (Quebec City: Septentrion, 1992). Chaput-Rolland, De l’unité, 81 (translation).

8 Charles Taylor’s Federalist Spirit Put to the Test of the Canadian Federation Bernard Gagnon

Charles Taylor is one of those who have contributed both intellectually and politically to Canadian federalism. Reconstructing his thought on the topic requires diving back into the last sixty years of political debates in Canada and Quebec, which have deeply marked the way he, as a philosopher, sees the situation. Taylor was a socialist activist and vice-president of the New Democratic Party in the 1960s, a public figure in the “No” camp during the 1980 and 1995 referendums, an expert invited to the major debates on Quebec’s constitutional future in the early 1990s, a public servant as member of the Conseil de la langue française in the 1980s, and co-chair of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission in the 2000s. Whether the issue has been language, political identity, constitutional future, or laicity, through his academic writings, opinion pieces, interviews, briefs, and political speeches, Taylor has not only been a witness to political events that have marked recent years, but also a key actor in them. His influence on federalist thought in Quebec does not translate into a doctrine, which would in itself be contrary to the way he sees intellectual deliberation, but instead into a comprehensive approach to our collective condition. His influence has had four vectors. First, he has given legitimacy to Quebec nationalism by exposing the foundational role of language and culture in the formation of modern political identities, and by situating Quebec claims more broadly in the politics of recognition. Second, by supporting asymmetrical federalism and distinct society status for Quebec, he has proposed a third way between unitary federalism and Quebec independence. Third, he has contributed to the idea of an inclusive Quebec identity thanks to his reflections on transformations in identity in relation to ethnocultural diversity. Fourth, and this is perhaps his most important intellectual legacy from the point of view of federalism, his conception of deep diversity has contributed to the debates on a renewed federation open to recognition of distinct peoples.

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Taylor’s reflections have influenced many academics in Quebec (Alain-G. Gagnon, Guy Laforest, Geneviève Nootens, Jocelyn Maclure, Michel Seymour) and, in turn, those academics have had a noticeable presence in Taylor’s thought, even though he does not mention it in his writings very often. Research on multinational states (Laforest, Gagnon, Seymour), on religious freedom (Maclure) and, more recently, on the Quebec model of diversity (Gérard Bouchard) plays an important role in Taylor’s work. In contrast, ultranationalist and ultrafederalist discourse has served as a counternarrative in the development of his approach to federalism. His openness to deep diversity and asymmetrical structures remains a source of inspiration for those who believe in the possibility of renewed federalism. In this text, I propose to trace the foundations of Taylor’s federalist thought. For that, I will base my arguments on an analysis of his academic writings, but also on his many public actions. To begin with, I will draw out the spirit of federalism that, in the background, structures all of his thought and, according to him, makes federalism the political model most appropriate for our contemporary political condition. In the four subsequent sections, I will retrace the formation of this vision of federalism chronologically, focusing on how it has changed and the points where a few problems arise. I will highlight the idea that Taylor, as an intellectual invested in his community, has not simply transposed his ideas onto the political scene in a unidirectional manner but has revised and clarified his thought in response to what real-life experience has taught him. Lastly, I will provide a critical summary of the federalist spirit that flows from what Taylor has said in today’s political context, in which any reform of the Canadian federation seems to have been put off indefinitely.

t h e s p ir it o f f e derali s m Taylor refers to federalism1 even though the idea itself is not conceptualized in his work. This is why it is preferable to talk about a “spirit of federalism” rather than an explicit theory. Federalism refers to many ideas in his writings, sometimes to a democratic ideal of political participation, sometimes to a way of managing deep diversity. The idea is also present as a model of state organization that is superior to the unitary model. The general idea that emerges is of a form of asymmetrical federalism, also described as communitarian or multinational federalism.2 Its primary virtue is that it affirms and recognizes multiple, complex identities. Since (regional, national, and diaspora) diversity is likely to grow in contemporary societies, this is the approach required in order to ensure common allegiance to the state in and by recognition of differences in identity. This form of federalism is based on three guiding principles: deep diversity, institutional asymmetry, and shared identity. According to the first, there are many ways to show allegiance to the federal state. For some people

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and communities, membership in a national or regional minority will have precedence over the shared political identity. For example, I can define myself a Canadian first, in the sense that commitment to Canadian values and institutions essentially defines my political identity. However, I can also consider myself a Canadian second, in the sense that it is first and foremost as a French Canadian, Acadian, or Quebecer that I adhere to the Canadian federation. A federation must therefore recognize the diversity of communities, nations, and peoples for whom a shared identity is a necessary component of the answer to the question: “Who are we?” According to the second guiding principle, namely, institutional asymmetry, a federal state must not only decentralize power structures (federated states, provinces, regions), but also include entities that are responsible for meeting objectives with regard to identity, language, and culture, and have sufficient power to be able to do so, which can imply powers that are distinct from those of the other members. For example, Indigenous nations and Quebec, which is the only political structure where there is a very great majority of members of the French-Canadian nation, must be given the powers necessary to achieve this end. According to Taylor, we can talk about asymmetry in this case but, unlike what the proponents of unitary federalism think, this does not entail a move away from the principle of equal consideration, for this principle justifies different treatment when some members have obligations that are recognized but not shared by other members.3 The first two principles of federalism are designed to deal with identity diversity and to provide sufficient institutional flexibility to adapt political structures to the social, historical, and political contexts of a given state. Taylor notes that, unlike the United States, Canada is a “real federal State” because it has “real cultural heterogeneity.”4 Canada does not simply recognize first-level individualistic diversity but seeks also to deal with “second-level or ‘deep’ diversity, in which a plurality of [national] ways of belonging would also be acknowledged and accepted.”5 The first two principles are related to the third, which is the need for citizens to share a common identity. This is necessary if we do not want to reduce collective belonging to pure instrumentality: “A democratic society needs a sense of common citizenship, that is, a common understanding of what it is to be a member of this society.”6 A shared principle of solidarity makes people accept the various sacrifices of collective life (paying taxes, defending the country, etc.). The central state must also have an identity of its own, on the one hand, insofar as it establishes the borders of citizenship (draws lines between those it includes and those it excludes) and, on the other, insofar as it must have its own personality in relation to other states. However, a communitarian federal state, unlike a unitary state, cannot count on an alliance between the majority ethnocultural identity and the national identity, as in Germany and Sweden, for example, and it also cannot

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imagine that the civic identity will transform into the main marker of national identity, as in France and the United States, for example. Instead, it has to count on some “added value” that must be perceptible to all members of the federation without imposing on any of them an image that would deform their collective identity. According to Taylor, this is possible only if the federation defines itself in a forward-looking manner,7 in other words, as a collective undertaking that is constantly changing and to which each group adheres for its own reasons, but in which mutual recognition must be understood as elevating each of the points of departure considered separately: “Suppose that we lived in a country where the common understanding was that there was more than one formula for citizenship and where we could live with the fact that different people related to different formulae … And we might come to be not dismayed and threatened, but even stimulated and enlarged by the differences we would have to bridge to keep this larger frame.”8 Taylor remains vague on concrete forms of shared identity in his federalism, and some have pointed out the utopian nature of his vision. Owing to divergent interests, the groups called upon to collaborate could just as well constantly demand new powers, which might whittle away the common foundations of the union.9 However, Taylor does not want to propose a policy made for “angels.” According to him, his approach is designed for men and women of this world.10 He notes that it is inevitable that a federation will be confronted with various conflicts, but they must be expressed in a democratic framework in which the ties created by a community of history and deliberation will win out over the centrifugal forces.11 That supposes that the federation is based on participatory institutions in which citizens feel they have real power over the course of events and that the peoples that compose the federal order enjoy real autonomy with respect to their own identity. For Taylor, not only do participatory structures favour citizens’ interest in the “public thing,” in accordance with Tocqueville, but they encourage the development of civic virtues, in accordance with Montesquieu. In a highly decentralized federal structure, “the elaboration of a consensus, the discussion of alternatives, the referring back to citizens, are all potentially feasible in small units in a way that has no parallel in larger ones,”12 and this contributes to the shared identity.

h is f ir s t w r it ings on the c a n a d ia n f e d e r a t ion (1960–70) Our portrait of Taylor’s federalist spirit can be completed and clarified by his various writings and commitments with respect to the future of the Canadian federation. While Taylor’s positions have been characterized by strong belief in federalism and distrust of the indépendantiste Québécois elites,13 his political thought changed over time in response to work in philosophy but also in reaction to new observations on social, economic,

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and cultural transformations in Canada and Quebec. Taylor’s writings can be seen as an attempt to translate the spirit of federalism into institutions adapted to a changing sociopolitical context. This has not been without theoretical and practical tensions. Taylor’s first political writings were marked by socialist activism from a pragmatic democratic perspective.14 While he had published a few texts in Cité libre in the early 1960s, those he was speaking to were mainly activists who were members of the New Democratic Party (of which he was the vice-president and for which he ran, and was defeated, four times) and left-leaning English-Canadian intellectuals brought together around the journals Canadian Dimension and Canadian Forum. The objective was to gradually, through grassroots mobilization and civic participation, lead federal policy toward economic nationalism, state interventionism, and measures to increase autonomy with respect to American hegemony.15 Constitutional issues were considered to be of secondary interest in these debates because Canada needed radical reform, and such reform could not be based on obsolete political structures that would allow the traditional elites to remain in power.16 Taylor was concerned with reconciling a centralizing economic program with democratic decentralization of political structures. He saw the source of social change as residing in the will of the people, which had to take root in radical democracy, from local communities to the summit of the state. The Canadian federation had to be decentralized and give major powers to municipalities, and the municipalities’ powers were to be juxtaposed with the powers of the regions (Ontario, Quebec, the East, and the West) and those of the central government. The central government would concentrate the principal economic powers (currency, customs, economic development) and protect Canada’s economic and political sovereignty against American hegemony. The regions, which Taylor substituted for the provinces, would hold powers with respect to social development (education, culture, health), while the municipalities would be responsible for implementation. Since the economic and the social are intrinsically linked, Taylor noted that the federal structure had to favour intergovernmental cooperation, but it was clear in his eyes that the central power remained the guardian of equitable redistribution of resources among the regions, just as it had to ensure equality of benefits for all citizens.17 Sensitive to the fate of French Canadians, whom he argued had too long been considered second-class citizens,18 he advocated for recognition of special status for Quebec19 because it was the only political entity where French Canadians were in the majority and where the majority of French Canadians were concentrated. From a structural point of view, Quebec was one region like the others in the federation and should be in charge of its own social aspects. However, owing to its linguistic and cultural uniqueness, it should also have special powers with respect to taxation, a veto on school

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and social issues, and a right to opt out with compensation with regard to certain social issues. Yet, recognition of special status for Quebec was not synonymous with recognition as a political nation. Taylor never mentioned the thesis of two founding peoples and did not support claims to that effect by socialist Quebec representatives (including Michel Chartrand and JeanMarie Bédard) when they were discussed at the New Democratic Party’s founding convention in 1961. Quebec could certainly be recognized as having history-based distinct powers for the French-Canadian ethnocultural nation,20 but this did not mean giving it the status of a founding nation of the confederation; the founding power would ultimately belong to all Canadian citizens united in regionalized democratic structures. Framing the issue of French Canada as a specific problem of FrenchCanadian “national” identity – an approach he perceived in the discourse of the Québécois nationalist intelligentsia – was a mistake according to Taylor. The problem of French-Canadian existential anxiety lay elsewhere, in the inegalitarian, elitist capitalist economic policies that divided individuals into adversarial classes. He nonetheless recognized the problem of French-Canadian underrepresentation in the power structures of Canadian society. From a left-wing point of view, Canada’s challenge was to ensure that the federal state would transform into a state of all Canadians, including in Quebec. It was obvious that Canada’s shared identity could only be political in nature, but without reproducing the American- or French-style civic nation. The strongly anchored historical identities of Quebec, and also of the rest of Canada, excluded the idea of a homogenous identity, but that could be compensated for by the formation of a shared political undertaking based on democratic participation, linguistic duality, and socioeconomic justice.21 Taylor did not see any incompatibility between the identity processes in Canada as a whole and the more particular process in French Canada, for the former were political whereas the latter was ethnocultural. In other words, there would be one sole political nation but two national cultures, one of British origin and the other of French origin, in addition to many regional and diasporic cultures. Taylor’s relations with the nationalist Québécois left were acrimonious, to say the least. Taylor did not share their idea of an exclusively madein-Quebec solution to Quebec’s problems, and he did not hide his annoyance with indépendantiste socialist groups.22 Quebec nationalism could be explained by a collective malaise, an understandable feeling owing to French Canadians’ underrepresentation in economic structures, but he complained that the “clerical elite” and the “student left from Montreal’s bourgeois Outremont enclave” exploited that malaise to defend class interests. Sooner or later, their progressive claims would end up drowned by their nationalist desires. Taylor predicted that the working and peasant classes had nothing to gain.23 If it wanted to cut the feet out from under the rising

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nationalism, the federal government would have to play an essential role in Quebec’s economic and social development, and strengthen Quebecers’ patriotic allegiance to the federal order. According to Taylor, this was the left’s true program in Quebec. In hindsight, this reductive reading of the left and of Quebec nationalists illustrates that Taylor was somewhat distanced from the kinds of things that were being said and felt in Francophone intellectual, union, and cultural milieus in Quebec in the 1960s. In his writings, he rarely referred to French Canadians’ historical claims and tended to minimize the progressive, democratic scope of the nationalist enthusiasm that was taking form. However, his writings from that time were those of a man in the heat of partisan political action, called upon to take a position on the direction to be given to progressive forces in Canada, and caught up, despite himself, in Quebec’s national row. During various debates in the New Democratic Party, Taylor took a position against resolutions submitted by more radical delegates who proposed recognizing that there were two nations in Canada (1969)24 and that Quebec has a right to self-determination (1971).25 Taylor participated with the party establishment (then led by David Lewis, who became leader in April 1971) in drafting the counterproposal that was adopted: “For a United and Independent Canada.” That resolution adhered to biculturalism but reasserted a strong federalist position in favour of a single political nation.26 That period of political activism culminated with the publication of The Pattern of Politics,27 in 1970. In some 160 pages, it laid out Taylor’s main political concerns. Canada’s economic and political sovereignty, threatened by its dependency on foreign (American) multinationals and a technocratic elite that gave in to their dictates, was front and centre. A left-leaning program based on economic planning and designed to protect the interests of the working classes was intended to free Canada of that dependency and put an end to the economic alienation experienced by whole sectors of the Canadian population. In the few pages he devoted to Canadian unity, Taylor recalled his commitment to bilingualism and biculturalism, and the importance of giving Quebec (the beating heart of French Canada) special status and ensuring equal language rights for Francophones and Anglophones. He also foreshadowed what would in later works be one of the vectors of his “spirit of federalism.” In a book addressed to readers who were mainly English-Canadian, Taylor wrote against those who favoured a uniform conception of Canadian national identity, arguing that there was more than one way to be Canadian and that there should be no need to take offence if some identified themselves as French Canadian first and Canadian second. On the contrary, Canada could benefit from multiple ways of belonging. In a shared Canadian identity, which, Taylor wrote, had yet to be built, the dialogue between such views, which could be diverse but were rich in history, could be the source of a new beginning. However, that would require, above

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all, breaking free of the dominant discourses of Canada’s political elites and remedying the disorganization of the working classes in all cultures, a mission that the New Democratic Party had to accomplish.

t he i d e n t it y d il e m m a in canada (1970–90) In the subsequent decades, Taylor put an end to his political engagement in the New Democratic Party and focused on his academic career. During this time, his conception of the situation in Quebec changed, and he began taking into account the fundamental role of language and culture in forming modern political identities. Taylor discovered this outside of political debates, in work on Hegel’s philosophy, in which the political community and the role of shared values play major parts. However, it was Herder and German romanticism, which he studied in this context, that stood out as the main references for this aspect of language and culture: the idea that peoples, like individuals, gain an identity through a language, the abandon, loss, or marginalization of which necessarily translates into a deep identity crisis.28 He wrote: “the conditions of my identity are a horizon of meaning, a language in the broad sense in which I can ask and answer the questions of ultimate significance. These I have access to through a culture, that of my community.”29 French Canada’s problem was no longer mainly due to the fact that it was disadvantaged socially and economically. The people’s will to express its identity was deeper. That aspiration could not be achieved if its language and culture were undervalued in the encompassing political whole. Understandable legitimate national claims were in line with a nation’s need to fulfill its potential on its own, to build its own identity, and to see its identity recognized by other nations. Taylor argued: “if we have a right that the conditions of our identity be respected, and if these conditions are primarily concerned with the health of our natural language, and if these depend on its expressive power and hence also opportunity, then we have a right that our language be accorded scope for expression.”30 What changed in Taylor’s vision concerned less his view of the federal structure or special status for Quebec and more the justifications for the reforms that were needed. This explains the new theme of recognition in his writings. Federal ties create a relationship between two nations in Canada, and the true value of the national identity of one of those nations, in other words, its language and culture, is not properly recognized. “Their argument is over what the conditions are for the linguistic community’s being a viable pole of identification … A new form of Canadian federation could do it too, one founded on a recognition of the [national] duality that is basic to the country.”31 On the eve of the 1980 referendum, in which he participated actively as a member of the “No” committee, Taylor nonetheless emphasized that the identity claim in no way justified the indépendantiste cause. Language and

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culture together formed only one of the two major foundations for modern nations, and the second one was even more fundamental, since it was political autonomy. The indépendantiste option could be justified only if the second one were blocked. According to him, not all nations were destined to be independent states, and Quebecers suffered neither from rule by a despotic power nor from colonial domination. On the contrary, the Canadian federation gave political participation in collective decisions to each citizen individually, and to the historical communities collectively, through the provincial states. Quebec’s independence was not a justifiable option with respect to political autonomy, and the idea of founding it on ethnocultural bases – which to his mind is what the Parti Québécois positions amounted to – carried great antidemocratic risk. “Sovereignty-association is the project of the ultranationalists … But few things are more spiritually destructive to a community than when ultranationalism wins out.”32 Quebecers did not have a right to self-determination because self-determination was embodied by the Canadian state. In other words, Taylor rejected the idea of engaging the political responsibility of the Canadian state in the fate reserved for French Canadians. In the constitutional context of 1981 and 1982, when the Canadian government unilaterally patriated the Canadian Constitution without Quebec’s consent, Taylor did not make any public statement denouncing the situation, even though it went against cooperative, asymmetrical federalism. Nor does his later work contain any criticism of the Constitution Act, 1982, unlike that of his colleague James Tully, who has compared it to a “straitjacket” and “structure of domination” for Quebec and for Indigenous peoples.33 At the turn of the 1980s, Taylor’s position was not unambiguous. On the one hand, he accepted that nationalist claims were partly legitimate but did not say how Canada was morally obliged to respond to them. On the other, his conception of “national duality” remained largely undetermined. In 1986, in one of Taylor’s rare texts on the federation during the decade,34 he said that the thesis of two founding peoples did not resonate outside of French Canada. Owing to its regional diversity and the major influx of immigrants, Canada could not think of itself as a nation in the ethnocultural sense, unlike French Canada. This meant that the only identity Canada could adopt was political. However, unlike the American model, that identity could not be based on the principles of individual rights and judicial power. Canada needed to adopt a model of political participation because of its deep diversity: “The fate of the participatory model in Canada, of the continued health of our practices of self-rule, depends on our continuing resistance to centralization, both because we would need many more decades in which to work out the outstanding issues in our common understanding as a political entity and because any such successful resolution itself would be bound to involve decentralized power.”35

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Canadian identity could not be summarized as two historical nations but as containing a multitude of historical communities (national, regional, identity-based) and, ideally, a single, shared political identity, although this remained to be built.

t he r e d e s ig n o f t h e c a nadi an federati on ( 1 9 9 0 – 9 5) The failure of the process for ratifying the Meech Lake Accord (1987–90), which aimed to include recognition of Quebec as a distinct society in the Constitution, triggered Taylor’s thought. In fact, his major texts on the Canadian federation were written mainly in the years from 1990 to 1995. In spring 1990, he said that the 1867 Constitution was morally dead in Quebec. The image of Canada that was embraced outside of Quebec was that it was “a ‘mosaic,’ the norm of the equality of the provinces, the idée fixe that there was only a ‘Canadian’ nation – all these elements were tied to the existing structures”36 that no longer had any moral value after Meech’s failure. He argued that the pact had to be remade. “It may be necessary to propose to English Canada something like a rerun of the Charlottetown Conference of 1864 whose defeat would not leave us with the status quo but would signify the end of the country.”37 The suggestion that the 1867 Constitution be abandoned was no great surprise given Taylor’s work. Even in his early writings, he never considered the British North America Act as a founding moment for the Canadian nation but rather as a pact between elites. What was new was the status Taylor now gave Quebec in future constitutional negotiations. It was up to Quebec to determine, by itself, what it wanted to see in the new federal agreement. According to Taylor, the federal pact could be acceptable to Quebec only if it addressed the following aspirations: (1) official recognition of Quebec as a distinct society, (2) attribution of powers, to be defined by Quebec, to allow it to play its historical role as the heart of the French-Canadian nation, and (3) an economic pact with the other regions of Canada to ensure Quebec would be open to the world economy and to provide political protection against outside hegemonic forces (American continentalism). The federal structure had to be more decentralized. In this proposal, the federal government would retain jurisdictions such as currency, external affairs, and defence, but the rest would have to be provincial jurisdictions (labour, income security, communications, agriculture, fisheries) or shared jurisdictions, when the situation required (immigration, industrial policy, environment).38 This vision of the future federation was consistent with some of the themes of his earlier writings, but with the addition of clear recognition of a French-Canadian nation and a Quebec state as that nation’s legitimate political representative. What was in question was not

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only cultural and linguistic duality but a form of political duality in which Quebec was called upon, as a party in its own right, to negotiate its place in the Canadian federation. Quebec (now “sure of itself,” Taylor wrote in June 1990) may have been preparing to dictate what it wanted, but it could not dictate the path to be taken by the rest of Canada. It was up to its partner or partners (Canada is not a unitary state) to define their identity and internal structure on their own. However, there was no clear option with respect to the direction to be taken. Taylor added: “A federation uniting whom? Who would be Quebec’s partners? Unfortunately, it is impossible to specify at this moment. Moreover, it is not for us to decide. English Canada itself, once it has understood and accepted that the country has to be remade from top to toe, will determine its identity.”39 Taylor nonetheless retained three options: (a) a unitary Canadian state linked through a confederal pact, (b) a symmetrical structure made up of four or five regions, of which Quebec would be a region of its own – a restatement of the positions he had defended in the 1960s, and (c) what he considered to be the best option at the time, an asymmetrical federal structure with recognition of Quebec as a distinct society. The new political structure also depended on the direction English Canada’s identity would take. Taylor argued that Quebec had every reason to maintain the federal structure, in one form or another, because of shared democratic values and the advantages of economic union that Quebecers had enjoyed in recent years, and also because the part of the French-Canadian nation that lived outside Quebec’s borders had been able to benefit from progress made within the federation, especially with respect to language matters: “Political collaboration with the other regions can also help to promote French. The progress of bilingualism in Canada, the learning of French by a growing number of English Canadians, the sometimes extraordinary expansion of immersion schools: these are all unchallengeable advantages for Francophone Quebecers. It all makes French more prestigious … [and] reduces the pressure that a strongly minority language will always feel in North America.”40 Moreover, it was not clear to Taylor that independence was the best way of meeting the need for recognition of Quebecers’ collective identity when the federal structure, which was based on multiple, complex identities, provided a defence against American cultural hegemony. In short, independence would not expose Quebecers to economic or democratic risk, but it would certainly be a step backward from the point of view of deep diversity, because it proposed a unitary Quebec state based on a homogenous ethnocultural identity, which was a regressive position in comparison with the collective enrichment entailed by collaboration among citizens from different horizons in a renewed federation. However, it was still necessary for the

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Canadian federation to change its political structures because the status quo would only prolong Quebecers’ feeling of alienation in a federation in which they did not recognize themselves. According to Taylor, the dilemma of the Canadian federation could be summarized by the following fundamental question: “Why are we here?” The answers he proposed were in sharp contrast to what he had argued in earlier decades,41 in that a united Canada would have to be based on participatory politics owing to its deep diversity. However, in 1991, he depicted a different Canada outside of Quebec.42 As a consequence of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, combined with a set of political and institutional values – multiculturalism, the provinces’ equality, non-violence, good government – Canada outside of Quebec finally had a collective identity in the form of a shared political identity. “The new patriotism of the Charter has given an impetus to a philosophy of rights and of non-discrimination”43 and to a procedural conception of liberalism that recognizes individual rights. Although he did not say so openly, Taylor described a Canadian identity outside Quebec that was growing closer to the American model. However, Quebec, even if it shared liberal values with the rest of Canada, could not feel included in this new Canadian identity because of the importance of collective considerations. In Quebec, cultural survival policy had not only to promote the language and culture, here and now, but it also needed to ensure that this collective objective would be available to future generations. This could lead to limiting individual free choice with respect to language. That would remain legitimate, Taylor pointed out, if the Quebec state respected individuals’ basic rights and minorities’ collective rights. The survival policy was not limited to the Quebec case alone. It also concerned Indigenous peoples, who were also seeking a form of recognition according to Taylor. In their own manner, Indigenous communities formed “distinct” societies in the Canadian federation; nonetheless, Taylor did not really specify what he meant by the “Indigenous” distinction, aside from in a few footnotes and short passages.44 Taylor was therefore favourable to Indigenous governmental autonomy, but it was only later that he developed his thought a little more.45 That autonomy was meant to give Indigenous people a means of “integrating in a way that would allow them to express their distinct historical experience properly, and therefore have autonomous institutions and means to put their original signature on their environment and their own destiny within our common society.”46 The Indigenous survival policy could, as with Quebec’s survival policy and in order to defend specific ways of life, cultures, and languages, violate liberal neutrality and the principle of equal treatment. According to Taylor, Indigenous people could also enjoy ethnic rights exclusive to the current members of their communities and the descendants of those members. This was justified because of their forced

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integration, historical wrongs, and the still ongoing discrimination against them. However, other than the right to vote, Taylor did not specify what ethnic rights should be considered. Taylor therefore made an open commitment in favour of government autonomy, but without cashing out the details. He considered it preferable to leave Indigenous people themselves in charge of deciding. However, his words contained a few tempering subtleties. Although he recognized that Indigenous people had been subject to forced integration and had been the victims of considerable wrongs (he mentioned the Indian Act and Indian residential schools), he did not use the term “colonization.” Moreover, unlike his colleague James Tully, but without directly rejecting the idea, he did not consider it politically promising to base the debate on the existence of Indigenous sovereignty prior to the Europeans’ arrival. He did not support “immemorial cultures” or “victims of history” discourses, which he felt were obstacles to conciliation.47 His stance recalled his positions on Quebec nationalist claims in the 1960s. To achieve the goals of national conciliation and shared identity, he considered it preferable to understand Indigenous claims from the angle of the modern policy of recognition.48 Therefore, with regard to Quebec and Indigenous peoples, Taylor showed himself to be lukewarm to the idea of engaging the Canadian state’s historical responsibility for past wrongs and present conditions. Canada (outside Quebec), Quebec, and Indigenous peoples were distinct political societies both from the point of view of their collective identities and the political rights that were to be associated with them. Thus, of the three options later maintained for Canada’s future, only the asymmetrical federalism option seemed possible to Taylor. The union of two (or more) unitary states went against deep diversity, and the federation of regions no longer corresponded to the new Canadian political identity outside Quebec. In the end, only asymmetrical federalism was therefore compatible with the spirit of federalism. Asymmetrical federalism would have to include official recognition of the specificities of Quebec and of Indigenous nations, with specific powers corresponding to their situations. The federal response lay in the general idea that there was a “range of formulae of belonging which Canada will have to incorporate within itself if we take the path of deep diversity; it is another case where we have to avoid imposing the formula of one group on others.”49 However, as a new referendum approached in Quebec, Taylor clarified and tempered his positions. As in 1980, he expressed fears about the indépendantiste plan, which he considered to be imagined and designed by “oldstock Québécois.” Moreover, in contradiction with what he said in spring 1990, he argued that asymmetry was “already a fact”50 in the Canadian federation. The proof he gave of this was that Quebec had special powers with respect to immigration and taxation, and would soon have special

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powers with respect to workforce training. The problem was therefore not structural, but symbolic. It was based on the fact that we did not manage to acknowledge what we really are: an asymmetrical federation with a distinct Quebec; and if it were not for the rivalries and intractability of the political leaders on both sides of the borders (although Taylor’s primary target remained Quebec nationalists), it would be possible to move forward. Speaking for Quebec federalists a few days before the day of the referendum, Taylor made a solemn commitment, in the Montreal Gazette, to continue the struggle for recognition of Quebec in the Canadian Constitution if the “No” side won in the November 1995 referendum,51 a promise that has remained a dead letter.

con s t it u t io n a l f a t ig u e (1995 to today) Between 1990 and 1995, Taylor went from severely criticizing federal structures – we had to go back to the federal drawing board – to justifying them “despite everything” because they were an embodiment of asymmetry. Once again, faced with the risk of a breakup, he chose to maintain the federal order; moreover, he gave it legitimacy, despite its apparent inflexibility. It was obvious to Taylor that, of the possible options, independence was the worst-case scenario, while the constitutional status quo – one that had been seen by Taylor, in 1990, as unacceptable to Quebec – was now the default option. The problem of non-recognition was reduced to a symbolic difficulty that, notwithstanding the importance Taylor gave it, could not justify the demise of the federation. The only hope was that, once the referendum was over, when constitutional negotiations began again it would be possible to find the right words to describe what we are collectively. In late 1990, Taylor participated in an attempt to find those words when he served on the New Democratic Party’s Social Democratic Forum on Canada’s Future, which was mandated to revise the party’s position on the Constitution.52 In its report, the Forum recommended “recognition, enshrined in the Constitution, of Quebecers as a people.”53 That proposal was adopted at the August 1999 National Convention. However, while the words changed, the report’s writers did not say much about their effects with respect to the distribution of powers between Quebec and the federal government, which had been central to the preceding constitutional saga. In reference to those in favour of unilateral federalism, the report sought to be more pragmatic than “absolutist,” and defended asymmetrical federalism. Quebec had to have the right to opt out, with full compensation, in the framework of a new Canadian social union within which the federal government, in collaboration with the provinces, it was specified, had to play a greater role in funding and planning, including in the provinces’ jurisdictions. What is interesting about the report with regard to the changes in Taylor’s thought has to do with the representation of Quebec as a people. A new form of Canadian duality

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was coming into view. It was no longer between two nations, one EnglishCanadian and one French-Canadian – no longer “based on the narrow confines of ethnicity”54 but between two societies of immigration, Canada and Quebec, each with its own internal diversity, each with its own linguistic and cultural particularities, and each different with respect to its shared values and goals. In other words, they were two distinct entities united by federal ties owing to converging interests (social democracy, diversity, social programs) but upon which neither unilateral federalism nor a single national identity could be imposed. The preference was for a flexible form of federalism able to respond to the different needs of its members and of the country’s great diversity, which included the Indigenous nations and various diasporas; but it favoured, especially, a pragmatic form of federalism that could be expressed less through constitutional formulas than through strong participatory democracy, intergovernmental collaboration, and a wide range of ways of accommodating diversity. In his own work and in various public appearances at the time, however, Taylor was careful not to link the question of the future of Quebec’s identity to that of its constitutional status. The idea of enshrining recognition of Quebec as a people in the Constitution was not mentioned again. Far from the trials and tribulations of constitutional debates, which Taylor often perceived as only a discussion between elites, he may have considered it preferable to reflect on the issues of the day (diversity, laicity) that Quebec, like all democratic societies, was facing, despite the question of its political future. Two lessons can nonetheless be learned from Taylor’s writings at the dawn of the new era. The first continues the conclusions that he drew from the constitutional debate in the 1990s. In his mind, Quebec’s distinct society was a fact implicitly recognized by the federation, even if not officially. Recognition seems to have become for him an obsolete issue. Quebec had acquired new powers and a right to opt out that made it possible for it to pass its own laws on the fundamental concerns in its social and cultural life: language, immigration, labour. The second lesson is new. It cannot be found in Taylor’s explicit statements, but in an interpretation of his last writings on Quebec. They suggest that Taylor recognizes, at least implicitly, that Quebec has domestic sovereignty within the Canadian federation and a right to political self-determination. “Nation culturelle, nation politique,” which he published in 1999, makes this change in direction explicit. In it, Taylor invites Quebecers to think about their “political identity” without “reference to its possible constitutional status,”55 but this is also because he considers that their future can be ensured in the Canadian federation. This reference to a “Quebec political identity” is a change in tone in his writings: Quebecers’ collective identity goes beyond the French-Canadian cultural framework and clearly includes a political core. It is advanced even though Taylor was previously relatively hesitant. Quebec is a political nation with a distinct territory, population,

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and state. It is a nation with a majority composed of descendants of French Canadians, but there are also Anglophone and Allophone minorities and Indigenous nations. This new reading of the Quebec nation is accompanied by a change in Taylor’s vision of the responsibilities of the Quebec state. While the French language remains a central concern, it is no longer a question of adopting a cultural survival policy, as he had argued in 1991, but of fostering the deployment of a pluricultural collective identity.56 In this new version of Quebec identity, the majority’s history, language, and collective affirmation play central roles, and those who join this nation have a duty to continue this narrative. However, if the political identity must be conceived of in an inclusive manner in order to allow every citizen and every group to participate in its definition, Quebec must turn toward a definition of its identity that will make it possible for minorities to adhere to it “with enthusiasm” and without fearing for the survival of their own cultural identities. This identity must be hybrid: between the political and cultural extremes. In other words, it must give priority to human rights and democracy considerations, but not renounce the contributions of the French language and references to the majority’s historical experience. On these two last points, what is important is that the collective identity not be seen as the unique prerogative of an ethnocultural group but as a deliberative space open to minorities as real partners in the collective undertaking. Taylor points out that political identity in Quebec, like elsewhere, can only be a complex identity in which citizens have different ways of uniting with the whole. The time has passed when a political nation could think of itself as having an exclusive, homogenous heritage; what is called for today is recognition of diversity. Taylor introduced a subtlety into his text that reveals the transformations in his thought on the Quebec and Canadian situation. Referring to complex identities like his own, held by those who recognize themselves both in the Canadian identity and the Quebec identity, he wrote that “it is rather unusual to belong to two cultural nations, but it is perfectly normal to be part of two sovereign peoples.”57  It is even a specific feature of a multinational state – an idea he now seems to hold, though without specifying its content. The reference to two sovereign peoples, one Canadian and the other Quebecer, was new in Taylor’s writing; unfortunately, he has not developed it further, in this text or elsewhere. It is clear that sovereignty in this context is not synonymous with a unitary state, but it can be associated with the idea of domestic self-determination, in other words, a people’s ability to define, by itself, its own policies on its collective life. This does not exclude a right to external self-determination, on which Taylor also indirectly takes a position. On the controversy concerning the possible segregation of Quebec’s territory in case of independence, he has clearly been in favour of respecting the integrity of Quebec’s land, and has also spoken in favour of a simple majority (50 per cent plus one) for deciding on the independence of Quebec.

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The thesis of two sovereign peoples also flows through the 2012 article “Interculturalism or Multiculturalism,” in which Taylor recognizes Gérard Bouchard’s contributions to his thought.58 In that text, Canada and Quebec form two distinct societies that, despite shared values with respect to democracy, rights, and citizenship, have different responsibilities with regard to collective identities. Quebec, which is similar in this way to European states in which the political nation includes a large ethnocultural majority, places greater importance on integration than on diversity, in contrast with Canada, where there is no ethnocultural majority. This is not a value judgment. These are two legitimate ways of managing diversity in different historical and political contexts. Taylor thus continues the distinction between Canadian and Quebec “values,” but with the addition of a Quebec nation clearly having a distinct political existence, with a state and a collective identity. There are a number of similarities between this Taylorian position and Gérard Bouchard’s writings on the Quebec nation. Despite their differences – one is a federalist, the other a sovereigntist – they agree on the pluralist recomposition of the Quebec identity. From this point of view, it was not surprising to see them together on the Bouchard-Taylor Commission. Both agreed that they could carry out their mission without entering into discussions on the constitutional status of Quebec. Their working together may also have meant that, after years of cleavage between federalists and Quebec indépendantistes, another political division had appeared in Quebec: between the “diversityists,” defenders of pluralism and open secularism, and the “identityists,” defenders of the French-Canadian majority identity and mainly favourable to the more Republican model of laicity (à la française).

c o n c l u s i on Deep diversity, asymmetry, and shared identity were the three pillars of the spirit of federalism. Since the mid-1990s, Taylor seems to have considered that asymmetry has gradually been acquired in the Canadian federation through various intergovernmental agreements. Quebecers would now have the powers necessary to define the “infrastructure” of their social life on their own. This is probably why Taylor thinks it is no longer necessary to revive constitutional debate. The question is no longer whether the federation is sufficiently asymmetrical; nothing prevents us from revisiting the power structure. The question is now whether an independent state would provide better protection for the collective Quebec identity. Taylor answers: “no.” However, the analysis is completely different with respect to deep diversity. Of course, Taylor could always agree that asymmetry guarantees it in practice, but on a deeper level the issue concerns official recognition that Quebec is a distinct society. In the midst of constitutional debate in 1992, he said that “it is the deep aspiration of every people to see itself recognized in

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its own political structures … However, even if there were a remote chance that Quebecers did not truly want to be recognized, the lack of a common accord on distinct society status would be a source of constant misunderstandings that would embroil us in dead-end disputes every time the slightest adjustment of existing structures would be proposed.”59 So far, it is difficult to claim that the Canadian federation embodies the principle of deep diversity with respect to Quebec or Indigenous peoples (another topic that Taylor has not revisited). Moreover, with regard to the principle of a federation’s shared identity, it is clear from Taylor’s writings that a democratic society requires more than shared laws and democratic principles: it requires strong political allegiance that grows out of meaningful participatory structures.60 One of the virtues of the federal structure is the possibility of decentralization of powers and also education of citizens through their active participation in political life. The corollary of the assertion that there are different identities was meant to be inclusion in an active democratic political life, which is necessary to consolidate the shared political goal.61 In a context of deep diversity, each group is required to define this shared allegiance, which is nonetheless indispensable and has to be an undeniable part of their collective identity. The current practices of the Canadian federation therefore only partially embody the Taylorian spirit of federalism, and the prevailing indifference to any constitutional reform does not bode well for bringing the practices closer to the ideal. It is conceivable, however, that Taylor himself has largely renounced reforming Canada’s federal structures, considering the dangers that relaunching the constitutional debates could mean for the stability of the country. Ultimately, the positions Taylor has taken have made the unity of the federation a principle that is hierarchically superior to that of recognizing deep diversity. The principle of a common identity shared by all members of the federation, which he argues could be achieved by strong democratic decentralization within the federation, seems to have become a secondary concern as the political debates have continued. If we were able to state what we “really are” in reference to the Canadian federation, it is very likely that we would still be far from the spirit of federalism, at least as Taylor has described it in principle. notes 1 Guy Laforest, “Philosophy and Political Judgment in a Multinational Federation,” in Philosophy in an Age of Pluralism, ed. James Tully (Cambridge, uk : Cambridge University Press, 1994), 194–209; Alain-G. Gagnon, “Le fédéralisme asymétrique au Canada,” in Le fédéralisme canadien contemporain: Fondements, traditions, institutions, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon (Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2006), 287–304. See also: Guy Laforest’s introduction and presentations in Charles Taylor, Reconciling

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the Solitudes: Essays on Canadian Federalism (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993). Gagnon, “Le fédéralisme asymétrique au Canada,” 287–304. Charles Taylor, “The Stakes of Constitutional Reform (1990),” in Taylor, Reconciling the Solitudes, 140–54. Charles Taylor, “Federations and Nations: Living Among Others,” in States of Mind: Dialogues with Contemporary Thinkers, ed. Richard Kearny (New York: nyu Press, 1995), 24. Charles Taylor, “Shared and Divergent Values (1991),” in Taylor, Reconciling the Solitudes, 183. Charles Taylor, “Impediments to a Canadian Future (1992),” in Taylor, Reconciling the Solitudes, 197. Charles Taylor, “The Politics of the Steady State,” in Beyond Industrial Growth, ed. Abraham Rotstein (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), 47–70. Taylor, “Impediments to a Canadian Future,” 199. James P. Bickerton, Stephen Brooks, and Alain-G. Gagnon, Six penseurs en quête de liberté, d’égalité et de communauté: Grant, Innis, Laurendeau, Rioux, Taylor et Trudeau (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2003). Ibid., 123. In The Pattern of Politics (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1970), Taylor even makes conflict a condition for real democratic debate; in this, he is in opposition with views of politics that focus on consensus. See also: Charles Taylor, “Cultures of Democracy and Citizen Efficacy,” Public Culture 19, no. 1 (2007), 117–50. Taylor, “The Politics of the Steady State,” 65. Bernard Gagnon, “Charles Taylor: Écrits sur la nation et le nationalisme au Québec,” Bulletin d’histoire politique 23, no. 3 (2015), 105–30. Nicholas H. Smith, Charles Taylor: Meaning, Morals and Modernity (Cambridge, uk : Polity Press, 2002), 170–83. Charles Taylor, “Alternative to Continentalism,” Canadian Dimension 3, no. 5 (1966): 12–5; Charles Taylor, “Nationalism and Independence,” Canadian Dimension 4, no. 3 (1967): 4–12. During this period, Taylor refused to consider the Constitution Act, 1867 (which he felt was elitist and non-democratic) as a foundation of Canadian unity. Canada was an emerging entity and the interests of the working classes, particularly in Quebec, could not be summed up in constitutional formulations because they were “constantly being concocted with an endless fertility by the élites. But none really reflects mass feeling.” Taylor, The Pattern of Politics, 137. Charles Taylor, “La planification fédérale-provinciale,” Cité libre 76 (1965): 9–16. Charles Taylor, “Bâtir un nouveau Canada,” Cité libre 79 (1965): 10–14. Taylor, “La planification fédérale-provinciale.”

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20 Ibid. 21 Taylor, “Nationalism and Independence.” 22 Charles Taylor, “La révolution futile ou les avatars de la pensée globale,” Cité libre 69 (August-September 1964): 16. 23 Charles Taylor, “Left Split in Québec,” Canadian Dimension 1, no. 7 (1964): 7–8. 24 David Waters, “Quebec Militants Down. npd Radicals Thumped in Voting,” The Gazette (Montreal), 30 October 1969. 25 Canadian Press, “Lewis Rebukes Radical ‘Waffle’ Aims, Promises to Put Pressure on Trudeau,” The Gazette (Montreal), 26 April 1971. 26 Roberta Lexier, “Two Nations in Canada: The New Democratic Party, the Waffle Movement and Nationalism in Quebec,” British Journal of Canadian Studies 30, no. 1 (2017): 1–22; Patricia Smart, “The Waffle and Quebec,” Studies in Political Economy 32 (1990): 195–201. 27 Taylor, The Pattern of Politics. 28 Charles Taylor, Hegel et la société moderne (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1998). 29 Charles Taylor, “Why Do Nations Have to Become States?” (1979), in Reconciling the Solitudes, ed. Guy Laforest (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993), 48. 30 Ibid., 49. 31 Ibid., 56–7. 32 Ibid., 57. 33 James Tully, “Liberté et dévoilement dans les sociétés multinationales”, Globe 2, no. 2 (1999): 13–36. 34 Charles Taylor, “Alternative Futures: Legitimacy, Identity, and Alienation in Late-Twentieth-Century Canada (1986)”, in Laforest, ed., Reconciling the Solitudes, 59–119. 35 Ibid., 107–8. 36 Charles Taylor, “The Stakes of Constitutional Reform”, in Laforest, ed., Reconciling the Solitudes, 145–6. 37 Ibid., 154. 38 Ibid., 168. 39 Ibid., 148. 40 Charles Taylor, “Les grandes lignes d’une solution constitutionnelle,” presentation at the Commission d’étude sur toute offre d’un nouveau partenariat, 23 March 1992, Department of Political Science, McGill University, Montreal, p. 3. (Translated from the French. Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations of French texts are by the translators of this volume.) 41 Taylor, “Alternative Futures,” 59–119. 42 Charles Taylor, “Shared and Divergent Values,” in Laforest, ed., Reconciling the Solitudes, 155–86. 43 Ibid., 165.

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44 Taylor, “Impediments to a Canadian Future,” 190, 193, and 200–1n2; Charles Taylor, “Can Liberalism Be Communitarian?”, Critical Review 8, no. 2 (1994): 257–62. 45 Charles Taylor, “Les Autochtones et nous: La vérité comme seule et unique voix,” Le Devoir, 28 July 2001; Charles Taylor, “Les raisons du self-government autochtone,” in Tom Flanagan, Premières Nations? Seconds regards (Quebec City: Septentrion, 2002), 247–67. 46 Ibid., 253 (translation). 47 Ibid., 249, 255. 48 Ibid. 49 Taylor, “Impediments to a Canadian Future,” 200–1n2. 50 Taylor, “Les grandes lignes,” 12 (translation). 51 Charles Taylor, “Message to the Rest of Canada: Quebecers Still Want Change,” The Gazette (Montreal), 28 September 1995. 52 The Forum was co-chaired by Nicole Turmel and Dick Proctor. In addition to Taylor, its nine members also included Alexa McDonough, who was then leader of the New Democratic Party. 53 New Democratic Party of Canada, Social Democratic Forum on Canada’s Future, adopted by the National Convention of the New Democratic Party of Canada, August 1999 (Ottawa: New Democratic Party, 1999), 22. 54 Ibid. 55 Charles Taylor, “Nation culturelle, nation politique,” in Penser la nation québécoise, ed. Michel Venne (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 1999), 41 (translation). 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., 40 (translation). 58 Charles Taylor, “Interculturalism or Multiculturalism,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 38, nos 4–5 (2012): 413–23. 59 Taylor, “Les grandes lignes,” 10–11 (translation). 60 Charles Taylor, “Globalization and the Future of Canada,” Queen’s Quarterly 105, no. 3 (1998): 331–42. 61 Charles Taylor, “Sharing Identity Space,” in Quebec-Canada: What Is the Path Ahead?, ed. John Trent (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1996), 121–4.

pa rt three

Civil Society in Action: Groups and Public Figures

9 The Search for a Third Option in a Time of Crisis: Constitutional Positions of Federalist Pressure Groups, 1977–81 Stéphane Savard

The hegemony of Quebec’s new nationalism began in the 1960s. It was territorial, involved many demands,1 and led to the emergence of two main constitutional trends. One of these trends, advocating a renewed form of federalism to varying degrees, shaped the Quebec state’s constitutional position in a relatively consensual manner. This was constant, even though successive elections resulted an alternation of parties called upon to form the government: the Quebec Liberal Party under Jean Lesage, the Union nationale under Daniel Johnson and then Jean-Jacques Bertrand, and then the Quebec Liberal Party under Robert Bourassa. These governments took constitutional positions and made demands centred on the notions of “special status,”2 “association of states,”3 and “cultural sovereignty.”4 Quebec’s constitutional demands were made in line with broad principles relating to obtaining special status, modifying the distribution of powers to the provinces’ benefit, gaining the right to self-determination, and obtaining the right to veto future constitutional changes.5 The other trend stemming from the new Quebec nationalism was sovereigntist and independentist, and support for it began accelerating in the mid1960s. The independentist parties, which included the Ralliement national and the Rassemblement pour l’indépendance nationale in 1966, and the Parti Québécois as of 1968, held only a small minority in the National Assembly, even though the Parti Québécois won 30 per cent of the popular vote in the 1973 election. Despite the fact that the number of independentist mna s was small, a growing number of nationalist and separatist groups from civil society had been speaking up and getting themselves heard in social space and the media since the beginning of the 1960s. These groups and public figures also pressured – directly or indirectly6 – the Lesage, Johnson, Bertrand, and

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Bourassa governments to ensure they kept making demands during constitutional negotiations, even though the positions of those governments were federalist. This resulted, for example, in Jean Lesage abandoning the FultonFavreau formula and Robert Bourassa not ratifying the Victoria Charter.7 These groups were also part of a new nationalist movement advocating for the adoption of a language policy in Quebec – based on French unilingualism – and for the province to take charge of policy on immigration and cultural diversity management.8 The election of the Parti Québécois in 1976 was like an electroshock for Quebec and Canadian federalists, who had until that time dominated the political landscape. It was suddenly no longer sufficient to simply rethink Canadian federalism or try to maintain a balance of power with Ottawa and the Liberal Party of Canada under the leadership of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. It became necessary to go to battle on the front newly opened by the victory of the Parti Québécois and its rise to power in Quebec. Those who professed to be federalists in Quebec faced unprecedented stress from two sides as they entered a period during which there was an impending referendum fight, and the Trudeau government was redefining the parameters of Quebec federalism and taking initiatives on constitutional matters. The Lévesque government set up a national committee on the referendum. It was in charge of, in particular, “disseminating information to the public on the sovereigntist option” in 1978 and 1979;9 but in 1977, the Trudeau government had already launched the Pepin-Robarts Task Force on Canadian Unity in order to find solutions to the ongoing constitutional tensions. Caught between two opposing battalions, some federalist groups joined forces to form associations and organizations defending their constitutional vision. This played a role in changing the face of civil society and its numerous pressure groups. The purpose of this chapter is to study the Quebec groups that were part of the federalist movement and actively sought to make their constitutional views known to elected officials in the political arena in the period spanning 1977 to 1981. This exceptional period began with the Parti Québécois’s victory in November 1976 and reached its climax during the 1980 referendum campaign and the Trudeau government’s attempt at a “constitutional power grab” against the provinces, which involved ignoring the referendum “promises” Trudeau had made in 1980–81. It ended with the November 1981 conference on the Constitution and the patriation of the Constitution in April 1982. Our aim here is to paint a picture of these groups by choosing the ones most representative of each trend, to analyze their stances on the stakes involved in constitutional reform and the referendum and, above all, to bring out the main characteristics of federalist thought “in action.” By “federalist thought in action,” we are referring to what can be interpreted from the positions adopted by the various civil society groups that took part in the constitutional debate. This means we will not be examining lines of

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thought that are carefully weighed and well-articulated, as, for example, a position formulated by the likes of intellectuals such as Léon Dion,10 but rather stances with characteristics that can be analyzed by looking at what citizen activists said. To do this, I have selected four key points when the groups being studied took part in public hearings directly related to constitutional debates: the Task Force on Canadian Unity (the Pepin-Robarts Commission) established by the Trudeau government in 1977 (1977–79),11 the National Assembly committee on the 1977 white paper on public consultations in Quebec,12 the 1980–81 Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons on the Constitution of Canada,13 and the 1980–81 Quebec parliamentary committee on the federal government’s draft resolution on the Canadian Constitution.14 In each of these cases, the spokespersons of federalist groups played roles in Quebec and Canadian politics by submitting briefs and by expressing their points of view in an official manner through dialogue with state-appointed commissioners and with the policy-makers in Quebec and Ottawa designated by their respective parties to reflect on constitutional issues. Our approach addresses two different historiographical currents. First, we examine conflicts surrounding conceptions of Canadian federalism, particularly in times of crisis. In her work Panser le Canada, historian Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon has painted a picture of the intellectual aspects of the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission in the mid-1960s,15 a time when, according to André Laurendeau, Canada was experiencing the worst crisis in its history. Historian Raymond B. Blake has analyzed the promotion of decentralized federalism by Newfoundland policy-makers from the 1960s to the 1990s and the tension it engendered, not only with Ottawa but also with Quebec.16 Other researchers, such as political scientists Alain-G. Gagnon and Kenneth McRoberts, have studied the period surrounding the failed constitutional negotiations at Meech Lake17 and the consequences in Quebec, including the establishment of the Bélanger-Campeau Commission, which led hundreds of individuals and groups to take positions in favour of, or against, renewed federalism.18 The first half of the 1990s can be seen, to some degree, as the third period in the constitutional crisis, the first having taken place in the 1960s. In this chapter, we are focusing on the second period of crisis, from 1970 to 1980, which, surprisingly, has not been studied very much. Historian Frédéric Bastien has provided a sound analysis of all aspects of the Trudeau government’s 1980–81 strategies in favour of unilateral patriation of the Canadian Constitution, but he has scarcely addressed Quebec federalist groups and their positions vis-à-vis the triangular power relationship between Ottawa, the provinces, and the Palace of Westminster.19 The other historiographical current addressed by our study is analysis of citizen empowerment during the 1960s and ’70s. Such empowerment disrupted Western political culture and democratic practices.20 Léon Dion, Sean Mills, Marcel Martel, and Martin Pâquet have shown how a new

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political culture emerged out of the Quiet Revolution. This culture centred on the empowerment of citizens to voice their views on a myriad of societal issues: language and immigration policies, the state’s role in education, malefemale relations, the civil rights of ethnic minorities, economic development policies, etc.21 Other studies have addressed citizens’ voices on Quebec’s constitutional future, but they have leaned mainly toward the voices of sovereigntist groups and leaders.22 Here we are presenting an analysis of pressure groups that have thus far been neglected in historiography. In this chapter, we begin by putting into context the emergence, in the early 1970s, of parliamentary practices increasingly sensitive to the principles of participatory democracy. This background is essential to gaining a better understanding of the groups we have selected for our study from among the main groups that were part of the federalist movement. We will describe them in the second section of this chapter. The chapter ends with an analysis of these groups’ and the main spokespersons’ federalist thought in action.

n e w p a r l ia m e n t a r y practi ces c e n t r e d o n c it iz e n e mpowerment 23 In the 1960s, the new social movements allowed citizens to voice their opinions and led to the establishment of many more pressure groups in the public forums of Western societies. There was increasingly open talk of the need to reform the political system by opening it up to participatory democracy.24 The transformations in Quebec’s political culture steered elected officials to reflect on how to adapt parliamentary practices: they wanted to open up dialogue with civil society in order to preserve the legitimacy of their political representation of the electorate. In particular, they sought to establish a public hearing process that could democratize discussion on societal issues and open up public debate, thus giving needed visibility to citizens and groups who contested or supported government decisions and the associated values and representations. However, the purpose of this process was also one of control, with the ultimate objective of channeling citizens’ voices into a specific location and circumscribing orientations. In addition to royal commissions of inquiry, which began to include more public hearings25 in the 1960s, both in Quebec and Canada, one of the main means of channelling and delimiting citizen participation was to establish public hearing processes in the National Assembly’s parliamentary committees. In the mid-1960s, the parliamentary initiative of using “standing committees” was back on the agenda. The idea was to make it possible for any individual to be invited to testify before elected officials26 and this was one of the factors that led to the creation of standing parliamentary committees in the early 1970s.27 Such committees are made up of elected members of the National Assembly who monitor, debate, and sometimes even criticize

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budgets allocated to government departments, important bills introduced in the National Assembly, government and state-owned enterprise plans, etc. When government officials decide that a question to be studied by a task force or parliamentary committee is to be the subject of a public hearing process, various groups and individuals are then invited to present their points of view and to submit, in most cases, briefs detailing their positions. Public hearings can be open, in which case an announcement is made, and the witnesses (individuals or groups) have a given number of days to express their interest in participating, or they can be relatively restricted, in which case only individuals and groups that have been invited can participate. There is no doubt that parliamentary committees with public hearings are full of potential and provide an interesting meeting environment for policy-makers and pressure groups, even though it is important to recognize that they are delimited by the party in power and prone to reproduce the sociopolitical stakeholders’ power relations and political strategies. Overlooked by historiography,28 they have nevertheless been analyzed in political sociology and political science – particularly with respect to the public hearings held by the Quebec Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (1978). The research in those fields has shown that public hearings represent an attempt to establish participatory democracy, that is, a democratic political system open to “mediating the needs, aspirations, and expectations of citizens with regard to the state.”29 Since parliamentary committees become “political discussion forums on choices offered to the public,” studying them makes it possible to analyze “the democratic structuring of the Quebec government’s action” during the Quiet Revolution.30

qu e b e c g r o u p s in t h e f e derali s t movement: 1 9 7 7 – 81 Citizen voices in public spaces, the media, and political forums played a role in changing the political culture in Quebec. In fact, citizen empowerment grew in the mid-1960s around major issues, especially related to nationalism. In addition to education reform, which mobilized the more conservative fringes in rural Quebec,31 several other core issues in the Quiet Revolution, such as language, integration of immigrants into schools and society, and the idea of independence, became the driving forces of a new form of citizen activism. Groups such as Mouvement Québec français, Mouvement national des Québécois, and the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste were formed or changed their approaches and how they operated to become true pressure groups. They attempted to influence elected officials in Quebec and Canada to propose major changes to the building of a symbolic order for Quebec that would be different from that proposed by Ottawa, which included a new flag, a law on institutional bilingualism, and a policy on multiculturalism.32

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In contrast, the constitutional debates, which began raging in the mid1960s and escalated especially after the election of the Parti Québécois in 1976, fostered the emergence of pressure groups that were in favour of keeping Quebec in the Canadian federation. Some federalist groups cut their teeth during the debate on the language acts in Quebec (Bill 22 in 1974 and Bill 101 in 1977), but they truly proliferated in the period 1977–81. The political turmoil surrounding the Quebec referendum and patriation of the Canadian Constitution allowed them to play very active roles in Quebec politics and encouraged them to participate in the related public hearings. Promotion of federalism was the main purpose of many groups, including the Positive Action Committee, which was present at all four of the public hearing processes we are studying. Formed in December 1976 by “15 members who had a concern for the future role of the non-French speaking people of Quebec, in Quebec, and for the future of Quebec within Canada,” in only a few months “it grew to 115 members including the chairmen of the various education sectors of Quebec, English-speaking sectors, including the union leaders, the chairmen of school boards, university principals and heads of various associations, and added to that a group of businessmen.” By 1980, after an appeal to the general public, the group had 50,000 members.33 Over a period of five years, the organization’s leaders and spokespersons included Storrs McCall, Alex  Paterson, Casper Bloom, and Suzanne Côté-Gotlieb. Note that the Positive Action Committee and other groups such as Participation Quebec merged in 1982 to form Alliance Quebec.34 Other groups had missions somewhat similar to that of the Positive Action Committee and also participated in at least two public hearing initiatives. The Quebec-Canada Movement, which had as its main objective to keep Quebec in Canada, had over 100,000 members in November 1977, the same year it was founded by Liberal mna Michel Gratton (in Gatineau).35 The movement was chaired by Claude Nolin in November 1977, with JeanPierre Gignac acting as spokesperson.36 Another group that also took part in two public hearing processes during that same period was the Council for Canadian Unity, which had been around since the mid-1960s when a few Montreal businessmen, including T.R.  Anthony Malcolm and Bruce Kippen, got together with the purpose of countering the separatist movement in Quebec37 and building a strong, united Canada for all Canadians, from coast to coast.38 It is impossible to know how many activists were in the organization during the period we are studying, but we do know that Jocelyn Beaudoin was the president and that the Council published a newsletter called Opinion Canada, edited by Jean Chevrier.39 Initially known as the “Canada Committee,” the Council for Canadian Unity would be called the “Canadian Unity Council”40 after the period we are looking at here and would also receive funding from Ottawa. Lastly, Commitment Canada/Engagement canadien participated in only one set of public hearings: the Pepin-Robarts Commission, in Montreal. Created in March 1977,

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Commitment Canada claimed to be made up of men and women for whom the word “Canada” had a vital, concrete meaning and evoked shared ideas and aspirations.41 Although we were unable to find the names of the group’s leaders, we know that Bernard Blanchard was responsible for presenting the brief before the members of the Task Force. Promoting federalism was not the main objective of all of the groups that participated in public hearings. However, we consider that some nevertheless belonged to the federalist movement insofar as their discourse contained a clear, overriding position in favour of the federalist option – whether it be the status quo or, more often, a renewed form of federalism. Stirred by the debates surrounding Bill 101, a number of Anglophone and Allophone groups took part in some of the public hearings. Their submissions concerned education, regional identity, and promotion of cultural diversity. The Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal can also be considered to have belonged to the federalist movement, since it was involved in the Pepin-Robarts Commission and the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons. As its chair explained at the end of 1980, it was the largest Protestant school board in Canada, and had, over the preceding fifteen years, participated in, and indeed, “been the focus of stormy social educational and political debate about language and religion and the control of education and how it should be financed.”42 Formed in 1979, the English-speaking Townshippers’ Association had some 6,000 members when it appeared before the Quebec National Assembly committee on the federal government’s draft resolution on the Canadian Constitution. The Association was formed to “promote English language interests and encourage full participation by English-speaking residents of the Eastern Townships in Quebec society,” and to strengthen its community’s identity “by grouping together to discuss common concerns, hopes and dreams, while at the same time continuing to keep in step with the changes in the greater Quebec community.”43 The Council of Quebec Minorities also participated in hearings. It was founded in 1978, and its president, Éric Maldoff, described it as “an umbrella organization with 42 member groups from across Quebec, groups which are concerned with questions of minority life in Quebec. A large number of those concerns deal with questions of language.”44 Maldoff later became one of the activists in favour of an alliance between Quebec’s ethnic minorities and Anglophones to speak for a more flexible Bill 101, and this later led to the creation of Alliance Quebec, in the early 1980s.45 The Quebec division of the National Congress of Italian-Canadians was also very active on the federal scene. Referring to herself and the members of her organization, spokesperson Rita DeSantis said: “We are convinced federalists and we share the vision that the Prime Minister of Canada has repeatedly and publicly depicted in moving terms to all Canadian citizens.”46 Indigenous groups that were actively involved in the 1980 debates on the referendum should also be included in the category of groups belonging

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to the federalist movement. Their political voice began to be heard in the United States, Australia, and Canada at the very end of the 1960s and was part of what historians called “Red Power.” In Canada, the 1969 federal white paper recommended abolishing the ancestral rights of the First Nations to make their members citizens like all others. This gave impetus to the Indigenous associations’ claims for Indigenous identity and to legal arguments in favour of recognition of their territorial and ancestral rights. In Quebec, the James Bay Project acted as a springboard for Indigenous groups to speak out for their identity and to claim their territorial, legal, and political rights (regarding governance and self-government).47 Some groups, such as the Inuit through the Northern Quebec Inuit Association and the Makivik Corporation, saw the need to engage publicly in constitutional debates. Established following the signature of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, the Makivik Corporation took on the charge of representing the Inuit in constitutional debates between Quebec and Canada.48 The Grand Council of the Huron Nation and the Atikamekw-Montagnais Council also spoke before the Pepin-Robarts Commission and the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons, respectively. Here we will not discuss the positions of the political parties represented in the National Assembly (which would be a matter for another study altogether given the scope of their speeches and stances on Canadian federalism), except when we look at the positions of third parties that were a bit like small political groups. It may come as a surprise, but the Communist Party of Quebec, of which the best-known spokesperson was Hervé Fuyet, could be considered to belong to the federalist movement, owing both to its unique discourse and to its will to be heard on constitutional issues. The Communist Party of Quebec participated in three of the four public consultations studied, sitting out only the Joint Committee’s public hearings.

f e d e r a l is t t h o ught i n a c t io n in a t im e of cri s i s A number of groups that belonged to the federalist movement received funding from the central Canadian government, and even from the Quebec government in some cases.49 In that respect, they were no different from the associations and organizations established by Francophone communities outside Quebec following the Secretary of State’s initiative in the 1970s.50 Not only did that funding make it possible for them to organize, but it also allowed them to develop the resources necessary to give people a voice at public hearings and thus to pressure policy-makers. They were empowered to put forward their values and interests in the hopes of helping to define the common good of Quebec’s sociopolitical community. As a number of researchers have shown, in the case of Francophone communities outside Quebec, such as the Franco-Ontarian community and the Fédération des

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francophones hors Québec,51 federal funding fostered their very existence and was instrumental in providing them with a public voice. Federal support did not hinder such groups from promoting their own interests, and they did not necessarily fall in line with Ottawa, in general, or with the Trudeau government, in particular, on constitutional issues. Although the federalist thought of these groups was not as well articulated as the ideology developed by professional intellectuals and policy-makers, it is no less relevant since it came out of a form of participatory democracy in which elements of civil society contributed to constitutional debate and reflection. Often indirect, this federalist line of thought was revealed through action, as the various groups positioned themselves on constitutional issues. All the groups we studied were independent and had relatively original perspectives on federalism, which complicated the debates and contributed to the federalist camp splitting into factions. Nonetheless, we can identify some general characteristics that define federalist thought in action, even though those characteristics were not necessarily shared by all the groups studied. The first characteristic concerns the primacy of Canadian bilingualism and the need to uphold language and education rights based on the principle of free choice. It was from this perspective that the Positive Action Committee argued for extending the “right to speak in the legislatures of the provinces and in the courts, civil and criminal, in English and French.”52 Criticizing the “erosion” of English services in Quebec over the preceding decade, the Committee also defended the “right to have access to health and social services wherever the numbers warrant in English and French.”53 The Committee was in favour of entrenching rights for French and English minorities everywhere in Canada, and it affirmed that bilingualism was a “unifying” factor in institutions such as legislative assemblies and courts, and that it was a “unifying feature for Canada.”54 This characteristic was also shared by the Council of Quebec Minorities, which, jointly with the Association canadienne-française de l’Ontario, demanded that members of linguistic minorities be able to feel like “first class citizens.”55 The Council of Quebec Minorities also argued that the Constitution had to provide for parents’ right “to have their children instructed in the official language” of their choice and that minorities should have the right to administer their own schools.56 The Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal evoked the same rights when its chair criticized Quebec’s language-planning policy: “Law after law has been passed in our province, which has severely restricted our rights as a local government to manage our own schools, our rights to negotiate with our own staff, and our rights to tax our own constituents and also severely restricted our rights to determine the language in which our children can be educated.”57 The Protestant School Board put forward the idea of a charter of rights and freedoms as a driving force behind Canadian federalism: “We want a Canada which not only talks about justice and freedom and opportunity

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and respect, and respect for local control of our social institutions, but a Canada which has the courage to practice what it preaches and build into its laws the necessary safeguards and democratic principles so that all of our people can benefit from these important values in order to realize their own personal aspirations.”58 At first sight, such a point of view could seem trivial. Yet, these groups’ positions and the underlying conceptions of federalism may provide a partial explanation why the Trudeau government was so tenacious when it came to enshrining the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and its section 23, on language of instruction,59 in the Constitution. The groups’ positions were also connected to similar perspectives held by Francophone communities outside Quebec. Indeed, the Council of Quebec Minorities joined with the Association canadienne-française de l’Ontario to submit a brief to the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons, in the fall of 1980.60 Yet, it can be argued that these positions in favour of bilingualism and language rights were somewhat inconsistent with the Trudeau government’s conception of federalism. As André Burelle has shown in his essay in this collection,61 these groups’ positions were, in fact, more in line with a communitarian vision of the Canadian federation. In our opinion, this reveals the historical roots of an approach that many researchers have considered and promoted: asymmetrical multinational federalism – as opposed to the symmetrical territorial federalism that Ottawa has been promoting since the patriation of the Constitution.62 Some of the groups recognized Canada’s demographic reality and expressed realistic hopes that four provinces – Ontario, Manitoba, Quebec, and New Brunswick – would acknowledge additional obligations regarding the two official linguistic minorities.63 The Quebec division of the National Congress of Italian-Canadians recognized this point with regard to language: “Freedom of choice can only be rejected by the majority of our Francophone fellow citizens from Quebec and their opposition is justifiable because the prerequisite of equality of status for both official languages does not as yet exist. A look to the near future gives no hope of radical change in this respect.”64 The English-speaking Townshippers’ Association took it one step further, requiring not only that the new Constitution “recognize and guarantee fundamental civil rights of English-speaking and French-speaking minorities throughout Canada,” but also that it recognize “the principle of two founding peoples and cultures.”65 These examples show a certain openness with regard to the communitarian federalism in the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission’s first recommendations prior to André Laurendeau’s death.66 In other words, the federalism implied in the submissions of some of the groups studied was not quite the same as the symmetrical territorial federalism that the Trudeau government was defending; Quebec’s experience, the ties with Francophone communities, and knowledge of the reality on the ground seem to have given these visions of federalism a special colour. The thesis of a pact between two founding

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peoples, rapidly disseminated by the elites in Quebec after Confederation in 186767 and still strongly promoted by the leaders of Francophone communities outside Quebec during the 1970s and ’80s,68 steered the discourse of some federalist groups during the 1977–81 period, as can be seen in the brief submitted to the Pepin-Robarts Commission by the Quebec division of the Council for Canadian Unity. It was a plea for a “new Canada” that would be “a completely, solemnly free Canada in a new alliance entrenching equality between the two founding peoples and bringing about substantial constitutional change, particularly regarding the distribution of powers and the constitutional court.”69 The second characteristic of these groups’ federalist thought in action is directly linked to the preceding observation: it involved openness to diverse expectations and therefore complex debates, which led to recognition of many possibilities with regard to the conception and implementation of federalism. In other words, some groups positioned themselves openly in favour of decompartmentalizing the debate on sovereignty-association. Although polarization of positions for or against sovereignty-association began in the late 1960s in Quebec,70 it accelerated after the 1976 election of the Parti Québécois and the subsequent referendum campaign. The Pepin-Robarts commissioners confirmed that they did not hear any “arguing for the maintenance of the status quo, that is the present system, without change in the relationship between Quebec and the central government,” from any Quebecers taking part in the proceedings: “Much more frequently and explicitly voiced were suggestions that the status quo ‘should be put definitely aside,’ that it was ‘clearly not an alternative to sovereignty-association’ or that ‘major and blatantly needed’ changes in the constitution were called for if Quebec were to be convinced to remain in Confederation.”71 What the commissioners were saying was that there were groups strongly in favour of a unifying, decentralizing federalist “third option,” even if it gave Quebec special status in terms of transfer of powers.72 However, this third federalist option was fuzzy and influenced by a number of social trends in Quebec and Canada. While Commitment Canada did not refer to a third option, it recognized the need to have open constitutional debate and to provide ordinary Canadian citizens with a means to voice their opinions, define their feelings of national belonging, and participate actively in the development of the country. It envisaged organizing a grassroots campaign for citizen participation in Canadian unity that would take a democratic approach to determining the nation’s future.73 During the public hearings at the National Assembly on the draft white paper on the public consultations, the focus was mainly on the referendum on Quebec’s constitutional future. At one point, Jean Chevrier, member of the Council for Canadian Unity, responded to a question from Union nationale mna Fernand Grenier by reflecting on what the Lévesque government hoped to achieve with the referendum:

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I think we should first agree on exactly what we are looking to get out of this referendum. For example, for many years now there has been talk about the various options for Quebec, for Canada. There are certainly supporters of the status quo, there certainly are. There are possibly others for sovereignty-association, surely, and for independence also. There is this famous third option, or renewed federalism, that has been a big topic of discussion in recent days and times. In terms of how the question should be worded, should we try to bring all the options together into one question, or should we only ask a more specific question, such as: Are you for or against independence-association? Are we not limiting the debate by limiting ourselves to only one question? Those who are against association are not necessarily in favour of the current system or status quo. I suppose it all depends on the way we envisage the solutions for Quebec’s future as a whole.74 Encouraged by Liberal mna Jean-Noël Lavoie, Chevrier continued his reflection: “It’s a question of justice for all. It’s about giving everyone the chance to voice their opinion on a general question; if people are going to put themselves in specific categories, then those categories should be broad enough for there to be a question that can encompass a given option.”75 These reflections on “multiple options” were not actual recommendations from the Council in the context of the referendum question. According to its chair, the Council was in favour of a “clear and precise” question with no possible “confusion.”76 The Positive Action Committee’s position was in line with this, and against formulating a referendum question that would include more than two options because it was important to obtain a clear vote with more than 50 per cent in favour of one of the choices.77 In our opinion, the general willingness in the constitutional debate to reflect on multiple options was nevertheless revealing of the desire and need for a “third option” that had yet to be clearly defined in public and political spaces. That third option therefore represented a number of different federalist tendencies, particularly at the time the Pepin-Robarts Commission was created.78 The Communist Party of Quebec, however, was in favour of a referendum offering more than two options: “In our opinion, this referendum will be of no value unless the different schools of thought are represented and the main options are offered to voters, that is, at the very least, under the current federalism, Quebec’s autonomy in the confederation, decentralization of federal power to the benefit of the provinces, secession or sovereignty-association, and Quebec and English Canada equal and united in a democratic Canada.”79 Spokesperson Hervé Fuyet even suggested holding a referendum in which a second ballot would be required if none of the options won a majority vote in the first ballot,80 which showed that he attached great importance to the different directions that federalism and sovereignty could take. His

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argument was consistent with his characterization of his party’s constitutional position as in favour of a democratic “Canadian republic” liberated from the imperialist British North America Act. The republic would recognize the existence of two nations in Canada and guarantee “economic, social, political, and cultural equality for both.”81 This seems to be the third option taken to the extreme, similar to what Daniel Johnson Sr proposed in the mid-1960s, with his notion of two equal nations, each having the right to its own strong, national state government, united in a new Canada.82 The third characteristic is exclusive to the federalist thought of Indigenous groups, which articulated clear, specific claims, the whys and wherefores of which led them to a conception of a form of multinational federalism – without naming it as such – different from that promoted by other federalist groups. Our research has shown that many Indigenous groups in Quebec did not merely watch the constitutional train go by in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but tried to board it and take it to their lands. They acquired constitutional experience that would be of use to them later, for example, in debates on the Meech Lake Agreement and, above all, during the Charlottetown Accord negotiations.83 With its position founded on identity and legal claims flowing from Indigenous rights, the Grand Council of the Huron Nation recalled: “Indians living in Quebec and in any other province or on territories that are an integral part of our country must not become stateless on the land of their ancestors. We recognize no power in the Quebec government regarding our rights, our culture, our customs, or the organization of our Indian societies. We are different from the nonIndian citizens of this country and we intend to remain such; that is our most cherished claim and desire, for us and our descendants.”84 It does not come as a surprise that, upon submitting its brief to the PepinRobarts Commission, the Grand Council of the Huron Nation, represented by Max  Gros-Louis, also known as Oné Onti, went on to state: “true Canadian unity can only be achieved through respect for multiculturalism; of course, since Indian culture was the first to be established in the land, everything should be done to preserve it.”85 The Inuit were particularly active between 1977 and 1981, participating in three of the four public hearings in question. Before the Pepin-Robarts Commission, they demanded a seat at the negotiating table on constitutional matters: “Our past history, therefore, has amply demonstrated to the Inuit of Quebec that we must not only be consulted but have a meaningful role in decisions concerning any constitutional reform which affect us.”86 Later, during the debates around a framework law on the public consultations, the Inuit requested a regional approach to holding the referendum. To justify their position, they reminded Quebec mna s: “Even if there are other special regions in this province, the Inuit of Quebec argue that the land they occupy, which is the part of the 1912 Territory north of the fifty-fifth

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parallel, is a distinct region within the province of Quebec. Relevant historical, cultural, political, and economic aspects of the territory in question make it a different part of Quebec.”87 Following the 1980 referendum, and a few years after the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement came into effect, the Inuit expressed their dissatisfaction with their regional self-government: “To date, however, Inuit aspirations for self-determination or autonomy on a regional and local level have been seriously impeded by Quebec.” They still demanded “self-determination within a regional context” which, according to them, could only be achieved “through mutual respect and open communications between Quebec and Inuit.”88 This sense of distinct regional character and identity was later strengthened by a reinterpretation of the founding peoples theory. The AttikamekMontagnais Council saw Indigenous peoples as founding peoples with the same status as French Canadians and English Canadians: “As independent peoples before the arrival of the Europeans, we wish to be recognized as the founding peoples on an equal basis with the English and the French.” This special position in the federation allowed them to demand “that the rights of Indians be enshrined in the Constitution before it is patriated to Canada, and that they not be amended or abrogated without the consent of the Indian nations concerned.”89 From the recognition of two founding peoples evoked by federalist groups, there was therefore a passage, with Indigenous groups in the late 1970s and early 1980s, to a conception of multinational federalism in which Canada would be made up of a number of founding peoples. In our opinion, this is when the first steps were taken toward a conception of federalism that would, over the subsequent fifteen years and especially during the 1991–92 negotiations surrounding the Charlottetown Accord, put the final nails in the coffin of the theory of a pact between two founding peoples.

c o n c l u s ion With the referendum on the constitutional future of Quebec and the political prevarication surrounding patriation of the Canadian Constitution, the years from 1977 to 1981 provided a profusion of opportunities for federalist groups to speak up. Strengthened by the support of thousands of members, the spokespersons of such groups made submissions to the various commissions of inquiry and parliamentary committees in Quebec City and Ottawa, and defended their views before political leaders during public hearings held by those commissions and committees. Although these groups were on the winning side of the 1980 referendum, they have been almost completely ignored by historians, in comparison with the nationalist and sovereigntist groups that were very active from the mid-1960s on. One of the goals of this chapter has been to remedy this historiographical failure

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by profiling the main groups that were part of the federalist movement and active during the period in question. These groups were not satisfied with the constitutional status quo and they advocated for a form of federalism that was meant to be multinational – whether centred around the notion of two founding peoples or around recognizing several founding peoples. In that respect, the groups studied called for political leaders in Quebec City and Ottawa to be more open to a third option, or even multiple options, and they all had views that diverged both from the sovereignty-association proposed by the Lévesque government and from the centralizing constitutional patriation plans concocted by the Trudeau government. This chapter shows that the idea of a third option – or multiple options – was not something held by the Quebec Liberal Party alone or just by intellectuals, such as Solange Chaput-Rolland and Léon Dion. Many civil society groups spoke up in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the firm conviction that they also had something to contribute to the constitutional debate. Taking their words into consideration is important for understanding the changes in values and representations in society. This is why this study is but a first step in a more systematic analysis of the federalist pressure groups that emerged in Quebec during the Quiet Revolution and were active in the sociopolitical arena at least until the 1995 referendum. notes

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2

3 4

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We wish to thank Alain-G. Gagnon and Antoine Brousseau Desaulniers for their insightful comments on the preliminary version of this chapter. We would also like to acknowledge the funding from the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (frqsc ) that made part of this research possible. This is what Michael Behiels called “neo-nationalism” and it emerged during the Duplessis era in Quebec in the 1950s. See: Michael D. Behiels, Prelude to Quebec’s Quiet Revolution: Liberalism versus Neo-Nationalism, 1945–1960 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1985), 20–36; Paul-André Linteau et al., Histoire du Québec contemporain, Volume 2: Le Québec depuis 1930 (Montreal: Boréal, 1989), 352–8, 421–2; Kenneth McRoberts, Quebec: Social Change and Political Crisis (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1988). This was Jean Lesage’s position in the 1966 election. See: Alain-G. Gagnon, “Québec-Canada: Circonvolutions constitutionnelles,” in Québec: État et société, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 1994), 87. See Daniel Johnson’s booklet Égalité ou indépendance (Montreal: Édition Renaissance, 1965). See: Gagnon, “Québec-Canada: Circonvolutions constitutionnelles”; Fernand Harvey, “Le gouvernement de Robert Bourassa et la culture, 1970–1976. 1re partie: la souveraineté culturelle,” Les Cahiers des dix, no. 72 (2018): 291–326. See: Kenneth McRoberts, Un pays à refaire: L’échec des politiques constitutionnelles canadiennes (Montreal: Boréal, 1999).

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6 Concerning direct and indirect external pressure on elected official by pressure groups, see: Jérôme Boivin and Stéphane Savard, “Pour une histoire de groupes de pression au Québec: Quelques éléments conceptuels et interprétatifs,” in De la représentation à la manifestation: Groupes de pression et enjeux politiques au Québec, 19e et 20e siècles, ed. Stéphane Savard and Jérôme Boivin (Quebec City: Septentrion, 2014), 22–6. 7 Antoine Brousseau Desaulniers, “L’évolution du débat politique québécois en regard de la question constitutionnelle (1960–1971)” (master’s thesis, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2016). 8 Marcel Martel and Martin Pâquet, Langue et politique au Canada et au Québec: Une synthèse historique (Montreal: Boréal, 2010); Laurence Monnot, La politique de sélection des immigrants du Québec: Un modèle enviable en péril (Montreal: Hurtubise, 2012). 9 Jean-Charles Panneton, Le gouvernement Lévesque – Tome 2: Du temps des réformes au référendum de 1980 (Quebec City: Septentrion, 2017), 174–8. (Translated from the French. Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations of French texts are by the translators of this volume.) 10 Note that Léon Dion spoke on 3 February 1981 before the Quebec National Assembly parliamentary committee tasked with studying the federal government’s draft resolution on the Constitution of Canada, and that a number of federalist groups showed support for or criticism of some of his ideas to better justify their positions. The following groups took part in the proceedings (31st Parliament, 6th session): the Positive Action Committee (11 February 1981, vol. 23, no. 46, part. B-2071-2072) and the Makivik Corporation (11 February 1981, vol. 23, no. 46, p. B-2093). 11 Public hearings were held in fifteen Canadian cities between September 1977 and April 1978. The public hearings held in Quebec City and Montreal were on 24 and 25 November 1977 and 16, 17, and 18 January 1978, respectively. See: Jean-Luc Pepin and John P. Robarts (Task Force on Canadian Unity), A Time to Speak: The Views of the Public (Ottawa: Ministry of Supply and Services and Services Canada, 1979), VII (hereinafter the Pepin-Robarts Report). 12 The 1977 Quebec white paper on public consultations aimed to establish the parliamentary and legal mechanisms for the Quebec referendum, but it was meant to be from a general point of view and not to focus on any specific public consultation (i.e., the referendum on the constitutional future of Quebec). The committee chair, Clément Richard, specified: “I would not wish, at least it would not be desirable for this parliamentary committee to turn into a debate – I am not saying that I will prevent any questions – on Quebec’s political future.” It seems, however, that the opposite occurred, since several groups focused on the future referendum on Quebec’s constitutional future. See: National Assembly of Quebec, Hansard, Commission permanente de la présidence du Conseil, de la Constitution et des affaires intergouvernementales, Étude du livre blanc sur la consultation populaire au Québec, 31st Legislature,

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2nd session, vol. 19, no. 221, 1 November 1977, pp. B6885, B-6887 (hereinafter the Committee on Public Consultations). The Joint Committee, in Ottawa, was mandated to “consider and report upon the document entitled ‘Proposed Resolution for a Joint Address to Her Majesty the Queen respecting the Constitution of Canada’ published by the Government on October 2, 1980, and to recommend in their report whether or not such an address, with such amendments as the Committee considers necessary, should be presented by both Houses of parliament to Her Majesty the Queen.” See: House of Commons of Canada, Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence of the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and of the House of Commons on the Constitution of Canada, 6 November 1980, p. 5 (hereinafter the Joint Committee). The committee was established by the Lévesque government in the wake of the Trudeau government’s plan for unilateral patriation of the Constitution. It was open to the voices of citizens, as the Premier emphasized: “The forum that the National Assembly is inaugurating today is, naturally, open firstly to parliamentarians as they are the ones who formed it, but I will say that it is also open to – perhaps above all – to groups and citizens from all over Quebec who wish to participate, because we have reached a particularly serious moment with significant implications for Quebec from a constitutional standpoint, or a political standpoint in the true sense of the term. It is likely the most serious crisis, from certain perspectives, that we have seen in our system’s 113year history” (translation). See: National Assembly of Quebec, Hansard, Commission permanente de la présidence du Conseil et de la Constitution Commission parlementaire 1981, Audition de personnes ou organismes relativement au projet de résolution du gouvernement fédéral concernant la constitution canadienne, 31st Legislature, 6th session, vol. 23, no. 5, 9 December 1980, p. B-78 (hereinafter the Committee on Patriation). Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon, Panser le Canada: Une histoire intellectuelle de la commission Laurendeau-Dunton (Montreal: Boréal, 2018). Raymond B. Blake, Lions or Jellyfish: Newfoundland-Ottawa relations since 1957 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015). McRoberts, Un pays à refaire. Alain-G. Gagnon and Daniel Latouche, Allaire, Bélanger, Campeau et les autres: Les Québécois s’interrogent sur leur avenir (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 1991). Frédéric Bastien, La Bataille de Londres: Dessous, secrets et coulisses du rapatriement constitutionnel (Montreal: Boréal, 2013). A number of European and American researchers have already covered the various empowerment strategies used by social movements and pressure groups since the 1970s in their relations with the government, state institutions, and elected officials. We have drawn our inspiration, in particular, from Marie-Hélène Bacqué and Yves Sintomer, La démocratie participative: Histoire

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23

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25

26

27

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et généalogie (Paris: La Découverte, 2011); Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 1990); and John Friedmann, Empowerment: The Politics of Alternative Development (Cambridge, ma : Blackwell, 1992). Léon Dion, Le bill 60 et la société québécoise (Montreal: hmh , 1967); Léon Dion, La révolution déroutée: 1960–1976 (Montreal: Boréal, 1998); Martel and Pâquet, Langue et politique; Sean Mills, The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010). We are thinking especially of the special issue “Le rin , parti indépendantiste: 1963–1968,” Bulletin d’histoire politique 22, no. 3 (2014); and Robert Comeau, Charles-Philippe Courtois, and Denis Monière, eds, Histoire intellectuelle de l’indépendantisme québécois – Tome I: 1834–1968 and Tome II: 1968–2012 (Montreal: vlb éditeur, 2010 and 2012). This section incorporates two reworked paragraphs from our research note “Histoire politique de la Révolution tranquille: quelques jalons pour une approche renouvelée,” Bulletin d’histoire politique 25, no. 3 (2017): 150–1. The concept of “participatory democracy” originated in the American New Left, more specifically in the Students for a Democratic Society organization. In its 1962 manifesto, the “Port Huron Statement,” the sds advocated greater citizen participation not only in political affairs but also, and above all, in society’s various spheres of activity. Frédéric Robert, “‘Port Huron Statement’ du Students for a Democratic Society: Entre idéalisme démocratique et programme politique novateur,” in Révoltes et utopies: La contre-culture américaine dans les années 1960, ed. Frédéric Robert and Armand Haged (Rennes: Les Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2011), 83–99. See, among others: Martin Pâquet, ed., “Pensée scientifique et prise de décision politique,” special issue, Bulletin d’histoire politique 17, no. 1 (2008): 175–262; and Émilie Guilbeault-Cayer and Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon, eds, “Les commissions royales d’enquête au Québec et au Canada: enjeux et débats,” special issue, Bulletin d’histoire politique 23, no. 3 (2015): 13–104. Recognized in 1867 parliamentary procedure, this practice quickly fell into disuse in the following decades. The 1963 Parliamentary Committee on the Constitution of Canada was one, if not the first, of these initiatives. Christian Blais, “Histoire des institutions politiques et parlementaires du Québec,” in La procédure parlementaire du Québec, ed. Michel Bonsaint, 3rd ed. (Quebec City: National Assembly of Quebec, 2012). This is with the exception of some recent work in political science and history that focuses on parliamentary committees. See: Mélanie Bourque and Pierre Avignon, “Le recours aux commissions d’enquête et aux groupes de travail dans les secteurs de la santé et de l’éducation: 1960–2014,” Bulletin d’histoire politique 23, no. 3 (2015): 82–104; Julien Prud’homme, “L’agronome, le forestier et l’urbaniste de la Révolution tranquille: L’expertise en commission

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30 31 32

33 34 35 36

37 38

39

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parlementaire, 1971–1973,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 68, nos 3–4 (2015): 353–73; Stéphane Savard, “L’énergie nucléaire au Québec: Débats politiques et conflits de représentations, 1963–1996,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 69, no. 3 (2016): 5–33; Stéphane Savard, “Débats politiques et prise de parole citoyenne: La création de la Société nationale de l’amiante,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 28, no. 1 (2017): 157–91. Yvon Thériault, “Introduction,” in Index cumulatif 5: Les commissions parlementaires, 1965–1980 (Quebec City: Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée nationale, 1982), II (translation). See also: Michel Gariépy and Michel Marié, eds, Ces réseaux qui nous gouvernent? (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997); Alexandre Macleod, Les commissions parlementaires et les groupes de pression à l’Assemblée nationale du Québec: Évaluation d’une tentative de politique consultative parlementaire (Montreal: Université du Québec à Montréal, 1977); Louis Simard et al., eds, Le débat public en apprentissage – Aménagement et environnement: Regards croisés sur les expériences française et québécoise (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006). Claude Harmegnies, “Les commissions parlementaires à Québec,” Les Cahiers de droit 15, no. 1 (1974): 73–146 (translation). On the mobilization of a fringe of civil society regarding Bill 64, see: Dion, Le bill 60. See: José Igartua, The Other Quiet Revolution: National Identities in English Canada, 1945–71 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007); Bryan D. Palmer, Canada’s 1960s: The Ironies of Identity in a Rebellious Era (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). Alex Paterson, Joint Committee, 18 November 1980, p. 51. Gary Caldwell, “Alliance Québec,” Canadian Encyclopedia, last updated 22 July 2015, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/alliance-quebec. http://www.assnat.qc.ca/en/deputes/gratton-michel-3511/biographie.html. Claude Marsolais says that the movement was initially led by Maurice Sauvé. See: Claude-V. Marsolais, “Un Québec divisé: Le référendum de 1980,” Cap-aux-Diamants, 41 (Spring 1995): 64.  See: http://www.youngcitizensfoundation.ca/fr/presentation/histoire/ historique-du-conseil-de-lunite-canadienne/ (accessed 1 November 2018). Submission to the Task Force on Canadian Unity by the Québec Section president of the Council for Canadian Unity, Mr. Roger Gaudry, C.C., January 1978, p. 3, Fonds of the Task Force on Canadian Unity, Library and Archives Canada, Montreal (hereinafter the Submission by the Quebec Section).  See: http://www.youngcitizensfoundation.ca/fr/presentation/histoire/ historique-du-conseil-de-lunite-canadienne/ (accessed 1 November 2018). Committee on Public Consultations, 10 November 1977, p. B-7494.  See: http://www.youngcitizensfoundation.ca/fr/presentation/histoire/ historique-du-conseil-de-lunite-canadienne/ (accessed 1 November 2018).

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41 Submission to the Task Force on Canadian Unity by Commitment Canada/ Engagement canadien, 16, 17, and 18 January 1978, p. 1, Task Force on Canadian Unity Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Montreal (hereinafter the Submission by Commitment Canada). 42 Joan Dougherty, Joint Committee, 24 November 1980, p. 8. 43 James Ross, Committee on Patriation, vol. 23, no. 2, 4 February 1981, p. B-1806. 44 Éric Maldoff, Joint Committee, 19 November 1980, p. 30. 45 Eduardo Ramos, “Les politiques du gouvernement du Québec concernant l’intégration des minorités ethnoculturelles à la société québécoise (1978– 1985)” (master’s thesis, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2009), 115–16. See also: Caldwell, “Alliance Québec.” 46 Rita DeSantis, Joint Committee, 10 December 1980, p. 8. 47 See: Stéphane Savard, “Aboriginal Communities in Québec and Hydroelectric Development: A Balance of Power with the State Since 1944,” Recherches amérindiennes au Québec 39, nos 1–2 (2009): 50–1. 48 Mary Simon, Committee on Patriation, vol. 23, no. 46, 11 February 1981, p. B-2091. 49 We are thinking of the Inuit, whose organizational structures, such as the Makivik Corporation, are funded in part under the provisions of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement. 50 Matthew Hayday, Bilingual Today, United Tomorrow: Official Languages in Education and Canadian Federalism (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005); Matthew Hayday, So They Want Us to Learn French: Promoting and Opposing Bilingualism in EnglishSpeaking Canada (Vancouver: ubc Press, 2016); Stéphane Savard, “Pour ‘Une politique globale, précise, cohérente et définitive de développement’: Les leaders franco-ontariens et les encadrements politiques fédéraux, 1968–1984,” Politique et Sociétés 27, no. 1 (2008): 129–55. 51 See: Michel Bock, “La fédération des francophones hors Québec devant le gouvernement québécois (1976–1991): Groupe de pression ou compagnon d’armes?”, in Savard and Boivin, eds, De la représentation, 234–74; Marcel Martel, “Les politiques gouvernementales fédérale et québécoise à l’égard des minorités francophones du Canada, 1960–1980,” Francophonie d’Amérique, no. 9 (1999): 201; Savard, “Pour ‘Une politique globale.’” 52 Alex Paterson, Joint Committee, 18 November 1980, pp. 53–4. 53 Ibid. Note that the formula “where the numbers warrant” became the cornerstone of section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is enshrined in the Canadian Constitution that was patriated in 1982. 54 Ibid., 54–5. Regarding bilingualism as a factor in Canadian unity, see also the position of the National Congress of Italian Canadians (Quebec Region): Rita DeSantis, Joint Committee, 10 December 1980, p. 10. 55 Éric Maldoff and Yves St-Denis, Joint Committee, 19 November 1980, pp. 31–5. 56 Ibid.

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57 Joan Dougherty, Joint Committee, 24 November 1980, p. 8. 58 Ibid., 8–9. 59 See: Michael Behiels, La francophonie canadienne: Renouveau constitutionnel et gouvernance scolaire (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2005). 60 Éric Maldoff, Joint Committee, 19 November 1980, p. 30. Note that the Association canadienne-française de l’Ontario, the Council of Quebec Minorities, and the English-speaking Townshippers’ Association also had official meetings to study the constitutional changes proposed by the Trudeau government after the 1980 referendum. See: James Ross, Committee on Patriation, vol. 23, no. 42, 4 February 1981, p. B-1806. 61 See also: André Burelle, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, l’intellectuel et le politique (Montreal: Fides, 2005). 62 Regarding multinational federalism, in contrast to territorial federalism, see: Alain-G. Gagnon, “Le fédéralisme asymétrique au Canada,” in Le fédéralisme canadien contemporain: Fondements, traditions, institutions, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon (Montreal: pum , 2006), 289–90. 63 Alex Paterson, Joint Committee, 18 November 1980, p. 53; Éric Maldoff, Joint Committee, 19 November 1980, pp. 31–5. 64 Rita DeSantis, Joint Committee, 10 December 1980, p. 10. 65 James Ross, Committee on Patriation, vol. 23, no. 42, 4 February 1981, p. B-1806. 66 See: Lapointe-Gagnon, Panser le Canada. See also the two texts by André Burelle in this book. 67 Stéphane Paquin, L’invention d’un mythe: Le pacte entre deux peuples fondateurs (Montreal: vlb éditeur, 1999). 68 Bock, “La fédération des francophones.” 69 Submission by the Québec Section, pp. 4–5 (translation). 70 See Antoine Brousseau Desaulniers’s chapter in this book. 71 Pepin-Robarts Report, vol. 2, p. 155. 72 According to the Pepin-Robarts Report, many witnesses from Quebec claimed to be against the idea that Quebec should obtain special status: “Would transferring these powers to Quebec amount to a ‘special,’ ‘particular,’ ‘distinct’ or ‘privileged’ status within the Canadian federation? Not really, argued a Quebec City participant, who told the Commissioners that the need to decentralize legislative authority is more urgently felt in Quebec than elsewhere and that there is nothing ‘wrong’ about ‘differentiated decentralization.’ Many other proponents of giving more powers to the Quebec government had no hesitation about offering these new powers to ‘all provincial governments’ who, after all, ‘are closer to the people.’ In such an approach, there would be no ‘special status’ as all provinces could choose whether or not to exercise these new responsibilities.” Ibid., vol. 2, p. 155. 73 Submission by Commitment Canada, pp. 1–2, 5. 74 Jean Chevrier, Committee on Public Consultations, vol. 19, no. 235, 10 November 1977, p. B-7501 (translation).

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Ibid., p. B-7502 (translation). Jocelyn Beaudoin, ibid., p. B-7502 (translation). Storrs McCall, ibid., p. B-7446. As Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon shows in her chapter in this book, Solange Chaput-Rolland agreed to be a member of the Pepin-Robarts Task Force because she was, in fact, seeking a “third option.” Hervé Fuyet, Committee on Public Consultations, vol. 19, no. 226, 4 November 1977, p. B-7153 (translation). Ibid. Ibid., p. B-7152. See also: Hervé Fuyet, Committee on Patriation, vol. 23, no. 49, 19 February 1981, pp. B-2235–2236. (Translation) On this matter, see: Éric Bélanger, “‘Equality or Independence’: The Emergence of the threat of political independence as a constitutional strategy for Quebec,” Globe: Revue internationale d’études québécoises 2, no. 1 (1999): 125. See also: Ghislain Otis, ed., Droit, territoire et gouvernance des peuples autochtones (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2005). Mémoire présenté par le Grand conseil de la nation huronne, represented by Max “Oné-Onti” Gros-Louis, 18 January 1978, p. 2, Fonds de la Commission sur l’unité canadienne, Library and Archives Canada, Montreal (translation). Ibid., 1–2 (translation). Northern Quebec Inuit Association, Brief to The Task Force on Canadian Unity, January 1978, p. 5, Fonds de la Commission sur l’unité canadienne, Library and Archives Canada, Montreal. Submission to the Committee on Public Consultations and recorded in the Debates (Hansard), vol. 19, no. 246, 16 November 1977, p. B-7830 (translation). Mary Simon, Committee on Patriation, vol. 23, no. 46, 11 February 1981, p. B-2092. René Simon, Joint Committee, 17 December 1980, p. 11.

10 Quebec Feminists’ Engagement during the 1980 Referendum: How Should the Yvettes Be Interpreted? Chantal Maillé

In this text, I will look at how the Yvettes movement should be interpreted in relation to Quebec feminism by reviewing the work of a group of authors who have tried to understand the nature of the links between this movement and feminism. The forty years that have passed since the 1980 referendum permit us enough distance to fully grasp and understand the diversity of the positions expressed by Quebec feminists with regard to the constitutional issues that were front and centre at that time in Quebec’s history. In the 1960s, part of the feminist movement was involved in promoting sovereignty, but it is clearer today that there were also many Quebec feminists who supported Canadian federalism. At the time of the 1980 referendum, the women’s movement was divided between neutrality, support for sovereignty, and support for federalism. Two influential groups, the Fédération des femmes du Quebec and the Association féminine d’éducation et d’action sociale, claimed to be neutral, even though the neutrality was only a façade in the case of the Fédération des femmes du Quebec, as we will see later. However, many independent women’s groups showed openness to sovereigntist positions.1 Micheline Dumont and Louise Toupin have pointed out that the 1980 referendum tore away the cloak of neutrality that the feminist movement in Quebec had worn until then: “Since the turn of the century, feminist groups had been taking a well-intentioned position of political neutrality. Their members may have held partisan political opinions, but they tried to set them aside when it came time to formulate their analyses. The 1980 referendum shattered that neutrality. There were wellknown feminists to be found in both referendum campaign camps, notably during the Yvettes episode.”2

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The women’s groups with the most radical feminist positions demonstrated the greatest support for the Parti Québécois,3 even though some, such as the Regroupement des femmes québécoises pour l’indépendance, suggested to their members that they should instead spoil their ballots by writing the word “femme” (woman) on them.4 Other feminists felt concerned by the Yvettes’ ambiguous discourse about a woman’s role and decided to vote “Yes” because the “No” option was taking on a conservative hue.5 But what about feminism and the Yvettes, those women who supported the “No” side during the 1980 referendum? Some studies show that many of the women mobilized in favour of “No” in the first referendum on Quebec sovereignty were feminists, but other researchers go further and, in fact, associate the Yvettes’ discourse with feminism. A new current of interpretation emerged in the 1990s, according to which the Yvettes were feminists whereas, until then, the focus had been on refuting the view that the movement was antifeminist, an idea that circulated widely in the media in 1980.

q u e b e c w o m e n a n d consti tuti onal s t a k e s p u t in c ontext The relationships that women in Quebec have had with the constitutional debates have been marked by the long period when women had no formal political rights, and that exclusion from politics continues to colour their relationships with the debates today. Women in general have never shared a common position on constitutional questions,6 but what about feminist women in Quebec and constitutional debates? In a text published in 1995, historian Micheline Dumont7 traced the broad lines of Quebec women’s participation in constitutional debates from the time of the Quiet Revolution. She observed that feminism and nationalism are inextricably linked in Quebec’s history but noted that, in the late 1970s, feminist women in Quebec, including those who were active in the Fédération des femmes du Quebec, were just as numerous in the Parti Québécois as in the Quebec Liberal Party. Dumont rejected the interpretation according to which the Yvettes expressed antifeminist ideas, recalling the participation of many women’s movement leaders, such as Thérèse Casgrain, one of those at the helm to the campaign to win women’s right to vote at the provincial level; Solange Chaput-Rolland, member of Voice of Women; Monique Bégin, member of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women; and Yvette Rousseau, former president of the Fédération des femmes du Quebec. According to Dumont, the women who initiated the Yvettes movement were gambling on Lise Payette’s blunder,8 and they were successful. Nonetheless, Dumont pointed out that, at the various events organized around the Yvettes, women’s issues were rarely mentioned, and that, following the Yvettes movement, people

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outside Quebec believed that Quebec feminists were federalists: “At the time of the referendum in 1980, many Canadian women observed the speakers for the Yvettes and thought: ‘In Quebec, feminists are federalists!’”9 The 1980 referendum on Quebec’s sovereignty mobilized a large number of Quebec women in favour of “Yes” but also a large number in favour of “No.” For a long time, the dominant interpretation was that the women mobilized for the “No” camp, especially the Yvettes, had traditional values and were not feminists, whereas the real feminists were mobilized for sovereignty. We therefore need to examine these ideas in light of recent work that has read the period in new ways. I will show that what has allowed some authors to propose a new interpretation of the Yvettes as feminists is related mainly to those authors’ use of a very broad vision of feminism as opposed to a more widely accepted definition structured around the centrality of equality between women and men, and rejection of the traditional roles that have been imposed. Much has been made of Jacques Parizeau’s comment, following the 1995 referendum, when he said that they had been beaten, in the end, essentially by “money and the ethnic vote.”10 However, after the first referendum in 1980, it was women whom many held responsible for the “Yes” side’s loss;11 and, unlike Parizeau’s comments blaming the “ethnic vote,” no one criticized that analysis. In his memoires, René Lévesque said concerning the 1980 referendum: “It was we, alas, who were going to give them the booster they needed … little Yvette.”12 In the aftermath of the 1980 referendum, it was rapidly decreed that women were the ones really responsible for the failure, in particular because of the Yvettes movement. On this, Stéphanie Godin wrote: Did the Yvettes make the No side’s victory possible? Unfortunately, it is impossible to prove that the Yvettes phenomenon had an impact on Quebecers’ voting intentions. However, many agree that the Yvettes were used as a springboard and driving force for the No campaign, beginning with the head of the “No” Committee, Claude Ryan, who said that the Yvettes were responsible for boosting the referendum campaign’s momentum. The Yvettes apparently managed to galvanize the “No” Committee’s troops because of their contagious enthusiasm, which they would have transmitted to the general population, creating, especially among women, a desire to display their support for the No camp and to get publicly involved in the campaign. The involvement of hundreds of women in the various counties of Quebec would support the argument that the Yvettes phenomenon made the No side’s victory possible.13 However, what do we know about the Yvettes movement and what information supports these analyses?

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t he yv e t t e s   m o v e m e n t : a bi t of background The movement came out of nowhere during the 1980 referendum campaign and it has been described as one of the most fascinating phenomena in our recent political history.14 It resulted in a huge gathering of 15,000 women on the evening of 7 April at the Montreal Forum. According to Micheline Dumont, everything began on International Women’s Day, on 8 March 1980, when Lise Payette, who was then Minister responsible for the Status of Women, gave a speech at the National Assembly in which she denounced sexist stereotypes that could still be found in textbooks. She illustrated her remarks with the figure of little Yvette. But who is Yvette? Yvette is the name of a stereotypical character in a school textbook. Lise Payette, after having noted that such stereotypes were still to be found in teaching material, made it her mission to require a revision of the content of textbooks. On 8 March 1980, International Women’s Day, Payette gave a speech, as a minister, in which she introduced Yvette to her colleagues: “Guy is active in sports: swimming, gymnastics, tennis, boxing, diving. His ambition is to be a champion and win lots of trophies. Yvette, his little sister, is happy and nice. She always finds a way to make her parents happy. Yesterday, at mealtime, she cut the bread, poured the water on the tea in the teapot, she carried in the sugar bowl, the butter dish, the pitcher of milk. She also helped to serve the roast chicken. After breakfast, she happily dried the dishes and swept the rug. Yvette is a very helpful little girl.15 According to Minister Payette, such stereotypes encouraged women to be submissive and to remain housewives. The day after her speech in the National Assembly, at a “Yes” supporters’ meeting at the Plateau Hall in Montreal, she added that Claude Ryan, the leader of the “No” camp, wanted women to remain Yvettes, and she compared Ryan’s wife Madeleine to an Yvette16 – in other words, to the good little girl in the school textbooks of the day, whose personality was defined by how well she did domestic chores for her family. According to Payette, to vote “No” would be to reject Quebec’s liberation in the same way that submissive women, Yvettes, reject their own liberation. Journalist Renée Rowan reported the Minister’s words in Le Devoir, on 10 March 1980.17 On 11 March, Lise Bissonnette wrote an editorial in Le Devoir in which she accused Payette of being contemptuous of housewives and of failing in her duty of sisterhood, even though she claimed solidarity. Bissonnette wrote: Women are called upon to vote collectively as women, to wave the flag of their ancestors, reminded that after the Conquest women guaranteed the continuation of the French-speaking nation in North America by

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making little Quebecers by the dozen, and that they should continue this work today, not via the cradle but via the ballot box. This sentimentality is more closely related to self-interested conscription in a time of crisis than to an appeal to intelligent beings, who have the perfect right to choose on the basis of the political analyses of the day and do not need to carry out a pseudo-mission that nature allegedly assigned them at birth. Those in favour of “Yes,” who most frequently resort to this technique of playing on guilt, are in this respect the real conservatives. The technique is all the more unpleasant because it recognizes women as a community only for the purposes of the referendum.18 Liberal activists seized the opportunity to transform the Minister’s words into a political weapon. On 30 March, in Quebec City, the “Brunch des Yvettes” brought together 2,000 “No” activists. On 7 April, in Montreal, 14,000 Yvettes gathered under the banner “Québécoises pour le Non” (Quebec women for “No”), with influential women from various spheres acting as spokespersons: Michelle Tisseyre, a popular tv host at RadioCanada; Madeleine Ryan, wife of Claude Ryan, an influential member of the “No” Committee; Monique Bégin, a federal politician elected under the Liberal banner; Thérèse Lavoie-Roux, a Quebec Liberal Party mna since 1976; Solange Chaput-Rolland, then a Liberal mna ; Jeanne Sauvé, a Liberal mp in Trudeau’s government; and Thérèse Casgrain, who had been a leader in the fight for women’s right to vote at the provincial level and was a founding member of the Fédération des femmes du Québec. On the women who spoke at the event in the Montreal Forum, Jacqueline Lamothe and Jennifer Stoddart wrote: “Those who spoke that evening were certainly not ordinary women, and there is no way they could be called stupid. Of the twenty-two women who addressed the crowd, there were three senators, two Liberal mna s, a federal cabinet minister, the Speaker of the House of Commons, women who had distinguished themselves in community service and women’s organizations, and many well-established professionals, lawyers, administrators, and artists. However, the organizers were careful to disguise this elitist aspect by adding a few young students and some women who introduced themselves as simple private citizens.”19 The federal troops, which had been going nowhere, were galvanized. Louis Cornellier wrote: “Blown away by the scale of the phenomenon, commentators such as Lise Bissonnette sought to explain the Yvettes movement as an ‘anti-feminist backlash’ orchestrated by ‘conservative housewives’ who felt excluded from the feminist discourse of the time.”20 On 9 April 1980, Bissonnette wrote in Le Devoir: “While we were working on their behalf, thousands of women did not see themselves in ‘liberation’ discourse, and even had the impression that they were being scorned and that their daily lives were treated as a dreary haze that had to be escaped at all costs or risk nonexistence.”21

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During the referendum campaign, a text by Nicole Lacelle, an activist in the women’s movement who was still in shock, reported on the influence that the Yvettes’ rally had on the women’s movement, forcing it to question its non-involvement until then: No independent group of women has yet taken an official position on the referendum. However, since the rally of the 14,000 “Yvettes” at the Forum last Monday, we are thinking more than seriously about doing so … The “Yvettes” phenomenon is very important to us because it shows how well the Right has succeeded in associating the “No” camp with contempt, contempt for women … For us, the “Yes” side is full of contradictions, but the “No,” as it was presented that evening at the Forum, offers a consistent plan. The “No” plan is Travail-Famille-Patrie [Work-Family-Homeland]. This is the alternative that women were offered last Monday evening. It is increasingly difficult to consider voting No because of the definition that the Right has given it.22

h o w s h o u l d t he yvettes m o v e m e n t b e in t erpreted? In the years following the 1980 referendum, a number of interpretations associated the Yvettes with a conservative vision of women’s role. Nicole Brossard described the Yvettes as “patriarchal mothers.”23 Diane Lamoureux wrote that the movement challenged the modernizing vision of women: “The image of emancipation through paid work and entering the labour force takes a back seat to rehabilitation of traditional feminine activities. The housewife re-emerges as the central figure in the women’s movement, not as a symbol of oppression, as was the case in the 1970s, but as a role to be given greater value in all the senses of the term.”24 In 1981, Jacqueline Lamothe and Jennifer Stoddart published a study on the content of the speeches given during the Yvettes rally at the Montreal Forum, and they came to the conclusion that what had been said was not anti-feminist.25 Micheline Dumont reported the difficulty she had trying to interpret the Yvettes: “I am one of the women who, at the time, were completely nonplussed by the thousands of women who joyfully proclaimed at the Forum and at all the regional brunches that they were Yvettes, and proud of it. It seemed unthinkable to us. How could women want to resemble the submissive little girl destined to do domestic chores, whom we had read about in school textbooks? In the end, as a ‘Yes’ supporter, I didn’t understand anything: I endorsed Lise Bissonnette’s interpretation.”26 The clio collective published an analysis of the Yvettes movement in L’histoire des femmes au Québec. It rejected the interpretation of the movement as antifeminist, but nonetheless did not associate it with feminism:

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Journalists initially interpreted it as the reaction of women who felt they had been sidelined by the new feminism, which called for women’s economic independence and allegedly failed to take into consideration the work that housewives do. A social trend toward resisting a certain type of liberated woman perhaps finds this to be an opportunity to express itself, but … these women want most of all to prove by their actions that they are participants in political life, using the opportunity to show it. Their purpose in demonstrating is therefore more to show their political vitality than to express, as some have claimed, their desire to see all women go back to being housewives. In fact, analysts have found no trace of anti-feminism in the speeches that were given at the Forum, and there was never a dichotomy between feminist “Yes” supporters and housewife “No” supporters.27 In this respect, the clio collective agreed with the analysis Lamothe and Stoddart set out in their 1981 article, which noted the ambiguity of the discourse and how it was anchored in traditional feminine roles: “There is a very subtle slide in the Yvettes’ discourse. Feminism is never attacked and feminists’ new demands are never rejected, even though those demands would result in transforming the Yvette stereotypes. However, feminine characteristics of the past are held in esteem: prudence, moral responsibility, devotion to children’s futures, common sense, and tireless work are associated with Canada’s constitutional status quo. These incantations of the most conservative aspects and the most passive components of the collective female experience lead us to say that the Liberal Party played on all that was most traditional for women to get them to accept its political option.”28 In 1992, at a colloquium in honour of Thérèse Casgrain, academics Naomi Black, Roberta Hamilton, Évelyne Tardy, and Micheline Dumont participated in a roundtable discussion on the theme “Les Yvettes douze ans après: essais d’interprétation” (The Yvettes twelve years later: attempts at interpretation”).29 Many questions were explored: Who were the Yvettes? Why did so many women join in and why were they so enthusiastic? Why has the explanation of the Yvettes as a brilliant political strategy not come to be seen as the leading interpretation?30 In her essay, Naomi Black expressed her surprise at seeing interpretations advancing the idea that the Yvettes could be seen as a symbol of the rupture between feminism and nationalism, an argument made by Diane Lamoureux.31 Suggesting that the Yvettes could well be representatives of federalist feminism, she wrote: Coming from outside Quebec, I really have the impression that most of the academics, that is to say, Quebec’s certified feminists, are indépendantistes, sovereigntists. At the time of the referendum at least, most of them supported the Parti Québécois. Therefore, could this speak in favour of

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a form of feminism that, without necessarily being sovereigntist, might nonetheless have focused on women’s independent action in the inner workings of power, in the state? A feminism that was aware that the welfare state had originated at the federal level, that women’s right to vote came, first, from the federal government and the Liberal parties. At that time, in 1980, no one was saying that there were many ways to be a feminist, including in Canada. The Liberal activists are the ones who became the spokespersons for non-sovereigntist political feminism.32 Yet, why were the Yvettes not immediately identified as feminists? As Stéphanie Godin recalled, “according to Black, there seems to have been only one form of feminism acceptable in Quebec: the radical feminism associated, at least in 1980, with Quebec’s independence. Because of their attachment to Canada, the Yvettes would not have been seen as feminists. However, it made it possible for difference feminism,33 which had been put on hold since the upsurge of more radical feminism, to come back to the fore. This means that the Yvettes phenomenon would be neither a manifestation of anti-feminism nor a turn to the Right, but the assertion of a different form of feminism that was more traditional and still very present in Quebec.”34 In a text she published after the roundtable, political scientist Évelyne Tardy identified five different ways in which the Yvettes were interpreted between 1980 and 1992. The first interpretation suggested that the Yvettes affair was only a pretext to mobilize women politically in favour of the “No” side. The second suggested that political parties manipulated women to establish the movement. The third was that it was a spontaneous reaction against the insult to housewives. According to Tardy, the fourth was the one most broadly publicized, mainly by certain journalists, and suggested that the Yvettes movement revealed an anti-feminist backlash and was a mass reaction by housewives who were irritated by feminist discourse. The fifth and last interpretation was based on the hypothesis that it was a manifestation of women’s political awakening. Tardy herself suggested seeing in the Yvettes movement a brilliant political strategy invented by women. However, journalists and male politicians were not ready to accept Tardy’s theory. As she put it: “The interpretations of the Yvettes phenomenon that were in fashion after the rally at the Forum satisfied many prejudices about women.”35 In a text published in 1995, Roberta Hamilton returned to the reasons that had prevented the “Yes” side from building a strategy around the Yvettes incident, noting in passing the central role of the mother figure in the Yvettes’ discourse. According to Hamilton, Quebec feminists found themselves on the “Yes” side and could not consider the Yvettes as feminists. She argued that the issue that remained unexplained after the 1980 referendum was why women “Yes” activists did not have a counternarrative to deal with the Yvettes: “The big question that remains is why no

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countervailing support was mobilized by the women on the ‘Yes’ side? If the Parti Québécois represented the best hope for feminists, and if many of them had supported the party, why did they not move to give Yvette and Guy, and what they represented, a decent burial?”36 Hamilton considered that there were a number of reasons for the silence. These would be related to the way the media analyzed the Yvettes, and also to the reactions to Payette’s remarks in the government and among feminists: “There are several reasons. First, the media read the Yvette movement as anti-feminist, and as more recent events bear out all over North America, the news media are far more interested in anti-feminist mobilization than feminist action (Faludi, 1991). Second, Payette’s cabinet colleagues responded to her faux pas with anger or silence. Third, the minister, acknowledging that she had lost her credibility inside and outside the cabinet as a spokesperson for women, dropped out of the campaign (Payette 1982). Fourth, many feminists – now disillusioned with the Parti Québécois – were unhappy to see Payette using the feminist issue to further nationalist goals.”37 However, Hamilton wrote that the key question was why Payette’s remark resulted in all those women joining the “No” side: “Finally, it must be asked why Payette’s remark motivated so many women to identify with Yvette and to organize for the ‘No’ side. Though the women who organized the Yvette rallies were hardly full-time homemakers, this was not true for the majority of participants … On the ‘No’ side virtue reigned supreme, here was a motherhood issue in every sense … The image of mother as defender of the nation, the main force behind national survival – proved inviolable.”38 Black’s interpretation of the Yvettes as feminists in her 1992 text was later reprised in academic work that made it possible to delve deeper. In 2003, Stéphanie Godin completed a master’s thesis in which she revisited the representations of the Yvettes.39 According to Godin, “the unofficial alliance of egalitarian feminism and Quebec nationalism since the 1960s still prevents many feminist historians from interpreting the Yvettes phenomenon as the expression of a form of Quebec feminism that is different from the forms valued in today’s taxonomies.”40 Godin observed that the Yvettes certainly annoyed part of the feminist movement. The Yvettes were labelled as conservative housewives and, for some, they represented the spectre of antifeminism. Godin theorized that, since they were branded anti-feminists, the Yvettes have been systematically ignored by Quebec feminist historiography despite the significance of their unusual position as a challenge to the relationship between feminism and Quebec nationalism.41 Godin also noted the high profile of the women who were the public representatives of the Yvettes and whom Payette described as “avowed feminists.”42 According to Godin, the Yvettes’ discourse belongs to a form of difference feminism, which postulates that the sexes are complementary rather than equal. This form of feminism is often associated with Catholicism. Godin argued that very few female historians had acknowledged that the Yvettes

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could have been feminists, or would have acted in a feminist manner, because they and their actions did not correspond to the type of feminism accepted in Quebec historiography. She wrote that Micheline Dumont did not believe that the Yvettes were feminists and that, in Lamoureux’s case, there seemed to be a preference simply to conclude that they were not anti-feminist.43 The reason would be that the discourse that promotes traditional feminine values and is sometimes referred to as “difference feminism” is not universally recognized as a form of feminism, in part because it does not contain a clear commitment to the values associated with equality between men and women. What is at the heart of the debate on the nature of the relationship between the Yvettes and feminism is, in a way, the classification of their discourse within a typology of different forms of feminism. In fact, we also need to ask whether the Yvettes claimed to be feminist or not. The analyses to which I have referred often define a form of feminism by association: many of the Yvettes’ leaders were feminists and clearly involved in feminist movements, so the Yvettes movement became feminist by association. Godin wrote that, for many women, Payette represented radical feminism, and that this would be one of the reasons some Yvettes went to the rallies: in reaction to Payette and perhaps also, in some cases, to radical feminism. However, Godin also considered that some participants adopted the Yvette identity for political reasons. They would have felt an urgent need to demonstrate the “No” presence in Quebec and to compete against the posters and fleur-de-lis flags that gave the impression that separatists were the only ones participating in the campaign. Taking a public position was very important for those who wanted to oppose the way that Payette, Minister of State for the Status of Women, was linking women’s independence with that of the province of Quebec. Godin argued that the women who showed up at the Yvettes rallies “were mostly feminists”44 but that “many of the women, while not totally opposed to the more radical feminist movement of the 1970s, were opposed to some of their practices and values, which seemed to them to deprecate housewives.”45 She concluded that the Yvettes phenomenon had contributed to deconstructing feminist theories in the following decade because it blurred the lines between the classifications then in use for the different forms of feminism. In the end, Godin gave a different explanation of the Yvettes’ feminism. She wrote that mentalities had been changed through historiography, but not enough to challenge the feminism of that period and its determination to exclude difference feminism and its representatives.46 Regarding the Yvettes’ nearly ten-year absence in Francophone historiography, Godin wrote: “Those women had what the Québécois saw as the two greatest faults at the time: for nationalists, they were committed federalists, and for feminists, they were housewives and proud of it. Because their federalist speeches were full of emotion and because they were proud of their traditionally feminine roles, they were very quickly judged conservative or even anti-feminist.”47

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In her conclusion, Godin wondered about the difficulties that arise in trying to make sense of women’s history within parameters dictated by the imposition of egalitarian feminism as the norm: However, beyond politics, perhaps the history of Quebec needs to examine its conscience? How is it that the Yvettes are still systematically ignored by historiography? Where are the Liberal women? How is it that the biographies of Louise Robic, Monique Bégin, and even Lise Bacon do not have a place alongside those of Lise Payette and Louise Harel, in the big book titled Ces femmes qui ont bâti Montréal [These Women Who Built Montreal]? Liberals are shunned because their political actions are considered partisan, yet the feminists associated with the Parti Québécois and the women politicians working for that party are not excluded in this way. In this thesis, we have seen the limitations of historiography and how difficult it is to write the history of women. Quebec feminist historiography has been caught in a trap: only one form of feminism seems acceptable and healthy for women. In this context, we have become prisoners of these sources, which share a single feminist discourse. We cannot escape this discourse, which presents Quebec equality feminism (the feminism of the “Yes” side) as the unique picture of Quebec modernity. It therefore becomes very difficult to put things into perspective and to analyze and interpret the sources by comparing them, for they are almost all forged from the same ideology.48 A decade after Naomi Black wrote that the Yvettes were the incarnation of a certain type of feminism associated with Canadian federalism, Godin aimed in her analysis to document how the Yvettes were feminists. Her approach was based largely on an open definition of the term “feminism,” which included discourse in favour of the status quo with respect to the sexes’ social roles and the idea that participating in the Yvettes movement was in itself a feminist action. The interpretation of the Yvettes as feminists was later taken up again by Flavie Trudel, who, in her 2009 PhD dissertation, reprised the theme from where it had been left in the preceding texts. Trudel introduced new elements, such as an analysis of documents produced by the Yvettes movement, which left no doubt about the Yvettes’ leaders’ references to feminism during the referendum campaign. She wrote: The archival documents that we have consulted show that the Canadian nationalists involved in the Yvettes movement also played the feminist card. In this respect, the patriotic Canadian speeches by Yvette Boucher-Rousseau, who was a Senator and former President of the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, had been active from the beginning and was a member of the Fédération des femmes

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du Québec, were extremely convincing. In every forum where she was invited to speak, she underscored her pride in being named Yvette: “I am very happy to have Yvette as my first name.” As one of the stars of the Yvettes and called upon to speak at major rallies for the “No” side, she never failed to refer to feminism. For her, the Yvettes movement was an opportunity for women’s collective awareness-raising, the beginning of feminine solidarity. She was addressing working women and the vital forces of the referendum campaign. On 7 April 1980, at the Montreal Forum, before the media and an audience of women estimated to number 14,000, she said, “I know that the first name Yvette means a working woman.”49 According to Flavie Trudel, many women who were at the forefront of the Yvettes movement came from the Fédération des femmes du Québec (ffq ), which is a feminist organization; and the widespread idea according to which the ffq did not take a position on the issue of sovereignty is not supported by the facts. In the years preceding the 1980 referendum, the ffq , unlike the Parti Québécois, did not participate in the consultation that led to the publication, by the Quebec Conseil du statut de la femme, of Pour les Québécoises, égalité et indépendance (For the women of Quebec: equality and independence), and it did not encourage its members to do so. Between 1977 and 1980, the ffq was led by Sheila Finestone, a feminist close to federal circles who was elected as a Liberal member of Parliament at the federal level in the 1980s, and served as a senator from 1999 to 2002. Based on an analysis of the ffq ’s newsletters from that period, Trudel showed that the ffq’s leadership did not seek to endorse or promote the Quebec Conseil du statut de la femme’s report once it was published. According to Trudel, there was no debate on the 1980 referendum within the ffq , neither at the agm nor elsewhere. That decision was based on the non-partisan principle in the ffq’s charter, a principle promoted and defended by Finestone when members tried to put the topic on the table: “After having examined the minutes of the ffq ’s major meetings (General Council, Board, agm ), we can confirm that members tried in vain to hold a debate on the national question. An attempt was made one year before the referendum, at the Annual General Meeting, which was attended by around one hundred women. It was nipped in the bud by the President, who appealed to the principle of non-partisanship.”50 Finestone’s repeated recourse to the principle of non-partisanship was, in fact, clearly partisan in that it created an obstacle to the possibility that ffq members could be mobilized to hold a vote to support the “Yes” side in 1980: “By presenting the referendum on sovereignty as a concern of political parties, a little like elections, it was easier for the President to steer the members away from the debate since the ffq ’s Charter specifies that the ffq is non-partisan.”51

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Trudel’s remarks suggest that there were ties between the ffq and promotion of the federalist “No” option during the 1980 referendum. They invite us to qualify the dominant thesis on the relationship between feminism and the national question in Quebec as framed by Lamoureux, according to whom “it is undeniable that a significant component of the feminist movement wanted to play an active role in the process of modernizing Quebec. For those feminists … one of the logical consequences of modernization was gaining the status of nation-state.”52 Susan Mann also agreed with Trudel,53 and showed the points of convergence and, often, shared demands of the nationalist and feminist movements in Quebec in the mid-1970s. According to Trudel, “the history of the ffq is intimately linked to the Yvettes movement”54  despite some ffq members’ opposition to the participation of their president, Sheila Finestone, in it. In addition to being ffq president, Finestone also sat on the “No” side’s board during the referendum campaign. Examining Finestone’s motives for getting involved in the “No” committee, Trudel wrote: “In an interview, Sheila Finestone explained that her contributions were crucial to getting the ‘No’ Committee to accept the idea of a big rally of women at the Forum. Women were the ones who imposed the idea. It is clear to us that Finestone was sitting on the committee as a women’s representative. It was on behalf of women and to advance their cause and the Canadian nationalist cause that Finestone committed deeply in the ‘No’ side.”55 Thus, “Sheila Finestone defended the Canadian nation on behalf of women and for women. Her involvement in the ‘No’ committee during the referendum period shows how crucial and how great a priority what was at stake in the referendum was to her. The President of the ffq conceived of Quebec women’s emancipation in the framework of Canada.”56 Trudel concluded that the women Canadian nationalists involved in the Yvettes movement also played the feminist card. She observed that her research findings were in conflict with the theses that hold that the ties between feminism and nationalism in contemporary Quebec show that “feminists’ nationalism in Quebec is necessarily Québécois.”57 Trudel drew another important conclusion, namely that the Yvettes were egalitarian feminists who advocated equal rights between the sexes and encouraged women to take charge of their political destiny. She drew attention to the fact that the idea that the ffq had a Quebec nationalist orientation seemed to her to be more myth than reality: “We find that researchers always refer to the ffq when portraying the (Quebec) nationalist dimension of the feminist movement.”58 She wondered about remarks by Diane Lamoureux, such as this one: “It is undeniable that a large part of the feminist movement wanted to play an active role in modernizing Quebec. For those feminists, as for part of the Quebec political elite, such modernization logically implied gaining access to the status of nation-state.”59

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Trudel then asked the following question: “That large part of the feminist movement probably had to include the ffq , but, if so, who?”60 She replied to the researchers who refused to associate feminism with the Yvettes movement: How can feminist historians such as Micheline Dumont and Louise Toupin, who refused until very recently to associate the Yvettes movement with feminism, now say that the feminists who took part in the Yvettes demonstrations nonetheless never referred to the feminist struggle? We see the opposite. The speeches were egalitarian feminist. They promoted equal rights between the sexes and encouraged women to take political control of their destiny. A number of the researchers we have mentioned have been members of the ffq at different periods: do their own positions on the national question prevent them from seeing certain facts? Why do they disregard the contribution by the federalist feminists, who were members of the ffq , to Quebec feminism at this specific point in its history?61 This short review of the literature shows that the feminism of the Yvettes movement can be analyzed in a number of different ways, but what seems to be at the heart of the different interpretations is more the definition given to the term “feminism” than recognition of the real ties between the Yvettes movement and certain feminists active in the women’s movement in Quebec. Isabelle Giraud tried to reconcile the points of view by proposing to read the Yvettes’ discourse in terms of strategy rather than content: By taking a traditional feminine identity as a starting point, Liberal activists found an opportunity to advance their feminism on the basis of new identity politics: “Yvette” became the symbol of proud, dignified Quebec women who would stand together to uphold the values of the federal past in Canada, and who were free and independent with respect to their family and moral commitments … The Yvettes expressed their opposition to the univocal version of women’s liberation that was then in vogue. The new Liberal feminine identity was in opposition to that of feminists in the workforce … The Yvettes’ solidarity was a temporary mobilization that did not give rise to specific associations because of its very political origin in the Quebec Liberal Party. However, backed by this new political identity, Liberal feminists in Quebec would from then on have two concerns at heart: family and the birth rate.62 In her more recent work, Dumont has remarked that the Yvettes very clearly sought to dissociate feminism from constitutional questions, quoting on this point a statement by Madeleine Ryan, one of the Yvettes’ organizers: “The Parti Québécois is trying to use women to get them to believe that their

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fate will be better in an independent Quebec, but in fact the two issues are unrelated.”63 According to Dumont, it was the traditional elites and political analysts who believed, and still believe, that the movement represented a rejection of feminism. She points out that the referendum nonetheless created divisions between feminists64 and that this made it a turning point.

c o n c l u s i on Many authors have acknowledged that the Yvettes made it possible for women to enter political history65 by finally giving them an opportunity to play a leading role on the political scene, even though they had not managed to get elected in great numbers in the years since they had won the right to vote. The texts we have examined also show how difficult it is to interpret the ties between this movement and Quebec feminism. Initially perceived as a manifestation of anti-feminism, especially in media analyses, the Yvettes movement was subsequently associated with new interpretations that placed greater emphasis on the role that feminists played in it and rejected the idea that the movement was anti-feminist. A further interpretation suggests understanding the Yvettes movement as the expression of a form of feminism. Flavie Trudel’s work supports this hypothesis, through her analysis of documents produced by the Yvettes movement during the 1980 referendum campaign. These analyses show that Quebec feminism has had various partisan allegiances far beyond its special relationship with the national emancipation movement. While it is obvious that Quebec feminists participated in the Yvettes movement, especially at the level of the organizing committee, which brought together women strongly identified with feminism, such as Thérèse Casgrain, it is plausible that a good number of the women present at the Montreal Forum on 7 April 1980 (like the majority of women in Quebec at the time) did not self-identify as feminists. By reclaiming the stereotype of a submissive woman, Yvette, as a symbol of a political position, the movement was able to draw in women with different statuses, including women who literally identified with the image of a submissive housewife because it corresponded to their social identity. In 2020, support for feminism brings together barely half of Quebec women, even though it is constantly growing. It is therefore reasonable to think that the women who participated in the Yvettes rally in 1980 were also divided in their support for feminism, as were women as a whole in Quebec. The authors who associate the Yvettes with feminism use a very broad definition of the term, on which there is no consensus because it is based on the idea that complementarity of the sexes can be a form of equality, and it does not necessarily support demands to achieve real equality between men and women. The ephemeral aspect of the movement and the fact that it did not result in any lasting structure, despite the resounding victory of the “No” side in May 1980 when the Quebec feminist movement was in an ascendant

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organizational phase,66 shows that there was a symbolic distance between the Yvettes and the women’s movement at that point in Quebec’s history. The Yvettes did indeed include feminist activists from the Quebec feminist movement, but, after May 1980, those activists did nothing to integrate the Forum rally participants into the feminist movement, which shows that there was a real distance between those women and organized feminism in the 1980s. notes

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I would like to thank Carolanne Magnan for the extremely meticulous work she did on identifying and summarizing literature on the theme of feminism and federalism, in the summer of 2018. Nicole de Sève, “Pour une nécessaire consolidation des acquis,” in Un Québecpays: Le oui des femmes, ed. Réseau des citoyennes pour l’indépendance du Québec (Montreal: Les Éditions du remue-ménage, 2018), 43. Micheline Dumont and Louise Toupin, La pensée féministe au Québec: Anthologie (1900–1985) (Montreal: Les Éditions du remue-ménage, 2003), 230. (Translated from the French. Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations of French texts are by the translators of this volume.) Claire Brassard, “Le référendum de mai et les groupes de femmes,” in La chance au coureur, ed. Jean-François Léonard (Montreal: Nouvelle Optique, 1980), 74. Chantal Maillé, Cherchez la femme: Trente ans de débats constitutionnels au Québec (Montreal: Les Éditions du remue-ménage, 2002), 57. Nicole Lacelle, “Quebec: A View from Inside,” Broadside 1, no. 8 (1980): 15. Maillé, Cherchez la femme, 39. Micheline Dumont, “Women of Quebec and the Contemporary Constitutional Issue,” in Gender and Politics in Contemporary Canada, ed. François-Pierre Gingras (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1995), 153–74. See the next section of this chapter: “The Yvettes Movement: A Bit of Background.” Micheline Dumont, “Women of Quebec,” 160. See Jacques Parizeau’s declaration on 30 October 1995: https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=c2my8ikBQMY. Louis Cornellier, “Retour sur les Yvettes,” Le Devoir, 5 February 2005, https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/chroniques/74052/retour-sur-les-yvettes. René Lévesque, Memoirs, trans. Philip Stratford (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986), 306. Stéphanie Godin, “Les Yvettes comme l’expression d’un féminisme fédéraliste au Québec,” Mens 5, no. 1 (2004): 85 (translation). Cornellier, “Retour sur les Yvettes.” Godin, “Les Yvettes comme l’expression,” 79. Godin uses Lise Payette’s statements in Le pouvoir? Connais pas (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 1982), 79

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20 21 22

23 24

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27 28 29

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(translation). Note that the translation of Payette’s description is taken from Graham Fraser, René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois in Power, 2nd ed. (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001), 222. As related by Micheline Dumont in “The ‘Yvettes’ Affair,” in Feminism à la Québécoise (Ottawa: Feminist History Society, 2012), 155. Renée Rowan, “Lise Payette: Ayons le courage de sortir de notre prison de peur,” Le Devoir, 10 March 1980. Lise Bissonnette, “Dire non à ce courage-là,” Le Devoir, 11 March 1980 (translation). Jacqueline Lamothe and Jennifer Stoddart, “Les Yvettes ou: Comment un parti politique traditionnel se sert encore une fois des femmes,” Atlantis, 6, no. 2 (1981): 12 (translation). Cornellier, “Retour sur les Yvettes” (translation). Lise Bissonnette, “L’appel aux femmes,” Le Devoir, 9 April 1980: 8 (translation). Excerpts from a speech by Nicole Lacelle, in Claire Brassard, “Le référendum de mai et les groupes féministes (1980),” in Dumont and Toupin, eds, La pensée féministe, 687–8 (translation). Nicole Brossard, “Notes et fragments d’urgence,” in Femmes et politique, ed. Yolande Cohen (Montreal: Éditions du Jour, 1981). Diane Lamoureux, Fragments et collages: Essai sur le féminisme québécois des années 1970 (Montreal: Les Éditions du remue-ménage, 1986), 148 (translation). Lamothe et Stoddart, “Les Yvettes ou.” Micheline Dumont, “Les Yvettes ont permis aux femmes d’entrer dans l’histoire politique,” quoted in Godin, “Les Yvettes comme l’expression,” 105 (translation). Collectif clio , Histoire des femmes au Québec, 2nd ed. (Montreal: Éditions du Jour, 1992), 480 (translation). Lamothe and Stoddart, “Les Yvettes ou,” 16 (translation). “Les Yvettes douze ans après: Essais d’interprétation,” in Thérèse Casgrain, une femme tenace et engagée, ed. Anita Caron and Lorraine Archambault (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université du Québec, 1993), 160. Évelyne Tardy, “Présentation,” in Caron and Archambault, eds, Thérèse Casgrain, 163–4. Lamoureux, Fragments et collages. Naomi Black, “Les Yvettes, qui sont-elles?”, in Caron et Archambault, eds, Thérèse Casgrain,” 168 (translation). Difference feminism promotes a traditional representation of femininity as experienced in the dominant Western context. It values motherhood because it would be a source of women’s power. Assigning different roles to men and women is also seen as a positive element in the spirit of promoting the complementarity of the sexes. Godin, “Les Yvettes comme l’expression,” 105 (translation).

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35 Tardy, “Présentation,” 182 (translation). 36 Roberta Hamilton, “Pro-Natalism, Feminism, and Nationalism,” FrançoisPierre Gingras, ed., Gender & Politics in Contemporary Canada, 146. 37 Ibid., 146. 38 Ibid. 39 Stéphanie Godin, “Les Yvettes comme l’expression d’un féminisme fédéraliste au Québec” (master’s thesis, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2003) (translation). 40 Godin, “Les Yvettes comme l’expression,” 73 (translation). 41 Ibid., 74. 42 Lise Payette, Des femmes d’honneur: Une vie engagée, 1976–2000 (Montreal: Libre Expression, 1999), cited in ibid., 93 (translation). 43 Diane Lamoureux, “Nationalisme et féminisme: Impasse et coincidences,” Possibles 8, no. 1 (1983), 43–59, cited in ibid., 92. 44 Ibid. (translation). 45 Ibid. (translation). 46 Ibid., 106. 47 Godin, “Les Yvettes comme l’expression” (2003), 141–2 (translation). 48 Ibid. (translation). 49 Flavie Trudel, “L’engagement des femmes en politique au Québec: Histoire de la Fédération des femmes du Québec de 1966 à nos jours” (PhD diss., Université du Québec à Montréal, 2009), 183 (translation). 50 Ibid., 167 (translation). 51 Ibid.,168 (translation). 52 Diane Lamoureux, L’amère patrie: Féminisme et nationalisme dans le Québec contemporain (Montreal: Les Éditions du remue-ménage, 2001), 137 (translation). 53 Susan Mann, The Dream of Nation: A Social and Intellectual History of Quebec (Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press, 2002). 54 Trudel, L’engagement des femmes, 176 (translation). 55 Ibid., 180 (translation). 56 Ibid., 181–2 (translation). 57 Ibid., 186 (translation). 58 Ibid. (translation). 59 Lamoureux, L’amère patrie,” 137 (translation). 60 Trudel, L’engagement des femmes, 187 (translation). 61 Ibid. (translation). 62 Isabelle Giraud, “Mouvement des femmes et changements des régimes genrés de représentation politique au Québec et en France 1965–2004” (PhD diss., Université de Montréal, 2006), 217–8 (translation). 63 Madeleine Ryan, cited in Micheline Dumont, “Les femmes et le nationalisme: Soyons vigilantes,” in Réseau des citoyennes pour l’indépendance du Québec, ed., Un Québec-pays, 209 (translation). 64 Dumont, “The ‘Yvettes’ Affair,” 159.

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65 Dumont, “Les Yvettes ont permis.” 66 In Quebec at the turn of the 1980s, the women’s movement expanded with the creation of many new groups such as sexual-assault help centres (centres d’aide et de lutte contre les agressions à caractère sexuel, or calacs ).

11 Community(ies), Nation(s), State(s): Nicole Laurin, Richard Desjardins, and Fragments of Pluralist Federalist Thought Jean-Charles St-Louis Most political scientists will agree with the elementary proposition that in the two-state situation either one wins and the other loses or they both win; or sometimes, both lose but that, on the whole, most people do not either gain much or lose much in any case … The referendum only told the same old lesson to the same people, already well warned from past events that they should not be hoping for much in the way of a real transformation of the conditions of work and life in general. Nicole Laurin1 Sovereignty is all well and good, but what we want is a free country. Richard Desjardins2

In his now classic book, Strange Multiplicity,3 James Tully set out to shed light on the complexity of the political organization of contemporary societies, which is often hidden by the inflexibility of the dominant languages of modernity. He invited us to rediscover, in the fields of political theory and constitutional law among others, the various sources (sometimes imposed, sometimes consented to or negotiated) that contribute to the potential renewal of our political associations. The reason to do such rereading was to identify forms of constitutional association, in particular what Tully calls “diverse federalism,” that, based on consent, continuity, and mutual recognition, would be better equipped to promote cohabitation and cooperation in “diverse” societies. This chapter’s aim is to broaden the spectrum of theories that can be considered to belong to this tradition of diverse or pluralist federalist thought,

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which is a minor tradition in the history of ideas on federalism both in Quebec and elsewhere. Although this tradition has few official rallying points outside the field of normative theory, it seems to be the kind of tradition that can be pieced together from fragments. Its premises have different origins, but they seem to share certain concerns and special sensitivity. On the fringe of the main discussions on Quebec’s place in Canada and the future of the federation, these premises invite us to think about community membership beyond the usual frameworks of the nation-state and sovereignty. Our goal here is to situate the works of sociologist Nicole Laurin and artist-activist Richard Desjardins in this context, and to show how their reflections make it possible to probe more deeply into certain aspects that have until now received little attention in the primary work that has been done on this topic. This study is part of a larger project aimed at tracing, in the North American Francophone world, a family of pluralist lines of thought that have generally been blind to their affinities and “family resemblances,”4 scattered as they are on the fringes of the tug-of-war between Quebec and the federation. It draws inspiration from the genealogical approach sketched out by Michel Foucault.5 The goal is to draw out diverging perspectives that, beyond the most common certitudes about Quebec nationalism and federalism, have tested the limits of hegemonic debates and questioning. This will involve identifying knowledge about community that is local, disempowered, minor, and subjugated, but has sought and still seeks today to break mainstream discussions free of their monist imaginaries. In order to show how forms of criticism that, owing to their dispersal, seem isolated and orphaned are in fact tied by bonds of kinship and do in fact resonate with each other, we will cast our net beyond the official forums of political theory and cross the recognized borders between fields of thought – for example, between the social sciences and the arts. The reflections of Laurin and Desjardins may belong to very different registers, but they share the same skepticism with respect to the nation-state and nationalism, a form of skepticism anchored in the struggles of the people who pay the real price. They also promote a form of diverse federal thought that sheds light on the material, concrete dimensions of inequalities, an aspect generally neglected by normative theory. Contributions to pluralist federalist thought have surged in academic milieus since the turn of the new millennium. One of the things they have in common is that the themes of their reflections include struggles for autonomy and recognition that cannot be resolved simply by a classical distribution of powers between central and federated states.6 They have been marked by the various anticolonial and post-imperial criticisms of the nation-state, liberalism, and forms of social regulation specific to contemporary capitalist regimes. Leading works have insisted especially on the limitations of the mainstream models of federal citizenship with respect to symbolic inclusion.

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By doing so, most of them have overlooked investigation into certain dimensions of power relations, in particular the way such relations are embedded in the main institutions and practices that provide the concrete organization of our collective life and the interrelations between the inhabitants of a given space. The purpose of this chapter is to shed light on this aspect of pluralist federalist thought, which has been left fallow so far. For this, we will explore certain critical contributions that, while they are not usually associated with the federalist camp in the context of Canada and Quebec, emphasize the concerns for political freedom and reciprocity that are those of diverse federalism. We will therefore see what the ideas promoted by Nicole Laurin and Richard Desjardins can contribute to a framing of the problems of state and state sovereignty that aims, in the spirit of diverse federalism, to deepen, on different levels, the autonomy of persons and communities but also their interdependence. Although neither Laurin nor Desjardins has ever aligned themselves with “federalist” positions in constitutional debates in Canada and Quebec, their words remain highly pertinent for reflection on diverse federalism as a form of organization of collective life on different levels. Each in their own register, they seem to be able to elucidate different facets of power relations that usually remain in the shadows in mainstream contributions to discussions on federalism, in particular those related to the role of the (nation-)state and the structure of sovereignty in the production and maintenance of certain political, economic, and symbolic inequalities. Because they are dissatisfied with the kinds of hopes raised by the main proposals for the future of Quebec and the Canadian federation, especially with regard to the possibility for everyone to live freely, Laurin and Desjardins offer analyses that are among the few, in the Francophone world, to challenge Quebec indépendantiste nationalism’s commitment to anti-imperialism. By exposing the limits of the Canadian and Quebec frameworks with respect to various communities’ aspirations to freedom, Laurin and Desjardins open the way to flexible conceptions of political organization that, by tapping into the autonomy and interdependence of the persons concerned, aim to renew our political practices “from the bottom up,” in the spirit of diverse federalism.

di ve r s e f e d e r a l is m a n d power relati ons In the constellations of ideas about federalism in Canada and Quebec, pluralist proposals are located on the fringes of the space occupied by the debates between universalist federalism and communitarian federalism.7 In light of analyses done from poststructuralist, anti-racist, feminist, decolonial, and anti-imperial perspectives, contemporary pluralist federalist critics propose imagining forms of political association, belonging, and citizenship that would not reproduce the “absolutist” conceptions of the dominant tra-

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ditions. They would therefore break definitively with the institutional, identity-based monism that characterizes modern political thought.8 Encouraging institutional and legal pluralism, diverse federalism promotes a flexible, evolving image of the “pact” that is limited neither to territory-based communities nor to the protection of individual rights.9 In this spirit, in order to free the analyses from the historical ruts in which they are often caught (for example, questions about the future of the Canadian federation and what Quebec’s place in it should be), we are going to follow James Tully’s example and approach federalism from a broad perspective, as a constantly changing association of diverse forms of communities that interact, overlap, and coordinate their activities on different scales.10 We will also take inspiration from François Rocher’s work and add to this the idea that diverse federalist thought is concerned first with the autonomy and interdependence of various orders of communities.11 Indeed, from this perspective, the autonomy-interdependence pair seems more promising than the idea of “unity in diversity.” As Henrik Enroth points out, “due to this preoccupation with the question of unity in plurality, we today find it difficult to imagine, let alone embrace, a plurality of interests and identities in the absence of some more fundamental sources of shared interest and identity – actual or potential – to keep plurality in check.”12 “Unity in diversity” thus reflects a more or less pronounced and explicit bias in favour of order (in particular, the order embodied in the state’s various forms of sovereign decision-making), which is always what must be preserved first. Because, historically, they represent a place where opposition is voiced against the deployment of the modern state and assertion of sovereignty,13 reflections on federalism seem to be fertile ground for articulating ideas about the community that are not based, in the end, on reconciling parties around sovereign institutions of the state, even if it is federal. For purposes of discussion, the relevance of certain representations will therefore be considered, no matter what their commitment with regard to the maintenance or renewal, at whatever cost, of the current arrangements (in the Canadian federation or the Quebec state). This approach may seem counterintuitive in the context of a contribution to a study of the history of federalist thought in Quebec. However, it suffices to shift the usual focus of such history, for example, by taking the point of view that has been formulated by many Indigenous stakeholders, to see that these attachments can be considered historically contingent and, in practice, secondary with regard to communities’ aspirations to autonomous organization and the establishment of reciprocal relationships of interdependence. While there is no doubt that the state and mainstream nationalist discourse is complicit in reproducing major forms of systemic oppression,14 reflections on these power relations have remained on the sidelines of the main discussions on federalism. The most substantial and insightful contributions once again come mainly from Indigenous movements and political

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theory. The interlacing of the state’s priorities and mainstream modes of economic development can be seen in a very concrete manner in resistance movements against unilateral plans to exploit natural resources on the lands of certain communities, which challenge both the government and private enterprise. Political scientist Joyce Green has shown, more broadly, how the language commonly accepted as an interface between the Canadian state and Indigenous peoples (the registers of self-determination, citizenship, and federalism) is marked from A to Z by colonialism and its presuppositions. This structure constantly reasserts the state’s sovereignty and the legitimacy of its way of occupying the land, and therefore that economic growth is paramount. According to Green, “transforming the relationship of subordination into a relationship of mutual esteem necessarily involves for [the colonial society], giving up the privileges that it until then considered self-evident.”15 As political scientist Dalie Giroux has shown, concrete recognition of the autonomy of Indigenous communities in this way “seems overall incompatible with colonial sovereignty, which is not only control over the land and the population, but also legal normativity, a way of parsing reality, a form of life.”16  For Giroux, it is possible to see protests against the extraction economy as “the most poignant and radical claim made in Indigenous struggles in recent decades, namely, the right to say no to development.”17 According to Glen Coulthard, the protests could go beyond ad-hoc resistance and open the way to a “colossal transformation of the political economy of contemporary settler colonialism”: “our decolonialization efforts must deal directly with more than simple economic relations; they must take into account the complex ways that capitalism, the patriarchy, white supremacy, and the state interact to form the constellation of power relations that provide lasting support for the models of behaviour, structures, and relationships.”18 These critical studies have also been received within institutions and theories of liberal individualism as specific demands that must be taken into account in the framework of the Canadian (or Quebec) state. That interpretation supposes that the way problems of sovereignty, economic relationships, and the main nationalist discourses are framed in the claims is specific to these struggles and remains confined to the context of redefinition (often negotiated piecemeal) of the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the state. More broadly, it is also proof of the limited capacity of liberalism’s vocabulary to grasp the meaning of inequalities and power relations beyond formal discrimination and symbolic inclusion.19 Coming into play under the theme of “recognition” in this specific discursive context, the main premises of diverse federalism have generally been heard (and sometimes formulated) as simple calls for openness and tolerance. A limited ability to conceptualize the co-constitution of relations of domination that affect both the symbolic and the material conditions of life20 thus seems to have been a common

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obstacle to liberal theories and critical theory, as can be seen in the debate pitting recognition against redistribution.21 However, the challenges brought by diverse federalist thought are potentially much more consequential. In order to translate the many “recognition struggles” into constitutional terms, we must understand, as Tully has so often pointed out, that we cannot separate questions tied to cultural pluralism from other vectors of oppression: “A demand for recognition is never purely symbolic. Each demand can alter in many ways the (social, economic, and political) power relations that are at the heart of any system of social cooperation.”22 In other words, struggling to transform what Tully calls “dominant intersubjective norms of mutual recognition”23 means jeopardizing institutionalized privileges and positions of power. Opposition to unilateral systems of sovereignty is a central facet of these struggles.24 The history of political ideas in Quebec is peppered with approaches that share, in one way or another, the concerns mentioned above. Those concerns can be found in the wide range of reflections, struggles, and practices that have arisen around the ideas of anti-imperialism and decolonization, and in attempts to focus light on the hegemony of the main nationalist discourses, the privileges of birthright citizenship, the violence of the world political economy, and the arbitrariness of borders.25 On the sidelines of the mainstream discussions on Quebec’s place in Canada and on the future of the federation, there is thus a series of reflections that, to various degrees and from different angles, call on us to think about belonging and the community outside of the usual frameworks of the nation-state. Depending on the context, thinking about political autonomy beyond the handful of options offered to the monist, state-centred political imagination (universalist federalism, binational federalism, or sovereign nation-state) does not seem to be an easy task. We will explore these tensions by studying the observations and theories of Laurin and Desjardins. Their thoughts, which are dedicated to freedom and the struggle against the different forms of individual and collective subjection, are in no way to be co-opted in the project of renewing federal practices “from the top down.” On the contrary, our purpose is to see how Laurin’s and Desjardin’s reflections on historical and contemporary forms of dispossession and heteronomy can, from the perspective of diverse federalism, provide avenues for deepening the autonomy of and interdependence between individuals and communities.

“t hi s w o r l d t h a t l iv e s i n us and escapes us ”: t he c r it ic a l s o c io l o g y of ni cole lauri n The sociology of nationalism and the state that Nicole Laurin began producing in the mid-1970s is a unique contribution to the social sciences landscape in Quebec. She revealed the processes of reproduction of power and inequalities that are at work in the various forms of nationalist

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discourse and in the renewal of state institutions and practices. In so doing, she reframed the problems in a way that breaks with the “methodological nationalism,”26 in other words, the propensity to naturalize discourse on the Quebec nation and “its” state, a propensity latent in mainstream research on Quebec society. According to Laurin, despite their differences, most approaches (including her early work with Gilles Bourque27) have in common that they reproduce the power relations underlying the nationstate conceptions of community life and regulating community life as if those power relations were normal:28  “The human sciences have here, as elsewhere, an unfortunate tendency to consolidate ideology. They develop and formalize its statements but, above all, they limit their investigation to the field of objects that the ideology presents to them as real, important, and worthy of scientific interest.”29 Putting everyday discourse on the nation into perspective in this way was not simply a radical break from the platitudes of Quebec academics and intellectuals at the time; it anticipated, by a number of years, the studies on “banal,” or everyday, manifestations of nationalism.30 Considered from the angle of the history of ideas about community in Quebec, the affinity of Laurin’s approach with the concerns of pluralist federalism can be described on three mutually reinforcing levels: 1 Laurin’s work proposes a systematic analysis of the mechanisms of state regulation and their interconnections with nationalism understood as a discourse of normalization of relationships between persons living within a single “nation.” 2 This analysis is in line with radical criticism of capitalism and social gender relations, which are relayed by the state on the level that is specific to it, but which spread from the private sphere all the way into the interstate and suprastate networks connecting people. 3 Community is conceived of as an open, undetermined process that is formed and transformed through struggles, changes in power relations, and the subversion of the institutions that embody those power relations. Laurin’s analyses can be situated in the framework of questions that arose after discourse on “national liberation” ran out of steam. Various versions of that discourse had united left-leaning movements and intellectuals under the themes of socialism and independence.31 While most of the stakeholders tried to attenuate or solve, on the theoretical level, the apparent contradictions between the unity of the Quebec people supposed by nationalism and its division into social classes, Laurin focused instead on shedding light on the “ideological” presuppositions upon which the attempt at reconciliation was based – and on the dynamics that such approaches contribute to

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naturalizing and obscuring:32 “Sociology’s task, and the task of criticism in general, is precisely to show the arbitrary, historical, relative aspect of meaning; in other words, the boundaries that imprison it. In the case of nationalism, what we can shed light on is how it creates the nation as a set of meanings, values, and sentiments conferred on solidarity, exchange, and the interdependency of the players in capitalist processes, and on how it invests the nation in the reproduction of these processes and the mechanisms that carry them out.”33 Thus, forms of contemporary nationalist discourse, whether they lean more to the right or more to the left, have in common that they pursue the political organization of a “national” population around a state as if it were necessary. At the same time, such discourse reaffirms the legitimacy of the powers that the state concentrates or contributes to consolidating. According to Laurin, by reproducing the state’s presuppositions, most of the portrayals of Quebec neonationalism “do not in any way challenge its claim to power, that is, the privilege that ideology gives it, to be precisely the state as a national state: mirror of the nation, guardian of its integrity, lever of its destiny! … This practice reproduces not only the state, its power, and its privileges, but also the ideology of the nation as the foundation for that power and source of those privileges.”34 However, if we are to understand nationalism’s special situation in Canada and Quebec (where nationalism “is also portrayed as refusal to be dominated”), social scientists must recognize that it remains “one of the essential elements of the vast field of consent and adhesion to bourgeois society by the dominated classes.”35 The first way in which Laurin’s analysis was out of sync with the studies of her time is that she adopted a resolutely “constructivist” and historical conception of nationalism, which she saw as an artefact of modernity and of the development of capitalism and the state. From that perspective – and in contradiction to the usual inferences – nationalism is not the expression of a pre-existing nation’s aspirations for autonomy; it is precisely, as a form of discourse, what produces and reproduces “the nation” as a representation of the community shared by a population: “The nation is, in fact, what is defined as such by nationalism, which is nothing but a kind of permanent discourse on ‘the state of the nation.’ The nation, in this sense, must be treated as a reality: a set of real facts produced in and by nationalist discourse in the broad sense.”36 To understand what nationalism is as a political phenomenon – what it produces, as discourse, in reality – we must break the chain of equivalence that derives naturally that a nation exists due to the presence of certain characteristics that are shared by a population (language, culture, history, religion, descent, etc.) and then, from there, interprets nationalist movements as manifestations of that nation. As narrative, nationalism is, in fact, an exercise in making meaning: its primary effect is to “constitute agents

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as a nation” and to designate certain practices, institutions and spaces as “national.” It is born with the modern state, which is portrayed in it “as the seat and centre of the nation, the guardian of its integrity, and the driving force behind its progress.”37 It accompanies the state as it unfolds and is transformed; and, at the same time, the state comes to represent the primary location in which are vested hopes to “control the collective life,” replacing or subordinating to its regulation “the older loci of identification, solidarity, opposition, struggle: the workplace, family group, religion, neighbourhood, region, organizations of all sorts.”38 According to Laurin, there is no doubt that nationalism “is based … on the very real emotions of flesh and blood people, such as attachment to the corner of the world where they were born, the elementary solidarity generated by similar past experience, and a shared linguistic universe”; and also “on the problems, that are just as real, of those same persons.”39 By giving those problems and feelings a primarily national meaning, nationalism as a discursive phenomenon also simultaneously establishes and legitimizes the (so-called “national”) state’s authority over those people, over the shared symbolic universe, and the territory. It gives meaning to the state’s various means of controlling and regulating behaviour, and to the entities that relay the state’s authority, such as the family, and thereby “provides certain elements that are essential to ensuring agents play their roles in ways that are appropriate with respect to the performance of the functions that they imply.” Historically, the system of roles in question has been the highly inegalitarian capitalist social order, the components and institutions of which are also, for the most part, “named, defined, and given value as national.”40 In day-to-day life, nationalism gives meaning to and helps normalize the relationships of domination in capitalist societies. Even in its more or less radical left-wing versions, it leads at best to the partial reorganization of these relationships because it confines its actions to the level of the state and its institutions, which can only seek to contain, smother, or co-opt protest movements.41 According to Laurin, since they concentrate their efforts on the level of the state and reaffirm its legitimacy as the place of concentration of power, protest movements have very little control over the broader dynamics of the North American and world political economies, of which the federal and provincial governments are the conduits, on the levels and in the jurisdictions that are their own. Their horizon is limited to adjustments that do not challenge the integrity of the production and exchange networks or the states’ prerogatives over “their” territory. This atypical framing of the problem naturally had an impact on the way the relations between the Canadian and Quebec states were explained. From Laurin’s point of view, constitutional confrontations had to be understood in light of the leading role that the Quebec state intended to play, beginning in the 1960s, in the defence and reproduction of the “Quebec nation.”

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The “new Quebec nationalism, the discourse on the nation in the Quebec state,” spread rapidly across the political scene, despite significant differences regarding its implications. Sharing the certainty of “the existence of a Quebec nation, the reproduction of which would be a ‘matter of State,’” each of the different options that formed on the indépendantisme-federalism continuum had its own answer to the question of “what state will be the most efficient at ensuring the reproduction of the Quebec nation, and how.”42 What was at stake in the discussions was therefore a reformulation of the relationships between federal and Quebec state institutions in accordance with what seemed to be required, depending on the point of view, to preserve “the nation” in the various areas that were supposed to concern it (language, culture, economic development, etc.). The range of possibilities in this regard – the margin of manoeuvre within which adjustments could be imagined, whether constitutional reforms or rupture – appeared to be limited, essentially, by the maintenance of the production and exchange networks at the American and Canadian levels. What is the relationship between this analysis, which was presented as a radical criticism of the state and nationalism, and the concerns and goals of pluralist federalism? To begin with, it breaks down, in a language different from that of recognition, the “imperial” nature of modern institutions and political discourse. It does so from an angle that tends to escape the readings based on the concept of “identity” that have come to dominate thought on pluralism, in particular because they tend to produce a more segmented portrait of struggles and power relations. Identity-based readings generally insist on the burden that modern constitutions place on citizens in minority groups, but Nicole Laurin’s proposal is based mainly on the political and material dispossession performed by the state and the growth economy in the everyday lives of “nationals” on behalf of whom their mechanisms are deployed. In a manner similar to Tully’s work on historical constitutionalism, Laurin’s analysis highlights both contingency and episodes of repression and appropriation resulting from the deployment of sovereignty in Canada and Quebec. However, she also identifies other spaces and forms of collective organization that, whether extinguished or resilient, whether integrated into state networks or not, help in practice to establish, on various levels, cooperative relationships that are more democratic and reciprocal.43 This portrait leads to an open conception of collective organization, one that is structured around struggles for autonomy, subversion of the imposed order, and in-practice reclamation of space for freedom.44 Like the struggle for recognition in Tully’s work, protest movements – particularly those at arm’s length from power – help to reconfigure established relationships between persons and communities. They aim to “increase, little by little, the space of the common good.”45 As struggles for autonomy, they also relaunch the question of the conditions for interdependence between

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communities on different scales – and, beyond that, the joint commitment of states within a federation – in a world marked by inequalities and power relations. This framing of the problem sheds light on statements that artist Richard Desjardins has been making for over forty years.

“ b e f o r e b e in g n a t ionali s ts … ”: au t o n o m y a n d c o l l e c t i ve organi zati on i n t h e w o r k o f r ic h a rd desjardi ns Often abrasive and irreverent, the body of work of singer-songwriter and documentary filmmaker Richard Desjardins, widely recognized and acclaimed for its poetical qualities, occupies a place in the Quebec artistic landscape and media universe that is analogous to Nicole Laurin’s analyses in the field of sociology. Desjardins’s decolonial criticism of the state and capitalism is sustained and never spares the institutions and discourse associated with Quebec nationalism – an unusual feature in the realm of French-language songs and songwriting. Desjardins deploys an interpretation of the constraints on individual and collective autonomy in capitalist societies that is similar to Nicole Laurin’s, although in a register that is different from social and political theory. Environmental protection and the situations of Indigenous peoples, labourers, and those who have been discarded by the growth economy are central to what he has to say. From the way he stages these multiple perspectives, there emerges a line of thought on the organization of communal life that calls out the complicity of governments, major multinationals, and their agents, all of which enthusiastically maintain the primary obstacles to creating a place where one can be at home on Earth. Although it is not formulated in as systematic manner as a treatise in the social sciences, a conception of federalist pluralist collective organization can be seen in Desjardins’s songs, documentaries, and public interventions.46 In the context of reflection on pluralist federalism, three aspects of Desjardins’s thought seem especially pertinent: 1 By telling stories about marginal and excluded characters, Desjardins’s work sheds light on the contingent factors involved in the main nationalist discourses on state sovereignty, whether Canadian or Quebec, opening the way to a pluralist conception of living together and using the territory. 2 Desjardins’s criticism of the many forms of cultural, political, and economic imperialism highlights both the different relations of domination and the privileges that take root and grow, and also the violence by which those relations and privileges are imposed and maintained. 3 The struggles for autonomy in Desjardins’s stories demonstrate that the ability to lead one’s life with dignity – independently and free of

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need – is an essential condition for establishing reciprocal relations between persons and communities. Commitment to the equality of the persons living in a given space seems, in this sense, to be a condition for achieving free, sustainable relationships of interdependence at all levels, which is one of the major goals of pluralist federalism. Desjardins’s point of view is structured around various forms of enunciative alterity. In a society that has many illusions about the imperialist scope of its dominant customs and paradigms, it seems necessary for his criticism to be narrated by voices emerging from situations of often radical individual or collective heteronomy. In this respect, his Indigenous characters are leading figures in his discourse on the political autonomy of communities. They challenge the legitimacy of the sovereignty that states claim over the land where they live, and they draw attention to their continuous presence and desire to keep living as they wish on their land. This is done by questioning and subverting key concepts in the Western political imaginary (such as land title, history, and memory). Through these figures, Desjardins deploys a discourse on collective freedom that challenges all imperialist ambitions. The idea of almost immemorial occupation of the land is especially important in the cosmology of Desjardins’s Indigenous characters.47 Their claims are based on the impression of living in a place legitimately and “since forever” that is at odds with non-Indigenous reasoning.48 Through these rhetorical figures (the Indigenous characters), Desjardins seeks to establish a possible threshold for comparing two worlds of radically unequal political weight. By showing the bias and ad hoc nature of the main forms of legitimization in the dominant political discourse,49 he criticizes the logic and effective deployment of national state sovereignty, equated with imperialism. For Desjardins the poet, everyday life in Western societies calls for the same reflections on the conditions for exercising freedom. At first, the conditions seem to be limited to the choice between a “normal” life, marked by work and moderation, and the life of a pariah, living more on the fringes than off the rest of society. This is the source of Desjardins’s question: “Am I a free man or just a lost bum?”50 The experience of marginality, individual to begin with, often characterized by isolation, remains anchored in the hope that a different type of community can be imagined and is ready to emerge. According to Desjardins, the primary institutions of capitalism and the state maintain, through violence of various degrees of intensity and subtlety, most of the people whose interrelated lives they regulate in unsatisfactory conditions. They make the world difficult, even impossible, to inhabit freely. On a continuum that extends from an employee’s drab, predictable everyday existence to the life of a vagabond, which hangs solely by a thread, these institutions produce only inhibited, alienated lives that are always increasingly

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precarious and without recourse. Labour and the law set the strict boundaries and expectations of modern life, inscribing it in, or bringing it back to, its place in a hierarchy in which freedom is glimpsed by only a powerful few. For Desjardins, this means that the state’s claims to represent the “people” or the “nation” are contradicted by the inequalities that these mechanisms maintain. According to his reading, governments, no matter what their allegiance, have never had the courage (or perhaps even the intent) to promote the wellbeing of local populations over the interests of private enterprise. For workers, work will rarely be anything but an activity in which the greatest part of their lives is invested simply because they must do so to survive.51 In Desjardins’s eyes, it is not so much politicians as it is the boards of directors and management of major companies and consortiums who decide, with complete impunity, the fate of the planet and its inhabitants. In both his songs and his documentaries, governments appear only as small, ambiguous cogs in the workings of industry. Most of the time, they appear as objective allies of capitalism and conservative forces: they justify the present state of things, favour it, and punish those who do not wish to comply. From this point of view, reworking the relationships between the Canadian and Quebec states does not seem very promising in itself with respect to the autonomy of most people. On the one hand, according to Desjardins, there is no reason to think that constitutional reform would give such people any form of control over the organization of where they live. Despite their differences, the Canadian and Quebec states share the same conception of economic development, focused on intensive resource development. That approach is unlikely to vary, no matter what changes are envisaged in Canada-Quebec relations, despite the known repercussions upon the ecosystems and minimal profits for workers and communities.52 On the other hand, Desjardins understands that the way the constitutional question is usually framed reproduces the colonial presuppositions underlying the actions of the Canadian and Quebec states. This is equally true with respect to language, culture, and the land. As expressed in works such as “La mer intérieure” (The Inland Sea) and “Qui s’en souvient?” (Who Remembers?), Desjardins believes that the privileges and the feeling of empowerment of the Francophone majority, along with its gathering around the Quebec state, need to be questioned seriously, especially with respect to that majority’s relationships with Indigenous peoples. In “Qui s’en souvient?”, he says: “Wampanoags, Paranokets / does that bring anything to mind? / I will continue. Narrangansetts / Beothuks, Pequots, let me take a break. / Spain, France, England, / well, that is already easier. / To discuss vocabulary, / you need to start by being alive. / To ensure our survival, / we have killed a lot of people. / Their names are not all written / in the Crown’s registers. Do I have the right to speak French (or English)? / From the bottom of my heart, from the marrow of my bones, / go ask the Iroquois that, / and thank your good luck, because a few still remain.”53

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In sum, for Desjardins, the main constitutional debates sidestep the real stakes raised by deeper autonomy and the relationships of interdependence between persons and communities, of which the central principal is individuals’ reclamation of the places where they live together. From this perspective, Desjardins considers as all the more important the kinds of struggles and protests of civil society that occur on the sidelines during discussions about the Canadian federation. These forms of activism are multiple possible avenues for the emergence of more reciprocal relationships between individuals and communities: “The Algonquins could expropriate Val-d’Or. They do not want to do so. They want a deal. Shared management and decent sharing of wealth. Let’s enter into that deal. Before being nationalists, we should start by being human.”54 Like any struggle over recognition, such protests are inspired less by a specific model of redistribution of powers and wealth than by an intuitive quest for freedom that is deeply anchored in individual and collective experiences. This is the quest of the various rebellious characters who people his songs: “Will there always be / water in my wine? / Will there always be a little less / when all you have is a slice of bread? / When the wind blows, I know where it comes from. / There are those who have everything and all the others have nothing. / Change that for me.”55 Desjardins brings to the stage the many fronts where people of different origins and life experiences seek to appropriate significant control over decisions that affect how they live their lives – “an invisible war where what is at stake is our survival.”56 Questioned recently about what are the most urgent political issues in Quebec and the world at the present time, Desjardins answered: “Dignity, having food to eat, especially, for everyone. It’s really heating up. [The most harmful thing at this time] is the growing control over human beings. Conditioning, too. I have the impression that people are more and more “enslaved,” so to speak.”57 Through the lens of a form of problematization (more intuitive than academic) of the role of state sovereignty and the growth economy in maintaining inequalities and privileges, dignity – the ability to live freely and safe from poverty – thus seems like a way to measure the real autonomy of persons and communities. Dignity is also seen as the material condition for establishing relationships that are not based on some form of one party being dependent on another. It seems that the democratic principles dear to pluralist federalism, namely consent and free participation in the decisions that concern us, which are also the foundations for every reciprocal relationship of interdependence, must take form not only in symbolic recognition but also in the commitment to work as a community to ensure decent living conditions for all. Concretely, this means calling for the dismantlement, on different scales and levels, of the political and economic mechanisms that prevent autonomous, sustainable organization and development of land by the people who live on it.

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c o n c l u s ion On the fringe in the landscape of discussions on nationalism and constitutional reform in Canada and Quebec, the proposals that Nicole Laurin and Richard Desjardins have made are important contributions to what could be a current in pluralist reflections on federalism in Quebec. Their criticisms of the interweaving of sovereignty, the primary nationalist discourses, and growth economy mechanisms shed light on certain facets of the inequalities and dominance relations that have not been sufficiently framed as problems in more classical discussions on the theme of recognition. They open the way to a conception of collective organization that goes beyond the paradigm of the division of powers between states considered sovereign in their spheres of activity. Laurin and Desjardins, from perspectives that resonate with the decolonial and anti-imperial aims of diverse federalism, propose diluting classical mechanisms of sovereignty, not simply by decentralizing or devolving powers but through individuals reclaiming control over their life circumstances. This type of reflection seems especially important at a time when the federal and provincial governments seem little inclined to protect local interests if those interests conflict with certain economic development plans, such as oil transport and natural and water resource development. The utterly fringe position of reflections such as those of Laurin and Desjardins in the space of constitutional debates says a lot about the central role that nationalism – Canadian and Quebec – plays as a commonplace in the discussion. Although the configuration of powers have made sociologist Laurin and poet Desjardins indépendantistes by default, or in spite of themselves, they have nonetheless demonstrated sustained skepticism about the main futures opened by the perspective of a sovereign Quebec state since, from an anti-imperialist perspective, its mechanisms would also have to be dismantled.58 Voicing criticism, rare in the Francophone milieu, of the decolonial claims of Quebec nationalism, both Laurin and Desjardins invite us to relaunch collective struggles aimed at (re)organizing, on different levels, social and political relationships on the basis of mutual recognition, historical continuity, and consent among the people concerned. By taking a little distance from the restrictive dichotomies that have marked the principal debates on the future of the Quebec state and the Canadian federation, we discover consistent fragments of real pluralist federalist thought. Despite the fact that, except among academics, interest in constitutional discussions seems singularly absent in Quebec and Canada, contemporary thought on federalism may have everything to gain by discarding historical commonplaces and tackling head-on the question of what kinds of concrete effects constitutional changes might have at the local level and in the daily lives of the people concerned.

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n otes 1 Nicole Laurin-Frenette, “Essais: Divertimento pour deux États. Divertimento for Two States,” Conjoncture politique au Québec, no. 3 (1983): 109–25, http://classiques.uqac.ca/contemporains/laurin_frenette_nicole/divertimento/ divertimento.html (the quoted passage is in English in the original text). 2 Quoted in Nicolas van Schendel, “Un pays libre à inventer: Pour Richard Desjardins,” Vice Versa, no. 48 (1995): 22. (Translated from the French. Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations of French texts are by the translators of this volume.) 3 James Tully, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (Cambridge, uk : Cambridge University Press, 1995). 4 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). 5 Michel Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended,” in Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–76 (New York: Picador, 2003). 6 Linda Cardinal and Marie-Joie Brady, “Citoyenneté et fédéralisme au Canada: Une relation difficile,” in Le fédéralisme canadien contemporain: Fondements, traditions, institutions, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon (Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2006), 435–60. 7 According to Dimitrios Karmis’s reading, universalist federalism gives priority to the institutions and identity discourse of the central state. Often situated in the lineage of liberal individualism (in particular that formulated by Pierre Elliott Trudeau), universalist federalism favours individual rights, political and legal homogeneity, and centralized decision-making within shared institutions. In contrast, communitarian federalism tends to insist on the autonomy of the federated states. In Quebec’s case, it is intimately related to variations in nationalist discourse (republicanism, province-centredness, subsidiarity, etc.) and is embodied in, among other things, the various versions of the thesis of a “pact between the two founding peoples.” See: Dimitrios Karmis, “Les multiples voix de la tradition fédérale et la tourmente du fédéralisme canadien,” in Gagnon, ed., Le fédéralisme canadien contemporain, 63–86. 8 Dimitrios Karmis and Jocelyn Maclure, “Two Escape Routes from the Paradigm of Monistic Authenticity: Post-Imperialist and Federal Perspectives on Plural and Complex Identities,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 24, no. 3 (2001): 379. 9 Karmis, “Les multiples voix.” 10 James Tully, “Federations, Communities and their Transformations: An Essay in Revision,” in Dominant Nationalism, Dominant Ethnicity: Identity, Federalism and Democracy, ed. André Lecours and Geneviève Nootens (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2009), 195–212. 11 François Rocher, “La dynamique Québec-Canada ou le refus de l’idéal federal,” in Gagnon, ed., Le fédéralisme canadien contemporain, 93–146.

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12 Henrik Enroth, “Beyond Unity in Plurality: Rethinking the Pluralist Legacy,” Contemporary Political Theory 9, no. 4 (2010): 471 (emphasis added). 13 Dimitrios Karmis and Wayne Norman, eds, Theories of Federalism: A Reader (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 25. 14 See, for example: David Austin, Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2013); Richard J.F. Day, Multiculturalism and the History of Canadian Diversity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000); Eve Haque, Multiculturalism Within a Bilingual Framework: Language, Race, and Belonging in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012); Sherene Razack, ed., Race, Space, and the Law: Unmapping a White Settler Society (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002); Lynn Caldwell, Carrianne Leung, and Darryl Leroux, eds, Critical Inquiries: A Reader in Studies of Canada (Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2013). 15 Joyce Green, “Autodétermination, citoyenneté et fédéralisme: Pour une relecture autochtone du palimpseste canadien,” Politique et Sociétés 23, no. 1 (2004): 13 (translation). 16 Dalie Giroux, Le Québec brûle en enfer: Essais politiques (Montreal: M Éditeur, 2017), 121 (translation). See also: Taiaiake Alfred, “Sovereignty,” in Sovereignty Matters: Locations of Contestation and Possibility in Indigenous Struggles for Self-Determination, ed. Joanne Barker (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 33–50. 17 Dalie Giroux, “Nationalisme et souveraineté dans les luttes autochtones contemporaines,” Les nouveaux cahiers du socialisme, no. 18 (2017): 78 (translation). The contributions by An Antane Kapesh on this subject are particularly informative. See, in particular: Eukuan nin matshimanitu innu-ishkueu: Je suis une maudite sauvagesse (Chicoutimi: Les éditions du caas , 2015); and the reading proposed by Amélie-Anne Mailhot, “La perspective de l’habitation politique dans Je suis une maudite sauvagesse/Eukuan nin matshimanitu innuiskueu d’An Antane Kapesh,” Recherches féministes 30, no. 1 (2017): 29–45. 18 Glen S. Coulthard, “Pour que vivent nos nations, le capitalisme doit mourir,” Les nouveaux cahiers du socialisme, no. 18 (2017): 18, 20 (translation). 19 See, for example: Himani Bannerji, The Dark Side of the Nation: Essays on Multiculturalism, Nationalism and Gender (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2000); Haque, Multiculturalism Within a Bilingual Framework; Daniel Salée, “Vivre-ensemble et dynamiques de pouvoir: Éléments pour comprendre l’anxiété antipluraliste actuelle des Québécois,” in Les conditions du dialogue au Québec: Laïcité, réciprocité, pluralisme, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon and JeanCharles St-Louis (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 2016), 253–81. 20 Paola Bachetta, “Décoloniser le féminisme: Intersectionnalité, assemblages, co-formations, co-productions,” Les Cahiers du cedref , no. 20 (2015): 125– 37; Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge, Intersectionality (Cambridge, uk : Polity Press, 2016). 21 Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redistribution and Recognition: A PoliticalPhilosophical Exchange (New York: Verso, 2003).

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22 James Tully, “Liberté et dévoilement dans les sociétés multinationales,” Globe: Revue internationale d’études québécoises 2, no. 2 (1999): 18 (translation). See also: James Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key, Volume 1: Democracy and Civic Freedom (Cambridge, uk : Cambridge University Press, 2008), 151–4. 23 James Tully, “Reconnaissance et dialogue: Émergence d’un nouveau champ d’études et de pratiques,” Négociations 2, no. 8 (2007): 36 (translation). 24 James Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 140–1, 174–5. 25 See: Sean Mills, The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010); Élyse Guay, “La revue Dérives (1975–1987) et l’écriture migrante: Introduire le Tiers dans la littérature québécoise” (master’s thesis, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2015); Diane Lamoureux, L’amère patrie: Féminisme et nationalisme dans le Québec contemporain (Montreal: Les Éditions du remue-ménage, 2001); Diane Lamoureux, “Nationalisme et féminisme: Impasse et coïncidences,” Possibles 8, no. 1 (1983): 43–59. 26 See: Daniel Chermilo, “Social Theory’s Methodological Nationalism: Myth and Reality,” European Journal of Social Theory 9, no. 1 (2006): 5–22; Andreas Wimmer and Nina Glick Schiller, “Methodological Nationalism, the Social Sciences, and the Study of Migration: An Essay in Historical Epistemology,” International Migration Review 37, no. 3 (2003): 576–610. 27 Gilles Bourque and Nicole Laurin-Frenette, “Classes sociales et idéologies nationalistes au Québec, 1760–1970,” Socialisme québécois, no. 20 (1970): 13–55. 28 Nicole Laurin-Frenette, “Contre les théories de l’idéologie,” in L’idéologie et les stratégies de la raison: Approches théoriques, épistémologiques et anthropologiques (Montreal: Hurtubise, 1984), 23–34. 29 Nicole Laurin-Frenette, “Remarques sur la théorie de la nation,” in Nation, souveraineté et droits: Actes du IVe Colloque interdisciplinaire de la Société de philosophie du Québec (Montréal: Bellarmin, 1980), 50 (translation). 30 On the originality of this approach in the Quebec social sciences landscape, see: Jean-Charles St-Louis, “Parler de ‘la diversité’ au Québec: Une étude généalogique des discussions récentes sur le pluralisme au Québec” (PhD diss., Université du Québec à Montréal, 2018), 15–34. 31 Nicole Laurin-Frenette and Jean-François Léonard, “Par-delà l’écran référendaire,” in L’impasse: Enjeux et perspectives de l’après-référendum, ed. Nicole Laurin-Frenette and Jean-François Léonard (Montreal: Nouvelle optique, 1980), 15–18. 32 Laurin’s tone, and the content of her writing, sometimes make this undertaking seem like a neverending disenchantment: “Class and nation … that was our youth, it became our profession and, in the end, ‘el monumento [somos] de una vida ajena y no vivida, apenas nuestra’ [the monument of an alien life not lived, barely ours] (Octavio Paz).” Laurin-Frenette, “Essais: Divertimento” (translation). On this taking of distance from the indépendantiste movement and the Parti québécois, see also: Yolande Cohen, “Hommage à Nicole, l’amie féministe,” Sociologie et sociétés 49, no. 2 (2017): 287–90.

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33 Nicole Laurin-Frenette, Production de l’État et formes de la nation (Montreal: Nouvelle optique, 1978), 43–4 (translation). 34 Ibid., 53–4 (translation). 35 Ibid., 33–4 (translation). 36 Ibid., 40 (translation). 37 Ibid., 41, 112 (translation). Note that the paradigm of an “imagined community,” with which this anarchist reading of nationalism, capitalism, and the state resonates, did not become a commonplace in the social sciences until after the publication of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities some five years after Laurin’s analysis. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (1983; New York: Verso, 2006). 38 Laurin-Frenette, Production de l’État, 41, 112 (translation). See also: Nicole Laurin, “Le projet nationaliste gestionnaire: De l’hôpital des religieuses au système hospitalier de l’État,” in Les frontières de l’identité: Modernité et postmodernisme au Québec, ed. Mikhaël Elbaz, Andrée Fortin, and Guy Laforest (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1996), 95–104. 39 Laurin-Frenette, “Essais: Divertimento,” 7 (translation). 40 Laurin-Frenette, Production de l’État, 43 (translation). 41 On this theme, see also: Nicole Laurin-Frenette, “Les intellectuels et l’État,” Sociologie et sociétés 15, no. 1 (1983): 121–9; Nicole Laurin-Frenette, “Féminisme et anarchisme: Quelques éléments théoriques et historiques pour une analyse de la relation entre le Mouvement des femmes et l’État,” in Femmes: pouvoir, politique, bureaucratie, ed. Nicole Laurin-Frenette, Yolande Cohen, and Kathy Ferguson (Lyon: Atelier de création libertaire, 1984), 9–53. 42 Laurin-Frenette, Production de l’État, 150, 128 (translation). 43 See: Danielle Juteau and Nicole Laurin, Un métier et une vocation: Le travail des religieuses au Québec de 1901 à 1971 (Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1997); Nicole Laurin, “Le démantèlement des institutions intermédiaires de la régulation sociale: Vers une nouvelle forme de domination,” Sociologie et sociétés 31, no. 2 (1999): 65–72. 44 Nicole Laurin, “Un pouvoir à subvertir,” Relations, no. 673 (2001): 12–4. Laurin’s remarks on her experience as a young researcher at Bureau d'aménagement de l'Est du Québec (baeq ) are a good example of these concerns for the autonomous organization of communities, despite pressure from public institutions and market forces. See the interview with Laurin by PierreLaval Mathieu in the series Sociologie et sociologues québécois (1981): https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSRq3THxIPo. 45 Nicole Laurin, “La conscience de la liberté,” Relations, no. 683 (2003): 20–1 (translation). 46 A more complete and detailed analysis of Desjardins’s work can be found in chapter 4 of my ma thesis: Jean-Charles St-Louis, “Engagement et inscriptions de Gilles Vigneault, Loco Locass et Richard Desjardins dans la chanson québécoise: Entre appartenance et liberté” (master’s thesis, University of Ottawa, 2010).

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47 See, for example, the songs “Les Yankees,” “Nataq,” “Les veuves,” and “La mer intérieure.” 48 “Priorité : le moulin à scie / réalité qui tombe sous le sens / On va avertir l’Abénakie / lui expliquer les circonstances / … ‘Bonjour, j’m’appelle Sylvain Rondin / j’m’en viens vous dire qu’on vient bûcher, / mais par chez vous on va être fin / on va en prendre pis en laisser’ / À dit : ‘Excusez, j’comprends pas tout / vous demandez ma permission ? / Vous venez de me dire : vous êtes chez nous / dans ce cas-là, monsieur, c’est non’ / Y dit : ‘Chez vous … Fait que montrez-moi vos titres de propriété …’ / À dit : ‘Mes ancêtres étaient là avant l’invention du papier’ / Y dit : ‘Le village fait sa part / on est de service, non, après tout’ / À dit : ‘Ça, ça marche des deux bords : / vous payez rien pour être chez nous.’” From “Les veuves,” track 13 on Richard Desjardins, Kanasuta, Foukinic, 2003. 49 “Nous y tenons le feu, le lieu / nous échangeons peaux, armes, idées / avec qui on veut, quand on veut / ce que t’appelles la liberté / … Voilà ! Je fus pour toi une ombre / qu’on éloigne au bout d’un fusil / Quand tu te trouvas en surnombre / t’inventas la démocratie / pour que nous ayons tout perdu / J’ai tant pleuré sur tes traités / que leur encre s’est répandue / sur mille lois déjà votées / Dans tes papiers je ne garde / que le droit à la servitude.” From “La mer intérieure,” in Richard Desjardins, La mer intérieure (Montreal: Docteur Sax, 2000). 50 “T’attends” and “M’as mettre un homme là-dessus,” tracks 3 and 4 on Richard Desjardins, Richard Desjardins au Club Soda, Foukinic, 1993 (translation). 51 This is the case for those working in the mining industry: “J’entends la fonderie qui rush / Pour ceux qui le savent pas / on y brûle la roche / et des tonnes de bons gars / … Entendez-vous la rumeur / la loi de la compagnie ? / ‘Il faudra que tu meures / si tu veux vivre mon ami.’” From “Et j’ai couché dans mon char,” track 5 on Richard Desjardins, Tu m’aimes-tu, Foukinic, 1990. See also “Les fros,” track 12 on Richard Desjardins au Club Soda. 52 A few months before the 1995 referendum, Desjardins said: “My own patriotism is conservation of water and the forests … So when someone talks to me about independence, if it’s to junk the rivers in French instead of in English, I am ready to wait another 100 years” (translation). Quoted in Michèle Laferrière, “Un poste d’essence sur l’autoroute du bonheur,” Le Soleil, 30 June 1995. 53 From “Qui s’en souvient?”, in track 4 on René Lussier, Le trésor de la langue, Ambiances Magnétiques, 1989. Translated from the original French: “Wampanoags, Paranokets / est-ce que ça vous dit quelque chose ? / Je continue. Narrangansetts / Beotuks, Pequots, je fais une pause. / L’Espagne, la France, l’Angleterre / déjà là, c’est plus reposant / Pour discuter vocabulaire / faut commencer par être vivant. / Pour assurer notre survie / on a tué bien des personnes. / Leurs noms ne sont pas tous écrits / dans les registres de la Couronne / Si j’ai le droit de parler français (ou anglais) ? / Du fond de mon

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cœur, des os de mon corps / va demander ça aux Iroquois / pis profites-en, y en reste encore.” With respect to culture, Desjardins calls more broadly for breaking down the boundaries of the symbolic universe, which tends to be centred on Francophone cultural works: “I’m pretty much more of a defender of freedom of expression than of the French language. There are not many who speak in general … The person I consider the greatest Quebec poet is Leonard Cohen … It so happens he is English. The meaning of an image is not a question of language. Quebec is a very, very closed cultural universe – dangerously closed.” Quoted in Marie-Hélène Bergeron and Gilles Perron, “La musique, sa nature, la poésie, sa culture,” Québec français, no. 82 (1991): 88–90 (translation). Richard Desjardins, speech given on the occasion of being presented with an honorary doctorate by the Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, 9 March 2004 (translation). From “Y va toujours y avoir,” track 11 on Richard Desjardins, Boom Boom, Foukinic, 1998. Translated from the original French: “Y va-tu toujours y avoir / de l’eau dedans mon vin ? / Y va-tu toujours y avoir que’que chose en moins / quand tout c’que t’as c’t’une tranche de pain ? / Quand le vent souffle, moi je sais d’où c’est que ça vient / Y en a qui ont tout’ pis tout’ les autres ont rien / Change-moi ça.” In addition to the songs mentioned above, see also “Charcoal,” on the same album; “Va-t’en pas,” track 9 on Richard Desjardins, Tu m’aimes-tu, Foukinic, 1990; and “Les mammifères,” track 13 on Richard Desjardins, Chaude était la nuit, Foukinic, 1994. Richard Desjardins, quoted in Sylvain Cormier, “Richard Desjardins: L’alouette en guerre,” Le Devoir, 12 September 1998 (translation). Interview with Catherine Perrin: “Boomtown Café: Les premiers pas de Richard Desjardins déterrés,” Médium large, Ici Radio-Canada Première, 9 May 2018, https://ici.radio-canada.ca/premiere/emissions/medium-large/segments/entrevue/71270/richard-desjardins-revisite-boomtown-cafe-abbittibbi. Concerning this particular historical context, van Schendel argues (in “Un pays libre”) that Desjardins’s criticism could very well be made in the framework of a renewal of the Canadian federation. Nicole Laurin explained her support for the “Yes” side during the 1980 referendum as meaningful in the face of the coalition of conservative forces that joined the “No” side just before the vote. Laurin-Frenette, “Essais: Divertimento.”

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12 Historian Michel Brunet and Canadian Federalism: “If I were [an English] Canadian, I would be the most ardent and enthusiastic centralizer there could be” Serge Miville

Strongly engaged in Quebec civil society, historian Michel Brunet was an important public intellectual figure in twentieth-century Quebec. Over the course of his career, he appeared more than a hundred times on public radio and television, and published innumerable texts in the leading Montreal newspapers in order to promote his ideas about the future of the Canadian federation and Quebec. He instrumentalized a vast network of correspondence in Quebec and Canadian academic and political circles, in addition to authoring two briefs on the constitutional future of Quebec on behalf of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal, in the hope of influencing the path of history. His vision of the Canadian federation was broad and deep, and went through a profound evolution over the decades, as it adapted to Quebec’s political reality. A member of the Montreal School of History, with his colleagues Maurice Séguin and Guy Frégault,1 Brunet reflected on many forms of renewed federalism. Wishing to respect the deep desire, which many English-speaking Canadians shared at the time, to build a centralized Canadian society with Ottawa as its centre, he believed that it was necessary to accommodate the ambitions of the two “state-nations”2 comprising the country. In 1964, he initiated thought on sovereignty-association when he appeared, with the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal, before the National Assembly of Quebec’s Comité parlementaire de la Constitution (of which then Liberal mna René Lévesque was a member) four years before the idea was enshrined in the first program of the Parti Québécois.3

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It should be noted that, during his career, Brunet did not identify as a sovereigntist, separatist, indépendantiste, or federalist, except on one occasion: the 1980 referendum. In March 1980, after having studied the Quebec political regime for many years, Brunet decided to convert to the Parti Québécois’s proposal for sovereignty-association, which shared many characteristics with his 1964 brief. The news was published in La Presse a few days before the vote.4 René Lévesque thanked Brunet for having joined the “Yes” side and for having “placed the need to strengthen this current of collective unity above any form of partisan division.”5 Bernard Landry also rejoiced, adding at the bottom of a form letter inviting members to the launch of the national “Yes” coalition committee: “If you only knew how much pleasure and joy I felt when I saw your name on the list.”6 Clearly, the “Brunet brand” still had symbolic value at that time. Brunet’s death, in 1985, did not go unnoticed by Lévesque. Having been forced out of the Parti Québécois a few months earlier, he sent Brunet’s spouse a letter of condolences in which he said: “Michel Brunet was for many of us a raiser of awareness, an attentive, patient guide in the rediscovery of our collective memory … It is as if, thanks to him, we perceived the heart, still beating today and forever, of the aspirations, struggles and tenacity that motivated Quebecers 200 years ago; as if the historian had managed to tap into the line of direct, efficient communication between them and us – that same people, the same nation that we still are … Mr. Brunet marked a whole era, and his work defined, above all, the perspectives of our national future. Most of all, Brunet’s intellectual strength as a researcher and his rigour in debates, the fact that he never feared a clash of ideas, make him an example to us all.”7 Brunet sought to influence the course of Quebec’s history. This was central to his thought, and it distinguishes him from his colleague Maurice Séguin. While Séguin believed that French Canadians were bound by pre-determined factors, Brunet felt that such things could be overcome. Putting his words into action, he took pleasure in corresponding both with colleagues and politicians. His archives are full of letters that he sent to Canadian prime ministers, such as Louis Saint-Laurent; to the editors of Le Devoir, such as Gérard Filion, André Laurendeau, and Claude Ryan; to parliamentarians and ministers, such as Marcel Masse, who was one of his former students; and to journalists and editorialists, such as Lise Bissonnette and Solange Chaput-Rolland. As Jean Lamarre has pointed out, this correspondence was often accompanied by copies of texts that he distributed freely to that vast network of readers to spread his ideas.8 Occasionally, a politician took the bait. For example, on 8 January 1959, Noël Dorion, Progressive-Conservative mp for Bellechasse, wrote to Brunet after having received the text of one of his conferences. Dorion told him that he had recently acquired a copy of Canadians et Canadiens,9 and that Brunet was “one of those with the best understanding of the situation in

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which French Canadians are struggling.”10 Dorion’s interest in Brunet’s ideas was an unexpected opportunity that the historian did not miss. He wrote, with his trademark lack of humility: “Your eloquent words – which are in addition to many others – prove to me that I am useful to the community.”11 While it was some time before they met in person, their correspondence continued, in particular on the question of federal funding for universities, which Brunet was against. He sent his faithful reader a substantial four-page letter setting out his arguments on the matter to inspire him.12 Their relationship developed to such a point that, in a “personal and confidential” letter, Dorion asked Brunet if he would accept an appointment to the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada. Brunet refused, citing his excessively heavy workload.13 This relationship is nonetheless a good example of Brunet’s method: cultivate relationships to exert influence. Brunet’s vision of federalism favoured strong decentralization in which Quebec would take on many of the responsibilities of a sovereign country, even going so far as to choose its own political regime. Over the decades, he refined his thought. One proposal was a presidential system, but which would incorporate certain elements specific to Canadian history, including United Canada’s double majority principle. In order to explore Brunet’s “federalist” thought, we will begin by identifying the contours of his intellectual commitment and his thought on French-Canadian history. Next, we will analyze the two briefs he wrote for the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal in the context of the Tremblay Commission, in 1954, and the Comité législatif sur la Constitution, in 1964. We will end with Brunet’s fight against the federalist vision of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, his former colleague at the Université de Montréal.

t h e b e g in n in g s o f a li ne of thought: b r u n e t a n d hi story Michel Brunet’s historiographical legacy is somewhat controversial. In Making History in Twentieth Century Quebec,14 Ronald Rudin condemned his work, concluding that his contribution was poor, particularly with respect to methodology. He criticized the “high praise” of Jean Lamarre, according to whom Brunet was one of the most important historians of his generation. According to Rudin, Brunet’s books were “little more than collections of loosely connected essays” that only added “to the cataclysmic view of the Conquest that Maurice Séguin developed more than twenty years earlier.”15 Two things stand out here. On one hand, Rudin caricatures Brunet and inadequately assesses the social impact of his work. Brunet’s worth as a historian cannot be measured uniquely in terms of the “scientific quality” of his work. Indeed, he contributed by creating an important historical narrative that he was able to communicate in essays and newspapers, and on radio and television. Brunet’s ideas had a social impact that went far

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beyond the ivory tower. On the other hand, Rudin considers that Brunet did nothing but continue the appeal to wretchedness begun by Séguin. This misunderstands Brunet’s original contribution to the epistemology of the Montreal School of History. Brunet was much more than “a screamer,”16 as Mason Wade used to say. In fact, Brunet provided an original perspective on the structural analysis of his colleague, Séguin. A neonationalist, from the beginning of his career Brunet sought to break with the traditionalist French-Canadian nationalism that he had espoused in his youth.17 With the looming threat of the creation of a “Canadian” federal welfare state after the Second World War, the time was ripe to criticize received dogma in order to refocus the debate on Quebec’s future. Worshipping at the altar of “historical truth” provided by science and the sociological laws that, according to him, governed human societies, Brunet lambasted the “traditionalists” who allegedly mystified history and ignored the material reality that threatened French Canadians. One of the rare lay persons to hold a PhD in history in Quebec at the beginning of his career, he quickly became an authority on French-Canadian history in the eyes of the media. Despite having done his dissertation on American history, Brunet dedicated his research and intellectual career to studying and reflecting on French Canada. His only book, Les Canadiens français après la Conquête, 1759–1775, published in 1969, ferociously attacked the narrative that historian Fernand Ouellet was producing at the same time. Ouellet was inspired by the Annales school and, in his 1965 book Histoire économique et sociale du Québec, he argued that French Canadians’ economic gap with English Canada lay in the traditionalist mentality of the habitants, the Conquest having little to do with their economic inferiority. In Brunet’s rebuttal, French Canadians are portrayed as rational beings with their backs up against the wall, who had no other choice but to collaborate with the conquerors in order to survive in the space that remained for them.18 In other words, the Conquest created the context for economic underdevelopment. The domination imposed by the Conquest was catastrophic for these new British subjects and the darkest chapter in French-Canadian history. However, like Canon Lionel Groulx,19 and unlike his colleague Séguin, Brunet believed that the history of French Canadians was on an upward course. After the alienation of the French regime and the “decapitation” of the elite20 caused by the Conquest, he saw a slow, but steady, improvement in the Canadiens’ fate. Because of this, Séguin apparently thought that Brunet had not understood his Normes (Séguin’s teaching notes and theoretical framework, posthumously published). According to Lamarre, Brunet’s interpretation was, in fact, original.21 The Conquest may have broken the back of the French Canadians, but Brunet remained hopeful that the development of social-democratic forces within the Quebec state would lead to a turnaround.22 This is why Brunet should not be seen as misunderstanding

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Séguin, but as contributing an original vision meant to go beyond Séguin’s catastrophic thesis. In other words, Brunet’s narrative was infused with great hope for Quebec and Canada. According to Brunet, Canada is composed of two “state-nations,” namely Canada and Quebec. Canadian Francophones living outside Quebec would be doomed to assimilation because of sociological laws and demographics. In fact, French Canadians would have no chance of salvation outside Quebec, the only Francophone state in North America.23 He maintained that demographic forces, not divine Providence and miracles, had made it possible for French Canadians to survive in the St Lawrence Valley despite two centuries of British and English-Canadian domination. The Francophone minorities would therefore not be able to escape the determinism of their domination, unlike the Quebecers for whom there was still hope. In January 1968, appearing on the radio program Présent in the context of Toronto’s French culture festival, Brunet said that “a scientist does not have the right to change the crucial events of history. Therefore, as soon as FrenchCanadian individuals [outside Quebec], lost in the Anglo-North-American mass, want to progress in North-American life, they have to assimilate.”24 Brunet’s fatalistic views on minorities were, according to him, explained by science, the same science that offered grounds for hope that Quebec’s star would rise. Brunet believed that the state was the ultimate weapon in the FrenchCanadian arsenal for promoting a liberal, social-democratic, Francophone society. In order to achieve its potential, however, the Canadian federation had to adapt to this situation rather than act like a steamroller ironing out Canadian differences.

m ic h e l b r u n e t ’ s “ f e d erali s t” vi s i ons Openly autonomist, Brunet took as his primary target French Canadians who sought to promote federal centralization during the postwar period. Although he was not a champion of Unionist Premier Duplessis’s program, Brunet supported Duplessis’s desire to retain provincial autonomy and his consequential attempt to block federal funding for universities. What did Brunet consider autonomy to mean? This was, according to him, an existential question for Quebec. He criticized Georges-Henri Lévesque, the first dean of Université Laval’s social sciences faculty and a former member of the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters, and Sciences (the Massey Commission) because, according to Brunet, Canada was no longer the French Canadians’ nation. The federal government, controlled by British-Canadian interests, therefore reproduced the interests of that nation, as legitimate as they might be. In an interview granted for the radio show Deux voix, un pays in 1962, Brunet said that it was normal for persons who identify as Canadians to act in the majority’s interests and to

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seek greater centralization. An English Canadian “has [in the federal government of Canada] a national government, and if I were [an English] Canadian, I would be the most ardent and enthusiastic centralizer there could be.”25 French Canadians simply needed to awaken to this reality. This explains why he distinguished between “Canadiens” and “Canadians.” Canada would be the Canadians’ state while Quebec would remain (French) Canadiens’ only state. Brunet understood that many Québécois still believed, mistakenly, that Canada was their nation and that its national project promoted their interests. His criticism of Georges-Henri Lévesque was barely veiled, especially after he published a critical note against Louis Saint-Laurent’s Massey Commission, which he described as a “manifestation of Canadian nationalism.” According to Brunet, “the dream of English Canada’s leader is gradually to build a mighty central power that would play the official role of national government in a unitary state.”26 He added: “The keynote of contemporary Anglo-Canadian thought is the search for unity, even at risk of ‘uniformity’: in other words, assimilation. That is what Canadian nationalism means.”27 Brunet’s vision of the Canadian federation must be understood from this point of view: Canada is the nation-state of English-speaking Canadians while Quebec is the nation-state of French Canadians. There is a clear tension between two ideals: one ideal is a unitary nation under a strong, centralized state governed from Ottawa, and one is a multinational state in which Quebec can secure French-Canadian autonomy. Brunet developed this line of thought in civil society, in two briefs he wrote for the Société Saint-JeanBaptiste de Montréal. The first saw the light of day in 1954, in the context of the Tremblay Commission on constitutional problems that was launched by Premier Duplessis, and the second during the Parliamentary Committee on the Constitution, in 1964. The two briefs are an eloquent demonstration of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal’s conversion to the neonationalist vision promoted by Brunet. Constitution and Federation – Canada’s Two Nations According to the brief Brunet wrote in 1954 for the Société Saint-JeanBaptiste de Montréal during the Tremblay Commission, the British North America (bna ) Act provided Quebec with all the leeway it needed to realize its potential as a nation-state. In the brief, Brunet also confirmed the legitimate aspirations of the two “state-nations” that comprised Canada, and the need for them to mutually respect one another: “Neither of the two nations concerned has the right to ask the other to renounce the ideals it embodies.”28 The brief contains around one hundred pages and argues the main thesis that the state of Quebec must act as the national government, or “statenation,” of French Canadians in Quebec. After a historical overview that

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returns to the broad themes dear to Brunet, including the importance of the Conquest and French Canadians’ resulting “abnormal” development, the brief proposed a political program as a solution to the main evils afflicting Quebec’s French-Canadian society. In passing, he had scathing remarks for those nostalgic for the 1920s and ’30s, and those seeking to maintain Quebec’s “traditional” policy in the face of the federal government’s growing “threat.” As usual, Brunet argued that his analysis was based on an “objective examination of the precise situation of French Canadians” in Quebec and at the national level.29 Brunet also claimed the brief was a faithful interpretation of the ideas “of all French Canadians interested in the progress of their nationality.”30 Brunet used rhetorical thunder to establish his authority in the matter. However, he said that it was only from the time of the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Second World War that Ottawa’s centralizing plans had acquired the legitimacy and impetus necessary for their implementation, in particular owing to the Rowell-Sirois Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations. Brunet considered that the Rowell-Sirois Commission had yielded “an Anglo-Canadian nationalist line of thought” that had gotten the better of the former colonies’ province-centredness, with the result that “English Canada in 1954 formed a true state-nation. Its national government was the one in Ottawa. That powerful government provided English-Canadian society with the political, economic, and social frameworks that every nation needs to develop and flourish.”31 According to Brunet, the million-dollar social and cultural initiatives funded by the central government gave Ottawa immense prestige in Canadians’ imaginary, and this threatened the particularity of the FrenchCanadian nation. The central state’s social, political, economic, and international responsibilities contributed greatly to positioning it as Canada’s national government. In the brief, Brunet also developed the foundations for what would become his seminal 1957 text on the “three dominants in French-Canadian thought,” in which he attacked French-Canadians’ agriculturalism, messianism, and anti-statism.32 The Conquest and the forced union of Upper and Lower Canada would have contributed to these “dominants,” creating peasant masses who “vegetated in the seigneuries”33 rather than contributing to the “normal” development of a modern society. No longer accustomed to the art of governing, French Canadians would not have known how to take full advantage of the Quebec state that was created in 1867, and this would have led to doctrinal anti-statism. Brunet’s diagnosis was as follows: English Canadians took over the central government in order to make it their national government. They allegedly abandoned their former regionalism to espouse the structure of a unitary state, as John A. Macdonald wished. The Anglophone majority would be “omnipotent” in the federal government, and French-Canadian members of Parliament

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would only acquiesce to the projects imposed upon them. However, the 1950s were, according to Brunet, pivotal. Crucial changes occurred because history was “speeding up,” and the result was that “the French Canadians who were aware of the seriousness of the situation spontaneously turned to [Quebec] … the only government they could put to their service.”34 The solutions that Brunet recommended were grouped into three scenarios. However, this was only a rhetorical ploy since, in reality, only one was desirable. First, it was possible that French Canadians would return to their “traditional” policy, namely that of the three “dominants,” which was, according to him, a “policy of submission” to English-Canadian power.35 In this scenario, French-Canadian ambitions had to be sacrificed to the EnglishCanadian political project of structuring a single “Canadian” nation. Brunet explained that this option had predominated for many decades, and that it would reduce Quebec’s flexibility, both inside and outside the province. He used the example of French-Canadian minority rights: “In the name of national unity, [English-Canadians] sacrificed the educational rights of their minorities in the other provinces. They proved powerless to protect them efficiently.”36 Moreover, the participation, by the French Canadians of Quebec, in English Canada’s imperialist wars since 1899 had its impact, as they had more easily accepted centralization, which was harmful to “the cultural autonomy of their nationality” because “centralization gradually destroys the few weak structures that the French-Canadian minority has retained: its provincial government.”37 This “policy of least resistance” remained the worst option available to the Quebec state. According to Brunet, it had to be rejected. The second option that Brunet explored was a return to the federalism of the 1920s and 1930s, a vision adhered to by “autonomists who were nostalgic” for a bygone era. According to Brunet, it was impossible to reverse the federal state’s trajectory with respect to social programs. The government in Ottawa had already infiltrated too far into provincial jurisdictions to reverse course. Moreover, the English-speaking provinces had abandoned the old battle for autonomy that Quebec alone was still waging. “Taking refuge in that any longer would be to condemn ourselves to an isolated rearguard action. It would be a losing battle, for the central government and the English-Canadian majority have no intention to go back to the 1920s and 1930s.” The balance that existed during those two decades was disrupted by the Second World War, and the result was that “the central government will never be placed in a position, even temporary, of partial subordination to the provinces.” From that time forward, thought Brunet, Ottawa would represent the aspirations of English Canadians. It was therefore necessary to accept this reality and move on to a different political strategy, to “reconsider the issue of the relations” between Quebec and Canada in order to renew the pact between the two societies. The only remedy was a FrenchCanadian policy.38

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In the end, the brief suggested that the province adopt the third option. According to Brunet: “A people cannot postpone the option’s hour indefinitely.” It was urgent that the province take a clear, definite decision regarding the future of the French-Canadian nation. That nation had to reject the “gradual assimilation” policies promoted by English Canada and “strengthen the political and economic frameworks essential to the survival and vitality” of French Canadians.39 This was the only acceptable option in Brunet’s eyes. It was, to a large extent, important to give the Quebec state the structures and institutions necessary for a “state-nation,” in order to cure the ills caused by the Conquest and English Canada’s centralizing policy: “The abnormal situation that has prevailed since the Conquest can last no longer.”40  The brief suggested that Quebec should adopt an aggressive welfare state policy by exercising the powers granted by the bna Act. It would therefore be necessary to protect the confederal aspect of the 1867 compact and to avoid being left behind by Ottawa’s social programs. Without such an approach, French-Canadian societal culture would be at risk. That said, Brunet overestimated the unitary aspect of English Canada and, at the time, did not grasp the complexity of regional tensions, a fact he would later integrate into his writing, as we will show below. There was therefore a sliver of hope for the federation. If the framework was applied carefully, it could provide all the leeway necessary to protect Canada’s plurinational reality. The Shift to Associated States: The Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal’s 1964 Brief Brunet’s vision became clearer in the ten years following the tabling of the first brief. The Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal submitted a second brief to the Quebec Legislative Assembly’s Parliamentary Committee on the Constitution in 1964, and thereby caused a great deal of concern in both Anglophone and Francophone Montreal. This time, the Société SaintJean-Baptiste de Montréal supported a form of sovereignty-association. The choice was no minor matter. The first pages of the brief state that the Société was taking on the responsibility of “speaking for thousands of French Canadians,” producing a “faithful” summary of French-Canadian history in order to propose a way to move forward for Quebec’s future.41 The brief gave an overview of various federal regimes, noting variations in the formula. Some were more “federating” in relation to the extent that the central power imposed its will on the federated peoples: “When a federation is formed, it is because the parties that constitute it have had to submit to one among them that has the means to place the others under its domination.”42 The foundation of a “federating” relationship, as Brunet understood it, would therefore be the domination of the weaker by the stronger. This

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means that institutional violence would be exercised and there would be “some coercion” in the relationship. The French-Canadian analogy is the submission of that people to the British conquerors. According to this analysis, one of the flaws in the federal system was that its “partisans tend to idealize it” and “to portray it as the remedy for all the evils of our time … Their conception of federalism is incomplete and unrealistic.”43 According to Brunet, the treatment causes more harm than good, as it requires limiting the powers of the Quebec state. This was but a thinly veiled criticism of future prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s thinking on federation. As it was presented, the federal model would be unable to acknowledge French-Canadian aspirations. For Brunet, French Canadians’ interests are served poorly by the present federation because the bna Act “had as its goal to create a quasi-unitary or quasi-federal national state. There can be no doubt about this.” Once again, Brunet, who had supported the bna Act ten years earlier, laid down what he believed was an irrefutable truth for his readers – in this case Quebec parliamentarians and the members of the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission. That irrefutable truth was that the purpose of the 1867 Act was, among other things, to limit French Canadians’ capacities in their new province: “It is no exaggeration to say that, consistent with the will of its authors, the 1867 Constitution reduced the provinces to simple administrative units stripped of any prestige, to ‘big municipalities,’ as Macdonald liked to say, completely under the tutelage of the central ‘national’ government.”44 The Constitution therefore had to be reformed in order to meet French Canadians’ expectations: “When [a constitution] becomes an unalterable document, a straitjacket for the society, the time has come to adopt a new one. A constitution does not exist independently of the people or nation that established it. Its purpose is to serve the society.”45 The brief’s first recommendation was a constitutional reform to recognize Canada’s two nations and five regions, in order to constitute a true Canadian confederation. Centralization had failed in its task to create a unitary state. The only way out of the resulting impasse was to rewrite Canada’s founding law, because the cooperative federalism promoted by Ottawa at the time would have been nothing more than a delusion and unable to deal with the main discord between the two Canadian nations.46 The rewritten bna Act would also have to reflect Brunet’s ideas about French Canadians’ ambitions. It would no longer be possible for Ottawa to be the seat of the national government of all Canadians, although it could be such for English Canada. Moreover, the province of Quebec would have to be recognized as a state distinct from, but perhaps associated with, the new Canadian confederation.47 What would the new partnership look like? Quebec could be a republic, with a president and an electoral college. The associated state would then be truly federal since, according to this scenario, “English Canada and the

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state of Quebec would associate to form a true confederation,” in which each would have equal representation in a unicameral chamber made up of representatives of both nations. No law would be able to be passed if it were not supported by a majority of the members from Quebec and a majority of the members from English Canada.48 It would be a return to the double majority principle of the 1841 union. This vision was harshly dismissed by the Montreal Star, which devoted to the matter its editorial of 19 June 1964: “The constitutional brief to be presented to the Quebec Legislature by the Montreal sjbm is an exercise in futility: totally unsuited to meet the needs of French Canada, totally unacceptable to English Canada. If we need constitutional change, it will not be made through the use of this instrument which would merely re-establish the condition of hopeless political deadlock which brought the British North America Act into being.”49 The English Montreal daily considered such a return to 1841 to be unacceptable. The “hopeless deadlock” that would result from such a system of governance would not remedy the various political problems facing Canada at the time. The newspaper also reproached the authors of the brief for abandoning the French-Canadian minorities: “In some respects an even more astonishing defect in the scheme is the deliberate rejection of the rights, the hopes, the aspirations of the million and a half Canadians of French origin who live in the other provinces. The plan is a plan for Quebec alone. The French-speaking minorities who dwell elsewhere are to be thrown upon the tender mercies of the English-speaking majority – to sink or to swim.”50 Paul Sauriol’s editorial in Le Devoir the same day began by criticizing the “uneven” quality of the brief, which meant that it could not be assessed as a whole. The document seemed to be the result of “the work of a team of specialists under the leadership of Michel Brunet and to correspond to the views held by the upper echelons of our national society. This gives the brief unchallengeable authority and prestige, but it would be excessive to see it as a kind of plebiscite of French Canada.”51 Sauriol’s editorial nevertheless said that the brief was a breath of fresh air because it provided a “middle solution” between “renewed Canadian federalism” and “the indépendantistes who advocate Quebec’s complete separation.” In sum, Sauriol took a balanced view. He did not explicitly endorse the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal brief’s recommendations, but instead pointed out that it brought water to the mill and inspired new ideas for resolving the political crisis between Quebec and Ottawa. However, it should be noted that Sauriol did not reject the brief’s basically radical positions. That task fell to Claude Ryan, who barraged the Société Saint-JeanBaptiste de Montréal with criticism on 20 June. In his editorial on the brief, Ryan ripped into the Société Saint-JeanBaptiste de Montréal. He charged that the document “made history a slave to a flimsy thesis.” He called the first hundred pages of the text “heavy and

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brutal,” because it had the “browbeating style, in which Michel Brunet excels,” and he claimed Brunet had used a rhetorical technique of accumulating dramatic passages in order to persuade the reader.52 Ryan noted that Brunet chose evidence very selectively, in particular with respect to Prime Minister John A. Macdonald. However, the most serious criticism was the accusation that Brunet was not a historian but a mere columnist, an “assembler of facts in service to a thesis that can be read between the lines throughout the narrative.” Ryan was nonetheless right when he stated that the brief was first and foremost the vision “that Professor Brunet has constructed of history.” However, Ryan considered “this vision to be too summary to be acceptable to a civilized mind.” He concluded his criticism with a scathing rebuke of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal: “By allowing itself to be lured on into dubious theses, the Société Saint-JeanBaptiste betrays its role as a spokesperson for the whole nation. It becomes the echo of a school of thought that is based on postulates about which we should have serious reservations. It leaves more than one observer pondering over the quality of the work methods that prevail within that organization.”53 Severely admonished, Brunet defended his position to Yves Michaud, claiming that the brief represented the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal’s position and not his own, even though they were closely related.54 As for Ryan’s editorial, Paul Guertin of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal responded six months later, on New Year’s Day, 1965. Taking advantage of Ryan’s presence at the Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal, Guertin allegedly slipped him a note, the contents of which are unknown to us.55 Ryan defended his position in a letter to him on 18 January: “When I was writing the article in question, I was not thinking at all about classifying the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal among the organizations that are simply marginal in our community. That did not stop me from considering that if the brief your organization submitted to the Parliamentary Committee on the Constitution had been less the work of a few individuals, it would probably have been even more representative.”56 In an exchange, a copy of which he sent to Brunet, Guertin refuted Ryan’s thesis that the brief was the work of “a few individuals.” Although he admitted that the assertion was “partly true,” he said that “nonetheless, our members’ reactions, which were extremely numerous, showed us that, overall, they were pleased with the position taken [by the Société Saint-JeanBaptiste de Montréal] with respect to the Parliamentary Committee.”57 Brunet also received his share of support. Léo Gagné, secretary of the États généraux du Canada français, wrote a letter to the president of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal, on 17 November 1964, to congratulate the president and his team for having vigorously defended the brief during a sitting of the Parliamentary Committee. He said, “Michel Brunet and François-Albert Angers gave a brilliant defence of the theses that your

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Société proposed.” He also said that the event was nothing less than a turning point in the history of Quebec: “We had the impression that we were witnessing a historic moment because, for the first time perhaps, we were hearing a national organization present, officially, within the walls of the nation’s Parliament, concrete proposals to ensure our community will flourish and to guarantee Quebec’s future.”58 Brunet, along with the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal team and François-Albert Angers, editor-in-chief of L’Action nationale, defended the brief before the Parliamentary Committee in the presence of future premier and Parti Québécois founder René Lévesque. Before the meeting of 10 November, the parliamentarians sent a series of questions to Brunet, inviting him to clarify his ideas. He provided some twenty pages of answers, in which he said that it was undeniable that the purpose of the Quebec and Charlottetown conferences was to create a centralized state.59 The time had come to rewrite Canada’s Constitution: “The 1867 agreement was tailored to the concerns of the people in 1867.” It did not correspond to the preoccupations of French Canadians in 1964. “We have reached a different stage, at which we need to plan new structures.”60 Despite his presence at the Committee hearing, Brunet remained in the background, leaving the floor mainly to Angers, who largely monopolized the sitting with economic concerns.61 The outcome did not receive much press. However, Paul Sauriol published an editorial on 17 November 1964, in which he drew attention to the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal’s appearance before the Parliamentary Committee the preceding week. Sauriol’s text focused on Ottawa’s ability to impose patriation of the Constitution unilaterally, a possibility he feared and hoped would be studied by the Committee in order to fix what he considered a loophole in the constitutional negotiations.62 Ultimately, the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal had anticipated the broad policies of the sovereignty-association movement and the Parti Québécois, which René Lévesque was to create four years later. The idea of associate states informed the constitutional policy of the first Parti Québécois government and was the subject of the 1980 referendum.

f e d e r a l is m , “ a n t i-federali sm,” a n d p ie r r e e l l io tt trudeau Brunet’s vision of federalism changed in the late 1960s and early 1970s to better integrate Canada’s regional realities. In the 1950s, he believed that all “Canadians” were unconditionally devoted to the federal government’s centralizing plan, but the Trudeau years forced him to reconsider his position. The (English-speaking) Canadian nation was not homogenous and its members did not necessarily all share the same beliefs. Politicians in western Canada who, at the time, were strongly criticizing the economic policies of the federal government, became, curiously, new allies.

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Brunet clarified his thought in the essay, titled “Le fédéralisme canadien: Ses origines et son évolution.” According to that text, Canadian federalism was not a creation of the 1867 bna Act but the result of a long evolution. It would have existed even before the colonial regime because it was practised in the pre-existing Indigenous societies. Given its immensity, New France could not do otherwise. Les Pays-d’en-Haut (in part of what is today Ontario) may have been part of the St Lawrence Valley, but it was, from this point of view, a semi-autonomous entity owing to the existing communication channels and geography. According to Brunet, the 1791 Constitutional Act confirmed this reality, as did the 1840 Union Act. In other words, it was not John A. Macdonald and his acolytes who created the federation – that regime preceded them. In fact, the regional nature of Canada required that form of governance.63 Brunet then criticized what he considered to be two groups of “anti-federalists.” The first were the centralizers, which included Pierre Elliott Trudeau. They “imagine that social justice and administrative efficiency” require eliminating the powers of the provincial governments. That group would have its origins in the thought of English-Canadian theorists whom, a few years later, Doug Owram was to call the “government generation.”64 Between the end of the Second World War and the mid-1950s, those intellectuals, hailing from the social sciences, “infiltrated the federal public service” in order to centralize Canada because they “did not accept the form of federalism that Canada had adopted.”65 He reproached that group of “ideology-driven intellectuals” for their “unitary, monolithic conception” of Canadian society, which he argued was not in tune with a federal vision anchored historically in both the geography and the politics of the long history of what had become Canada.66 The second group of “anti-federalists” would be the sovereigntists, who consider, according to Brunet, that the key to Quebec’s development resides in withdrawing the province from the Canadian union. This solution seemed to irritate Brunet at the time because it would involve a contradiction: to be viable, withdrawing from the federation would require a series of agreements with the very country from which one had to exit.67 Neither option seemed acceptable to Brunet, as he expressed in a conference presentation he gave in 1972 (later published in 1976). It was not necessary, he ventured, to challenge the 1867 Constitution. The target was not really Canadian federalism. The problem seemed to lie within Quebec, owing to “an Anglophone community that, since the Conquest, has never been placed in a minority position.” Brunet therefore suggested prudence. The necessary reforms had to occur within Quebec, in particular, through language laws that would rebalance the power relations between the two languages.68 So, how are we to understand Brunet’s late endorsement of the Parti Québécois’ sovereignty-association plan in 1980? The most plausible explanation is that it was a reaction against the federalism of Prime Minister Pierre

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Elliott Trudeau, a former colleague of Brunet’s at the Université de Montréal. The archives reveal that Brunet and Trudeau’s relationship was cold, when they were both academics in the 1950s. The gloves came off following the publication, in 1956, of La grève de l’amiante, in which Trudeau’s introduction vilified the French Canadians of Quebec.69 Brunet wrote to Trudeau: “I was asked to write a book review of La Grève de l’amiante. It would have been easy for me to show just how partial and biased your essay on intellectual history is. I have preferred to tell you what I think about it directly.”70 He accused Trudeau of serving the “Canadian” nation by attacking FrenchCanadian nationalism: “The only nationalism that seems obsolete, meanspirited, and unacceptable” to the “pseudo-sociologists” that take inspiration from Everett Hughes,71 of the University of Chicago, “is that of the FrenchCanadian nationality.”72 Brunet finished his letter by inviting Trudeau to go beyond such analyses: “It is up to you to set the record straight. The young people who read you must not conclude that the mere fact of being a nationalist necessarily means one is ‘stupid.’”73 Trudeau’s response came a few months later, in November, when he wrote to Brunet: “if we have to remain adversaries, let’s at least try to limit the damage.”74 Brunet attacked not only Hughes’s sociology but also Lord Acton’s philosophy on nationalism. Acton, who was British of Italian-German origin and born in Naples, held that individual freedom took precedence and he severely criticized nationalism. Many people converted to Acton’s point of view following the horrors of the Second World War. Pierre Elliott Trudeau was one of them. The attraction can be explained, in particular, by the parallels that could be drawn with the situation in Canada, between the English Canadians, the French Canadians, and the communities that had emerged as the result of recent immigration. In Acton’s theory, the political nation places the emphasis on individual freedoms rather than on collective rights, and this makes it possible to federate ethnicities within a territory and to eliminate conflicts. Far from being emancipating, nationalism is perceived as fundamentally harmful, for it inexorably leads to war between peoples. Trudeau took up Acton’s theory, and asserted that nationalism is a human expression of tribalism. He cited Acton in his 1958 essay titled “De quelques obstacles à la démocratie au Québec,”75 in which he criticized nationalism in general and FrenchCanadian nationalism in particular. However, for Brunet, French-Canadian nationalism was emancipating and necessary to free French Canadians from the weight of the structures that his colleague Séguin was theorizing. Despite the ideological chasm separating them, Brunet congratulated his colleague Trudeau on his election. Indeed, in July 1967, the future prime minister recognized the sensitivity of the gesture.76 However, true to his views, Brunet did not stop criticizing Trudeau. In 1968, in his correspondence with Claude Ryan, who was the editor of Le Devoir, Brunet likened Trudeau, who was campaigning to become the leader of the Liberal Party

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of Canada, to Gavroche, the smart-aleck street urchin in Les Misérables.77 Moreover, in 1979, he wrote to Ryan that Trudeau was “not worthy of the eminent position he holds.”78 According to Brunet, Trudeau incarnated the “anti-federalism” that was compromising Quebec’s future. Brunet’s first text on Trudeau the politician was published in La Presse, on 22 June 1968, and republished seven years later in Notre passé, le présent et nous. According to Brunet, and many others, in fact, Canada was “gravely ill.”79 Yet, Trudeau was trying to persuade the electorate that this was not the case. His speech on Canadian unity seduced the “Canadians,” who were apparently in need of a remedy involving optimistic self-hypnosis:80 “The Catholics have learned that he goes to mass. To the Canadians, he serves up reheated speeches on Canada’s greatness, beauty, and unity. He tells them, over and again, that there is no French-Canadian problem, that the malaise … is just Premier Johnson’s imperialist fever that has become a pawn remote-controlled by General de Gaulle, that coast-to-coast bilingualism will put an end to all the tensions dividing the country.”81 According to Brunet, the Prime Minister was engaging in doublespeak. On the one hand, his discourse was in the vein of “traditional” nationalism so as to seduce the French Canadians. On the other, it targeted “Canadians” with rosy words that minimized the national unity crisis. The ultimate goal would be to promote a unitary vision of Canada. However, Brunet believed that Canada, if it hoped to survive, “would live as two,” rather than under the aegis of a single Canadian nationality, or else it would “break up.”82 Brunet integrated into his thought part of the thesis proposed by Ramsay Cook and taken up by J.M.S. Careless – two researchers with whom he corresponded and with whose work he was familiar – on Canada’s “limited identities.”83 The regional nature of the country and the different identities, including that of Quebec, would make it impossible to achieve homogeneity of identity as conceived of in the Western European and American models. In a text that was first published in L’Action nationale, Brunet called the idea that Canada formed a united country and a homogenous nation “hilarious.”84 The point was that “geography and history” have divided Canada into “at least five regions,” creating an obstacle to the dream of developing national policy and unity as proposed by Trudeau.85 Moreover, Brunet pointed out, identity-related changes meant that the French Canadians of Quebec were becoming Québécois, who “refuse to be considered as the anonymous survivors of a minority cultural group in the process of being assimilated into a big pan-Canadian whole.”86 In the context of a constitutional renewal, they expected the basic law of Canada to represent that reality. Brunet caricatured the complexity of Trudeau’s thought, saying that he would defend a messianic vision analogous to that of the “traditional” thinkers of French Canada – those of the “compensatory myths” who postulated that French Canadians would be able to regain control of Canada by exercising their political strength to govern. Note that Brunet had made

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a career out of denouncing this vision of Quebec: “The Quebec nationalism of today recognizes that the continent-wide objectives of the messianic French-Canadian nationalism of yesterday are unrealistic, at a time when the contemporary apostles of that ideology are, by fluke, temporarily in power in Ottawa.”87 Brunet also hoped that English Canada would recognize French Canadians’ desire to maintain a strong provincial state in order to guarantee their future. However, such recognition also had to be reciprocal: “No serious Québécois argues that this future can be built without taking English Canada and the North American context into account.”88 Brunet emphasized that the real danger lay with “the backward French-Canadian nationalists who have taken power in Ottawa under false pretence,” namely Prime Minister Trudeau, who “has clouded the issues dangerously and broken painstakingly built bridges” between the two nations.89 While the Liberals may have been shaken, for a moment, during the 1972 election, that of 1974 proved that Trudeau was resilient. Despite an interlude in 1979, Trudeau came back in time to fight the 1980 referendum. Seeing little future in Trudeauist federalism, Brunet opted for sovereignty-association, in 1980. Ultimately, Trudeau won his bet, and patriated Canada’s Constitution in 1982, without the support of Quebec, and, above all, without enshrining associated states in it. Lord Acton triumphed over Quebec neonationalism.

c o n c l u si on In October 1984 – a little less than a year before he died – Brunet composed a handwritten letter to René Lévesque, but he did not send it. It took the form of a settling of accounts against the Parti Québécois governments, in which Brunet lectured the Quebec premier. In his sermon to his old friend,90 Brunet called Lévesque’s years in power a “series of political mistakes for which your party, and especially Quebec and Quebecers, must now suffer the tragic, unfortunate consequences.”91 Brunet said what he really thought about the referendum failure: “Why did you hold the referendum in 1980, when you knew it would be lost? It was criminal, suicidal, and irresponsible! I will never forgive you for it.”92 Indeed, the “Yes” side’s defeat opened the door for Prime Minister Trudeau to repatriate the Constitution of Canada without Quebec’s approval. The vision of federalism that Brunet defended was crushed. For Brunet, Canada was made up of two “state-nations,” two global societies that had legitimate but opposing aspirations because of a federal structure, the flexibility of which often depended upon who was the prime minister. Canada was certainly a state, but not a nation; it was plurinational. Brunet maintained that underlying tensions would only be exacerbated by attempts to homogenize a country that was so diverse in terms of both geography

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and identity. Nonetheless, he had long thought that the Canadian federation already had a toolbox for resolving the disputes among its members. Far from being alarmist, given the many conflicts, Brunet thought that such divides were consubstantial with the regime. In 1976, he wrote: “Canada may be a difficult country to govern, but that is not because it is a federal state; it has adopted federal institutions because it is difficult to govern.”93 notes 1 Jean Lamarre remains the authority on the Montreal School of History. Jean Lamarre, Le devenir de la nation québécoise selon Maurice Séguin, Guy Frégault et Michel Brunet (1944–1969) (Quebec City: Septentrion, 1993). 2 Brunet often used “nation-État” instead of the standard term in French: “État-nation.” 3 Michel Brunet, Addenda au mémoire soumis au comité parlementaire de la Constitution, Montreal, November 1964, p. 4, Fonds Michel Brunet (hereinafter fmb ), P136/C-18, Archives de l’Université de Montréal (hereinafter aum ); S.a., oral session, parliamentary committee on the Constitution, p. 1, fmb , P136/C-18, aum . 4 Claude Gravel, “Michel Brunet s’engage pour le oui – ‘Nous vivons dans une démocratie dirigée,’” La Presse, 8 May 1980. 5 Letter, René Lévesque to Michel Brunet, 18 March 1980, fmb , P136/C-113, aum. (Translated from the French. Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations of French texts are by the translators of this volume.) 6 Letter, Bernard Landry to Michel Brunet, 31 March 1980, fmb , P136/C-113, aum (translation). 7 Letter, René Lévesque to Léone Dussault, 5 September 1985, fmb , P136/ J2-27, aum (translation). 8 Lamarre, Le devenir de la nation, 425–6. 9 Michel Brunet, Canadians et Canadiens: Études sur l’histoire et la pensée des deux Canadas (Montreal: Fides, 1954). 10 Letter, Noël Dorion to Michel Brunet, 8 January 1959, fmb , P136/A194, aum (translation). 11 Letter, Michel Brunet to Noël Dorion, 10 January 1959, fmb , P136/A194, aum (translation). 12 Letter, Michel Brunet to Noël Dorion, 23 April 1959, fmb , P136/A194, aum . 13 Letters, Noël Dorion to Michel Brunet, 21 February 1961; and Michel Brunet to Noël Dorion, 23 February 1961, fmb , P137/A194, aum . 14 Ronald Rudin, Making History in Twentieth-Century Quebec (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1997), 121. 15 Ibid. 16 American historian Mason Wade said of the Montreal School of History trio that Maurice Séguin was “the Thinker,” Guy Frégault “the Writer,” and Michel Brunet “the Screamer.” See: Lamarre, Le devenir de la nation, 384.

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17 Jean Lamarre, “Un nationaliste bien de son temps,” in Le devenir de la nation, 351–78. 18 Michel Brunet, Les Canadiens après la Conquête, 1759–1775: De la révolution canadienne à la révolution américaine (Montreal: Fides, 1969). 19 On this, see: Michel Bock, A Nation Beyond Borders: Lionel Groulx on French-Canadian Minorities (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2014). 20 A great deal of the Canadien aristocracy left New France after the conquest. Merchants were also cut off from the European continent and could no longer trade with France. 21 Lamarre, Le devenir de la nation, 385–6. 22 Ibid. 23 This explains his opposition to Canadian bilingualism. Serge Miville, “Une utopie à combattre: Le bilinguisme chez Donald Creighton et Michel Brunet,” Bulletin d’histoire politique 26, no. 2 (2018): 128–53. 24 Société Radio-Canada (src ), Présent, édition du dimanche, 21 January 1968. 25 Société Radio Canada, Deux voix, un pays, 12 October 1962. 26 Brunet, Canadians et Canadiens, 51 (translation). 27 Ibid., 56 (translation). 28 Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal, Canada français et union canadienne: Mémoire présenté le 13 mai 1954 à la Commission royale d’enquête sur les problèmes constitutionnels (Montreal: Les Éditions de l’Action nationale, 1954), 119 (translation). 29 Ibid., 15 (translation). 30 Ibid., 16. 31 Ibid., 30 (translation). 32 Michel Brunet, “Trois dominantes de la pensée canadienne-française: L’agriculturisme, l’anti-étatisme et le messianisme,” in La présence anglaise et les Canadiens: Études sur l’histoire et la pensée des deux Canadas (Montreal: Beauchemin, 1958), 113–66. The essay was published the preceding year in Écrits du Canada français, no. 3 (1957): 33–117 (translation). 33 Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal, Canada français, 40 (translation). 34 Ibid., 56 (translation). 35 Ibid., 59 (translation). 36 Ibid. (translation). 37 Ibid., 60–1 (translation). 38 Ibid., 63 (translation). 39 Ibid., 69–70. 40 Ibid., 72 (translation). 41 Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal, Le fédéralisme, l’Acte de l’Amérique du Nord britannique et les Canadiens français: Mémoire de la Société SaintJean-Baptiste de Montréal au Comité parlementaire de la Constitution du gouvernement du Québec (Montréal: Éditions de l’Agence Duvernay, 1964), 9 (translation). 42 Ibid., 24 (translation).

266 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69

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Ibid., 22–3 (translation). Ibid., 37 (translation). Ibid., 52 (translation). Ibid., 112–14. Ibid., 115. Ibid., 118. “Study in Futility,” Montreal Star, 19 June 1964, fmb , P136/C-130, aum . Ibid. Paul Sauriol, “Une nouvelle confédération de deux États nationaux,” Le Devoir, 19 June 1964 (translation). Claude Ryan, “L’histoire au service d’une thèse fragile,” Le Devoir, 20 June 1964 (translation). Ibid. (translation). Letter, Michel Brunet to Yves Michaud, 22 June 1964, fmb , P136/C-130, aum (translation). This, at least, is what Claude Ryan said: “Just a word to let you know that I read the little note you gave me on New Year’s at the Basilica carefully.” Letter, Claude Ryan à Paul Guertin, 18 January 1965, fmb , P136/C-117, aum (translation). Ibid. (translation). Letter, Paul Guertin to Claude Ryan, 21 January 1965, fmb , P136/C-117, aum (translation). Letter, Léo Gagné to Paul-Émile Robert, 17 November 1964, fmb , P136/C-130, aum . Michel Brunet, addendum to brief submitted to the parliamentary committee on the Constitution, November 1964, p. 4, fmb , P136/C-18, aum . S.a., oral session, parliamentary committee on the Constitution, fmb , P136/C-18, R/1071, p. 1, aum (translation). On Angers’s thought, see the chapter by Jean-Philippe Carlos in this collection. Paul Sauriol, “Un oubli dans la formule de rapatriement de l’aanb ,” Le Devoir, 17 November 1964. Michel Brunet, “Le fédéralisme canadien: Ses origines et son évolution,” in Notre passé, le présent et nous (Montreal: Fides, 1976), 183–93. Ibid. Ibid., 190 (translation) Ibid., 192. Ibid., 193. Ibid. Pierre Elliott Trudeau, ed., La grève de l’amiante: Une étape de la révolution industrielle au Québec (Montreal: Éditions Cité libre, 1956). English version: The Asbestos Strike, trans. James Boake (Toronto: James Lewis & Samuel, 1974). Letter, Michel Brunet to Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 23 September 1956, fmb , P136/A580, aum (translation).

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71 The criticism of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Laval University, under Georges-Henri Lévesque, is obvious here. See also: Jean-François Laniel, “Les petites nations au prisme de la tradition et de la modernité, suivi d’un détour au Canada français,” Sociologitcheski problemi/Problèmes sociologiques, no. 47 (2015): 90–109. 72 Letter, Michel Brunet to Pierre Elliott Trudeau (translation). 73 Ibid. 74 Letter, Pierre Elliott Trudeau to Michel Brunet, 12 November 1956, fmb , P136/A580, aum (translation). 75 The article was republished in Pierre Elliot Trudeau, “De quelques obstacles à la démocratie au Québec,” in Le fédéralisme et la société canadienne-française (Montreal: hmh , 1967), 105–28. On Trudeau’s democratic thought, see: Mélanie Ouellette, “Les Canadiens français, l’histoire et la démocratie: L’interprétation de Pierre Elliott Trudeau,” Mens: Revue d’histoire intellectuelle et culturelle 1, no. 1 (2000): 37–50. 76 We have not found the original note written by Brunet. Trudeau was elected for the first time in 1965, and we do not know whether Brunet congratulated him then or two years later. Letter, Pierre Elliott Trudeau to Michel Brunet, 20 July 1967, fmb , P136/A580, aum . 77 Letter, Michel Brunet to Claude Ryan, 2 March 1968, fmb , P136/A520, aum. 78 Letter, Michel Brunet to Claude Ryan, 7 May 1979, fmb , P136/C-118, aum . 79 Michel Brunet, “La campagne électorale de 1968: Un pays qui se cherche et la tentative de diversion de M. Pierre-Elliott Trudeau,” in Notre passé, 208. Malaise was a metaphor used frequently at that time to describe the state of the country, in particular around the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. See: Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon, Panser le Canada: Une histoire intellectuelle de la commission Laurendeau-Dunton (Montreal: Boréal, 2018). 80 Brunet, “La campagne électorale,” 209. 81 Ibid., 211 (translation). 82 Ibid., 214 (translation). 83 J.M.S. Careless, “‘Limited Identities’ in Canada,” Canadian Historical Review 50, no. 1 (1969): 1–10; Ramsay Cook, “Canadian Centennial Celebrations,” International Journal, no. 22 (1967): 659–63. See also: P.A. Buckner, “‘Limited Identities’ Revisited: Regionalism and Nationalism in Canadian History,” Acadiensis, no. 30 (2000): 4–15. 84 Michel Brunet, “La révision constitutionnelle: Un problème canadien ou québécois?”, in Notre passé, 228. This text was first published in L’Action nationale, April-May 1972, 681–8 (translation). 85 Brunet, “La révision constitutionnelle.” 86 Ibid., 229 (translation). 87 Ibid., 231 (translation). 88 Ibid., 231–2 (translation). 89 Ibid., 232 (translation).

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90 Brunet remembered long evenings spent in discussion after René Lévesque’s television show Point de mire: “Some nights, we kept talking until 3:45 a.m.” Draft of unsent letter, Michel Brunet to René Lévesque, 11 October 1984, fmb , P136/C-85, aum (translation). 91 Ibid., 1 (translation; Brunet’s emphasis). 92 Ibid., 5. 93 Brunet, “Le fédéralisme canadien,” 193 (translation).

13 The Quebec “School” of History and the Idea of Federalism François-Olivier Dorais

What is commonly referred to as the “Quebec School of History,”1  in reference to the work of Marcel Trudel, Fernand Ouellet, and Jean Hamelin, figures prominently in the history of ideas and knowledge in Quebec. It was born at a crucial time of renewal of historiographical thought, linked to the shaping of historical science as a discipline,2 but also to a new phase of public enthusiasm for the science of history. Confronted with a need to understand the present and a symbolic obfuscation of the future, dynamics precipitated in part by the Second World War, the new generation of secular historians, who belonged to the first university institutes of history in Montreal and Quebec City at the end of the 1940s, were tasked with creating, in Jean-Charles Falardeau’s words, a “new ‘definition’ of the FrenchCanadian situation.”3 Along with the Montreal School, the “Quebec School of History” shaped, from the 1950s to the 1970s, the deployment of a foundational matrix for Quebec history, structured around a struggle to explain the historical causes for French Canadians’ economic and social inferiority; but also an attempt to overhaul the interpretative framework of French-speaking Quebec’s history as a whole. The key issue in this undertaking was to ensure that a new conception of historicity gained a broader foothold in intellectual life in postwar Quebec. Sociologist Gilles Bourque called it, rightly, the “historicity of want.” Breaking down the earlier traditionalist approach, which reigned from the 1840s to 1945, the new historicity postulated a deficiency lodged at the heart of French Canadians’ cultural disposition.4 The famous quarrel between the two “schools of history” took shape against a broader, though non-exclusive,5 opposition between “neonationalist” and “neoliberal” interpretations of the causes of the deficiency and how to remedy it.6 While the contours of that quarrel are well known today, historiography is nonetheless lacking with respect to the “Quebec School” and its

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historians’ writings. We might say that the notion of a school generally serves as something taken for granted in our literature, except when it is used as an ideological label applied a posteriori,7 with the effect of neutralizing both the complexity and the substance. Is that not the danger of all classifications in terms of “school” or “church,” which often tend to be based on weak, intuitive definitions, inevitably with an arbitrary and normative component?8 An object with unclear borders and a fuzzy identity, the “Quebec School” seems, above all, to have been relegated to playing the role of foil to the Montreal School, the players and writings of which have been discussed much more abundantly and favourably in academia.9 This disequilibrium may perhaps be a sign of the fact that our intellectual history is still largely Montreal-inspired, and probably also that it has a neonationalist bias.10 As Ronald Rudin wrote, “it is almost impossible to find any francophone with a kind word for the Laval historians, despite their longevity, methodological innovations, and frequently painstaking research.”11  That observation probably also applies to many figures in Quebec federalist thought, whose historical researches still rely on studies on liberalism and anti-nationalism by the postwar Francophone personalist left. Those analyses were also given precedence in Cité libre and by the sociologists of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Université Laval.12 However, the special accent placed on the personalists has left little room for analysis of other voices and the intellectual roots of federalist thought, starting with the historiography at Université Laval in Quebec City. Although they published less in intellectual journals than did their Montreal colleagues, the historians at Université Laval were far from a silent, defenceless block in the debate on the national question, in which they took part indirectly, building on a sociohistorical definition of Francophone Quebec. In this text, I will focus on analyzing the historiographical narrative framed by the Université Laval trio from the point of view of its contribution to the genesis of a new form of federalist argumentation in postwar Quebec. What did these historians contribute to the emerging debate on the national question in the 1960s? To what extent can we say that their historiographical production was placed in service to the federalist political option? What “origin story” of Quebec did they endorse? Lastly, to what degree did that story leave a mark upon intellectual life and politics in Quebec? These are the main questions here. Our analysis will have three stages. First, we will situate the Université Laval historians’ intellectual foundations in the geography of Quebec thought. Next, we will discuss the key ideas of their historiographical narrative. Lastly, we will corroborate our observations using the work Canada: Unity in Diversity (1967),13 which was co-authored by our three historians and provides one of the rare in-depth statements and formulations of the methodological and interpretative projections of the “Quebec School.”

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u n iv e r s it é l a v a l a s an i ntellectual ce n t r e o f f e d e r a l is t t hought i n quebec The Université Laval historians’ way of looking at Quebec’s past, in particular with respect to interpreting the Conquest and the English regime, owed much to the immediate institutional and regional environments in which it developed. Where the roots took hold is important, from the point of view of the history of Quebec federalist thought. We must remember that one of the major intellectual centres was at Université Laval. The intellectual and cultural “microclimate” specific to Quebec City can be explained, first, by the fact that its large Anglophone community dated back to the mid-nineteenth century. The city’s thriving port attracted many waves of immigration from Britain and, in 1861, English-speakers accounted for over 40 per cent of the population.14 The English-speakers in Quebec City made up, proportionally, less of the population than they did in Montreal, where there was significant interethnic tension between the urban English-speaking business bourgeoisie and the French-Canadian population, which was in solidarity with the surrounding rural areas.15 However, historically, the English presence was more integrated into the middle and working classes in Quebec City. This, coupled with the proximity of the imperial power (in the form of the British governor and the colonial parliament) and a strong British presence in the public administration and the military garrison, created a different “urban culture” in the old capital (Quebec City), leading its elites to be loyal, to get along with each other, and to make compromises with the British regime.16 Moreover, beginning in the 1830s, the divide between patriots and reformers overlapped in part with the division between the two cities. In Montreal, the trend toward a revolutionary break was clearer among the members of Louis-Joseph Papineau’s circle, whereas in Quebec City, the reformist elite embodied by Étienne Parent and François-Xavier Garneau sought to reconcile a form of survivalist nationalism with Britishinspired moderate liberalism.17 As Serge Gagnon has pointed out, some of the influential members of Quebec City’s educated elite had social origins in “old Laurentian farmland” in eastern Quebec, which was dominated by the clergy and notables belonging to the petite bourgeoisie. This coloured their vision of the world, which was characterized by “nostalgia without aggressiveness” and a form of “conservatism in which fear of the present was less of an obsession than nostalgia for the past.”18 Indeed, it may be that Quebec City’s loss of economic (and symbolic) status in relation to Montreal, toward the end of the nineteenth century, fed into this substratum of nostalgia and conservatism. Has not Paul Villeneuve spoken of Quebec City as a “place of continuity”?19 The Church, which had laid down deep institutional roots in the city, had become used to that cultural and economic environment. Under the influence of Cardinal Taschereau,

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and in reaction to the political-religious tensions raised by Ultramontane activism in Montreal and Trois-Rivières, Quebec City became the home of a form of liberal Catholicism that was defined less by its doctrinal goals than by its praxis – in other words, by how it constantly sought a modus vivendi between the Church and the British-style liberal state. According to Jean-Philippe Warren, the religious elites’ proximity to civil power in the capital city favoured the development of a “Catholic realpolitik” and the negotiation of arrangements on the basis of “shared interests.”20 Quebec City’s senior clergy’s inclination toward moderation and bon-ententisme can also be seen in the writings of its educated elite, notably those of figures such as Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Ferland, Camille Roy, Thomas Chapais and, especially, Arthur Maheux, the first director of the Université Laval’s Institut d’histoire, when it was founded in 1947. In these figures, we can see the original lines of affinity of a form of historiography specific to Laval that was to ally, to varying degrees, traditionalism, loyalism, and bon-ententisme. What we mean by “loyalism” follows DamienClaude Bélanger’s usage and refers to a French-Canadian traditionalist doctrine formulated after 1760 and based on loyalty to the British Crown, admiration for British political institutions, and a special ethics of order, moderation, and compromise.21 Bon-ententisme is not necessarily equivalent to this. It proceeds less from a formal doctrine than from a desire for national unity and mutual understanding, formalized as a cultural and political movement in the wake of the heated debates around the first conscription crisis.22 The criticism of hardline nationalism from the point of view of loyalism and bon-ententisme, which was in part in reaction to the development of Abbé Lionel Groulx’s Laurentian nationalism, was based less on rejecting the French-Canadian nation and national feeling than on nationalism’s perceived potential for going wrong. For many intellectuals during the interwar period, the rise of European nationalisms had revealed the violence to which ardent nationalism can lead. Indeed, we can see the more “conciliatory” and “moderate” fringe of Quebec’s senior clergy as being more sensitive than those elsewhere to the decrees of the Holy See, which, from the time of Pius XI’s condemnation of the Paris newspaper Action française in 1926, ordered more restraint with respect to nationalism.23 The intellectual metamorphosis of Father Georges-Henri Lévesque following the Second World War confirms this. He gradually abandoned conservative nationalism, which he tended to contrast with the spirit of a new form of humanism based on an ideal of human concord and reconciliation in a common Word. Father Lévesque’s federalist positioning, confirmed by his participation in the Massey Commission, flowed from such humanist thinking, which placed service to humanity and human freedom first. The objective was to make Canada the prototype for a civilization of the future that would

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carry a message of peace and conciliation.24 It also flowed from a specific conception of an academic’s role: while not being completely cut off from the world, an academic should maintain a healthy distance from worldly matters and avoid succumbing to ideological and political concerns other than those of considered knowledge. In accordance with this belief, which was also shared by Léon Dion and Jean-Charles Falardeau,25 nationalist demands were inconsistent with the ideological “de-enslavement” of knowledge, according to which greater integration in the Canadian academic complex should be encouraged.26 Father Lévesque was, perhaps along with Henri Bourassa before him, one of the leading figures who would to some extent bridge French-Canadian loyalism and Quebec federalist thought, and it is pertinent to note that the decline of the former was accompanied by a surge in the latter.27 The passage from loyalism to federalism, which was partly due to the dynamics of secularization and Quebecization in French Canadians’ frame of reference after the Second World War, was not mechanical, especially since the rifts between loyalism and federalism are just as great as, if not greater than, the continuities. This can be seen in the cases of those such as Trudel, Ouellet, and Hamelin, who, while they belonged to the same Université Laval tradition, did not display any direct, shared intellectual kinship with their predecessors. They perpetuated neither the loyalist interpretation continued by those such as Chapais, for they judged it too obsolete, conservative, and partisan;28 nor the bon-ententiste moral ideal of Maheux, for which their contempt was barely veiled.29 Similarly, they discarded providentialism in history, endorsing instead a rational, secularized scientific credo inspired by the positivism of American social sciences and French social history, which turned toward the analysis of economic structures. Thus, like other historians of their generation, the members of the “Quebec School” took distance from the public vocation that their predecessors assigned to history and, in lieu, endorsed an orientation toward the advancement of knowledge, the legitimacy of which would flow from accountability to their peers in the historical community. Indeed, it was their acquiescence in this plan for a professionalized history discipline that largely explains the intellectual friendship that long united Marcel Trudel and Guy Frégault, despite their divisive quarrels about interpretation.30 It was not until the late 1950s, when opinions on the Quebec national question were becoming more entrenched and polarized, that a more unified, coherent historiographical position was openly formalized at Université Laval. In particular, the historiographical position was structured around a played-down reading of the Conquest, which was reinterpreted in accordance with “structures et conjonctures,” and the resumption of the old “collective guilt” narrative portraying French Canadians’ flaws and failings as resulting from factors lodged in their own cultural recesses.

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t he n a r r a t iv e o f t h e “quebec school” While it is true that, as a historical object, the “Quebec School” has rarely been studied for and of itself, it cannot be understood as completely separate from the Montreal School inasmuch as it was in reaction to the latter that it formulated a new way of understanding the French-Canadian past. Indeed, the approach of the Quebec City historians consisted above all in offering, in the same breath and on a single front, a counternarrative with respect to traditional nationalism and clericalism. The result was that these historians had an especially radical reading of modernity, envisaged above all from the angle of processes inherent to capitalist socioeconomics. They sought to contrast this vision with the traditional “mentality” of Francophone elites. The work done by Fernand Ouellet, who was certainly the most controversial and intellectually engaged of the three, is the best example of this tendency. In his generation, Ouellet was probably the historian who defended most strongly the thesis of a hard separation between modern rationality and the subjectivity of French-Canadian traditions.31 In fact, Ouellet situated the dynamics specific to the “Quebec School” in the process of modernization that those historians had undertaken, namely the “more or less urgent impression that the institutions and structures in Quebec society at the time were clearly in contradiction with the fundamental requirements of a modern industrial society.”32 The counter-proposal dynamics that we find at the heart of the “Quebec School” narrative place it within a storyline shared by the Cité libre journal, which André J. Bélanger notes was also defined partly as an “opposition ideology.” It was an ideology “with little attachment to exploring a possible future” and its orientations were elaborated “in contact with the indépendantiste plan, which it did not consider ‘politically valid.’”33 As in the case of the Citélibrists, the universe of thought of the Quebec City historians was held captive by the idea – in many respects illusory – of a Quebec that was monolithic, unanimous, consensual, and still stuck in clerical ways; and by the opinion that, to break out of that rut, strong universalist criticism of nationalism was required. While they were conspicuous by their absence in the pages of Cité libre,34 the historians of the “Quebec School” were nonetheless favourably received by it, as can be seen from some of the advertisements reserved for their works on the journal’s back cover.35 We also sometimes find their works in the bibliographical references of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who used, for example, Trudel’s interpretation of the 1971 parliamentary regime to support his thesis that democracy was not understood by French Canadians.36 It seems, however, that it was once again Ouellet who had the most clearly stated affinity for Trudeau. Seeing himself as the “historical wing”37 of Cité libre, Ouellet shared a number of deeply held beliefs with the future prime minister: in particular, progressive faith in universalist reason, distrust of nationalist communitarian sentiments – judged difficult

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to reconcile with liberalism – and, perhaps above all, a modernist relationship with the past, which supposed that humans were progressing toward a world freed from the weight of the traditions and national memory of traditional French Canadians. Indeed, it was at Trudeau’s personal invitation that Ouellet wrote a chapter in Towards a Just Society: The Trudeau Years, in which he proposed an interpretation of the Quiet Revolution that was again strongly influenced by the modernist current of the 1950s.38 However, Trudeau was not the only federalist politician from Quebec who found inspiration in Ouellet’s writings. When he was still the editor of Le Devoir, Claude Ryan devoted a long, rather glowing text to Ouellet following the publication of his Histoire économique et sociale. In his review, Ryan pointed out how much Ouellet’s analyses concerning the Patriotes’ misguided liberalism, and the persistence of Ancien Régime “mentality” in their thought, shed much-needed light on the “barely veiled contempt for freedom that some nationalist extremists display even today.”39 Thus, as we said, the “Quebec School” narrative is easier to decipher from what it rejected than from what it proposed. In other words, its hypotheses about the past were less developed in reference to a matrix endogenous to the group than in response to a proposal from outside. Telling evidence of this is the fact that, at Université Laval, there was no tutelary or paradigmatic figure, similar to Lionel Groulx or Maurice Séguin for the Montreal School, to foster the transmission of a powerfully formulated framework for interpreting Quebec’s past. On the contrary, if there was a “magisterium” at Université Laval, it seems to have come from intellectual figures “outside” the group, such as André Latreille, Ernest Labrousse, and Robert Mandrou, who have had a lasting influence, particularly with respect to methodology in history.40 In the end, the “Quebec School” seems to have been a collective entity that was intellectually less coalescent than its Montreal rival. This observation makes it problematic to identify it as a “school of thought” in the strong sense. This is also confirmed by the great variety in its historiographical production, the lack of an intellectual doctrine shared by its alleged members, and the difficulty in establishing its charisma with respect to clearly identifiable disciples. Devotion to it did not become routine.41 If anything, the original position of the Université Laval trio seems to have been more that of a “school of activity,” an expression we are borrowing from sociologist Samuel Gilmore that designates the distinctive feature of a group with a convergent dynamic resulting less, given its action, from the sharing of similar ideas or a doctrine than from the dynamics of interaction, exchange, and collaboration shaped through a work process.42 According to Jacqueline Low and Gary Bowden, who have applied Gilmore’s concept to analyze the sociohistorical genesis of the Chicago School, a “school of thought” would be to a “school of activity” what a hammer is to a Swiss Army knife. The former has a very clear definition with a clearly stated purpose, meaning, and use. A hammer is a percussion tool: it is made for hitting

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something. The latter stands out, in contrast, because of the variety of its tools and because of the wide range of functions it is given by its users.43 This approach seems to provide a better conceptual opening for identifying the Laval ethos, which Jean Lamarre said, rightly, was held together more by a “similar conception of a historian’s job [than by a] shared thesis or hypothesis concerning the overall future of their association that they would have developed and disseminated together.”44 Therefore, if the historians at Université Laval were faithful to an orthodoxy, it was mainly a “professional” orthodoxy – in other words, a doctrine constituted around research techniques, methods, and expertise shared and transmitted with a concern to build a specialized history discipline based on method and practised as freely as possible, at a distance from society’s moral and ideological pressures. Martin Pâquet is right to point out that, “beyond solid friendships and ferocious rivalries,” the Laval professors shared, above all, a “professional ethos,” namely “that of the career professor who produces and disseminates higher learning,” defined primarily as “a regard based on the material, methodological, and epistemological conditions of historical knowledge, a regard that distrusts doctrinal speculation.”45 Of course, this conception and these methods did not prevent the historians from conceiving theories about the past, and the theories about the past certainly suggested methods, in a kind of back and forth. The Laval trio’s historiographical discourse framed a threefold political conscience, even though its members were divided by distinct approaches: Trudel was more of an empiricist and attached to the heritage of nineteenth-century positivism; Ouellet was more Labroussian and did quantitative research focusing on statistics; and Hamelin was more hermeneutic and attached to a Catholic humanist conception of history. To begin with, all three demonstrated a strong commitment to “demythifying” the past by building on method-based knowledge, in contrast with traditional and providentialist historiography. This approach, which they shared, as we have mentioned, with many young secular historians of their generation, was perhaps best expressed by Trudel, the oldest of the three. During his service at Université Laval in the 1940s and 1950s, he introduced a new relationship between historiography and social, political, and ideological life by disseminating a specific conception of research and teaching that was characterized by autonomy, freedom, and openness. In that process, what counted was, first, the endorsement of scientific work based on research and method – in particular, meticulous study of sources. This point of view conveyed both strong commitment to a discipline, which meant taking distance and seeking disinterested historical knowledge that was uninfluenced by literature and theology and was above partisanship and ideology; and also the power of a utopian dream and positivism-inspired abstraction, namely “pure research” free from any moral or political influences. This approach was propelled by the unique intellectual context in

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postwar Quebec, when nationalism, as a mobilizing instrument, inspired distrust and there was a major disconnect between the real and the ideal, between reality and myth.46 It seems that there was a particularly sharp change of direction at Université Laval, in particular by the new generation of sociologists, whose intellectual interests were based in part on a clear separation between the positive and normative spheres of research.47 Thus, unlike the Montreal School, which gambled on resisting anti-nationalist leanings in Quebec in the 1950s, for the Laval historians, the way out of Quebec’s traditional society did not necessarily require modernizing and renewing French-Canadian nationalism from the inside. Another distinctive feature of the “Quebec School” narrative is that, to varying degrees, it defended the idea that the truth about Quebec’s past would become clear less through national and political developments than through social and economic outcomes. This trend, which is especially clear in the writings of Ouellet and the young Jean Hamelin, was inherited from the French Annales school of historiography, which left deep traces at Laval and resulted from the resumption of stays in Paris by students from Laval, and also from visits to Quebec City by well-known French historians. The appeal of the French Annales imprinted the Laval historians’ approach with a “scientific mission,”48 namely to break down both disciplinary and national boundaries. Among other things, it made the Laval historians more open to taking up the social sciences and adopting an approach to Quebec that focused more on territory and spaces. This encouraged the Laval historians to minimize the political impacts of the colonial power relations, to see the foundations of French Canada and English Canada in the dynamics of a changing socioeconomic system, and to insist, especially, on the advantages related to such coexistence in a shared space. Indeed, this is what explains the Laval historians’ affinity with English-Canadian historiography, in particular in the case of Ouellet, who, notably, took up and adapted Donald Creighton’s geographical-economic determinism as well as Creighton’s very voluntarist perspective, centred on merchants’ dynamic energy and entrepreneurial spirit. In this framework, Quebec was interesting only as one component of a much greater system, with reference, in this case, to the building of Canadian nationalism. This following from that, the three “Quebec School” historians also aspired, again to different degrees, to put into practice a neutral, detached science that could serve as a natural language to bring together and mesh cultures across Canada. In the spirit of the Laurendeau-Dunton “moment”49 and in continuity with Université Laval’s long institutional tradition of reconciliation of Canada’s two cultural groups, the “Quebec School” lent to historiography the function of reconciling French and English Canadians and bringing them closer together. This aspiration took concrete form in certain research projects that were begun, in part, by these historians – such as the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, which was the result of

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collaboration between Université Laval and the University of Toronto, and the textbook Canada: Unity in Diversity, which we will discuss in the next section. Although, at least as far as Trudel and Ouellet were concerned, these collective undertakings cannot be completely reduced to federalist positioning, they were closely related to it.50 It is useful to remember that their public opposition to Quebec’s plan for political independence dated from the early 1960s. In fact, Trudel saw Quebec’s independence as a “solution of denial” of French Canada’s history, which would therefore be sacrificed, according to him, on the altar of the Quebec nation. In his eyes, the sovereigntist plan amounted to building a “Berlin Wall” that would risk “transforming into strangers our brothers, our relatives, and all the others of the same blood and the same culture who will remain outside our enclave.” Drawing on his expert knowledge of New France, Trudel also maintained that Quebec’s independence could worsen French Canadians’ endemic weaknesses, which he saw as dating back to the time of the French regime, when New France was a colony “languishing” with respect to demography, industrialization, culture, and education in comparison with the “fantastic development of the American colonies.” Using the “collective guilt” argument, which consisted in placing the primary responsibility for the fate of French Canadians upon French Canadians themselves, Trudel criticized them for not taking advantage of the confederal regime, in particular, because they had failed to enter the federal public service, choosing liberal professions instead.51 Ouellet took a slightly different tack, describing indépendantisme as an isolationist plan that, like the mythicizing abstractions of traditional religious messianism, risked creating obstacles to concrete social demands by shifting them onto the ethnic level. In 1968, he wrote: “The young nationalist … has simply exchanged religious dogmatism for nationalist dogmatism.” In contrast, federalism remained a “major strength” from his point of view, because it was an idea with “solid roots in the masses.” Moreover, it was truly in North American and Canadian solidarity that were “founded the truest standard of living and aspirations.”52 canada: unity in diversity

These structuring aspects of the “Quebec School’s” historiographical narrative are perhaps revealed most clearly in Canada: Unity in Diversity, one of the rare publications that united the Laval trio in pursuit of the goal of achieving a single synthesis. Published in English in 1967, and in French in 1968, the textbook has more than 500 pages and was co-authored by Trudel, Ouellet, Hamelin, and Professor Paul G. Cornell (of the University of Waterloo). It is probably the best illustration of these historians’ desire to frame a historiographical narrative in service to the ideal of a bilingual, bicultural Canada. It came out in the midst of the celebrations of the centenary of Confederation, was intended primarily for grade 13 students in

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provinces outside of Quebec, and followed up on a recommendation by Trudel and Geneviève Jain to the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission.53 In particular, the ambition was to attempt to merge the English-Canadian and French-Canadian narratives into a new synthesis of Canada’s history. Although the French version of the introduction, written by Trudel, left some doubt as to the book’s political motivations, the English version was perfectly frank. Written by William Kilbourn (a historian from Toronto), it presented the whole thing as “a book for post-Centennial Canada” that “more or less takes for granted the existence of a Canadian state, a Canadian society and a certain minimal Canadian identity whose characteristics can be identified, celebrated or deplored.” Kilbourn saw the work as a response to the English-Canadian nationalist orthodoxy’s excessively centralizing, uniformizing reading. Thanks to its “dualist” and regional approach, the textbook was meant to help challenge the unilateral vision of Canadian federalism and support a hypothesis that Canada’s federalism was along the lines of Pearson’s: in other words, more attentive to recognizing the diversity of the provinces and, in particular, Quebec’s specificity. A product of the “Laval School of historians,” the narrative thread subscribed to “Bourassa’s Actonian brand of Canadian nationalism,” the only middle way that could, according to Kilbourn, prevent Canada from being broken apart by “separatist” forces.54 Constructed around this twofold – dualist and regionalist – imperative, the book nonetheless reveals the difficulties the authors faced as they tried to offer a new integrating, coherent, unified narrative of Canada. It suffices to look at the slide in translation between the French title, which suggests a juxtaposition implying equal weight (Canada: unité et diversité), and the English title, which gives precedence to unity in relation to diversity (Canada: Unity in Diversity). As Jocelyn Létourneau has noted, behind the differences between the titles, there was indeed “a semantic issue related to a political challenge.” Although, from the English-Canadian point of view, Canada’s unity and convergence were “compatible” with diversity, this was not true from a French-Canadian “dualist” standpoint. According to the latter, Canada remained “a country with irreducible tension between the forces of unity and those of diversity, which take the form of two great national systems of conformity.”55 Some of the correspondence in Trudel’s archives also reveals the difficult negotiations among the authors on the choice of a title they could all endorse. Countless proposals were discussed: “A Common Adventure,” “En communauté de biens,” “En communauté d’histoire,” “Le Canada, des origines à 1867,” “Histoire du Canada, depuis la Nouvelle-France à 1867,” “Le Canada: Deux nations, une histoire,” “Histoire du Canada – divergence et convergence,” “Un pays, dix provinces.” At one point, the publisher proposed that the book have rigorously parallel titles: “Canada: Conflict and Common Ties” and “Canada: Conflit et liens communs.” This especially irritated Trudel, who saw it as “precisely

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the wrong approach to take when translating” because it was too literal, and he even went so far as to threaten to remove his name from the book if that title became the final choice.56 Trudel also challenged the choice of Kilbourn to write the introduction, because he was a historian relatively unfamiliar to the French-Canadian academic community. He thought it would have been preferable to choose a better-known writer, such as Ramsay Cook, a famous historian at the University of Toronto who had supported Pierre Elliott Trudeau publicly during the 1968 federal election.57 Although Trudel was wary of over-politicizing nationalism, he was also very critical of postwar federal centralization and attached to a dualist conception of the confederal pact; his dissatisfaction with Canadian federalism had been clear for a long time. Close to Abbé Lionel Groulx and the Montreal School at the beginning of the 1950s, he had always been sensitive to French Canadians’ unfavourable position in the history of Canada and rather distrustful of bon-ententiste enthusiasm for the Constitution. This makes it easier to understand the fragile links uniting the different parts of the textbook. The chapters were distributed according to the expertise of each of the historians, who, for the most part, simply provided condensed versions of previous work. Moreover, that the table of contents is broken down according to regions gives a strong impression of a collection of relatively autonomous “little countries,” with different histories and colours but lacking strong glue joining them together. Even Kilbourn recognized, in his introduction, that the whole “lacks a certain personal colour and a strong narrative line.”58 As we read the book, we see that the authors strayed from their goal of writing a history of Canada that was reconciled with itself and ended up creating a narrative backlit by the traditional French-Canadian nationalist metanarrative. The section on New France, which was prepared by Trudel, was designed mainly to deconstruct Séguin’s thesis about the fundamental, existential normality of the French regime. Trudel painted the period as in no way a golden age incubating a unitary, coherent nation. It was, instead, a “closed society” that tended “to close the doors of economic opportunity”59 and was living on borrowed time, with an illusion of its territorial power and a common destiny. New France was, for Trudel, nothing but a “clay-foot giant.”60 Moreover, the Conquest, which falls more under the interpretative lexicon of “cession” or “surrender,” does not appear in the textbook as the central, founding fact. Canada’s history is instead broken into periods according to geographical and socioeconomic configurations.61 In the chapters that Ouellet devoted to nineteenth-century Lower Canada, the narrative focuses on the generosity of the British under the English regime, describing the decisive rise, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, of a Francophone conservative bourgeoisie in the liberal professions. The members of those professions would have distrusted the English merchants and capitalism, and this became the new cornerstone of the narrative. In

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line with conclusions he had drawn in earlier research, Ouellet made the Patriotes the reflection of the ambivalent positions and wavering of that rising Francophone bourgeoisie, in particular by describing Louis-Joseph Papineau as a man fatefully divided. For the rest, the moral, cultural, and political superiority accorded to the Canadian nation made the 1840 Act of Union, a grand, “inevitable” event that was in harmony with the evolution of the economic situation, which was creating greater interdependence between Upper and Lower Canada.62 Similarly, the “conquest” of responsible government appears as one of the central feats of “one of the most constructive periods of the nineteenth century.” In other words, the narrative was focused not so much on concern for cultural survival over the long term as on the coexistence of two communities in a space, territory, and evolving material structures. French-Canadian settlers were portrayed as completely backward, representing a heavy, inert tradition, which was difficult to reconcile with the march of capitalist progress across the continent. The overall effect was a picture, supported by Anglo-American and British historiography, of a two-tiered Canada, in which a medieval, Catholic French Canada coexisted with a more dynamic, entrepreneurial, Protestant English Canada. The Confederation of 1867, analyzed by Hamelin, was seen as a rational, pragmatic project, the result of a given historical context and motivated mainly by economic interests. It would not be until the early twentieth century that an analysis of the major national crises (the First and Second World Wars and the Great Depression) would reveal a more or less extensive and coherent set of bonds at the scale of what was to become the Canadian nation. The authors therefore saw Henri Bourassa as the champion of Canadian autonomism against the “bitter provincialism” that arose in the 1920s in Quebec around Action française.63 It is difficult not to see in this opposition a broader rejection of the “separatist” tendencies of the ideology of Groulx and his heirs, and support for the interpretations by historians Mason Wade and Michael Oliver, which were considered mainstream in the 1950s.64 However, it is in the second part of the textbook, devoted to the history of Canada since 1931 and Canada’s emergence as a middle power, that the narrative’s patriotic leaning becomes clearer. Written mostly by Paul Cornell, the section introduces a plot that follows the arc of affirmation of a Canadian nation-state that would be autonomous and independent with respect to both its domestic affairs and its international status. Notably, Cornell insisted on portraying the reform-oriented Quebec of the Quiet Revolution as the “dawn of a new age,” and also as the spearhead of Canadian distinctiveness: “The cultural antecedents of French Canada are unique, and some of his typical attributes – individualism, gaiety of spirit, graciousness, a dedication to principles, devotion, a sense of mission and many others – are the values and attributes most needed by all Canadians in operating a worthwhile society.”65 On this last point, José Igartua is probably right that “Cornell was calling for English-speaking Canada to borrow

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cultural stereotypes from French Canada … Overall, this valiant attempt to write a common textbook for all of Canada ended up reinforcing EnglishCanadian stereotypes of French Canada.”66 Although it was revised and expanded for the second edition, which appeared in 1971, Canada: Unity and Diversity enjoyed only passing recognition. Too scholarly to be used widely in high schools, too innovative to become required reading for historians, the textbook gave rise to little discussion and did not really leave a mark. It has to be admitted that it was published at a major tipping point in history, which may have predestined it to obsolescence – a time when the established order was being challenged on every front, and student, nationalist, and popular social movements were leading university students toward political radicalism with little patience for compromise or reconciliation. Canadian nation building was accompanied by escalating discontent in Quebec, where nationalism was gaining greater political and symbolic importance. Neonationalist ideas, which had been promoted by the Montreal School historians since 1945 and were influenced by the growth of anticolonial nationalism, were winning more and more support. They especially rose to the surface during the Estates General of French Canada. In 1968, the formation of the Parti Québécois established a new connection between the ideological and political levels, and this moved the debate on the objectives of Francophone Quebec into the political arena. Trudeau’s rejection of a binational vision of Canada, in the sense defined by the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission, and Quebec’s rejection of the Victoria Charter in 1971 both mortgaged bicultural federalism’s future. It is therefore reasonable to think that the points of view ordinarily associated with the Laval historians would have been tuned out in Quebec in the late 1960s, as was Cité libre, which was in decline.67 This political downfall was accompanied by a historiographical downfall, as a new generation of historians gradually entered the scene, abandoning the “failed historicity” of their masters for a new “emancipating historicity,” which was declined according to the themes of social class, exploitation, oppression, domination, and normality.68 This can be seen in the concurrent, but successful, publication of the textbook Canada-Québec, by Jacques Lacourcière, Jean Provencher, and Denis Vaugeois, in 1968. Canada-Québec was closer to the neonationalist interpretations of the Montreal School. In other words, just when it articulated its approach in one of its greatest collective works, the “Quebec School” was perhaps fading away.

c o n c l u s ion This last observation also raises questions about the reach and influence of the Université Laval historians in the shifting terrain of historiography, academia, and politics in the 1960s. All in all, it seems that the Laval “school” was most efficient when it sought to break with traditionalist and

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neonationalist historiography. From this point of view, it would have been a product of the paroxysm of criticism, in the 1950s and ’60s, of the “Great Darkness.” There is no doubt that the Laval historians’ irreverence allowed them to innovate on the intellectual and scientific levels. In that respect, we can consider their work to be a major contribution to the renewal of Quebec historiography, particularly regarding social and economic history, and the training of generations of history students and researchers. That said, since the “school” remained entrenched in postwar modernist thought, perhaps it mortgaged its own future, in a way. It is clear that its critical perspective on history rapidly found itself in the face of the winds of change that were blowing at the time of the Quiet Revolution. Young people were reacting to the characterization of French Canadians’ cultural and economic situation as backward and were seeking an inspiring way out, something that did not seem to be available in the Laval School’s historical narrative. This is the conclusion that historian Jean-Marie Fecteau came to, concluding that the reorganization of national perspectives that accompanied the Quiet Revolution was nothing less than “fatal to the analytical ambitions of the Quebec School.”69 Fecteau’s remark tends to corroborate the findings of a survey conducted in March 1969 by La Bombe H, the history students’ journal at Université Laval. It showed that around 60 per cent of the students enrolled in the Institut d’histoire were “sovereigntists” and that, consequently, “most” of them “did not find the theories of the ‘Quebec School’ very attractive.”70 Moreover, in a self-analysis of his own education, historian Paul-André Linteau pointed out the extent to which, for the generation that attended university in the second half of the 1960s, the classical distinction between the “Montreal School” and the “Quebec School” was “not very useful.” For that generation of students, “the emergence of a form of nationalism oriented toward modernization [and] the feeling of participating in the building of a new Quebec … transcended the old influences of the schools of history.”71 From this point of view, the sudden departures of those like Trudel and Ouellet, who left Quebec’s academic milieu in the mid-1960s to continue their careers in Ontario,72 could perhaps be seen as having some existential and political meaning, beyond the usual explanations concerning their disruptive secularism. Indeed, their “exile” is in contrast to the more marked social resonance of the “Montreal School” historians, whose ideas managed to exert powerful public impact, such as in the Quebec public service (Frégault), on nationalist claims (Brunet), and in the training of new generations of researchers (Séguin). While the federalist historiographical “school” certainly succeeded, on the critical level, in breaking with the old, competing metanarratives, thereby bringing in fresh air that would benefit subsequent generations of historians, it does not seem to have been able to define a new, unified metanarrative in phase with how Quebec society was evolving.73 However, perhaps what makes the Laval trio unique is their academic

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“longevity.” At Université Laval, Hamelin was responsible for inspiring a number of students to become historians. Trudel and Ouellet both enjoyed second careers in teaching and research in Ottawa, and their publishing output remained impressive into the early 2000s. This long run helped to open new avenues in historiography, in particular for the “revisionist” or “modernist” generation of historians, which became established in university departments in the 1970s and ’80s.74 It is not by chance that many representatives of that generation (such as, in particular, Gérard Bouchard, Fernand Harvey, Yvan Lamonde, Jean Provencher, and Jacques Rouillard) found Université Laval’s Department of History to be an important source of their “intellectual dna .”75 notes

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We would like to thank Stéphane Savard and Antoine Brousseau Desaulniers, whose judicious comments on the first version of this text helped to improve it. We have placed the school’s name in quotation marks on purpose since, as we point out later in this article, the trio at Université Laval, unlike their counterparts in Montreal, did not form a school in the strong sense of the term. However, we accept the label insofar as it is used as a cultural category. For the English-Canadian context, see: Donald Wright, The Professionalization of History in English Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005). Jean-Charles Falardeau, “Lettre à mes étudiants: À l’occasion des 20 ans de la Faculté des sciences sociales,” Cité Libre, May 1959, 14. (Translated from the French. Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations of French texts are by the translators of this volume.) Gilles Bourque, “Histoire, nation québécoise et démocratie ou ne nous en sortirons-nous jamais?”, in Les impasses de la mémoire: Histoire, filiation, nation et religion, ed. E.-Martin Meunier and Joseph Yvon Thériault (Montreal: Fides, 2007), 188–95 (translation). Some authors, such as Michael Gauvreau, have provided a more nuanced view of the relevance of the usual classification of postwar Quebec intellectuals as “neonationalists,” “neoliberals” (“citélibrists”), or “traditonalists,” pointing out, among other things, how much such a classification abstracts from the fact that there is a dialectical continuity with Catholic elements. See: Michael Gauvreau, The Hand of God: Claude Ryan and the Fate of Canadian Liberalism, 1925–1971 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017). Michael Behiels, Prelude to Quebec’s Quiet Revolution: Liberalism versus Neo-Nationalism, 1945–1960 (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1985). The first attempt to conceptualize “schools of history” dates back to 1966, in Serge Gagnon, “Pour une conscience historique de la révolution québécoise,” Cité libre, January 1966, 4–16.

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8 For a critical discussion on the uses of the notion of “school,” see: FrançoisOlivier Dorais, “Classifier et organiser la production historiographique au Québec: Réflexions critiques autour de la notion d’‘école historique,’” Bulletin d’histoire politique 24, no. 3 (2016): 158–76. 9 Among others, consider Jean Lamarre, Le devenir de la nation québécoise selon Maurice Séguin, Guy Frégault et Michel Brunet (1944–1969) (Quebec City: Septentrion, 1993); Robert Comeau and Josiane Lavallée, eds, L’historien Maurice Séguin: Théoricien de l’indépendance et penseur de la modernité québécoise (Québec: Septentrion, 2006); and, more recently, Jean Lamarre, Maurice Séguin: Historien du Québec d’hier et d’aujourd’hui (Quebec: Septentrion, 2018). 10 Evidence of this can be found, in particular, in vlb ’s series on the intellectual history of Quebec indépendantisme. The blind spot may be easier to understand if we consider that, since the 1990s, the political and intellectual federalist elite in Quebec has gradually become uninterested in the Quebec national question and has shifted away from constitutional debate and Quebec’s demands. (At least, this was the case until the publication, in 2017, of Québécois, notre façon d’être Canadiens.) This is also not to say that this is a result of a disciplinary bias, given that some researchers in political science, notably Alain-G. Gagnon and Guy Laforest, have reflected on the question of federalism in Quebec – in particular, multinational federalism. 11 Ronald Rudin, Making History in Twentieth-Century Quebec (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 170. 12 See, in particular: Jean-Philippe Warren and E.-Martin Meunier, “De la question sociale à la question nationale: La revue Cité Libre (1950–1963),” Recherches sociographiques 39, nos 2–3 (1998): 291–316; Jean-Philippe Warren and E.-Martin Meunier, Sortir de la “Grande noirceur”: L’horizon “personnaliste” de la Révolution tranquille (Quebec City: Septentrion, 2002); Michael Gauvreau, Les origines catholiques de la Révolution tranquille (Montreal: Fides, 2008); Jules Racine St-Jacques, “L’engagement du père Georges-Henri Lévesque dans la modernité canadienne-française, 1932–1962: Contribution à l’histoire intellectuelle du catholicisme et de la modernité au Canada français” (PhD diss., Université Laval, 2015). 13 Paul G. Cornell, Jean Hamelin, Fernand Ouellet, and Marcel Trudel, Canada: Unity in Diversity (Montreal: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1967). 14 Marc Vallières et al., eds, Histoire de Québec et de sa région, Vol. 2: 1792–1939 (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2008), 692. 15 Fernand Ouellet, “Papineau et la rivalité Québec-Montréal (1820–1840),” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 13, no. 3 (1959): 311–27. 16 See: Jean-Philippe Warren, “La ville de Québec comme foyer ‘libéral’ au XIXe siècle: Les catholiques canadiens-français entre opportunisme et ultramontanisme,” Archives de sciences sociales des religions 1, no. 165 (2014): 227–44. 17 Yvan Lamonde, Histoire sociale des idées au Québec, Tome I: 1760–1896 (Montreal: Fides, 2000), 208–9.

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18 Serge Gagnon, Le Québec et ses historiens de 1840 à 1920: La NouvelleFrance de Garneau à Groulx (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1978), 204 (translation), quoted in Damien-Claude Bélanger, Thomas Chapais: Historien (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2018), 38. 19 Paul Y. Villeneuve, “La ville de Québec comme lieu de continuité,” Cahiers de géographie du Québec 25, no. 64 (1981): 49–60 (translation). 20 Ibid., 235. 21 See, in particular: Damien-Claude Bélanger, “Thomas Chapais, loyaliste,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 65, no. 4 (2012): 439–72. 22 Robert Talbot, “Une réconciliation insaisissable: Le mouvement de la bonne entente, 1916–1930,” Mens: Revue d’histoire intellectuelle de l’Amérique française 8, no. 1 (2007): 67–125. 23 Michel Bock, “La théologie au service du bon-ententisme à l’Université d’Ottawa: Le père oblat Georges Simard (1878–1956), ou comment un groulxiste devient loyaliste,” Cahiers Charlevoix, no. 11 (2016): 230. 24 On this, see: Racine St-Jacques, “L’engagement du père Georges-Henri Lévesque.” 25 See, in particular: Léon Dion, “Aspects de la condition du professeur d’université dans la société canadienne-française,” Cité libre, no. 21 (1958): 7–30; Falardeau, “Lettre à mes étudiants.” 26 Jean-Philippe Warren, L’engagement sociologique: La tradition sociologique du Québec francophone, 1886–1955 (Montreal: Boréal, 2003), 243–97. 27 This intuition comes from Damien-Claude Bélanger, “Thomas Chapais, précurseur de ‘l’école’ de Laval?”, 71e Congrès de l’Institut d’histoire de l’Amérique française, Drummondville, 19 October 2018. 28 On this point, we agree with Damien-Claude Bélanger’s observations in Thomas Chapais: Historien, 186–9. 29 This was the case for Trudel in particular, who, in the 1950s, released many attacks on Maheux. See: Rudin, Making History, 105–6. 30 See: François-Olivier Dorais, “Marcel Trudel et Guy Frégault: Regards sur une amitié intellectuelle,” Recherches sociographiques 57, nos 2–3 (2016): 523–52. 31 Joseph Yvon Thériault, Critique de l’américanité: Mémoire et démocratie au Québec (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 2002), 246. 32 Fernand Ouellet, “Historiographie et nationalisme,” Mémoires de la Société Royale du Canada, no. 13 (1975): 35 (translation). 33 André J. Bélanger, Ruptures et constantes – Quatre idéologies du Québec en éclatement: La Relève, la jéc , Cité libre, Parti Pris (Montreal: Hurtubise, 1977), 131–2 (translation). 34 According to Léon Dion, “it was impossible to create a Quebec City section of Cité libre, which remained a Montreal journal and which explains its main weaknesses: lack of historical depth and social roots.” Léon Dion, Nationalismes et politique au Québec (Montreal: Hurtubise, 1975), 56 (translation). It is also possible that the radical secularism of Trudel and

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36

37 38

39 40 41

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Ouellet, tending toward anti-religiosity, could make personalist Catholics such as Gérard Pelletier and Pierre Elliott Trudeau feel a little uncomfortable. See, in particular: the June-July and August-September 1960 and January, February, March, and October 1961 issues, in which there are advertisements for, in particular, Les élections provinciales dans le Québec (1867– 1956), by Jean Hamelin; L’esclavage au Canada français and L’Atlas historique du Canada français des débuts à 1867, by Marcel Trudel; Papineau, by Fernand Ouellet; and Économie et société en Nouvelle-France, by Jean Hamelin. Pierre Elliott Trudeau, “De quelques obstacles à la démocratie au Québec,” in Le fédéralisme et la société canadienne-française (Montreal: Hurtubise, 1967), 108. Société Radio-Canada, “Fernand Ouellet,” Écrire l’histoire au Québec, Cahier no 2 (Montreal: Société Radio-Canada, 1981), 6 (translation). Fernand Ouellet, “La Révolution tranquille: Tournant révolutionnaire?”, in Towards a Just Society: The Trudeau Years, ed. Thomas S. Axworthy and Pierre Elliott Trudeau, trans. Patricia Claxton (Markham, on : Penguin Books, 1990), 313–41. Claude Ryan, “L’histoire du Québec sous un jour différent (suite et fin),” Le Devoir, 11 January 1968 (translation). François-Olivier Dorais, “Présence et influence de Robert Mandrou au Québec,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 69, no. 3 (2016): 59–82. On the notion of “school” in science, see, in particular: Romain Pudal, “Sur la réification des collectifs: À propos de l’École de Chicago,” Cahiers internationaux de sociologie, no. 119 (2005): 367–76. Samuel Gilmore, “Schools of Activity and Innovation,” Sociological Quarterly 29, no. 2 (1988): 203–19. Jacqueline Low and Gary Bowden, eds, The Chicago School Diaspora: Epistemology and Substance (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013), 10. Lamarre, Le devenir de la nation, 23 (translation). Martin Pâquet, “Sensibilités et solidarités: L’ethos de Laval,” in L’Architecture flamboyante en France: Autour de Roland Sanfaçon, ed. Stéphanie Diane Daussy (Lille, France: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2020), 20 (translation). We would like to thank the author of this work for providing us with exclusive access to a version of this text. Jean Lamarre, “À la jointure de la conscience et de la culture: L’École historique de Montréal au tournant des années 1950,” in L’horizon de la culture: Hommage à Fernand Dumont, ed. Simon Langlois (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1995), 281–98. See, in particular: Warren, L’engagement sociologique. Daniel Poitras, “L’impossible oubli: Fernand Ouellet, la Révolution tranquille et la république contrefactuelle des Patriote,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 66, nos 3–4 (2013): 350.

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49 Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon, Panser le Canada: Une histoire intellectuelle de la commission Laurendeau-Dunton (Montreal: Boréal, 2018). 50 In fact, some clarification is required here since Jean Hamelin’s ideas changed and he tended toward sovereignty in the 1970s. 51 Marcel Trudel, “Le séparatisme, solution de reniement – décembre 1961,” 1961, Fonds Albert-Tessier, 0236, Archives du Séminaire de Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivières, Quebec (translation). 52 Fernand Ouellet, “Le défi fédéraliste,” in Le Canada au seuil du siècle de l’abondance (Montreal: Hurtubise, 1969), 319–28. See also: Fernand Ouellet, “Les fondements historiques de l’option séparatiste dans le Québec,” Liberté 4, no. 21 (1962): 90–112. 53 Trudel and Jain submitted a study, in this regard, to the Commission in 1965, and it became public in 1969. On the basis of an analysis of the content of the textbooks used in elementary and secondary schools in French and English Canada, the study attributed Canada’s division, in part, to the way history was taught, and proposed the establishment of a team, composed of EnglishCanadian and French-Canadian historians, who would produce a textbook that would teach French and English Canadians about their shared adventure in the Americas up to the present day. Marcel Trudel and Geneviève Jain, Canadian History Textbooks: A Comparative Study, Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism Staff Study no. 5 (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1970). 54 William Kilbourn, introduction to Canada: Unity in Diversity, ed. Paul G. Cornell, Jean Hamelin, Fernand Ouellet, and Marcel Trudel (Toronto: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1967), XII. 55 Jocelyn Létourneau, “La relació Québec-Canadà en l’ensenyament de la historia,” Perspectiva Escolar, no. 352 (2011): 17–24 (translation). For a French translation of the Spanish: https://jocelynletourneau.files.wordpress. com/2011/07/quebec-canada-enseignement-histoire.pdf. 56  Letter, Marcel Trudel to James Marsh, 19 May 1967, Fonds Marcel Trudel, 305/42388/, Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa (translation). 57 Trudeau may have been extremely anti-nationalist but, in the late 1960s, he still refrained from giving in to a “unitary” vision of Canadian federalism, and advocated full linguistic rights for Francophone communities and equal status for English and French all across Canada – a position that did not fail to attract Quebec’s federalist intelligentsia. See: André Burelle, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, l’intellectuel et le politique (Montreal: Fides, 2005), 45–51. Note also that Trudel made these statements when he was a professor at the University of Ottawa, soon after the “three doves” had arrived in the federal capital; and that those three represented new political hope for a whole generation of Francophone intellectuals who had long decried the postwar Anglodominant federal centralization.

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58 William Kilbourn, introduction to Cornell et al., eds, Canada: Unity in Diversity, xi. 59 Ibid., 59. 60 Ibid., 40. 61 Ibid., 51, 53, 59. 62 Ibid., 150, 156–8. 63 Ibid., 51, 53, 59, 83–84, 94, 216–17, 230, 233. 64 For an in-depth study of the ideological construction of the Bourassa-Groulx contrasts in Quebec historiography, see: Michel Bock, Quand la nation débordait les frontières: Les minorités françaises dans la pensée de Lionel Groulx (Montreal: Hurtubise, 2004), 32–65. 65 Cornell et al., eds, Canada: Unity in Diversity, 499. 66 José Igartua, The Other Quiet Revolution: National Identities in English Canada, 1945–71 (Vancouver: ubc Press, 2006), 162. 67 André Carrier, “L’idéologie politique de la revue Cité libre,” Revue canadienne de science politique 1, no. 4 (1968): 425–8. 68 Bourque, “Histoire, nation québécoise et démocratie,” 188–95. 69 Jean-Marie Fecteau, “Entre la quête de la nation et les découvertes de la science: L’historiographie québécoise vue par Ronald Rudin,” Canadian Historical Review 80, no. 3 (1999): 454 (translation). 70 “Les étudiants,” Le Carabin, 13 March 1969, 18 (translation). 71 Paul-André Linteau, “La nouvelle histoire du Québec vue de l’intérieur,” Liberté 25, no. 3 (1983): 37–8 (translation). 72 Marcel Trudel joined the Department of History at the University of Ottawa in 1965, and he continued his career there until his retirement in 1982. In 1965, also, Ouellet became a professor at Carleton University and then later moved to the Department of History at the University of Ottawa (1975–85) before joining York University (1986). 73 We would like to thank Julien Goyette for sharing this idea with us. 74 See: Rudin, Making History. 75 Yvan Lamonde talked about his training in history at Laval in these terms. Jonathan Livernois, ed., Les affluents partagés: À propos d’Yvan Lamonde (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2013), 111.

14 The Quebec School of Diversity: The Emergence, Unfolding, and Renewal of a Line of Authentic Federalist Thought Félix Mathieu

On 12 March  2018, Jean-Marc Fournier, then Minister Responsible for Canadian Relations and the Canadian Francophonie, spoke at the Université du Québec à Montréal on the occasion of the unveiling of a new research centre: the Centre d’analyse politique – Constitution et fédéralisme (cap-cf )1. He highlighted the merits of what he called the “Quebec School of Diversity” for furthering knowledge on federalism and management of deep diversity. Those present can confirm that this portion of the speech was meant to honour Professor Alain-G. Gagnon, director and founding member of the cap-cf . In academic jargon, a “school” generally refers to a group of researchers who, while sharing a fairly coherent and original set of ideas, put forward a particular interpretation of a phenomenon and undertake to promote that interpretation through publications and public events. This is how Fournier used the term, and it is also how it is understood by Gagnon, who has professed his adherence to the “School” on several occasions.2 In an article published in Le Devoir, journalist Hélène Roulot-Ganzmann also introduced the “Quebec School of Diversity.”3 In her article, she interviewed Gagnon and traced the origins of the School back to the creation of the Groupe de recherche sur les sociétés plurinationales, in 1994. But what exactly is the Quebec School of Diversity? Our reflection will be guided by a number of sub-questions: Can we legitimately speak of a Quebec “School” of Diversity? If so, in what context did it emerge? What are the institutions that support it? Who does the School gravitate around? What are their main concerns? What path has the Quebec School of Diversity followed? Is it running out of steam or has it managed to renew itself?

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To answer these questions, I will first conduct a critical review of Quebec and Canadian literature on diversity management and federalism. I have also consulted various administrative documents from the Groupe de recherche sur les sociétés plurinationales, including those used to prepare grant applications. To be completely transparent, I would like to point out that I have belonged to the network that is associated with the Quebec “School” of Diversity since 2014, and have attended many scholarly meetings organized by the various research groups concerned. I am therefore familiar with their dynamics. In this chapter, to better situate the debate in Quebec and Canada, we will begin by taking a conceptual detour to describe the main theoretical visions of federalism and their foundations. Next, we will describe the context in which the Quebec School of Diversity came into being. We will then take the time to clarify the notion of “school,” as used in scientific circles, in order to better delineate the group, which proposes a conception of federalism and ideas about how it should be expressed in Quebec. We will then examine in more detail the School’s activities and how they have been carried out, focusing on its network of researchers, their contributions, and the institutions that support them. Lastly, we will look at today’s state of affairs and the Quebec School of Diversity’s current activities.

f o r m s o f f e derali sm a n d t h e o r e t ic a l foundati ons How can we successfully institute a “good” way to live together? This is a question that has been driving the work of many researchers and has led to the development of many theoretical and normative models. There are obviously as many “good” ways of living together as there are theoretical models. Although many authors have sought to reach a level of abstraction high enough for their conclusions to apply to as many contexts as possible, the fact remains that most of these theoretical constructs are derived largely from problems specific to one or only a few societies. Diversity and Deep Diversity Thanks, on the one hand, to the philosophical debates between “liberals” and “communitarians”4 in the second half of the twentieth century and, on the other, from the angle of political life in Quebec and Canada,5 to political philosophers such as Charles Taylor6 and James Tully,7 great strides have been made in clarifying and structuring the terms that make it possible to express nuanced thought on diversity management. To begin with, Taylor and Tully have been instrumental in spreading the merits – on both the conceptual and practical levels – of a clear distinction between “deep diversity” and “first-level” diversity, in other words, the form of diversity that flows from immigration or ethnocultural background.

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It seems essential to integrate this conceptual distinction into reflections on the management of diversity; otherwise, we will be muddying the waters more than clarifying the terms of the debate. Put simply, deep diversity refers to the fact that, in our “complex societies,” there are multiple ways of belonging to a common political undertaking. In other words, even if all citizens of a given sovereign state have the same citizen status, they may see the anchor points for their participation in political life differently. This is particularly typical of “multinational” states, where two or more national communities recognizing themselves as “global societies” coexist, each with its own institutional apparatus. The political forces claiming to belong to “deep diversity,” which are for the most part minority nations and Indigenous peoples, generally mobilize the language of political autonomy and self-determination. On the political level, the main goal of such minorities is basically to fight in order to be recognized and treated as full “partners” within the encompassing political association, or to secede from the association and ultimately establish their own sovereign state. First-level diversity – the one often referred to as “ethnocultural diversity” or “diversity from immigration” – speaks the language of recognition, but it mostly uses the lexical field of non-discrimination.8 The demands put forward by spokespersons for such groups in liberal democracies focus mainly on the integration of their groups into the encompassing society. They put pressure on the state so that the public system will make certain mechanisms, especially institutional mechanisms, available to them to limit the various obstacles to the integration dynamic. Those who claim to belong to deeply diverse groups often demand major institutional and constitutional restructuring of multinational states so that they can become fully emancipated, both culturally and politically.9 Those who claim to be ethnoculturally diverse demand instead that the host society and the state support them and take their differences into account to facilitate their integration process. In a nutshell, while the former aspire to “make society,”10 the latter wish to integrate into one. Forms of Federalism The emergence, unfolding, and renewal of authentic federalist thought in Quebec grew primarily out of a theoretical gap that suggested a clear distinction between the types of claims of the advocates of deep diversity, on the one hand, and those of ethnocultural diversity, on the other. The group we will be referring to as the core of the Quebec School of Diversity in the next section was a pioneer in developing a coherent, reasoned approach to multinational federalism, a model focusing particularly on what augurs in cases of deep diversity. Multinational federalism is one of the possible theoretical variations of federalism,11 but there are of course many. University of Ottawa political

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scientist Dimitrios Karmis12 has charted the possibilities and, without looking at his theory in full detail, we will draw inspiration from it to present briefly, in the following paragraphs, the main characteristics of the most discussed models. The classical theoretical models of federalism – those developed by Kenneth  C.  Wheare, William Livingston, William Riker, Carl Friedrich, Daniel Elazar, Ronald Watts, etc. – agree on the following principles:13 federalism is about promoting a political system that incorporates into its institutional and constitutional structure some self-governance features for the political association’s constituent entities, as well as shared-governance features, to foster some form of solidarity and mutual trust between them. Federalism must also promote respect for regional diversity while recognizing the necessity of ensuring a form of political unity. A federal system of government must therefore be flexible enough to adapt to the political context in which it operates. From this common understanding have emerged a number of theoretical conceptions of federalism, each emphasizing specific features. The most common model in the literature – and, as a corollary, the one that has established itself as the “normal” model in the United States and, to some degree, in Canada – is “territorial”14 federalism. As I have suggested elsewhere, “a territorial federation generally consists of a mononational political community that, to ‘make society’ and in the spirit of effectiveness and efficient governance, divides its territory into various administrative parts responsible for organizing local and regional affairs. Naturally, this leads the territorial federation to develop a conception of federal culture that treats all components of the federation in the same way, under the assumption that more or less substantial exercise of local citizenship will have no significant repercussions on individuals’ actualization and dignity as citizens.”15 This conception of federalism attaches virtually no importance to the distinction between “deep diversity” and “ethnocultural diversity.” Federalism here is not a “model for deep diversity management”; rather, it is intended to optimize the efficiency of governance. “Universalist federalism” is similar in that regard, as it grants “moral superiority [to] common institutions … based on the assumption that [they] have the positive potential to pacify the relations between their constituent units – the federated states – that are mostly driven by particularistic and bellicose tendencies.”16 The central order of government therefore inherits “a dominant role with respect to the federated entities. This form of federalism also tends to promote maximum centralization of constitutional powers. Likewise, its added value consists mainly in distributing political authority over a vast territory so as to optimize political and administrative efficiency. Following this logic, universalist federalism is generally allergic to any form of institutional asymmetry between the federated parties.”17

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“Communitarian” or “dualist” federalism may be seen as the “other side of the coin” of the universalist conception. While it gives moral superiority to federated entities rather than to the central government, it “comes close to a confederal vision, in that the components prevail or take precedence over the whole. Proponents of communitarian federalism are also very comfortable with the possibility that the structure of federal institutions could be asymmetrical if that would favour the sustainability of one or more of the political association’s constituent communities.”18 Lastly, there is a family of theories that we can situate on the continuum of “pluralist” conceptions of federalism. Essentially orbiting the multinational and plurinational spheres, these models are intended to break with any “monistic conception of culture and identity that dominates modernity. In contrast with the idea that ‘a culture is separate, bounded and internally uniform,’ pluralist federalism is based on ‘the view of cultures as overlapping, interactive and internally negotiated,’”19 Multinational federalism appears to be the most appropriate model for managing diversity in “political societies composed of many national communities that nonetheless wish to share a common destiny. However, the common or shared destiny must be balanced with the requirement to accommodate the diverse national communities, and first and foremost those that are indeed minorities, so that they can develop a satisfactory level of political autonomy.”20 Plurinational federalism emphasizes the need to deconstruct the idea that nations are stable, unified political bodies in terms of identity.21 Instead, it agrees with the thesis that every individual is the bearer of multiple identities that are not always “in the shadow” of the national identity. The plurinational form of federalism therefore tends to “denationalize” the debate on deep diversity management and focus it instead on constantly changing local and regional identities. Forms of Federalism in the Quebec-Canada Context The First and Second World Wars, the two deadliest conflicts of the twentieth century, caused major political trauma both in Quebec and in Canada. Military conscription brought back memories of the Boer War at the end of the nineteenth century, and created a rift between English Canadians, who accepted enlistment in the army much more voluntarily to defend Great Britain, and French Canadians – with the province of Quebec carrying more and more weight on the political and cultural levels. Moreover, the war efforts contributed significantly to centralizing Canada’s institutional and political system, to the detriment of strict distribution of powers deriving from the British North America Act, known today as the Constitution Act, 1867. In the interwar period, Prime Minister Richard Bedford Bennett’s “New Deal” was a defining moment in the centralizing process. However,

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“defederalization” – in other words, institutional centralization – was halted for a time after the Liberals, under William Lyon Mackenzie King, returned to power in 1935. Soon after, Mackenzie King (Wilfrid Laurier’s political successor) established the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations (1937– 40), commonly referred to as the Rowell-Sirois Commission. The Commission played a key role in shaping a mainstream conception of federalism, which was found mostly outside Quebec. As political scientist James Mallory22 has suggested, this “federalism of urgency” focused mainly on improving the efficiency of governance while also serving the interests of the Canadian nation. Federalism had to be pragmatic, just as British wisdom would have taught. However, Bennett’s New Deal, the report of the Rowell-Sirois Commission, and the 1942 conscription crisis all contributed to the construction of a Francophone counternarrative on federalism. One of the first significant expressions of that narrative was in the work of the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Constitutional Problems (1953–56), or Tremblay Commission, set up by the Quebec government. In the context of the increased government revenues from personal income tax and with a view to the federal grants for universities, the Tremblay Commission was, in some ways, the province’s response to the federal report signed by Rowell and Sirois.23 Federalism, as promoted by the Tremblay Commission, clearly had a communitarian and a dualist colour.24 This was the beginning of a long battle in which the Quebec government would oppose the central government. The purpose of Quebec’s opposition was not only to allow the province to fully exercise its constitutional prerogatives, but also to claim other powers, so as to have better control over its political existence and future.25 In the decade that followed, when Quebec was in the midst of the Quiet Revolution, a new narrative was constructed to reimagine Canadian federalism. André Laurendeau, the intellectual heir to Henri Bourassa and ultimate incarnation of a committed intellectual, inspired the hope that Canada’s constitutional architecture could be redesigned so that the two founding peoples of the federation would enjoy real equality of opportunity in North America.26 He and Davidson Dunton co-chaired the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, and his “blue pages” in the Commission’s 1965 Preliminary Report (1963–71) were to mark the imaginaries of both Quebecers and a considerable number of their fellow English Canadians. More than ever before in its history, the Canadian political association seemed mature enough to recognize that it was formally made up of two founding peoples, two nations with “global societies” and that it needed to preserve this deep diversity.27 Moreover, in the late 1970s, the work of the Task Force on Canadian Unity, led by Jean-Luc Pepin and John Robarts, echoed some of the ideas promoted by Laurendeau and Dunton.28 André Laurendeau’s untimely death, in 1968, took the wind out of the movement’s sails, and it also paved the way for a new narrative, popularized by Pierre Elliott Trudeau. The “Trudeauist vision”29 can be summarized as follows: the

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Canadian federation is a single multicultural society upon a backdrop of institutional bilingualism. Add to this picture the fact that “Trudeau the Elder” had developed deep disdain for nationalism, particularly Quebec nationalism, which he systematically associated with backward French-Canadian ethnonationalism. Paradoxically, this is the man who became one of the greatest thinkers on and advocates for Canadian nationalism. He wrote: “One way of offsetting the appeal of separatism is by investing tremendous amounts of time, energy, and money in nationalism, at the federal level … Resources must be diverted into such things as national flags, anthems, education, arts councils, broadcasting corporations, film boards; the territory must be bound together by a network of railways, highways, airlines; the national culture and the national economy must be protected by taxes and tariffs; ownership of resources and industry by nationals must be made a matter of policy.”30 The Trudeauist vision was to have a profound and lasting impact on the Canadian federation’s institutional and constitutional structure with the coup de force orchestrated by Trudeau in 1981–82, when the Canadian Constitution was patriated from London and a new, complex amendment procedure, and a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, were enshrined. According to this vision, which we can situate on the continuum of territorial federalism, all the provinces must be considered strictly equal with respect to one another, and the institutional network must be scrupulously symmetrical for all the federated entities. The patriation of the Constitution and advent of “Canada 1982” created a toxic environment that hindered the full development and emancipation of deep diversity in Canada, because the “monolithic liberalism”31 it ran on focused all its energies on recognition of ethnocultural diversity through the consolidation of a Canadian multiculturalism policy. Although, for Guy Laforest, the 1982 patriation represented “the end of a Canadian dream,” it obviously did not mark the “end of [Canada’s] history.” In the years that followed, Brian Mulroney’s Conservatives would work hard to bring Quebec back into the bosom of the Canadian family, seeking a compromise that would allow the province to endorse the Constitution “with honour and enthusiasm” – in the words chosen by Lucien Bouchard, Mulroney’s speechwriter at the time. It is really in that context that the Quebec School of Diversity took shape and its members developed an authentic form of federalist thinking that was sensitive to deep diversity.

t h e e m e r g e n c e o f the quebec s c h o o l o f d iv ers i ty The Meech Lake (1987–90) and Charlottetown (1992) constitutional rounds were the scenes of particularly exciting political debates for political scientists, legal scholars, historians, and political philosophers. Questions were raised as to how legitimate and advisable it would be for Quebec to rejoin the post-

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1982 Canadian constitutional family. Of course, the procedure for amending the Constitution was also a core issue. This would lead a cohort of intellectuals to join forces: the “Meech generation.” We will come back to this. A Quebec “School” of Diversity? In intellectual and academic circles, it is not uncommon to hear of “schools” – for instance, the Chicago School, the Frankfurt School or, closer to home, the Montreal School of History, and even the “Quebec School of History,” as François-Olivier Dorais puts it in his essay in this collection. But what exactly is a “school”? For a clear picture of what a “school” is, we will draw inspiration from work by David Sanschagrin,32 Christian Topalov,33 Robert Pudal,34 and Frédéric Boily, Natalie Boisvert, and Nathalie Kermoal.35 First, Topalov explains that “asserting the existence of a ‘school’ is one of the usual approaches in the development of scientific traditions, [and] the sets of references and examples, which are the tools scholars use, bring them together into organized, coherent groups and strengthen their legitimacy by providing them with ‘classics.’”36 Topalov goes on to suggest that the purpose of such schools is to “consolidate or reorganize a disciplinary field or specialty in such a way as to give scholarly competition a meaning that symbolically supports the positions of those who initiated the action.”37 Based on that, we can establish four criteria that should preside over a definition of a school of thought. First, a school is powered by the presence of an especially prominent thinker, who provides an overall structure or impetus for the action and reflection to be undertaken. This is the requirement that there be “an intellectual with the stature of a school founder.”38 Second, the intellectuals and professors driving and energizing the group must actually work together and belong to the same institutional and organizational structure, a structure “through which they can publicize their thinking.”39 Third, the members must “claim to draw inspiration from the same intellectual influences.”40 Fourth, “the intellectuals in question must share a certain set of ideas … [thereby making] it possible to identify the group as a ‘school.’”41 As we will see in greater detail over the next few pages, the Quebec School of Diversity meets all four criteria. In short, political scientist Alain-G. Gagnon has played a key role in structuring and developing the School’s activities by managing the institutional network that would ensure its intellectual vitality. The creation of the Groupe de recherche sur les sociétés plurinationales (grsp ), in 1994, was pivotal in that respect. The following sections will make it clear that the members of the Quebec School of Diversity share the same intellectual influences and that their respective work contributes to their mutual progress in interpreting the Canadian

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federation’s trajectory and suggesting promising approaches for the future. That being said, a “school” is not a “church” and, while the members share some ideas, they still disagree on many others. The “Meech Generation” and the Creation of the GRSP The “Meech generation” is political scientist Guy Laforest’s favorite way to describe the intellectual renewal in Quebec at the time of the Meech Lake Accord (1987–90). According to Laforest, “it should be remembered that the Meech Lake Accord was the finest effort in a decade to redress the injustice done to Quebec and to have done with the question of the legitimacy of institutions.”42 We can see why the Accord generated great excitement and gave new hope to intellectuals and, more broadly, to the populations of Quebec and Canada. Though it could be expected that ratification of the Accord by all of Canada’s legislative assemblies and its implementation would significantly improve the way people live together and how deep diversity is managed in Canada, the reverse was also to be expected.43 The Accord’s failure on 23 June 1990, followed a few months later by the rejection of the Charlottetown Accord in the referendum of 26 October 1992, considerably tempered enthusiasm. More than ever, the options for a renewed post-1982 Canadian federation in which the legitimate claims of the peoples belonging to deep diversity would be truly considered seemed to have reached an impasse. In Quebec, many criticized the intellectuals and civil society in English Canada for abandoning Quebec, for having fallen under the spell of the Trudeauist vision, which climaxed with the 1982  patriation of the Constitution and the enshrinement in it of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. At the same time, a significant number of Quebecers felt that too much consideration had been given to the claims of Indigenous peoples – to the detriment of the conditions put forward by Quebec – especially during the negotiations on the proposed Charlottetown Accord.44 It is important to keep in mind that the acute tensions between the Quebec majority society and the Indigenous peoples, which had exploded with the Oka Crisis in 1990, were still very palpable. It is precisely against that background that the first institutionalization dynamics of what would later become the Quebec School of Diversity began to take shape, in particular with the Groupe de recherche sur les institutions et la citoyenneté (gric ), put together in 1991–92. The group came into being as a result of Daniel Turp and Alain-G. Gagnon’s efforts mainly, but other intellectuals also revolved around it, such as Claude Bariteau, Yolande Cohen, Guy Laforest, Daniel Latouche, Roméo Saganash, JacquesYvan Morin, Daniel Salée, Alain Noël, François Rocher, Gary Caldwell, and José Woehrling.

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In Le Devoir and La Presse, members of the gric collectively published a series of articles outlining a vision for the common good. These included articles with evocative titles  such as “Le pacte de la langue,”45 “D’égal à égal: Nous devons refaire notre réflexion sur la nature des relations à établir avec les peuples autochtones,”46 “Pour un Quebec concurrentiel et solidaire: Jalons d’un nouveau pacte social,”47 and “Les défis pour l’avenir.”48 The gric’s dynamism also led to the publication of a collective work on the 1992 referendum.49 Alongside these activities, many of the gric ’s members were mobilized – as individuals, not as members of the group – by Groupe Réflexion Quebec to participate in the writing of a manifesto intended to break the constitutional deadlock. This document would eventually form the basis of a political platform for Action démocratique du Quebec.50 At Jean Allaire and Mario Dumont’s instigation, Groupe Réflexion Quebec then took the path of active politics. As a result, some of the intellectuals who belonged to the gric and had agreed to work with Groupe Réflexion Quebec for a time decided to reorganize and focus strictly on the academic aspects. And this is how the grsp saw the light of day. The Quebec School of Diversity’s Institutionalization and Normative Sources Funded without interruption, since 1994, by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (sshrc ) and the Fonds de recherche du Quebec – Société et culture, the grsp quickly developed and initiated a series of major projects on the Quebec academic scene. Focusing on themes such as lessons for Canada from federal and non-federal states from 1993 to 1996, and nationalism and communitarian pluralism with respect to political management of diversity from 1995 to 1998, the group actively mobilized the energies of Alain-G. Gagnon, Guy Laforest, James Tully, François Rocher, and Dominique Arel. Gagnon, Laforest, Tully, and Rocher were the true intellectual roots from which the Quebec School of Diversity would grow and establish itself. Along with Daniel Turp, Gagnon was the “backbone” of the gric . He was instrumental in structuring the grsp and the organizations in orbit around it – especially the Canada Research Chair in Quebec and Canadian Studies (Chaire de recherche du Canada en études québécoises et canadiennes, or creqc ) and the Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur la diversité et la démocratie (cridaq ), both founded in 2003. Together, the grsp , cridaq, and creqc form the institutional core of the Quebec School of Diversity. Although these three university centres gradually came to have their institutional seats at the Université du Québec à Montréal, the School has affiliates in most Quebec universities and even in some universities outside the province.

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Major publications were soon to be produced, such as Alain-G. Gagnon’s Quebec: State and Society,51 James Tully’s Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity,52 and Gagnon and Michael Burgess’s Comparative Federalism and Federation: Competing Traditions and Future Directions.53 A few years later came another notable publication: Multinational Democracies,54 a collective work edited by Gagnon and Tully. These works significantly contributed to the development of the School as they provided a theoretical framework and analytical tools that would be used by a whole generation of researchers to better understand the evolution of the Canadian federation and better define their normative proposals for equitable treatment of deep diversity. The works also went deeper into certain matters that the gric had already addressed in its collective publications, such as imagining the conditions for a Canadian federation that would be just and equitable with respect to Quebec, finding common ground for making or renewing a “pact” between the French-speaking majority and the English-speaking minority in Quebec, and with the Indigenous peoples, reflecting on the various levers for achieving social justice worthy of the name, promoting the French fact, and using it as a driving force for the integration of newcomers to Quebec, etc.

a de v e l o p in g q u e b e c s c h ool of di vers i ty With sixteen permanent members today, the grsp is continuously working to renew and swell its ranks. Although not all have contributed equally to the foundation and activities of the Quebec School of Diversity, the following group comprises its intellectual core: Antoine Bilodeau, Eugénie Brouillet, Alain-G. Gagnon, Dimitrios Karmis, Guy Laforest, André Lecours, Dominique Leydet, Jocelyn Maclure, Félix Mathieu, Geneviève Motard, Geneviève Nootens, Martin Papillon, Johanne Poirier, François Rocher, James Tully, and José Woehrling. While Gagnon, Laforest, Tully, and Rocher can be described as the first wave of intellectuals involved in defining the School’s spirit, with Woehrling joining the group shortly after, there was, in the 2000s, a second wave that brought in a new “generation,” with Brouillet, Karmis, Lecours, and Nootens. Over the last decade, still in a spirit of not only renewing but also expanding its research activities, the grsp has integrated Bilodeau, Leydet, Maclure, Motard, Papillon, and Poirier. Félix Mathieu (the author of this chapter) is the newest addition to the group, having joined in 2022. The Motivations for Founding a School According to political scientist François Rocher, English-Canadian literature on federalism is generally in some degree of continuity with “the argumentation advanced by the Rowell–Sirois Commission.”55 He notes that

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“the dominant understanding of the English-language literature on federalism pays no heed to the notion of autonomy but emphasizes the notion of efficiency.”56 Yet, “the interpretation of the federal regime within EnglishCanadian literature emphasizes the transition from a highly centralized system, in which the general government could intervene in provincial jurisdiction using declaratory powers of reservation and disallowance, to one of the most decentralized federations in the world. The narrative is generally the following: The recourse to unitary mechanisms has diminished over time to the point where the power of disallowance has not been exercised since 1943 … Therefore, the authority of the provinces was confirmed and their subordination to the general government was reduced.”57 As we saw in the first section of this chapter, this reading of the Canadian federation’s sociopolitical trajectory is at odds with the interpretation that has prevailed in Quebec since at least the Tremblay Commission in the 1950s. Moreover, there was a considerable period of time when Quebec French-speaking researchers were rarely invited to present their work among English-speaking circles specializing in federalism, and they were almost never quoted.58 Considering the Meech Lake and Charlottetown constitutional negotiation rounds, the gric ’s first steps, and the participation of some of its members in the Groupe Réflexion Quebec’s work, this lack of recognition of Quebec’s French-speaking researchers in English-speaking academic circles clearly encouraged Alain-G. Gagnon and his colleagues to put in place an organizational and institutional structure for promoting and furthering Quebec studies on federalism and deep diversity management. The creation of the grsp , in 1994, was a pivotal moment for the Quebec School of Diversity. It in fact created the perfect conditions for Quebec intellectuals to “found a school” to establish authentic federalist thinking that would be sensitive to the demands of the advocates of deep diversity. The School’s Research Projects and Publications Since the early 2000s, the grsp has piloted and carried out no fewer than five major projects, all financed by funding agencies. Most of them have taken the form of symposiums or scholarly meetings followed by the publication of a collective work, and they have generally been inspired by more or less formal discussions among grsp members. These discussions have gradually become more structured as the members have begun to organize annual meetings systematically to take stock of past projects and define future undertakings. In the space of eighteen years (2000–18), the grsp published thirty-eight collective works – some of which are translations of the French or English original – as part of the following research projects: “Justice and Stability: A Theoretical and Comparative Analysis of Canada, Belgium, Spain, and the

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United Kingdom” (1999–2002); “A Theoretical and Comparative Analysis of Canada, Belgium, Spain, and the United Kingdom” (2000–04); “Majority Nationalism and Cultural Diversity: The Institutional, Cultural, and Legal Dimensions” (part  1: 2003–06; part  2: 2005–09); “Trust, Distrust, and Mistrust in Multinational Democracies” (part  1: 2007–10; part  2: 2011– 15); and “Constitutional Politics in Multinational Democracies: Claims, Conflicts, and Debates” (part 1: 2014–17; part 2: 2016–20).59 These projects allowed grsp members to work with researchers from other backgrounds, both in Canada and abroad. As researchers took part in the organization of symposiums and the production of collective works, partnerships were created with many different research centres and institutes, such as the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations (Queen’s University), the Institute for Research on Public Policy (Montreal), the Institute for Comparative Federalism (eurac Research, Bolzano, Italy), the Institut d’Estudis de l’Autogovern (Government of Catalonia), the Centre on Constitutional Change (University of Edinburgh), and the Grupo de Investigación sobre el Derecho y la Justicia (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid). Alongside these projects, grsp researchers have collaborated regularly in the writing of scientific articles. In particular, each member’s individual research output has marked the social sciences both in Quebec and in Canada, especially with respect to federalism and deep diversity management. It is worth highlighting the following works for their objective contributions to the literature: La négation de la nation: L’identité culturelle québécoise et le fédéralisme canadien,60 Federalism, Citizenship, and Quebec: Debating Multinationalism,61 La Raison du plus fort: Plaidoyer pour le fédéralisme multinational,62 Minority Nations in the Age of Uncertainty: New Paths to National Emancipation and Empowerment,63 Trudeau and the End of a Canadian Dream,64 Interpreting Quebec’s Exile Within the Federation,65 Basque Nationalism and the Spanish State,66 Quebec Identity: The Challenge of Pluralism,67 Retrouver la raison: Essais de philosophie publique,68 Désenclaver la démocratie: Des huguenots à la paix des Braves,69 La  souveraineté populaire en Occident: Communautés politiques, contestation et idées,70 and Public Philosophy in a New Key (volumes 1 and 2).71 Many of these works (both collective and individual) were published in collections edited by Gagnon or other grsp members. For example, twentyseven books have been published in Québec Amérique’s “Débats” series, since Gagnon became its editor in 1995. Numerous contributions have appeared in book series under Gagnon’s editorship, series such as “Diversitas” (Peter Lang Publishing), “Politeia” (Les Presses de l’Université du Québec), “Diversité et démocratie” (Les Presses de l’Université Laval), and “Trajectoires” (Boréal). The Quebec School of Diversity’s work has also been showcased in collections with other regular grsp members as editors, such as the Presses de l’Université Laval’s book series “Prisme,” edited by Guy Laforest. More recently, under the

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leadership of Alain-G. Gagnon and in association with the cap-cf , a new series, “Études fédérales et constitutionnelles,” was created in 2022 with the Presses de l’Université Laval.

c o n c l u s i on The title of the symposium at which I was invited to present my reflections was “Histoire de la pensée fédéraliste contemporaine au Québec: Émergence, déploiement, essoufflement (1960 à aujourd’hui).” Given that the nationalist movements and indépendantiste forces in Quebec have been running out of steam since the 1995 referendum,72 one would be right to think that their main opponent – the proponents of federalism – has met the same fate. In some ways, this is not completely false. Under the leadership of Jean Charest, from 2003 to 2012, and Philippe Couillard, from 2013 to 2014, the Quebec Liberal Party – the main political vehicle for federalism in Quebec – often played the status quo card, claiming that the “constitutional fruit was not ripe,” as Charest put it. Yet, we have to recognize Mario  Dumont’s great efforts, as Action démocratique du Quebec leader, to promote a vision reconciling autonomist nationalism with profitable federalism, as Frédéric Boily shows in this book. In Boily’s eyes, although Coalition avenir Québec has more or less taken over that discourse, François Legault’s now nationalist, now federalist flights of oratory have not really convinced anyone that they are authentic. At best, we can concede that Coalition avenir Québec has helped to break down the sacrosanct wall between independence and federalism. In academic research, however, it seems to me that the last few years have been fairly rich in terms of renewed authentic federalist thinking in Quebec. In particular, the discourse has been in harmony with defending the province’s distinctiveness within the Canadian federation, that is, in harmony with a fundamentally multinational conception of federalism that is sensitive to the advocates of diversity’s legitimate claims. We should note that the grsp was one of the three finalists for the 2018 sshrc Insight Award,73 which shows the impact of the organization’s work, not only within the academic community but also in society at large. The grsp was also a finalist for the Insight Award in 2014 and 2015. Moreover, on 1 June 2017, the government of Quebec unveiled its Policy on Quebec Affirmation and Canadian Relations, which clearly promotes a pluralist and asymmetrical conception of federalism for the full development and emancipation of all partners in the Canadian political association. As I have shown elsewhere, the grsp has had considerable influence upon how the government has defined its vision of renewed Canadian federalism: “Just over one time out of three – that is, fifty-three times out of 152 – when the government of Quebec has mobilized academic work to support its position, it has chosen work on which grsp members have collaborated.

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This, in addition to the lexical field used by the government of Quebec to express its vision – for example, the key phrase ‘to put an end to the internal exile of Quebecers’ – shows the Groupe de recherche sur les sociétés plurinationales’s great influence on Minister  Fournier and the Secrétariat aux affaires intergouvernementales canadiennes, which has since been renamed Secrétariat du Québec aux relations canadiennes.”74 As mentioned in the introduction, a new university research centre for the advancement of knowledge on federalism and constitutionalism (the cap-cf) came into being at the Université du Québec à Montréal, in April 2018. In partnership with the grsp , the cridaq , and the creqc , the new centre has already collaborated in several scholarly meetings on themes dear to the Quebec School of Diversity: “Reimagining Canada: From a Binational to a Multinational State” (University of Ottawa, May 2018), “Federalism, Democracy, and National Diversity in the 21st  Century” (Université du Québec à Montréal, October 2018), and the symposium that preceded the publication of this very collection: “Histoire de la pensée fédéraliste contemporaine au Québec: Émergence, déploiement, essoufflement (1960 à aujourd’hui)” (Université du Québec à Montréal, November 2018). Lastly, although we have only touched on it in this chapter, it is worth pointing out that the Quebec School of Diversity is increasingly being recognized worldwide as a leading centre for research on federalism and deep diversity management. In addition to organizing, in collaboration with other research centres, international summer schools on themes with which the School members are concerned – where the achievements of French-speaking Quebec researchers are often discussed – the institutional network of the Quebec School of Diversity holds a prominent place in the International Association of Centers for Federal Study (iacfs ), with Alain-G. Gagnon serving as the association’s vice president since 2016. However, this relative success in the academic arena should not blind us to the fact that the Quebec School of Diversity’s ideas face a serious struggle to gain ground and penetrate the expectation barrier of citizens and organized groups in civil society, both in Quebec and in Canada. With that in mind, if we turn our attention to contemporary public debates, the editors of this collection are quite right in saying that federalist thinking is running out of steam. Those who have driven political life in Quebec and Canada over the past two decades have gradually abandoned constitutional debates on renewed Canadian federalism. This means that the younger generations, in particular, have been politicized in a context where these issues are never discussed and where issues such as climate change, tuition fees, secularism, and the like dominate the scene. In order to prevent the Quebec School of Diversity from running out of steam too, its representatives will have to work hard – and perhaps their successors even more so – to translate their reflections into a language that resonates in debates in civil society.

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In that respect, one of the Quebec School of Diversity’s main priorities in the near future should be to take a more serious look at shared governance in multinational federations. Although, in their publications, the School members have often stressed the need for autonomy of all partners within the political association – in order for each of the constituent entities to have the institutional anchoring necessary to ensure its sustainability as a single political community within the Canadian federation – they sometimes appear to overlook the dynamics that could foster greater cooperation among the various orders of government. If they want their ideas to reflect a federal ideal, and not merely an ideal of autonomy for the federating partners, they will have to invest new energy in the latter dimension, that is, the distribution of powers, which is at the heart of the theory of federalism. notes 1 Since the publication of the original, French version of this chapter, the author has become a regular member of the cap-cf . 2 See: Alain-G. Gagnon, “Une école québécoise du fédéralisme,” Le Devoir, 25 September 2015, https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/idees/450932/ une-ecole-quebecoise-du-federalisme. 3 Hélène Roulot-Ganzmann, “Il existe une école québécoise de la diversité,” Le Devoir, 19 September 2015, https://www.ledevoir.com/politique/ canada/450135/ multinationalisme-canadien-il-existe-une-ecole-quebecoise-de-la-diversite. 4 See: Will Kymlicka, “Liberalism and Communitarianism,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 18, no. 2 (1988): 181–203. 5 See: Kenneth McRoberts, Un pays à refaire: L’échec des politiques constitutionnelles canadiennes (Montreal: Boréal, 1999). 6 Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition”: An Essay, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton, nj : Princeton University Press, 1992), 25–74; Charles Taylor, Reconciling the Solitudes: Essays on Canadian Federalism and Nationalism (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993); Charles Taylor, Multiculturalisme: Différence et démocratie (Paris: Flammarion, 1994). 7 James Tully, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (Cambridge, uk : Cambridge University Press, 1995); James Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key, vols 1–2 (Cambridge, uk : Cambridge University Press, 1997). 8 See: Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, nj : Princeton University Press, 2011). 9 Alain-G. Gagnon, Minority Nations in the Age of Uncertainty: New Paths to National Emancipation and Empowerment (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014).

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10 See: Joseph Yvon Thériault, Faire société: Société civile et espaces francophones (Sudbury, on : Prise de parole, 2007). 11 See the project “Cinquante déclinaisons de fédéralisme: Théorie, enjeux et études de cas,” at: https://capcf.uqam.ca/50declinaisons. 12 Dimitrios Karmis, “The Multiple Voices of the Federal Tradition and the Turmoil of Canadian Federalism,” in Contemporary Canadian Federalism: Foundations, Traditions, Institutions, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 53–75. 13 See: Michael Burgess, In Search of the Federal Spirit: New Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 14 Will Kymlicka, La voie canadienne: Repenser le multiculturalisme (Montreal: Boréal, 2003). 15 Félix Mathieu, Taking Pluralism Seriously: Complex Societies under Scrutiny, trans. Mary Baker (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020), 122–3. 16 Karmis, “Multiple Voices,” 56. 17 Gustavo Gabriel Santafé and Félix Mathieu, “Les récits du fédéralisme au Parti libéral du Québec,” in Ré-imaginer le Canada: Vers un État multinational?, ed. Félix Mathieu and Dave Guénette (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2019), 69. (Translated from the French. Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations of French texts are by the translators of this volume.) 18 Ibid., 69–70 (translation). 19 Karmis, “Multiple Voices,” 67. 20 Mathieu, Taking Pluralism Seriously, 124. 21 See: Michael Keating, Plurinational Democracy: Stateless Nations in a PostSovereignty Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 22 James Mallory, “Five Faces of Canadian Federalism,” in The Future of Canadian Federalism, ed. Paul-André Crépeau and C.B. Macpherson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965), 3–15. See also: Xavier Dionne and Alain-G. Gagnon, “L’évolution des relations fédérales-provinciales au Canada,” in La politique québécoise et canadienne: Acteurs, institutions, sociétés, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon and David Sanschagrin (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2017), 241–61. 23 See the thematic dossier “La commission Tremblay (1953–1956),” Bulletin d’histoire politique 16, no. 1 (2007). 24 Karmis, “Multiple Voices,” 77. 25 See: Dionne and Gagnon, “L’évolution des relations,” 249. 26 See: Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon, Panser le Canada: Une histoire intellectuelle de la commission Laurendeau-Dunton (Montreal: Boréal, 2018). 27 McRoberts, Un pays à refaire, 10. 28 Alain-G. Gagnon and Daniel Latouche, Allaire, Bélanger, Campeau et les autres: Les Québécois s’interrogent sur leur avenir (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 1991), 64–5.

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29 See: Guy Laforest, Trudeau and the End of a Canadian Dream, trans. Paul Leduc Browne and Michelle Weinroth (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995). 30 Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Federalism and the French Canadians (Toronto: Macmillan, 1968), 193. 31 Laforest, Trudeau and the End, 176. 32 David Sanschagrin, Les juges contre le Parlement? La conscience politique de l’Ouest et la contre-révolution des droits au Canada (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2015), 34–5. 33 Christian Topalov, “Écrire l’histoire des sociologues de Chicago,” Genèses 2, no. 51 (2003): 147–59. 34 Robert Pudal, “‘Sur la réification des collectifs’: À propos de l’École de Chicago,” Cahiers internationaux de sociologie 2, no. 119 (2005): 367–76. 35 Frédéric Boily, Natalie Boisvert, and Nathalie Kermoal, “Portrait intellectuel de l’école de Calgary: Définition et influence,” International Journal of Canadian Studies 32 (2005): 175–203. 36 Topalov, “Écrire l’histoire,” 127 (translation). 37 Ibid., 127–8 (translation). 38 Frédéric Boily, “Le néoconservatisme au Canada: Faut-il craindre l’École de Calgary?”, in Stephen Harper: De l’École de Calgary au Parti conservateur, ed. Frédéric Boily (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2007), 32 (translation). 39 Sanschagrin, Les juges contre, 35 (translation). 40 Ibid. (translation). 41 Ibid. (translation). 42 Laforest, Trudeau and the End, 46. 43 See: Guy Laforest, Pour la liberté d’une société distincte: Parcours d’un intellectuel engagé (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2004), 325ff. 44 Daniel Salée, “L’évolution des rapports politiques entre la société québécoise et les peuples autochtones depuis la crise d’Oka,” in Les Autochtones et le Québec: Des premiers contacts au Plan Nord, ed. Alain Beaulieu, Stéphan Gervais, and Martin Papillon (Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2013), 323–42. 45 gric , “Le pacte de la langue,” Le Devoir, 24 April 1993. 46 gric , “D’égal à égal: Nous devons refaire notre réflexion sur la nature des relations à établir avec les peuples autochtones,” Le Devoir, 28 March 1994. 47 gric , “Pour un Québec concurrentiel et solidaire: Jalons d’un nouveau pacte social,” La Presse, 23 August 1994. 48 gric , “Les défis pour l’avenir,” Le Devoir, 24 August 1994. 49 Claude Bariteau et al., Référendum, 26 octobre 1992: Les objections de 20 spécialistes aux offres fédérales (Montreal: Les éditions Saint-Martin, 1992).

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50 On this matter, see Frédéric Boily’s chapter in this collection. 51 Alain-G. Gagnon, ed., Québec: State and Society (Peterborough, on : Broadview Press, 2003). According to Google Scholar, this collection has been cited 137 times (taking into account both the French and the English versions). 52 Tully, Strange Multiplicity. According to Google Scholar, this work has been cited 2,510 times (taking into account both the French and the English versions). 53 Michael Burgess and Alain-G. Gagnon, eds, Comparative Federalism and Federation: Competing Traditions and Future Directions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993). According to Google Scholar, this work has been cited 220 times. 54 Alain-G. Gagnon and James Tully, eds, Multinational Democracies (Cambridge, uk : Cambridge University Press, 2011). According to Google Scholar, this work has been cited 344 times. 55 François Rocher, “The Québec-Canada Dynamic or the Negation of the Ideal of Federalism,” in Gagnon, ed., Contemporary Canadian Federalism, 98. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., 110. 58 For the current debates on the question, see: François Rocher and Daniel Stockemer, “Langue de publication des politologues francophones du Canada,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 50, no. 1 (2017): 97–120; Jean-François Godbout, “Les cinquante ans de la Revue canadienne de science politique: Le bilinguisme en déclin?”, Canadian Journal of Political Science 50, no. 1 (2017): 3–11; Linda Cardinal and André Bernier, “La gouvernance francophone de la Revue canadienne de science politique et la diffusion des connaissances en français, de 1968 à 2015,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 50, no. 1 (2017): 57–76. 59 For a detailed breakdown of all these collections, see: “Arborescence programmatique du grsp : Projets s’étalant de 1993 à 2020,” accessed 15 September 2018, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327041326. 60 Eugénie Brouillet, La négation de la nation: L’identité culturelle québécoise et le fédéralisme canadien (Quebec City: Septentrion, 2005). According to Google Scholar, this work has been cited seventy-six times. 61 Alain-G. Gagnon and Raffaele Iacovino, Federalism, Citizenship, and Québec: Debating Multinationalism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007). According to Google Scholar, this work has been cited 178 times (taking into account both the French and the English versions). 62 Alain-G. Gagnon, La Raison du plus fort: Plaidoyer pour le fédéralisme multinational (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 2008). According to Google Scholar, this work has been cited eighty-two times (taking into account both the French and the English versions). 63 Gagnon, Minority Nations. According to Google Scholar, this work has been cited thirty-nine times (taking into account both the French and the English versions). Note that it is now available in approximately twenty languages.

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64 Laforest, Trudeau and the End. According to Google Scholar, this work has been cited 253 times (taking into account both the French and the English versions). 65 Guy Laforest, Interpreting Québec’s Exile Within the Federation: Selected Political Essays, Diversitas 20 (Brussels: P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2014). According to Google Scholar, this work has been cited twenty-one times (taking into account both the French and the English versions). 66 André Lecours, Basque Nationalism and the Spanish State (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2007). According to Google Scholar, this work has been cited ninety-two times. 67 Jocelyn Maclure, Québec Identity: The Challenge of Pluralism (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003). According to Google Scholar, this work has been cited 193 times (taking into account both the French and the English versions). 68 Jocelyn Maclure, Retrouver la raison: Essais de philosophie publique (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 2016). According to Google Scholar, this work has been cited fifty-one times. 69 Geneviève Nootens, Désenclaver la démocratie: Des huguenots à la paix des Braves (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 2004). According to Google Scholar, this work has been cited five times (taking into account both the French and the English versions). 70 Geneviève Nootens, La souveraineté populaire en Occident: Communautés politiques, contestation et idées (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2017). According to Google Scholar, this work has been cited two times (taking into account both the French and the English versions). 71 Tully, Public Philosophy. According to Google Scholar, this work has been cited 514 times. 72 Simon Langlois, “Évolution et suites du référendum de 1995,” in La démocratie référendaire dans les ensembles plurinationaux, ed. Amélie Binette and Patrick Taillon (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2018), 55–84. 73 “The Insight Award recognizes outstanding achievement arising from a single or multiple sshrc -funded initiatives. It is given to an individual or a team … whose initiative(s) have significantly contributed to knowledge and understanding about people, societies and the world. The research outcomes must have led to demonstrable impact within the nominee’s fields of research and/or beyond the social sciences and humanities research community.” “Insight Award,” sshrc , accessed 21 July 2021, https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/ funding-financement/programs-programmes/impact_awards-prix_impacts-eng. aspx#insight-savoir. 74 Félix Mathieu, “Prêt, pas prêt, on y va? Affirmation du Québec et mûrissement du fruit constitutionnel au Canada,” in La révision constitutionnelle dans tous ses états: Expériences belges, canadiennes et européennes comparées, ed. Marc Verdussen, Patrick Taillon, and Dave Guénette (Montreal: Éditions Yvon Blais/Anthemis, 2020) (translation).

part five

Legal Considerations in Federalist Thought

15 Federalism and Canadian Foreign Policy: The Conception of the Gérin-Lajoie Doctrine Stéphane Paquin

International relations have long been marked by the presence of independent political communities seeking to protect their sovereignty against interference by foreign powers. As early as 1648, the Peace of Westphalia prohibited European monarchs from interfering in the internal affairs of other states, particularly in religious conflicts, which were at the root of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48). Sovereignty lay in the ability of a government to make decisions without foreign interference.1 Over the centuries, the legal attributes of sovereignty have become more specific. Under international law, sovereign states have four fundamental rights: (1) jus belli, the right to declare war, (2) jus legationis, the right to send and receive diplomatic missions, (3) the right of access to justice, that is, the right to have access to international courts of law, and (4) jus tractatuum, the right to conclude treaties with other sovereign powers. These legal and political rights are those of a sovereign country that controls a defined territory and in which a government exercises supreme authority over a population. These rights are designed to be indivisible, as is the principle of sovereignty. Paradoxically, at the very time when the principle of sovereignty was established as a system internationally (the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries), states relying explicitly on the “divisibility” of sovereignty were created: federations. In federal systems, the central government and the federated states are, at least in theory, sovereign in their areas of jurisdiction. Federalism is therefore based on sovereignty’s divisibility and, as such, is difficult to reconcile with the principle of sovereignty. In a federal system, sovereignty can be exercised in the same territory and over the same population by two or more sources of political power. Therefore, the way powers are distributed between two orders of government is of the utmost importance. Based on what is provided for under the federal Constitution, some areas of activity are under the exclusive

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authority of the federal government, some are under that of the federated states, and some fall under shared jurisdiction. This is, for the most part, what determines the nature and form of the federated states’ participation in foreign policy, as well as the relationship between the provinces and the federal government in that area. However, federalism poses a problem for international law. While international law treats federal systems as unitary actors without regard to the distribution of powers, a federal state must take that distribution into account when negotiating and implementing international treaties, even if only to ensure the federated states’ compliance with the country’s international obligations. A perfect example of this tension between sovereignty and federalism is Canadian federalism. The federal government’s claim to be the only order of government empowered to represent Canada in international relations has been considered unacceptable by the government of Quebec since the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine was formulated in 1965. If the federal government had full authority over foreign policy, it would be able to negotiate international treaties in areas of provincial jurisdiction – for example, in education, health, or labour – and then impose a treaty’s application on the provinces. The Canadian government would be legislating in complete contradiction to the distribution of powers provided for in the Canadian Constitution. With international negotiations and treaties increasing worldwide, this was simply not acceptable to the Quebec government during the Quiet Revolution. The Gérin-Lajoie doctrine specifies that Quebec is the power that must conclude international conventions in its areas of jurisdiction. Paul GérinLajoie declared in 1965: “I repeat that there is no reason why the right to implement an international agreement should be dissociated from the right to conclude this agreement. This is a case of two essential steps in the one, single operation. Nor is it admissible, any longer, for the federal state to exert a kind of supervision and adventitious control over Quebec’s international relations.”2 Since 1965, all Quebec political parties, including the Quebec Liberal Party, the Parti Québécois, the Union nationale, Action démocratique du Québec, and Coalition avenir Québec, have backed the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine.3 Former premier Jean Charest even took the idea a step further when, at a conference at the École nationale d’administration publique in 2004, he stated: “Quebec’s powers at home are Quebec’s powers everywhere.”4 Both former premier Philippe Couillard5 and former Minister of International Relations and La Francophonie Christine St-Pierre6 have said the same, and this formulation has bolstered the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine as the new doctrinal basis for government action. In this chapter, we will take a closer look at the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine to trace how the Quebec conception of the relationship between federalism and foreign policy has evolved. First, we will outline the history of conflict

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between the principles of sovereignty and of Canadian federalism until the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine was formulated in 1965. We will then turn to the federal government’s reaction to the doctrine.

t h e g é r in - l a j o i e doctri ne The tensions between the Canadian government’s sovereignty in foreign policy matters and the distribution of powers between the federal government and the provinces did not begin with the Quiet Revolution. Although one might assume that Quebec is the only province to take the matter to heart, the issues surrounding sovereignty and the distribution of powers arose long ago.7 Nevertheless, during the Quiet Revolution, the Quebec government took a strong “provincialist” stance, especially with the formulation of the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine. In his famous speech drafted by jurist André Patry and delivered to the Montreal Consular Corps on 12 April 1965, Quebec’s Deputy Premier and Minister of Education Paul Gérin-Lajoie (a constitutionalist by training) argued that the Canadian government did not have a monopoly on treaty-making and that the Quebec government also had the right to negotiate treaties within its areas of jurisdiction. Gérin-Lajoie’s speech was seminal. For the first time, an important Quebec minister had asserted, before foreign dignitaries, Quebec’s desire to play a role on the international scene within its areas of constitutional jurisdiction, without the supervision or consent of the Canadian government. With its resolutely nationalistic tone, the speech would become known as the “Gérin-Lajoie Doctrine of the international extension of Quebec’s domestic jurisdictions.”8 Since 1965, the doctrine has been the foundation of Quebec’s international actions. In his speech, Gérin-Lajoie asserted “Quebec’s determination to take its rightful place in the contemporary world.” Given the speech’s importance and the fact that it is fairly revealing of the Quebec government’s motives, it is relevant to quote long excerpts and comment on them. Gérin-Lajoie began his speech, which is written in a legal style, by laying out the context. He stated: Quebec is not sovereign in all domains: it is a member of a federation. But, from a political point of view, it constitutes a state. It possesses all the characteristics of a state: territory, population, autonomous government. Beyond this, it is the political expression of a people distinguished, in a number of ways, from the English-language communities inhabiting North America … I would like to refer to an example which touches you very closely. At Paris, a little more than a month ago, I signed an agreement on educational matters with representatives of the Government of the French Republic. Since that time, this agreement has been the subject of great

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interest and numerous commentators have professed astonishment at the “precedent” which it represented in matters diplomatic and constitutional. Actually, this event specifically demonstrated Quebec’s determination to take its rightful place in the contemporary world and to provide, in external as well as internal affairs, all the means necessary for the realization of the aspirations of the society for which it stands.9 Gérin-Lajoie was referring to the rapprochement between France and Quebec in the early 1960s. Even though the Quebec Liberal Party’s 1960 platform did not include a section on Quebec’s international relations, Jean Lesage, the party leader, wanted to establish trade missions in Europe and elsewhere to attract foreign capital and industrial projects. He did not foresee what would happen during his two terms. Although the history of Quebec’s international relations did not begin with the Quiet Revolution, the Lesage government’s actions between 1960 and 1966 gave Quebec’s international policies a strong foundation. Three important events would shape Quebec’s new relationship with the world: the opening of the Maison du Québec in Paris in 1961, a 28 February 1965 “agreement” with France on education – Quebec’s first international agreement – and, above all, the formulation of the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine, the legal basis for Quebec’s international actions. These policies gave Quebec an unprecedented international identity at the time.10 Gérin-Lajoie’s 1965 speech continued: “I mentioned a short time ago the surprise caused by the signing of an agreement on education between France and Quebec. This agreement is completely in keeping with the established constitutional order. Actually, the Canadian Federal Government is in a unique position with regard to international law. If it possesses an incontestable right to deal with foreign powers, the implementation of agreements which it may conclude concerning matters under provincial jurisdiction lies beyond its legislative competence. This was the decision, nearly thirty years ago, in a judgment handed down by the judicial committee of the Privy Council, a judgment which has never been set aside.”11 It is necessary to explain Paul Gérin-Lajoie’s assertion that the agreement was in line with the established constitutional order. In Canada, the British North America Act, known since 1982 as the Constitution Act, 1867, hardly addresses international relations. Unlike some other federations’ constitutions – and this is a problem for Canada – the Canadian Constitution does not provide for exclusive jurisdiction over foreign affairs.12 The provisions of the Constitution Act, 1867, that touch upon the distribution of legislative powers (sections 91 and 92) do not specify explicitly whether the federal or provincial government has authority over foreign policy.13 In addition, in contrast with some federal regimes’ constitutions, the Constitution Act, 1867, does not prohibit the provinces from playing a role in foreign policy. In fact, the only reference to foreign affairs is in section

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132, which is intended to give the new Dominion of Canada the power to enforce imperial treaties, including those affecting provincial jurisdictions. The section states: “The Parliament and Government of Canada shall have all Powers necessary or proper for performing the Obligations of Canada or of any Province thereof, as Part of the British Empire, towards Foreign Countries, arising under Treaties between the Empire and such Foreign Countries.” The Act’s silence can be explained by the fact that Canada did not become a sovereign country in 1867, but remained a member of the British Empire. Since only the Empire enjoyed the rights of a sovereign entity, it was not necessary to define the prerogatives of the provinces or the government of Canada in that regard. Those who framed the Constitution Act, 1867, did not foresee that the new dominion might eventually enjoy the same autonomy in foreign policy as in domestic affairs. Roff Johannson has noted that “the British North America Act was not designed to provide a constitution for an autonomous nation-state. Rather, what was involved was the sharing of authority between various levels of local government.”14 As Gérin-Lajoie pointed out, it is true that constitutional practice gives the federal government a greater role in foreign affairs. The period from 1871 to 1923 saw a change in procedures, as federal officials began to participate in negotiations that resulted in imperial treaties affecting Canada. Prime Minister John A. Macdonald was part of the British delegation that concluded the 1871  Treaty of Washington on border demarcation. After the First World War, Canada signed the Treaty of Versailles under its own name, and obtained a seat in the League of Nations and at the International Labour Organization. In  1923, as Minister of Marine and Fisheries, Ernest Lapointe signed a treaty with the American government on behalf of the Canadian government for the protection of the halibut fisheries. Prime Minister Mackenzie King insisted that the treaty not be countersigned by the British ambassador in Washington. Although they protested at first, the British agreed. This new procedure was confirmed with the 1926 Imperial Conference, which allowed Canada, as well as the other dominions, to negotiate and sign treaties. Canada was also gradually granted the right to establish diplomatic and consular relations with sovereign countries. With the 1931 Statute of Westminster, Canada was officially granted full international personality, including the right to make its own treaties. However, nothing suggested that the federal government had the capacity to implement the treaties it ratified in provincial jurisdictions.15 This is crucial as it forms the basis of Gérin-Lajoie’s legal arguments. Since the Statute of Westminster jeopardized the distribution of powers, the question of the federal government’s ability to impose its treaties on the provinces was raised rather quickly. Once the Statute was signed, the federal government naturally became more enterprising with regard to making

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treaties and attempted to impose their implementation on the provinces. As a result, several disputes were brought before the courts in the 1930s. The jurisprudence established would serve as a foundation from then on. One of the first cases concerned the aeronautics convention. In the 1932 Aeronautics Reference, certain provinces objected to the federal government laying claim to powers in the field of civil aviation. The federal government argued that it was merely applying an international treaty made by the British Empire in Paris in 1919. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, which, until 1949, was the final court of appeal for Canada, concluded that the Paris Convention was an “Empire treaty”; therefore, section 132 of the British North America Act allowed the federal government to legislate in provincial jurisdictions to ensure its implementation.16 The 1932 Radio Reference also related to areas of provincial and federal jurisdiction. This time, the federal government claimed the right to regulate and control radio communication in Canada, following Ottawa’s ratification of an international agreement on wireless telegraphy. The Judicial Committee ruled that section 132 did not apply because it was the Canadian government, not the Empire, that had signed the convention. However, the Committee concluded that it amounted “to the same thing.” They stated: “It is Canada as a whole which is amenable to the other powers for the proper carrying out of the Convention; and to prevent individuals in Canada infringing the stipulations of the Convention it is necessary that the Dominion should pass legislation which should apply to all the dwellers in Canada.”17 Since radio broadcasting did not fall within the subjects of exclusive provincial legislation provided for in section  92, the Committee granted legislative authority to Ottawa pursuant to the “Peace, Order, and good Government” residual powers clause of section 91. However, this decision could still be detrimental to provincial prerogatives: by entering into international treaties, the federal government would be able to legislate in the provinces’ areas of jurisdiction and impose its policies on them. And this is exactly what the federal government sought to do in 1935. In response to the economic crisis, R.B.  Bennett’s government passed legislation to implement International Labour Organization conventions concerning minimum wages, hours of work, and weekly rest in the industrial sector. Once again, Ottawa justified its intrusion into an area of provincial jurisdiction by invoking section 132. Although the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Ottawa’s favour, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London rejected the arguments in 1937. This judgment is of paramount importance with respect to the Canadian government’s legal capacity and the provinces’ rights regarding international treaties. It is at the heart of the legal logic in the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine. The judgment stipulates that, while section 132 of the British North America Act gave Parliament and the federal government power to implement imperial treaties, that power was not a general power conferred on

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the Canadian state with respect to the implementation of treaties.18 The 1937 Labour Conventions Reference placed great emphasis on an a contrario argument to the effect that, if the federal government had exclusive powers respecting treaty-making, then it would be able to implement treaties in areas of provincial jurisdiction and legislate in total contradiction with the distribution of powers provided for in sections 91 and 92 of the Constitution.19 However, the judges maintained that these sections were the very foundation of the federation and could not be circumvented in that way. They wrote: “No one can doubt that this distribution is one of the most essential conditions, probably the most essential condition, in the interprovincial compact to which the bna Act gives effect.”20 The Judicial Committee also ruled that implementation power should follow the distribution of powers provided for in sections 91 and 92. In the decision on labour conventions, Lord Atkins, member of the Privy Council, wrote: It will be essential to keep in mind the distinction between (1.) the formation, and (2.) the performance, of the obligations constituted by a treaty, using that word as comprising any agreement between two or more sovereign States. Within the British Empire there is a well-established rule that the making of a treaty is an executive act, while the performance of its obligations, if they entail alteration of the existing domestic law, requires legislative action. Unlike some other countries, the stipulations of a treaty duly ratified do not within the Empire, by virtue of the treaty alone, have the force of law. If the national executive, the government of the day, decide to incur the obligations of a treaty which involve alteration of law they have to run the risk of obtaining the assent of Parliament to the necessary statute or statutes. To make themselves as secure as possible they will often in such cases before final ratification seek to obtain from Parliament an expression of approval. But it has never been suggested, and it is not the law, that such an expression of approval operates as law, or that in law it precludes the assenting Parliament, or any subsequent Parliament, from refusing to give its sanction to any legislative proposals that may subsequently be brought before it.21 In sum, in Canada, since this decision, the power to conclude a treaty (i.e., to negotiate, sign, and ratify a treaty) has rested with the executive, whereas the implementation power has resided with the legislature. Since Parliament is sovereign, it is not required to take legislative measures for the implementation of a treaty concluded by the executive. The same applies to provincial legislatures. For a treaty to have the force of law in Canada, the Canadian Parliament must legislate, particularly where federal laws are concerned, and provincial parliaments must also do so where provincial laws are at

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issue. A treaty does not apply by itself, above existing laws: there needs to be some legislative intervention for it to take effect. In Canada, judges rule on the basis of laws, not treaties. For a treaty to be complied with in domestic law, it must, in most cases, be incorporated into legislation at the appropriate order of government.22 If domestic law is compatible with the treaty, there is no need to legislate. This is often the case, as the provinces and the federal government are often in the vanguard of international law or have already enacted laws that are stricter than international standards. If the law is incompatible with the treaty, implementing or incorporating legislation is required. This problematic situation, which Gérin-Lajoie described as “absurd,” is the core of his argument. The idea developed by Gérin-Lajoie in his 1965 speech, when he was both deputy premier and education minister, is both simple and far reaching. He proposed to change the usual formula so that Quebec would be able to negotiate and implement international agreements in its areas of jurisdiction. Gérin-Lajoie’s position is explained by the fact that neither the Constitution Act, 1867, nor the Statute of Westminster, 1931, confer exclusive authority over foreign affairs on the federal government. Moreover, since the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council’s Labour Conventions Reference, in 1937, the federal government has had the power to enter into treaties in areas of provincial jurisdiction, but it has not had the authority to compel the provinces to implement such treaties. This is why many international treaties ratified by Canada do not apply to all provinces or are never implemented. Because the federal government cannot implement the treaties it signs if they concern the jurisdictions of Canadian provinces, Paul Gérin-Lajoie wanted the provinces to negotiate their own treaties. He said the following in his 1965 speech: At a time when the Government of Quebec is fully aware of its responsibility for the realization of the particular destiny of Quebec society, it has no desire to abandon to the Federal Government the power of implementing agreements in matters falling under provincial competence. Furthermore, it is fully aware of the fact that there is an element of absurdity in the existing constitutional situation. Why should the state which puts an agreement into execution be unable to negotiate and sign it? Is an agreement not concluded with the essential purpose of putting it into application, and should those who will have to implement it not have the right to work out the conditions in advance? In the matter of international competence, the Canadian Constitution is silent. With the exception of Article 132, which has become a dead letter since the Statute of Westminster 1931, there is nothing that says that international relations are solely under the jurisdiction of the federal state. Therefore, it is not by virtue of written

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law, but rather by repeated practice over the past forty years, that the Federal Government has assumed an exclusive role with regard to relations with foreign countries.23 Further on in his speech, he reworded the same argument: “I repeat that there is no reason why the right to implement an international agreement should be dissociated from the right to conclude this agreement. This is a case of two essential steps in the one, single operation. Nor is it admissible, any longer, for the federal state to exert a kind of supervision and adventitious control over Quebec’s international relations.”24 Having stated what he wanted, Gérin-Lajoie now had to explain how it was necessary or useful. He continued: There was a time when Ottawa’s exclusive exercise of international powers was scarcely prejudicial to the interests of the federated states, inasmuch as the field of international relations was fairly well defined. But, in our day, this is no longer so. Interstate relations now touch every aspect of social life. This is why, in a federation such as Canada, it is now necessary for those member groups, who wish to do so, to participate actively and directly in the preparation of international agreements with which they are immediately concerned … Parallel to the full exercise of a limited “jus tractatuum” claimed by Quebec, there is equally the right to participate in the activity of certain international organizations of a non-political character. A large number of interstate organizations have been founded for the sole purpose of bringing about a solution, by international cooperation, of problems which up to now have been purely local in nature. Further, the multiplication of exchange of all kinds between countries has necessitated the direct or indirect intervention of the modern state so that these exchanges may be made basic elements of progress of understanding and of peace between peoples. In many fields which have now assumed international importance, Quebec wishes to play a direct role in keeping with its true countenance.25 Gérin-Lajoie was referring to changes that are now called the internationalization and globalization of the international order. In the 1960s, a new phenomenon emerged that began to worry Quebec politicians and public officials. Traditionally, questions of international policy were dominated by issues that had little to do with the Canadian provinces’ areas of jurisdiction. In the days when international relations essentially concerned peace and war, trade tariffs, and currency stability, major international policy initiatives scarcely involved the provinces directly. In 1945, particularly with the creation of the United Nations, experts started to be concerned that international questions would gradually come

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to involve matters of provincial jurisdiction. International negotiations were starting to deal with matters “purely local in nature,” as Gérin-Lajoie put it. As bilateral and multilateral international agreements multiplied and normative activity increased in the various international organizations that produced treaties ratified by Canada, areas of provincial jurisdiction were increasingly concerned. Given that more and more international treaties, conventions, and agreements negotiated by Canada concerned areas of activity under provincial jurisdiction (education, public health, social services, culture, communications, transportation, natural resources, vocational training, the environment, business subsidies, financial institutions, treatment of investors, removal of non-tariff barriers, regulation of professions, etc.), it was problematic that the provinces were not involved more directly in negotiations and in the preparation of mandates. In the context of the Quiet Revolution, the federal government’s persistence in signing treaties on questions falling under provincial jurisdiction was unacceptable. The underrepresentation of Francophones in the federal public service and the lack of knowledge on Quebec policy issues triggered an immediate reaction from Quebec leaders. Faced with this new problem, 1960s Quebec had three options. First, the Quebec government could agree, as was the case with the American federation, for example, to be automatically bound, through constitutional amendment or otherwise, to international agreements signed by the government of Canada with other countries, even where such agreements concern exclusively provincial jurisdictions. Second, mechanisms for federal-provincial coordination of Canada’s foreign policy could be set up. The idea was to involve the provinces in the decision-making process on Canadian foreign policy, an approach that is common in many federal states today.26 Third, the Quebec government could negotiate and sign international agreements in its own areas of jurisdiction while ensuring its foreign policy was consistent with the federal government’s broad directions and commitments.27 Quebec officials ruled out the first option since it implied abandoning Quebec’s constitutional powers, which was contrary to the spirit of the Quiet Revolution. As Gérin-Lajoie pointed out in his speech, the government is “fully aware of its responsibility for the realization of the particular destiny of Quebec society, it has no desire to abandon to the Federal Government the power of implementing agreements in matters falling under provincial competence.”28 The second option, which the federal government preferred, would have given the federal government a new constitutional power: the right to interfere in provincial policy matters on the basis of a new international competence. The federal government would therefore have been able to use an international agreement to force Quebec to amend its laws so that they would comply with that treaty.

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The third option, the one the Quebec government chose, namely the Gérin-Lajoie Doctrine, was unacceptable to the federal government, which had believed, up to that point, that it had a monopoly on foreign affairs in Canada. According to Claude Morin, that was how Quebec would come to develop an international policy in its areas of jurisdiction. Quebec’s inaction, in that respect, would have implicitly suggested that it agreed to federal government intervention.29

t h e f e d e r a l g o v e r nment’s reacti on When Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson was asked to comment on GérinLajoie’s speech, he said: “Paul doesn’t mean it.”30 But few of his advisors came to the same conclusion. Although the Canadian government was initially open to policies of rapprochement with France, it began to toughen up following the formulation of the doctrine and after certain diplomatic and protocol incidents that had left the Canadian ambassador in Paris in the dark. According to Claude Morin, who was involved in the conflict on the Quebec side, “the federal approach changed drastically from the moment Quebec took certain actions that were seen not as the ultimate end of a reassuringly quiet revolution, but rather as a starting point for the realization and strengthening of ambitions through which Quebec ultimately challenged, from a federal perspective, Ottawa’s dominant and exclusive role in foreign policy.”31 Eight days after Gérin-Lajoie’s speech, Secretary of State Paul Martin Sr categorically rejected the government of Quebec’s analysis and demands. On 20 April 1965, he declared: “The constitutional situation of Canada regarding the power to make treaties is clear. Canada has only one international identity in the community of nations. There is no doubt that the Canadian government alone has the power or the right to make treaties with other countries.”32 He went on to say that the federal government had sole responsibility for the direction of external affairs as an integral part of national policy affecting all Canadians. Two days later, on 22 April 1965, Minister Gérin-Lajoie gave a second speech on the question to a group of professors from French and Swiss universities. He explained that, when Ottawa concluded treaties on matters falling under provincial jurisdiction, the provinces were responsible for implementing them. He considered that, consequently, the Quebec government should also be able to negotiate such treaties. He argued that Quebec needed to develop its own international policy because it was not adequately represented by the federal government and because the Canadian foreign service neglected the French-speaking nations of the world. Quebec’s desire to establish closer relations with French-speaking countries had become a necessity because federal diplomacy gave priority to Commonwealth countries. Gérin-Lajoie added that Quebec was not a province like the others and that,

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by developing an international policy, it would simply take responsibility for a political field that it had previously neglected.33 This Quebec interpretation of the Canadian Constitution was not shared by the federal authorities. On 23 April 1965, the federal government proposed the following compromise: “Once it is decided that what a province wants to accomplish in signing an agreement with a foreign country in terms of education or any other field of provincial responsibility is compatible with Canadian foreign policy, then the provincial authorities may go ahead to discuss the details directly with the relevant authorities in the country in question34 … However, when it was a case of formally entering into an international agreement, the federal powers responsible for signing treaties and conducting foreign affairs in general would necessarily have to come into play.”35 The government of Quebec considered this last requirement to be unacceptable because, by giving the federal authorities a form of veto over provincial policies, it affirmed the Canadian government’s supremacy over areas of provincial jurisdiction. Ottawa wanted to oversee the entire treaty-making process and reserved the right to reject a policy prescribed under provincial jurisdiction. The idea behind this proposal was to create a framework for the current and future actions of the Quebec government. Canada would sign agreements with France and other countries, such as Belgium and Switzerland, that have French as one of their official languages. Such agreements would cover Quebec’s agreements, which would become a sort of extension of the federal agreements. An internal memo to the attention of Secretary of State Paul Martin Sr – which was meant to remain secret but was revealed by Claude Morin – was intended to explain the purpose of the federal initiative. It reads as follows: “This [the framework agreement] is intended to counter three aims of the Quebec technocrats: (a) only Quebec can speak for French Canada, (b) Quebec has a monopoly on relations with Frenchspeaking countries, and (c) regarding education, culture, etc., since Quebec is autonomous internally, it is independent externally and can establish and develop relations with other countries in these fields without having to deal with Ottawa (consultation, authorization, opinion, etc.).”36 Gérin-Lajoie’s reaction to the proposal was scathing: “Quebec does not require Ottawa’s permission to enter into international agreements in areas under its jurisdiction. It did not request permission to sign an agreement with France and will not do so whenever it decides to conclude other agreements of that nature with other countries.”37 After the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine was formulated, the federal government took an increasingly hard line. Paul Martin Sr wrote two white papers on this issue. In 1968, in Chapter 2 of Federalism and International Relations, titled “The Federal Responsibility,” he pointed out that, “in international

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law, the conduct of foreign relations is the responsibility of fully independent members of the international community. Because the constituent members of a federal union do not meet this criterion, the direction and control of foreign relations in federal states is generally acknowledged to be the responsibility of the central authority. Accordingly, the members of federal states have no independent or autonomous capacity to conclude treaties, to become members of international organizations in their own right, or to accredit and receive diplomatic and consular agents.”38 In the second white paper, Federalism and International Conferences on Education, the federal government reaffirmed its position as the only order of government that could represent Canada as a whole on the international stage, even in areas of exclusive provincial jurisdiction such as education. It also argued that a “devolution” of federal authority in this area would entail the disintegration of Canada. The white paper left no ambiguity as to the “indivisibility” of Canadian foreign policy: “Foreign policy is the external expression of a country’s sovereignty  … That a country should have several separate votes at an intergovernmental conference can mean that it would have more than one foreign policy. Foreign policy cannot be fragmented … In the international world, there may be large and small units. There are and can be no half units.”39 In short, for the federal government, foreign policy was indivisible and only the Canadian government had the authority to make proper international treaties. The development of a foreign policy by the Quebec government elicited reactions from more than just politicians. Public servants at the Department of External Affairs in Ottawa were hostile to the advent of this cumbersome new player for two reasons. First, the Quebec government’s actions competed with those of the federal government, jeopardizing their efforts and legitimacy. Second, a considerable number of French Canadians had recently attained top positions in the department and were outraged to be told by Quebec officials that the interests of Francophones were not adequately represented.40 Yet, studies presented to the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism confirmed Quebec’s analysis with regard to the federal government’s lack of consideration of Francophones. The Department of Foreign Affairs even tried to torpedo the work of two Quebec academics (including the author of the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine, André Patry) who were officially mandated to investigate the department’s respect for Canada’s cultural duality. In his report, Professor Gilles Lalande concluded, “it is surprising, to say the least, that the law of numbers has not permitted a single French-language career officer to be head of a mission in the great majority of countries where Canadian interests are judged the most important.”41  André Patry, who

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wrote the second study for the Commission, showed that English was still the language of communication between the Department of External Affairs and international organizations, including the Universal Postal Union, the only official language of which was French!

c o n c l u s ion The most extraordinary thing in the history of the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine is that it became official government policy not as the result of a long reflection process but almost by accident. When Gérin-Lajoie first addressed the Montreal Consular Corps, Premier Jean Lesage was on holiday in Florida and could not be brought up to date on his deputy premier’s interpretation of the Canadian Constitution. Upon his arrival at the airport, Lesage was asked by journalists to comment on his minister’s speech. He said that Paul Gérin-Lajoie had indeed stated the government’s policy.42 As Claude Morin says about the event, “as was the case then, and as will be the case again and again, a major government policy was announced as a result of an unexpected combination of circumstances and the more or less appropriate, yet necessary, answers to questions raised by those same circumstances … I have also learned that, in our system, a statement by the premier, no matter how informal, becomes the statement of final government policy, automatically rendering all previous ministers’ positions and nuances obsolete.”43 If the premier had rebuffed his minister of education, the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine would have remained a dead letter. Thanks to Lesage’s declaration of support – which took even the public officials who were present by surprise, including Claude Morin, as they had expected a denial – the GérinLajoie doctrine became Quebec’s official policy, simply because Premier Lesage was in a good mood when he arrived at the airport in Quebec City! However, it should be noted that Gérin-Lajoie was a renowned constitutionalist, which lent a certain authority to his speeches. Moreover, the legal basis of the doctrine was built on the jurisprudence of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, which gave it more credibility. To this day, neither this jurisprudence nor the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine have been overturned. notes 1 On the concept, see: Bertrand Badie, Un monde sans souveraineté (Paris: Fayard, 1999). 2 Excerpt from the speech by Paul Gérin-Lajoie, Vice-President of the Quebec Executive Council and Minister of Education, to the Members of the Montreal Consular Corps, Montreal, 12 April 1965. Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie, “Allocution du ministre de l’Éducation, M. Paul Gérin-Lajoie,” 12 April 1965, https://www.sqrc.gouv.qc.ca/relations-

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canadiennes/positions-historiques/positions-quebec-1936-2001. asp. English translation: https://www.sqrc.gouv.qc.ca/relations-canadiennes/ positions-historiques/positions-quebec-1936-2001-en.asp. François LeDuc and Marcel Cloutier, Guide de la pratique des relations internationales du Québec (Quebec City: Ministère des Relations internationales, 2000), 78. Cited in Annie Chaloux and Stéphane Paquin, “Le Québec sur la scène international: Les raisons de son dynamisme,” Globe: Revue internationale d’études québécoises 13, no. 1 (2010): 27. (Translated from the French. Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations of French texts are by the translators of this volume.) Philippe Couillard, “Discours d’assermentation du Conseil des ministres du gouvernement du premier ministre Philippe Couillard,” 23 April 2014, https:// www.bibliotheque.assnat.qc.ca/DepotNumerique_v2/AffichageNotice. aspx?idn=75688. Christine St-Pierre, “Pérenniser l’objectif: Moderniser les moyens,” colloquium on the fiftieth anniversary of the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine, 27 March 2015, accessed 12 December 2019, http://www.mrif.gouv.qc.ca/fr/salle-de-presse/ allocutions/2015/2015_03_27. Stéphane Paquin, ed., Histoire des relations internationales du Québec (Montreal: vlb éditeur, 2006); André Patry, Le Québec dans le monde (Montreal: Leméac, 1980). It was not until 1967 that Gérin-Lajoie used this historic expression during a debate in the National Assembly, on the establishment of the Department of Intergovernmental Affairs. Speech by Paul Gérin-Lajoie, Montreal, 12 April 1965, 130–1. On the history of Quebec’s international relations, see: Dale C. Thompson, De Gaulle et le Québec (Montreal: Éditions du Trécarré, 1990); David Meren, With Friends Like These: Entangled Nationalism and the Canada-QuebecFrance Triangle, 1944–1970 (Vancouver: ubc Press, 2012); Frédéric Bastien, Relations particulières: La France face au Québec après de Gaulle (Montreal: Boréal, 1999); Shiro Noda, Entre l’indépendance et le fédéralisme, 1970–1980: La décennie marquante des relations internationales du Québec (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2001); Luc Bernier, De Paris à Washington: La politique internationale du Québec (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université du Québec, 1996); Paul-André Comeau and Jean-Pierre Fournier, Le Lobby du Québec à Paris: Les précurseurs du général de Gaulle (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 2002). On education, see: Sami Mesli, La coopération franco-québécoise dans le domaine de l’éducation: De 1965 à nos jours (Quebec City: Septentrion, 2014). Speech by Paul Gérin-Lajoie, Montreal, 12 April 1965, 133. Anne-Marie Jacomy-Millette, “Les activités internationales des provinces canadiennes,” in From Mackenzie King to Pierre Trudeau: Forty Years of Canadian Diplomacy, 1945–1985, ed. Paul Painchaud (Quebec City: Les

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14 15

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20 21 22

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Presses de l’Université Laval, 1989), 82–3. See also: Michel Lebel, Francis Rigaldies, and José Woehrling, Droit international public, vol. 1 (Montreal: Les Éditions Thémis, 1978), 181–8. On the distribution of powers, see Réjean Pelletier, “Constitution et fédéralisme,” in Le parlementarisme canadien, ed. Manon Tremblay, Réjean Pelletier, and Marcel R. Pelletier (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2000), 53–9. Peter Roff Johannson, “Provincial International Activities,” International Journal 33, no. 2 (1978): 359. Section 3 of the Statute of Westminster reads as follows: “It is hereby declared and enacted that the Parliament of a Dominion has full power to make laws having extra-territorial operation.” On the aeronautics, radio, and labour convention references, see: Howard A. Leeson and Wilfried Vanderelst, External Affairs and Canadian Federalism: The History of a Dilemma (Toronto: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973), 65–77. Peter H. Russell, Rainer Knopff, and Ted Morton, eds, Federalism and the Charter: Leading Constitutional Decisions (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1989), 95. Canada (ag ) v Ontario (ag ) (Labour Conventions), [1937] A.C. 326 (P.C.), in François Chevrette, Herbert Marx, and Han-Ru Zhou, Constitutional Law: Fundamental Principles: Notes and Cases, trans. Mary Baker, Maya Grabianowska, and Han-Ru Zhou (Montreal: Les Éditions Thémis, 2020), 298. In Liquidators of the Maritime Bank of Canada, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London also confirmed federalism as the founding principle of Canada: “The object of the [British North America] Act was neither to weld the provinces into one, nor to subordinate provincial governments to a central authority, but to create a federal government in which they should all be represented, entrusted with the exclusive administration of affairs in which they had a common interest, each province retaining its independence and autonomy.” Liquidators of the Maritime Bank of Canada v. Receiver-General of New-Brunswick (1892), A.C. 437, 441–2. Canada (ag ) v Ontario (ag ) (Labour Conventions), [1937] A.C. 326 (P.C.), in Chevrette, Marx, and Zhou, Constitutional Law, 298. Ibid., 294–5. Sylvie Scherrer, “L’effet des traités dans l’ordre juridique interne canadien à la lumière de la jurisprudence récente,” in Développements récents en droit administratif, ed. Barreau du Québec, Service de la formation permanente (Montreal: Les Éditions Yvon Blais, 2000), 59. Speech by Paul Gérin-Lajoie, Montreal, 12 April 1965, 133. Ibid. Gérin-Lajoie himself added the part in italics (emphasis added) to the speech prepared by André Patry. Source: André Patry, interview by the author, January 2006.

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25 Speech by Paul Gérin-Lajoie, Montreal, 12 April 1965, 133–4. 26 Stéphane Paquin, “Quelle place pour les provinces canadiennes dans les organisations et les négociations internationales du Canada à la lumière des pratiques au sein d’autres fédérations?” Administration publique du Canada/ Canadian Public Administration 48, no. 4 (2005): 477–505. 27 Claude Morin, L’art de l’impossible: La diplomatie québécoise depuis 1960 (Montreal: Boréal, 1987), 38. 28 Speech by Paul Gérin-Lajoie, Montreal, 12 April 1965, 133. 29 Morin, L’art de l’impossible, 39. 30 Lester B. Pearson, cited in Jack Granatstein and Bothwell Robert, Pirouette: Pierre Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 116. 31 Morin, L’art de l’impossible, 33 (translation). 32 Cited in Morin, L’art de l’impossible, 38. For an English version, see: Richard Howard, Jacques Lacoursière, and Claude Bouchard, A New History of Canada: Quiet Revolution, 1960–1967 (Wrocław: Éditions Format, 1972), 1239–40. 33 Robin Gendron, Toward a Francophone Community: Canada’s Relations with France and French Africa, 1945–1968 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006). 34 Cited in Morin, L’art de l’impossible, 38. For an English version, see Howard, Lacoursière, and Bouchard, A New History of Canada, 1239. 35 Morin, L’art de l’impossible, 38. 36 Cited in ibid., 59 (translation). 37 Paul Gérin-Lajoie, cited in ibid., 29 (translation). 38 Government of Canada, Federalism and International Relations (Ottawa: Secretary of State for External Affairs, 1968), ch. 2, p. 11, https://primarydocuments.ca/wp-content/uploads/1968/01/FedIntRelationsMartin1968.pdf. 39 Government of Canada, Federalism and International Conferences on Education (Ottawa: Secretary of State for External Affairs, 1968), 12, https:// primarydocuments.ca/federalism-and-international-conferences-oneducation-supplement-to-federalism-and-international-relations/#14. 40 Thompson, De Gaulle et le Québec, 190. 41 Patry, Le Québec dans le monde, 79 (translation). 42 However, according to Dale C. Thompson, Paul Gérin-Lajoie went to Florida to give Lesage his speech after delivering it to the Montreal Consular Corps, and Lesage said: “It’s good, Paul, it’s good” (translation). But the fact remains that Lesage was made aware of the speech after it was delivered. See: Thompson, De Gaulle et le Québec, 186–7. 43 Morin, L’art de l’impossible, 31 (translation).

16 Quebec and Constitutional Conventions: Precarious Safeguards in Unwritten Federalism Amélie Binette There is in every constitution a strongest power – one which would gain the victory if the compromises by which the Constitution habitually works were suspended, and there came a trial of strength. John Stuart Mill1

In many respects, the Canadian Constitution of 1867 is a prosaic, arid text.2 Written in a language set in the vocabulary of the nineteenth century,3 it is filled with numerous specifics and details,4 and contains many transitional or simply obsolete provisions.5 In addition to this opaque style, there is no official French version of the Constitution Act, 1867,6 as only the English version was adopted by the British Parliament. To have a complete, rigorous view of the written constitutional norms, when reading the Act it is therefore best to be equipped with doctrinal and jurisprudential resources, which means, at least, an annotated version.7 In addition to these issues of form, the Constitution Act, 1867, contains some unitary and centralizing mechanisms, including the subordination of the lieutenant-governors to the governor general,8 the federal authorities’ exorbitant power given the distribution of jurisdictions, the term “parliament” used exclusively to refer to federal legislative power,9 the absence of judicial federalism and the fact that the Senate’s organization is, for the most part, far from the ideal of a federating chamber,10 not to mention the federal government’s declaratory, emergency, residual and, especially, spending powers. Although opinions differ on the degree to which Confederation is centralized11 or decentralized,12 the fact remains that French Canadians saw the British North America Act, 1867, as a compromise that “was an adequate response to the identity concerns of the Quebec nation.”13 The Constitution

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provided Quebec with certain legal guarantees concerning Quebec’s language, religion, civil law tradition, and culture, continuing the spirit of the Quebec Act, 1774.14 Over the years, Canadian federalism has evolved and gradually left behind its “quasi-federalism”15 label. Admittedly, many gaps remain between Canadian reality and the ideal, but, in day-to-day life, federal and provincial political actors have been able to create a political regime that, to a great extent, departs from the one set out in the Constitution Act, 1867.16 Yet, the means used to reconcile the constitutional text with the precepts of federalism very often have in common that they developed outside the formal, written Constitution, which has remained almost unchanged for 150 years.17 The modifications result from the actions of political actors and not those of the constituent power. Whether the measures take the form of intergovernmental agreements on immigration,18 parliamentary resolutions, including the resolution on the Québécois nation,19 “consultative” referendums, or possible constitutional conventions concerning the alternation between Francophone and Anglophone governors general,20 they must always face judicial review to ensure they are in accordance with the law. In other words, the Constitution Act, 1867, codified important guarantees for Quebec, and those guarantees have proven essential to the development and preservation of its identity. In parallel, it provided mechanisms that create obstacles to the federal ideal. This has meant that federalist thinking in Quebec has always had to come to terms with this dichotomy, and has often had to use constitutional conventions to get around these difficulties. This chapter’s aim is to show that, in their conception of the Canadian Constitution as a guardian of the Quebec nation’s protections, political actors since 1960 have used “informal, flexible” means of federal reform just as often as formal constitutional amendments. Since, historically, the latter have been difficult to implement, notably because of the difficulty in exercising constituent power, Canadian federalism has frequently evolved by means of concurrent, unwritten norms – in other words, primarily, constitutional conventions. Nevertheless, during patriation, Quebec was confronted with ambiguities, which have endured, as to the nature of such conventional norms in a federal context.21 (We will look at these norms in the second section of this chapter.) In the 1981–82 reference questions, the Supreme Court of Canada confined conventions to a very limited role, and Quebec systematically finds itself at a disadvantage in the power relationship when it relies on constitutional conventions to defend its guarantees against federal political actors. Our hypothesis is that, while the conventions have given Canadian constitutional law some means of keeping pace with the inevitable sociopolitical

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changes since Confederation, they provide Quebec only with very relative guarantees in its interactions with its federal partners; and that this is precisely because the principle of Canadian duality is at the heart of the dispute.

t he c a n a d ia n c o n s t it u t ion as synonymous w it h g u a r a n t e e s for quebec At the time of the Union of 1840, even though the Province of Canada had a unitary regime, cohabitation between Catholic Francophones and Protestant Anglophones had become a form of “unofficial” federalism.22 During the pre-Confederation negotiations, French Canadians, conscious of their distinctiveness but also of their minority status within the British colonies in North America, sought a constitutional architecture that would allow them to, this time officially, “organize politically to better express their identity.”23 The Constitution was to become the preferred means to achieve this end, with guarantees for Quebec which “seemed sufficient to justify its adherence to the federative formula.”24 The concern to affirm Quebec as both a territorial and a national community has also been shared by Quebec’s political actors since at least the 1960s.25 Both in requests for formal amendments to the Constitution and in actions designed to make federalism evolve through informal means, Quebec’s political demands have been marked by the idea of protecting and improving the guarantees established in 1867. The aim, essentially, has been to better reflect Quebec’s special status within the federation. Quebec’s Formal Political Demands to Increase Constitutional Guarantees The logic of the constitutional protection of Quebec’s powers and autonomy lies in the fact that Quebec “needs legal and political structures to ‘defend and maintain itself’ in a Canada where the majority is English.”26 Since the Quiet Revolution, Quebec’s leaders have continued to borrow words such as “compact” and “constitutional guarantee” from the lexicon of the Constitution to justify their demands for recognition of Quebec’s distinctive character27 and a distribution of legislative powers that reflects that reality. During his term as Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Benoît Pelletier drew attention to the fact that, for Quebec, the Canadian Constitution played a crucial role as guardian of the historical compromises that were negotiated with its federal partners in order to “provide some sort of protection and to give Quebec the means to counterbalance, if only a little, the wishes of the majority.”28 From the outset, the norms that govern the amendment of the Canadian Constitution were seen as the foundation of Quebec’s position with respect to the other members of the federation. Those norms prevent any one of

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the groups that make up the federation from unilaterally changing the rules of the game,29 the guarantees by virtue of which the other groups accepted the federal compact.30 Since 1960,31 political players in Quebec have always campaigned for a formula for amending the Canadian Constitution that would, on the one hand, prevent one parliament from subordinating any other32 and, on the other, reflect Quebec’s distinct status within Canada. Such a course of action aligns perfectly with the dynamic between political actors and constitutional amendment procedures in a multinational context, as described by Richard Albert, who has said that “the rules of amendment are the place to look for the legal recognition of multinationality because these rules reveal the agents of legal change.”33 From the Lesage government’s first term to 1982, Quebec demanded a right to veto any important constitutional change that could limit its powers,34 such as an amendment to the distribution of legislative powers,35 and expressed its desire for that veto to be codified in the amending formula that was under negotiation at the time. To be sure, during the common front of April 1981, the Lévesque government chose to exchange the right of veto for the possibility to “opt out” with compensation.36 However, as Marc Chevrier points out, “it would be surprising that a simple executive document that was valid only to the extent that the federal government accepted it and that was designed to convince the federal government to withdraw its project and renegotiate it with the provinces would be sufficient to revoke a political convention as fundamental as Quebec’s consent to a new federative order.”37 For that matter, following the agreement between the provinces, except for Quebec, and the federal government on the patriation of the Constitution in November 1981, René Lévesque’s government made the right of veto (or a general right to opt out accompanied by full compensation) one of the necessary conditions for its adherence to the Constitution Act, 1982.38 This stipulation was taken up again under the governments of Pierre-Marc Johnson and Robert Bourassa, and also by every Quebec government since the failure of the Meech Lake Accord.39 More recently, under Philippe Couillard’s Liberal government, the constitutional policy document titled Quebecers, Our Way of Being Canadian specified that the demand for the right of veto remained.40 In addition to the demands regarding the amending procedure, Quebec’s political actors have also been looking to reform the Constitution in a manner fully consistent with the normative principles of federalism in order to enshrine guarantees that the nation has “legal tools allowing it … to translate, on the political level, its collective cultural ambitions.”41 This theme is echoed in the demands that “directly touch the heart of cultural insecurity in Quebec,”42 that is, the distribution of powers with respect to education, communications, immigration, language, and culture. As Antoine Brousseau Desaulniers has shown, the demand, made by all Quebec governments since 1960, regarding a new distribution of powers,

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proves to be “a significant contrast in terms of constitutional demands, in comparison to the experience of previous decades, which were marked by Maurice Duplessis’ Union Nationale government’s plain refusal of the federal government’s infringements.”43 In 1989, Claude Ryan, then a minister in the government of Robert Bourassa, stated point blank that Quebec would not want to “sacrifice its powers in linguistic matters to an ideal of Canadian unity that would not be accompanied by very strong guarantees concerning the protection of Quebec’s distinctive character.”44 Marc Chevrier has explained that the actions of Quebec governments were, quite rightly, inspired by a subsidiary conception of federalism, according to which they “considered themselves the primary holders of government responsibilities” regarding certain jurisdictions; and that they “have felt the federal government should play an auxiliary role and refrain from doing for Quebec what Quebec could do alone or in cooperation with the other provinces.”45 Even though the demands of the different Quebec governments for a right of veto and expanded powers over language, culture, and education have been unanimous, it has been a struggle to turn them into formal amendments to the Constitution Act, 1867.46 The failure of the Meech Lake47 and Charlottetown48 accords at the turn of the 1990s contributed to creating an environment rather hostile to constitutional discussions between the partners in the federation.49 In addition, the amendment of the Constitution, already arduous before 1982 because the intervention of the Parliament of the United Kingdom was required,50 became more perilous after patriation and the adoption of a complex, rigid amending formula. Currently, the provisions of the Constitution Act, 1867, concerning the organization of federalism are practically untouchable.51 The formal procedures are supplemented by a marked tendency toward the multiplication of actors52 and globalization of concerns,53 which “relegates Quebec’s distinctiveness to a rank that is in no way exceptional.”54 In this context, it becomes more sterile for Quebec’s political actors to rely on the formal constitutional amending procedure as the only means for conveying their demands for autonomy and participation to the federal authorities. A Way Out of the Constitutional Standstill: Recourse to Constitutional Conventions In 1867, only the historical compromises specific to the Canadian dynamic55 and the elements that departed from the British institutional model were codified in the British North America Act. For example, the fact that the Canadian state is a federation explains, in part, the infringement of the principle of parliamentary sovereignty that was inherited from England’s

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more pragmatic, flexible conception of a constitution.56 In other words, the Constitution Act, 1867, “did no more than what was necessary to establish confederation.”57 Since only a very small core of constitutional norms feature in the texts,58 other sources of predominantly unwritten law complete the Constitution in the material sense. Such sources of law include rules of common law, underlying constitutional principles, customs, and constitutional conventions. Far from being merely accessory, these sources of law bear on points as important as Canada’s gradual acquisition of independence from the United Kingdom,59 the honour of the Crown, parliamentary privilege, the appointment of the prime minister,60 the establishment of responsible government,61 etc. Confronted with the extreme rigidity of formal, written constitutional norms, both federal political actors and those in Quebec and the other provinces have sought to use “Canada’s distinctive constitutional dynamic,”62 between written and unwritten law, to make federalism evolve by other means.63 Over time, this evolution has often allowed the text of the Constitution, with its more unitary, centralizing mechanisms, to be reconciled with the precepts of federalism. To begin with, constitutional conventions are very often used in Quebecfederal relations to “set aside provisions in the Constitution Act, 1867, that are incompatible with authentic federalism.”64 Such conventions are, essentially, rules of practice that are constructed as political events unfold: practices that give rise to a consensus within the political class.65 Henri Brun, Guy Tremblay, and Eugénie Brouillet explain that constitutional conventions “allow for things to evolve while avoiding the difficulties that formal constitutional amendments present.”66 In 1981, on the occasion of Re: Resolution to Amend the Constitution, the Supreme Court identified three essential requirements to be met for there to be a constitutional convention. The first is that there be precedents,67 which are necessary but not sufficient. The second is that the political actors concerned by the precedents must feel bound by the rule that such precedents, without being strictly obligatory, must be recognized and accepted in practice.68 Finally, the third requirement aims to specify the raison d’être of the conduct, which must be different from simple usage or custom. Here lies the federal principle’s potential as a justification for constitutional conventions. Many of Quebec’s demands concern the participation of Quebec governments in federal institutions, such as with respect to the appointment of senators and Supreme Court justices,69 the holding of federal-provincial conferences, and the alternation between Francophones and Anglophones as governor general and as chief justice of the Supreme Court.70 The powers of reserve and disallowance of provincial legislation, provided for in sections 55–57 and 90 of the Constitution Act, 1867, are probably the examples most often cited in this respect. From a legal standpoint,

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they enable the governor general (who, in accordance with constitutional conventions, acts under instructions of the federal prime minister) to disallow a provincial law that was legitimately adopted. This can be done for mere political expediency, without having to provide any justification.71 For many decades, both doctrine and the courts72 have agreed that there is a constitutional convention that “neutralizes” these powers, in accordance with the principles of autonomy and non-subordination of the orders of government within a federation.73 This constitutional convention, as a tacit agreement between the actors, is in contradiction with the written text of the Constitution and, in practice, removes all the latter’s power without, however, modifying its wording in any way. Over time, those it addressees, in this case the political actors, perceive the convention as obligatory. Although the nature of constitutional conventions compels the courts to recognize them, it cannot guarantee that they will be enforced. Since constitutional conventions conflict with the strict letter of the law, either by rendering it inoperative or by clarifying it, they allow political practices to evolve, but leave the text formally untouched74 and available to be given precedence by the courts, when necessary. The assent they receive is strictly political.75 As Gil Rémillard pointed out, “nothing in the law prevents the governor general or the lieutenant governors from using their powers of reserve, veto, and disallowance to annul a provincial law, as constitutional as it may be, if for any reason it does not suit them.”76 As in the case of the powers of reserve and disallowance,77 and that of the appointment of justices to the Supreme Court, Quebec has often tended to resort to constitutional conventions for mechanisms that aim to reinforce its status within the federation, and to increase its participation in the federation’s shared institutions by counteracting the unitary features in the Constitution Act, 1867.78 By acting in this manner, political actors give themselves more freedom than they would have under the formal Constitution, which lacks legitimacy in the eyes of all the political parties that sit in Quebec’s National Assembly79 and provides, through the amending formulas codified in the Constitutional Act, 1982, very little room for maneuvre.

qu e b e c ’ s in f o r m a l g u arantees at the me rcy o f p r e c a r io u s p o li ti cal normati vi ty When contributing to the creation of consensual and conventional norms with its federal partners, the governments of Quebec have tended to promote an alternative form of constitutional amendment to convey their federal ideas. They have thus sought a means to affirm the distinctive cultural identity of Quebec by bypassing the obstruction of constituent power. At first glance, constitutional conventions can thus seem to be of good service

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to the defence of Quebec’s guarantees in the Canadian federation, within a more flexible constitutional environment that does not limit itself to the often centralizing text of 1867. However, since 1960, Quebec’s political actors have realized that there are a number of flaws in this strategy. Constitutional conventions remain a source inherited from England and are thought out in that context. Paradoxically, to attempt to make the Canadian state and its (formal and informal) Constitution more consistent with the ideal of federalism, we turn to a mechanism that comes from a unitary state with, to top it off, a flexible constitution. This mixture of genres and constitutional traditions,80 yields major difficulties that are detrimental to the power relationship between Quebec and the rest of Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada as Interpreter of Political Sources The legal battles linked to the patriation of the Constitution have contributed to showing the limits of constitutional conventions as a safeguard of Quebec’s interests. The ambiguity as to the conventions’ flexibility, and their interactions with formal constitutional law, turned out to be a double-edged sword for Quebec’s political actors in the 1981–82 references, all things considered.81 It used to be unusual for a court in Canada or elsewhere to produce a complete argument on the nature of and respect for constitutional conventions.82 Indeed, the latter fall within a solely political relationship between the concerned actors, whether federal or provincial. As English jurist Albert Venn Dicey said: “The subject of conventions is not one of law but of politics, and need trouble no lawyer or the class of any professor of law.”83 On the occasion of the patriation, the Supreme Court nevertheless took a step in a new direction. In 1981, after Quebec, Manitoba, and Newfoundland had referred the matter to their respective courts of appeals,84 the Supreme Court ruled on questions concerning the conformity of the federal government’s patriation plan both with the letter of the law and constitutional conventions. On the latter point, the majority of the justices of the Court considered that the federal government would violate a convention if it ignored the opposition of several provinces and proceeded unilaterally with a plan that would affect their powers. The Court took the time to describe the nature, content, scope, and interaction of the convention in question with formal law.85 First, it specified that “the convention existed because the federal principle could not be reconciled with a state of affairs where the federal authorities could unilaterally modify provincial legislative powers.”86 However, the Court rejected the theory according to which proceeding would require the unanimous consent of the provinces; the Court preferred instead to state that there had to be a substantial degree of provincial consent.87

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At the same time, the Court concluded that, drawing on how the law is written, it “knows nothing of any requirement of provincial consent, either to a resolution of the federal Houses or as a condition of the exercise of United Kingdom legislative power.”88 The Court conceded that the Constitution is “silent” on the power of federal Houses to proceed by themselves with such a change. Yet, this silence, the Court continued, is not proof of the non-existence of that power.89 This reasoning seems contrary to legal logic, the federal nature of the state, and the impact of having a federal system on the role of the Constitution, as was summarized by minority Justices Ritchie and Martland: “The Canadian Senate and House of Commons were Houses in a Parliament in a federal state, whose powers were not all embracing, but were specifically limited by the Act which created it.”90 The majority justices could have interpreted the silence of the Constitution Act, 1867, in the light of political practices, namely the very convention that they recognized as existing in the very same judgment. Had they done so, they would have acted in accordance with precedents in which the courts had considered conventions as secondary, complementary sources for better interpreting the texts of laws.91 Surprisingly, they instead decided to proceed with a “hermetic separation”92 between law and conventions. Critical of this approach, Jacques-Yvan Morin and José Woehrling suggest that “a cleavage this radical – and artificial – between the law of the Constitution and constitutional practice is unimaginable.”93 Admittedly, the Trudeau government went back to the drawing board following the reference and resumed negotiations with the provinces. The negotiations led to an agreement on patriation, which excluded Quebec in the end. Back before the Supreme Court in 1982, Quebec submitted an argument based on there being a convention by virtue of which patriation should have required either unanimity or Quebec’s consent. In its second reference, the Court concluded that it did not see, in the precedents, recognition by political actors of a historical, conventional right of veto allegedly stemming from the principle of Canadian duality. In this way, the Court interfered in a relationship that had traditionally belonged solely to the political arena. It began acting as guardian94 of a political instrument even though it had no means of enforcing penalties in case of violation. Of course, once the highest court had declared that there was a constitutional convention, the stakeholders’ impression that they had to follow it logically increased.95 This is one of the performative effects of Supreme Court decisions on the state of constitutional law.96 In addition, by ruling on the content of the convention, the Court helped to “codify” it,97 in a way, and thereby altered its nature as something strictly unwritten. Nonetheless, the constitutional convention did not acquire “any legal effect.”98 According to the Court, that would have been contrary to the

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convention’s nature as a convention.99 The impact of the strict, artificial separation between law and conventions that the Court held in 1981–82100 is much greater in a context where constituent power is blocked and the rigid provisions of the Constitutional Act, 1867, are untouchable.101 A Power Relationship with the Federal Order That Is Difficult to Reverse In Canada, the English origin of constitutional conventions generates a second major consequence: to some extent, it leaves federalism at a dead end. Most authors echo the Supreme Court’s lessons, which are themselves taken from English doctrine.102 Traditionally, the binding scope of constitutional conventions was attributable to a spirit of fair play. For example, it is expected that a government that lost an election or was defeated in the legislative chamber by a no-confidence vote would hand over the power to the opposition without any undue fuss.103 Brun, Tremblay, and Brouillet explain this practice as follows: “Essentially, successive governments accept the legitimacy of the opposition, and concede in advance its right to take power if it wins the election. They do not seek to profit from their position by trying to silence or obstruct the opposition.”104 That convention is in line with the other conventions that determine the relations between the government and the opposition, and between the elected assembly and the government. It is one of the oldest conventions in our system. Conventions are essentially inferred from honest conduct in parliamentary debate. Political actors thus act in conformity with rules conventionally established by all, well aware that they may, in turn, find themselves in their adversary’s position. Everyone wins by respecting conventions, because the power balance can easily be reversed in favour of the opposition, for example.105 Beyond strategic considerations, sound conduct of state business and respect of democracy depend on this. In an assembly, election results logically guide the behaviour of political actors.106 Yet, without making any assumptions about the bad faith of federal authorities in Canada, this logic cannot be transposed automatically to constitutional conventions, the raison d’être of which is precisely the federal principle. Unlike the power relationship between the members of the elected assembly and the government, in the case of the constitutional conventions (for example, those around the principle of responsible government), the power relationship between Quebec political actors and their federal counterparts is not likely to be reversed. The federal authorities also see the potential of using constitutional conventions to offer Quebec certain concessions and better protection for constitutional guarantees while bypassing the formal negotiation process.

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However, they very often have a trump card up their sleeve. Backed by the centralizing elements in the text of the Constitution Act, 1867, federal political actors are more likely to come out the winners in a conflict between a written constitutional provision and a constitutional convention, especially if the conflict ends up before the Court.107 The situation has been all the more complex for Quebec since the 1982 Supreme Court opinion. When analyzing the criteria for there to be a convention on Quebec’s historical right of veto, the Court stated that, in such a case, the explicit recognition of other provinces would be necessary108 and that such acknowledgment could not be inferred from past practice: “It seems to us that the contention of appellant’s counsel to the effect that conventions need not be explicitly accepted is impossible to distinguish in practice from a denial of the requirement of acceptance by the actors in the precedents.”109 By requiring explicit recognition from federal authorities and the other provinces on the constitutional convention concerning Quebec’s right of veto, the Court added additional requirements, in comparison with English doctrine. It applied the lessons of English jurist Sir Ivor Jennings in a much more formalist manner. Jennings advocated for the need to find “general acquiescence”110 among political actors. In contrast with unanimity, the virtue of such a level of general consent can be explained, among other things, by the fact that we must sometimes contend with possibly contradictory statements by members of the same government:111 “Indeed, one would search in vain for a complete unanimity on the precise terms of many conventions.”112 Given this, the criteria of recognition as defined by the Court became “more difficult, even impossible to fulfill.”113 Under these circumstances, not only is Quebec confronted with a text that is often detrimental to its autonomy and distinctive identity, but, if it appeals to a “reconciliatory” constitutional convention, it must demonstrate that the convention is recognized by the other provinces. Yet, considering that the latter do not generally share Quebec’s understanding of communitarian or dualist federalism, preferring instead the principle of all provinces being equal,114 the power relationships, even in informal constitutional law,115 prove to be, over time, unfair toward Quebec.116

c o n c l u s i on It goes without saying that constitutional conventions always remain more precarious than the rigid written norms of the Constitution, and, when they directly contradict the Constitution, they present many challenges regarding respect for federalism. According to François Chevrette, moreover, federalism is “not the sort of regime to be established by customary practice, no matter how English might be the context in which we hope to institute it”!117 In a way, conventions’ advantages are their flaws. Political and evolving, they allow a text that has been carved in Canadian constitutional stone for a

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century and a half to adapt, and they can also attenuate its centralizing character in many ways. In that sense, the governments of Quebec have often sought to set up a distinctive space for Quebec within Canadian federalism, particularly when it has been a question of strengthening the principle of participation with respect to federal authorities, such as the Supreme Court, Senate, and senior public administration. Recently, when Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin retired, the Quebec government issued a firm reminder that, in accordance with a convention founded on the principle of Canadian duality, the next chief fustice of the Supreme Court of Canada had to be from Quebec. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did indeed appoint Justice Wagner, respecting in fact the tradition, but, when he did so, he refused to admit that any convention had truly influenced his choice.118 Once again, the crucial point is whether or not the political actors recognize that they are bound by the convention. In the current state of things, following the Supreme Court’s understanding of the recognition criterion, Quebec political actors are always at a disadvantage in relation to the other members of the federation. Constitutional conventions’ flexibility truly becomes an Achilles’ heel.119 According to the Supreme Court’s lessons, a contemporary political actor uninterested in respecting the informal rules of the game could seriously compromise, almost single-handedly, the recognition of a convention, even if it had been established at the price of political compromise over many years.120 In the 1981 reference, the Court’s majority was clear about this vulnerability: “The very nature of a convention, as political in inception and as depending on a consistent course of political recognition by those for whose benefit and to whose detriment (if any) the convention developed over a considerable period of time is inconsistent with its legal enforcement.”121 In any event, the position of the various Quebec governments over the last several decades seems to have exerted an influence on a point that could, over time, change the Supreme Court’s thinking on constitutional conventions. Recently, the Court seems to have shifted in matters of federalism, taking a stance different from the one that characterized the 1981–82 resolutions on patriation. In 2014, in its judgments concerning the federal bills respecting Senate and Supreme Court reform, the Court showed itself to be particularly sensitive to the specific character of Quebec and to historical arguments regarding the compromises negotiated between the members of the federation.122 Noting this tendency, Sébastien Grammond arrived at the conclusion that there was a form of resurgence of the foundational compact theory.123 The Court gave considerable weight to the perception that Quebec had federal institutions,124 establishing significant ties between the notions of “legality” and “legitimacy.”125 For instance, the Court based its argument on the April 1981 Accord,126 which was concluded by the common front of eight provinces, and it used the Accord to interpret the constituent’s

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intentions respecting Article 43 of the Constitution Act, 1982. This means that the Court took care to examine a political consensus that had occurred in the past and had included Quebec before it was finally excluded from patriation. Moreover, the Court recognized, in a way, that the Constitution has always been for Quebec a guarantor of the compromises established in 1867 and since that date. Admittedly, those were occasions when the Supreme Court had to interpret written, formal provisions of the Constitution,127 not political norms like conventions. Yet, in the context of a multinational federation, in the future it would be perfectly consistent for the Court to draw inspiration from these recent judgments and demonstrate greater caution when ruling on a constitutional convention that is crucial for one of the parties to the negotiation. This could translate into a change in the way the recognition criterion is studied. The objective of a constitutional convention founded on the principle of federalism is often to enshrine greater autonomy for a province or steadier participation in the federal authorities, especially when the province, like Quebec in many matters, defends its specificity in the federation through a historical compromise. In such a context, rather than impose a standard that requires something that is in practice almost unattainable, such as formal, unanimous agreement by all members of the federation that there is a convention, could the Court not grant asymmetric weight to the statements of Quebec’s political actors, for example? It would be a means of better adapting a historically English source to the federal, binational dimension of the Canadian state. notes

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The author would like to thank Patrick Taillon for his comments and attentive reading. John Stuart Mill, “Considerations on Representative Government,” in On Liberty and Other Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 270. Marc Chevrier, “Notre république en Amérique,” in Penser la nation québécoise, ed. Michel Venne (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 2000), 150–1. Henri Brun, Guy Tremblay, and Eugénie Brouillet, Droit constitutionnel (Cowansville, qc : Éditions Yvon Blais, 2014), 201–2. Jean Leclair and Yves-Marie Morissette, “L’indépendance judiciaire et la Cour Suprême: Reconstruction historique douteuse et théorie constitutionnelle de complaisance,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal, no. 36 (1998): 499. Based on an inventory of the transitional provisions and the provisions that have been modified by constitutional conventions or amended by subsequent constitutional Acts, André Tremblay identifies almost eighty obsolete sections in the Constitution. See: André Tremblay, Droit Constitutionnel: Principes (Montreal: Les Éditions Thémis, 2000), 7.

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6 30 & 31 Vict., c. 3 (U.K.). 7 The Department of Justice Canada has published an administrative consolidation of the Constitution Acts, 1867 to 1982. The French version is generally reproduced in works on Quebec legal doctrine: Canada, Codification administrative des Lois constitutionnelles de 1867 à 1982 (Ottawa: Department of Justice of Canada, 2001). However, neither the translation nor the editorial notes that it contains have been drafted in collaboration with the provinces or approved by them. 8 Constitution Act, 1867, s. 85. 9 Constitution Act, 1867, s. 17. The drafters used the term “legislature” to refer to the provinces’ elected assemblies. 10 Réjean Pelletier, “Le principe fédératif et les institutions fédérales: le Sénat canadien correspond-il au ‘modèle’ d’une Chambre haute dans une fédération?”, Revue québécoise de droit constitutionnel, no. 3 (2010): 8. 11 Vincent C. Macdonald, “Judicial Interpretation of the Canadian Constitution,” University of Toronto Law Journal, no. 1 (1935–36): 261–4; Ronald L. Watts, Comparaison des régimes fédéraux (Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1996), 80; Andrew Heard, Canadian Constitutional Conventions: The Marriage of Law and Politics (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2014), 155. 12 Richard Simeon and Ian Robinson, “The Dynamics of Canadian Federalism,” in Canadian Politics, ed. James Bickerton and Alain-G. Gagnon (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 155. 13 Jean-Charles Bonenfant, “L’esprit de 1867,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 17, no. 1 (1963): 32 (translated from the French; unless otherwise indicated, all English translations of French texts are by the translators of this volume); Eugénie Brouillet, La négation de la nation: L’identité culturelle québécoise et le fédéralisme canadien (Quebec City: Septentrion, 2005), 135, 199. 14 Quebec Act, 1774, 14 Geo. III, c. 83 (U.K.), reprinted in R.S.C. 1985, app. II, no. 2. 15 See, for instance: Kenneth Clinton Wheare, Federal Government (London: Oxford University Press, 1947), 19. 16 Richard Albert, “Introduction: The Values of Canadian Constitutionalism,” in Canada in the World: Comparative Perspectives on the Canadian Constitution, ed. Richard Albert and David R. Cameron (Cambridge, uk : Cambridge University Press, 2017), 2; André Bernard, La vie politique au Québec et au Canada (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2000), 19. 17 Over the years, some changes have been made to the Constitution Act, 1867, notably by the Constitution Amendment Proclamation, 1983 (si /84-102), (R.S.C. 1985, app. II, no. 46), which concerned Indigenous rights, and by the Constitution Amendment Proclamation, 1993 (New Brunswick Act) (S1/9354), but it has never been subject to a major reform. 18 Agreement between the Government of Canada and the Gouvernement du Québec with regard to cooperation on immigration matters and on the

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selection of foreign nationals wishing to settle either permanently or temporarily in Québec (Cullen-Couture Agreement); Canada-Quebec Accord Relating to Immigration and Temporary Admission of Aliens (Gagnon-Tremblay-McDougall Agreement). House of Commons of Canada, Debates, 39th Parliament, 1st session, vol. 141, no. 87, 27 November 2006, pp. 5411–12. See also: House of Commons of Canada, Debates, 35th Parliament, 1st session, vol. 133, no. 267, 29 November 1995, p. 16971. Frédéric Levesque, “L’alternance au poste de gouverneur général et la dualité canadienne: Règle de politesse ou convention constitutionnelle?”, Revue générale de droit 37, no. 2 (2007): 301–43. Re: Resolution to amend the Constitution (1981) 1 S.C.R. 753; Re: Objection by Quebec to a Resolution to amend the Constitution (1982) 2 S.C.R. 793. James Careless, The Unions of the Canadas (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1967), 209–10; Frederick Vaughan, The Canadian Federalist Experiment: From Defiant Monarchy to Reluctant Republic (Montreal: McGill’s-Queen’s University Press, 2003), 60–7. Gil Rémillard, Le fédéralisme canadien, vol. 2 (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 1985), 124 (translation). Ibid., 134. (translation); Alain-G. Gagnon, “Political Dynamics in Quebec: Charting Concepts and Imagining Political Avenues,” in Albert and Cameron, eds, Canada in the World, 63. Marc Chevrier, Canadian Federalism and the Autonomy of Québec: A Historical Viewpoint (Quebec: Ministère des Relations internationales, 2003), 3. François Rocher, “The Quebec-Canada Dynamic or the Negation of the Ideal of Federalism,” in Contemporary Canadian Federalism: Foundations, Traditions, Institutions, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 100. See: Secrétariat aux affaires intergouvernementales canadiennes, Québec’s Positions on Constitutional and Intergovernmental Issues from 1936 to March 2001 (Quebec City: Ministère du Conseil exécutif, 2001); and Positions du Québec dans les domaines constitutionnel et intergouvernemental de 2001 à 2008 (Quebec: Ministère du Conseil exécutif, 2016). On the protective function of the Canadian Constitution, see: Sébastien Grammond, “Compact is Back: The Supreme Court of Canada’s Revival of the Compact Theory of Confederation,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 53, no. 3 (2016): 803–6. Benoît Pelletier, “Allocution du ministre Benoît Pelletier à l’occasion du Congrès canadien des affaires constitutionnelles 2008,” Quebec City, 18 January 2008, https://www.sqrc.gouv.qc.ca/secretariat/salle-de-nouvelles/ discours/details.asp?id=79 (translation). François Rocher considers that, for Benoît Pelletier, “Quebecers’ attachment to Canada is conditional on it reconnecting with the federating spirit, rejecting the impulses that favour concentration of power and means in the hands of the central government and taking

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30 31

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distance from a standardizing vision of a unitary Canada.” See François Rocher’s chapter in this collection. Jacques-Yvan Morin and José Woehrling, Les constitutions du Canada et du Québec, du régime français à nos jours, vol. 2 (Montreal: Les Éditions Thémis, 1994), 129n14. Paul Gérin-Lajoie, Constitutional Amendment in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1950), 4. Before 1982, recourse to the Parliament of the United Kingdom was necessary to amend essential characteristics of the Canadian Constitution: Statute of Westminster, 22 & 23 Geo. V, c. 4 (U.K.). Brouillet, La négation de la nation, 83. Albert, “Introduction,” 4 (emphasis added). “Speech by Jean Lesage,” Quebec Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Lac-Beauport, Quebec, 10 March 1965, p. 7; reproduced in Secrétariat aux affaires intergouvernementales canadiennes, Québec’s Positions, 25. “Speech by Jean Lesage to the Reform Club of Montreal,” Montreal, 1 March 1965, p. 1; reproduced in Secrétariat aux affaires intergouvernementales canadiennes, Québec’s Positions, 25. See Patrick Taillon’s chapter in this collection. Chevrier, Canadian Federalism, 11. Secrétariat québécois aux relations canadiennes, Resolution of the Québec National Assembly on the conditions without which Québec cannot accept the patriation of the Canadian Constitution, 1 December 1981, https://www.sqrc. gouv.qc.ca/documents/positions-historiques/positions-du-qc/part3/ Document18_en.pdf. Sécrétariat aux affaires intergouvernementales canadiennes, Québec’s Positions. Secrétariat aux affaires intergouvernementales canadiennes, Quebecers: Our Way of Being Canadian: Policy on Québec Affirmation and Canadian Relations (Quebec City: Secrétariat aux affaires intergouvernementales canadiennes/Direction des communications, Government of Quebec, 2017), 52, 54. Even after the adoption of An Act respecting Constitutional Amendments, S.C. 1996, c. 1 (Regional Veto Act), Quebec continued to demand a right of veto formally integrated to the Constitution Act, 1982, instead of the precarious veto, complemented with exceptions, that was set out in the “ordinary” federal statute. Brouillet, La négation de la nation, 71 (translation). Patrick Taillon, Réapprendre à defendre nos intérêts essentiels: Quelques critiques à l’endroit de la nouvelle politique d’affirmation du Gouvernement du Québec (Montreal: Institut de recherche sur le Québec, forthcoming) (translation). Antoine Brousseau Desaulniers, “Les usages du passé comme marqueurs des transformations de la culture politique québécoise en regard des débats constitutionnels (1960–1971),” Politique et Sociétés 37, no. 3 (2018): 4. (trans-

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lation). Systematically added to this were demands that denounced “the encroachment on provincial jurisdiction” by the federal government’s excessive powers including, in the first place, its spending power. Secrétariat aux affaires intergouvernementales canadiennes, Québec’s Positions, 58. “Allocution de Claude Ryan,” Kingston, 8 December 1989, pp 1–2 (translation). In 1968, Daniel Johnson considered that “the Canadian Constitution must take into account the fact that Quebec has a special role to play in achieving cultural equality.” Daniel Johnson quoted in “Working paper submitted by Québec to the Standing Committee of Officials on the Constitutional Conference,” 17 July 1968. In 1975, Robert Bourassa concluded that, to consent to patriation, Quebec must demand that the “constitution provides the guarantees necessary for the survival of French culture.” Robert Bourassa, closing address at the Les années 80 conference, MontGabriel, Quebec, 24 August 1975. Quebec’s 2017 policy of constitutional affirmation states that: “Quebec will always be concerned about the ongoing vitality of its language and culture.” Secrétariat aux affaires intergouvernementales canadiennes, Quebecers: Our Way, 105. Chevrier, Canadian Federalism, 15. An exception is the Constitution Amendment, 1997 (Quebec) (SI/97-141) on the creation of linguistic school boards in Quebec. It was the fruit of bilateral negotiations with Ottawa. 1987 Constitutional Accord, 3 June 1987). “Consensus Report on the Constitution: Final Text” (Charlottetown Accord), Charlottetown, 18 August 1992, https://www.sqrc.gouv.qc.ca/documents/ positions-historiques/positions-du-qc/part3/Document27_en.pdf. Patrick Taillon, Les nouveaux obstacles juridiques au renouvellement du fédéralisme canadien (Montreal: Institut de recherche sur le Québec, 2007). Statute of Westminster, 22 & 23 Geo. V, c. 4 (U.K.). Michael Lusztig, “Constitutional Paralysis: Why Canadian Constitutional Initiatives Are Doomed to Fail,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, no. 27 (1994): 747–71. Benoît Pelletier, La modification constitutionnelle au Canada (Toronto: Carswell, 1996), 315; Morin and Woehrling, Les constitutions, 535. Gilles Bourques and Jules Duchastel, “Les identités, la fragmentation de la société canadienne et la constitutionnalisation des enjeux politiques,” International Journal of Canadian Studies 14, no. 1 (1996): 77–94. Taillon, Les nouveaux obstacles, 24 (translation). See, for instance: MacDonald v. City of Montreal, (1986) 1 S.C.R. 460, para. 104; and, more recently, Reference re Supreme Court Act, ss. 5 and 6, (2014) 1 S.C.R. 433, paras. 48, 59, 69. The preamble to the Constitution Act, 1867, makes reference to this by specifying that the text is “similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom” (first recital). Peter W. Hogg, Constitutional Law of Canada 1–3 (loose-leaf ed., 1977); cited in Benjamin L. Berger, “White Fire: Structural Indeterminacy, Constitutional

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Design, and the Constitution Behind the Text,” Journal of Comparative Law 3, no 1 (2008): 253. Hugo Cyr, “L’absurdité du critère scriptural pour qualifier la constitution,” Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law, no. 6 (2012): 302. Heard, Canadian Constitutional Conventions, 2; Re: Resolution to amend the Constitution, 880. Ibid., 878. Ibid., 858. David E. Smith, Federalism and the Constitution of Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), x. Pelletier, La modification constitutionnelle, 41–2 (translation). For many, the “flexibility” made possible by unwritten constitutional normativity largely accounts for the resilience of the Canadian Constitution. See: Gérin-Lajoie, Constitutional Amendment in Canada, 24; Albert, “Introduction,” 8; Berger, “White Fire”; Maurice Lamontagne, Le fédéralisme canadien: Évolution et problèmes (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1954), 97–8; Alain C. Cairns, “The Living Canadian Constitution,” in Essential Readings in Canadian Constitutional Politics, ed. Christian Leuprecht and Peter H. Russell (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 267. Morin and Woehrling, Les constitutions, 137–8 (translation); Nicole Duplé, “La cour suprême et le rapatriement de la constitution: La victoire du compromis sur la rigueur,” Les Cahiers de droit 22, nos 3–4 (1981): 624. Owen Hood Phillips and Paul Jackson, Constitutional and Administrative Law (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1978), 29. Brun, Tremblay, and Brouillet, Droit constitutionnel, I.160. More broadly, André Tremblay explains that constitutional conventions “aim to make the exercise of government more democratic, adapt a rigid legal framework to shifting situations and resolve ambiguous situations.” Tremblay, Droit Constitutionnel, 20–1 (translation). Re: Resolution to amend the Constitution, 888–98. Ibid., 898–905. Chevrier, Canadian Federalism, 10. Levesque, “L’alternance au poste,” 320; José Woehrling, “La modification par convention constitutionnelle du mode de désignation des sénateurs canadiens,” Revue de droit de l’Université de Sherbrooke 39, nos 1–2, (2008–09): 143; Heard, Canadian Constitutional Conventions, 156; Julien Fournier and Amélie Binette, “La Couronne: Vecteur du fédéralisme canadien,” Les Cahiers de droit 58, no. 4 (2017): 649. Morin and Woehrling, Les constitutions, 155; Brouillet, La négation de la nation, 171; Pelletier, La modification constitutionnelle, 19. In 1938, in Reference Re The Power of the Governor General in Council to Disallow Provincial Legislation and the Power of Reservation of a LieutenantGovernor of a Province (1938) S.C.R. 71, the Supreme Court confirmed that these powers “subsist,” but later recognized, in 1981, that “reservation and

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disallowance of provincial legislation, although in law still open, have, to all intents and purposes, fallen into disuse.” Re: Resolution to amend the Constitution, 802. Rémillard, Le fédéralisme canadien, 162; Rocher, “The Québec-Canada Dynamic,” 90. Patrick Taillon, “Une Constitution en désuétude: Les réformes paraconstitutionnelles et la ‘déhiérarchisation’ de la Constitution au Canada,” in La norme juridique “reformatée”: Perspectives québécoises des notions de force normative et de sources revisitées, ed. Louise Lalonde and Stéphane Bernatchez with the collaboration of George Azzaria (Sherbrooke: Éditions Revue de droit de l’Université de Sherbrooke, 2016), 303. Marc Chevrier gives the following details: “Their sanction falls under the political domain’s jurisdiction, that is to say, of non-judiciary state institutions, public opinion, and even, the electorate.” Marc Chevrier, “Le juge et la conservation du régime politique au Canada,” Politique et Sociétés 19, nos 2–3 (2000): 74 (translation). Rémillard, Le fédéralisme canadien, 162 (translation). Since 1887, Quebec’s political actors have campaigned for the official abolition of reservation and disallowance. See: Chevrette, Marx, and Zhou, Constitutional Law, 12. Patrick Taillon, “Le fédéralisme de participation et l’urgence de réinventer les institutions fédérales,” in Jean-Charles Bonenfant et l’esprit des institutions, ed. Amélie Binette, Patrick Taillon, and Guy Laforest (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2018), 296. In this respect, see the resolutions adopted by the National Assembly of Quebec since 1981 on the non-adherence of Quebec to the Constitution Act, 1982: https://www.sqrc.gouv.qc.ca/relations-canadiennes/positions-historiques/ motions-assemblee-nationale-en.asp. Marc Chevrier reminds us that the Canada of 1867 “combined Empire and colony, federation and unitary State, monarchy and democracy.” Chevrier, “Le juge et la conservation,” 155 (translation). Stephen Tierney, “Misconceiving Federalism: Canada and the Federal Idea,” in Albert and Cameron, eds, Canada in the World, 35. Tremblay, Droit Constitutionnel, 27. Albert Venn Dicey, An Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (London: Macmillan, 1915), 30. For a contrary opinion, see: Fabien Gélinas, “La Cour suprême du Canada et le droit politique,” Cahiers du Conseil constitutionnelle, no. 24 (2008): 2. Re Amendment of the Constitution of Canada, (1981), 117 D.L.R. (3d) (Court of Appeal of Manitoba); Re Amendment of the Constitution of Canada (No. 2), (1981) 118 D.L.R. (3d) (Court of Appeal of Newfoundland); Avis sur le projet de resolution concernant la Constitution du Canada, (1981) C.A. 80 (Court of Appeal of Quebec). Morin and Woehrling, Les constitutions, 447.

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86 Re: Resolution to amend the Constitution, 759 (reasons of Justices Martland, Ritchie, Dickson, Beetz, Chouinard, and Lamer). 87 Ibid., 905. 88 Ibid., 807. 89 Ibid., 786. 90 Ibid., 831 (dissenting opinion by justices Martland and Ritchie) (emphasis added). The Canadian state is, moreover, the product of aggregative federalism, where the colonies pre-existed the federal state and, at the time, constituted distinct political entities; the federal state did not precede the colonies. 91 British Coal Corporation v. the King, (1935) A.C. 500; The Attorney-General of Ontario and Others v. The Attorney-General of Canada and Others and The Attorney-General of Quebec, (1947) A.C. 127; Reference Re Canada Assistance Plan (B.C.), (1991) 2 S.C.R. 525. 92 Gélinas, “La Cour suprême,” 73 (translation). 93 Morin and Woehrling, Les constitutions, 480 (translation). See also: François Boulianne, “Le rapatriement constitutionnel de 1982: Existait-il une coutume constitutionnelle nécessitant l’accord unanime des provinces pour modifier la Constitution?”, Les Cahiers de droit 55, no. 2 (2014): 329–84. 94 Peter H. Russell, “The Supreme Court and Federal-Provincial Relations: The Political Use of Legal Resources,” Canadian Public Policy 11, no. 2 (1985): 163. 95 Chevrette and Marx, Constitutional Law, 25. 96 Sandra Laugier, “Performativité, normativité et droit,” Archives de Philosophie 67, no. 4 (2004): 607–27. 97 Chevrier, “Le juge et la conservation,” 74. 98 Morin and Woehrling, Les constitutions, 453 (translation). In the 1981 resolution, the Court explicitly rejected the scenario of “crystallization” of a convention into a rule, in the strict sense of the law. Re: Resolution to amend the Constitution, 779–80. 99 Re: Resolution to amend the Constitution, 774–5. 100 Brun, Tremblay, and Brouillet, Droit constitutionnel, 411. 101 Peter W. Hogg, “The Difficulty of Amending the Constitution of Canada,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 31, no. 1 (1993): 41–61. 102 Heard, Canadian Constitutional Conventions, 1–2. 103 Re: Resolution to amend the Constitution, 878. See Hugo Cyr’s article for a complete overview of the subtleties that surround this constitutional convention: “De la formation du gouvernement,” Revue Générale de droit 43, no. 2 (2013): 419. 104 Brun, Tremblay, and Brouillet, Droit constitutionnel, I.138 (translation). 105 Simultaneously, “the observance of conventions by the Opposition is ensured by their desire to take the power and protect their reputation.” Emlyn C.S. Wade and Godfrey Philips, Constitutional Law (London: Longmans, 1965), 78. 106 Tremblay, Droit Constitutionnel, 28.

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107 “The Canadian federation has certainly been modernized since 1867. The political system that has emerged scarcely resembles the nearly unitary government its constituents agreed to. Jurisdictions have been transformed and made more flexible; governments have developed consultation and delegation mechanisms, enabling them to reorganize the division of some of their responsibilities and coordinate their activities. But despite this unquestionable evolution, Canada has remained a unitary federation in its official discourse and its constitutional architecture, making the central government the primary and most representative authority.” Chevrier, Canadian Federalism, 14. 108 Re: Objection by Quebec to a Resolution to amend the Constitution, 815. 109 Ibid., 817. 110 Ivor Jennings, The Law and the Constitution (London: University of London Press, 1959), 117. 111 Heard, Canadian Constitutional Conventions, 175. 112 Ibid., 176. 113 François Boulianne, “La validité du rapatriement de 1982: Analyse de la coutume constitutionnelle nécessitant l’accord unanime des provinces” (master’s thesis, Université Laval, 2016), 52 (translation). 114 Alain-G. Gagnon, “Introduction: Intersecting Perspectives on Canadian Federalism,” in Gagnon, ed., Contemporary Canadian Federalism, 12; Bernard, La vie politique, 18. 115 Marc Chevrier, “De quelques fonctions du droit au sein de l’Empire canadien,” in La mobilisation et la protection des collectivités minoritaires, ed. Eugénie Brouillet and Louis-Philippe Lampron (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2013), 50. 116 In the fourth edition of their treatise, Henri Brun and Guy Tremblay concluded that in Canada an “ex-gratia” federalism has been constructed, which works as long as the federal government accepts to respect its rules and spirit. Henri Brun and Guy Tremblay, Droit constitutionnel (Cowansville, qc : Éditions Yvon Blais, 2002), 437. In Reference re Employment Insurance Act (Can.), ss. 22 and ss. 23 (2005) 2 S.C.R. 669, Justice Deschamps, speaking for the majority, agrees in her remarks with Brun and Tremblay on this subject: “What are regarded as the characteristic features of federalism may vary from one judge to another, and will be based on political rather than legal notions. The task of maintaining the balance between federal and provincial powers falls primarily to governments” (para. 10). 117 François Chevrette, “Les trois visages du constitutionnalisme canadien,” Revue juridique Thémis, no. 20 (1986): 508 (translation). 118 Patrick Taillon and Amélie Binette, “Québec et Canada,” Annuaire international de justice constitutionnelle, no. 34 (2018): 877–8. 119 Heard, Canadian Constitutional Conventions, 3. 120 Analyzing the impact of the Court’s positioning at the time of patriation, historian Jean-Louis Roy concluded that it had destabilized normative grounds that had been held as essential, such as the veto and the value of constitutional

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conventions: “Relieved of their political weight and of their symbolical value, these few points of reference, apparently dependable and solidly rooted in history, were destroyed.” Jean-Louis Roy, “Entre le changement et l’indiscipline,” Les Cahiers de droit 26, no. 1 (1985): 70 (translation); Tierney, “Misconceiving Federalism,” 35. Re: Resolution to amend the Constitution, 775–6 (emphasis added). Catherine Mathieu and Patrick Taillon, “Le fédéralisme comme principe matriciel dans l’interprétation de la procédure de modification constitutionnelle,” McGill Law Journal 60, no. 4 (2015): 784. Sébastien Grammond adds Reference re Secession of Québec, (1998) 2 S.C.R. 217 to his analysis of the 2014 references. Grammond, “Compact is Back,” 812. He considers that, in this contemporary conception of the compact, the Court tends to recognize, in parallel, a compact between the Crown and the First Nations (817). Mathieu and Taillon, “Le fédéralisme comme principe matriciel,” 781. Reference re Supreme Court Act, ss. 5 and 6, (2014) 1 S.C.R. 433, paras. 49, 55, 93; Reference re Senate Reform, (2014) 1 S.C.R. 704. See also: Dave Guénette, “La cour suprême du Canada et la pluralité démotique de l’État canadien: Des traces de consociationalisme dans la jurisprudence constitutionnelle,” Revue Générale de droit, no. 46 (2016): 235. “Constitutional Accord, Canadian Patriation Plan, April 16, 1981 (accord signed by the provinces, except Ontario and New Brunswick),” https://sqrc.gouv.qc.ca/documents/positions-historiques/positions-du-qc/part3/ Document14_en.pdf. In both cases, the Court invalidated the federal initiatives, which essentially violated the principle in virtue of which the “April Accord, and ultimately Part V, reflect the political consensus that the provinces must have a say in constitutional changes that engage their interests.” Reference re Senate Reform, para. 31.

17 The Root of the Deadlock: The Constitutional Veto in Federalist Thought in Quebec Patrick Taillon

The negotiation of an amending formula able to protect Quebec against changes detrimental to its interests has long been at the centre of constitutional discussions. The right of veto is one of the traditional claims that has taken up a considerable amount of time and energy. Quebec, the only province with a Francophone majority and the heart of Francophonie in Canada, has most often demanded that its consent be obtained before the adoption of any amendment affecting its powers, rights, and interests. For over sixty years, the debate lived on until, in the late 1990s, the constitutional question simply became “taboo” in Canadian politics. Along with recognition of Quebec’s national specificity, the right of veto has been established as one of the most fundamental and essential minimum demands to be met by any attempt to reintegrate Quebec into Canada’s constitutional community after the adoption of a new Constitution without its consent in 1982. The goal of this chapter is to challenge whether this traditional demand should remain a priority for Quebec. We will criticize this demand for a right of veto and the inordinate space it has occupied in the thought of nationalists engaged in reforming federalism. Our purpose is not to argue the advantages of maintaining the status quo with respect to the Canadian Constitution or to defend some form of methodological nationalism focusing on the defence of Quebec’s interests,1 but to make the promotion of our national interests more pertinent and efficient. The originality of our approach lies in using the specific, emblematic example of the right of veto to perform self-criticism of Quebec federalist thought and to highlight, more generally, the lack of deep deliberation and reflection on the content of Quebec’s traditional demands. Taking advantage of the distance provided by the passage of time, this study aims to show that the veto question has adversely affected Quebec’s capacity to advance its interests in the federation. In the end, demanding such a right has been a poor strategy. It is an idea that has proven to be

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counterproductive in the journey toward renewed federalism. However, the purpose is not to criticize those who, in their day, tried to formulate the demands that seemed, to the best of their knowledge, to be the most essential. Our criticism is in fact aimed toward the future, toward the protagonists in today’s and tomorrow’s constitutional story, who too often tend to evade necessary debate on the content of constitutional demands, presuming that what was considered a priority in the past must systematically remain a priority now and in the future. Because we now know much more about the practices and constitutional framework flowing from the patriation of the Constitution, it is possible for Quebec to take a new look at the question of the right of veto. From the angle of cost-benefit analysis, enshrining such a veto for Quebec would, of course, be a win, but we have to admit that its infrequent exercise, combined with the unanimity required to obtain it, greatly diminishes its interest. This two-part study will trace the role of the right of veto in the history of constitutional negotiations before going on to explain the reasons in favour of Quebec putting this demand on hold.

t h e r ig h t o f v e t o i n the hi story o f c o n s t it u t io n a l negoti ati ons The right of veto has played a central role in the history of constitutional debates, and this began long before patriation. As early as the 1920s, in the periphery of the Imperial Conferences that led to the Balfour Declaration and the passage of the Statute of Westminster, 1931, the gradual recognition of Canada’s political independence also raised the sensitive question of “Canadianizing” the formula for amending the Constitution. Indeed, what we today clumsily call the “patriation” of the Constitution consisted, on the legal level, in giving Canada an endogenous (in other words, specific-to-the-federation) constituting power that would replace the exogenous constituting power exercised by the Parliament in London. As the “dominion” was acquiring more political independence, the British Parliament was turning into the parliament of a foreign state. However, before the legal competency to amend supra-legislative rules of imperial origin (in particular, the British North America Act, 1867) could be transferred or “patriated,” the members of the federation had to be able to agree on the terms of a special, strict, complex amending formula. A Very Canadian Problem: The Inability to Agree – from the Statute of Westminster to Patriation As early as the 1927 Dominion-Provincial Conference, the federal authorities proposed giving all the provinces a veto on “major” changes, especially to the provinces’ powers and to the rights of (linguistic and confessional)

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minorities.2 However, that offer tended to overlook the provinces’ participation in aspects concerning the reform of federal institutions. At the end of the discussions, the members of the federation were unable to agree on the rules that would govern amendments to the Constitution, and they unanimously agreed to a “temporary” solution, which was codified in section 7 of the Statute of Westminster, 1931, and remained until 1982.3 The solution consisted in maintaining the status quo and leaving the Parliament in London with the power to legislate “for Canada,” if it proved necessary to amend any of the more rigid provisions of Canada’s Constitution. Other negotiations took place in 1935 and 1936, and also in 1950, but they failed every time because consensus could not be reached.4 While the mini-patriation of 1949 is an exception to this series of failures, that was only because the federal authorities acted unilaterally and obtained from the Parliament of Westminster a new ability to amend secondary and complementary aspects of federal institutions. That way of doing things was severely criticized by many provinces, and contributed to cooling intergovernmental negotiations throughout the 1950s. In the early 1960s, during discussions on the Fulton Formula, and then on the Fulton-Favreau Formula, it was proposed that Quebec be given the right to veto any proposed amendment of the distribution of powers.5 However, that right was to be accompanied by provisions that were, overall, extremely inflexible and would reduce Quebec’s chances of seeing the Constitution evolve in the direction of its interests.6 From the election of Jean Lesage and the beginning of the Quiet Revolution, Quebec had been demanding a deep reform of federalism, but, in the end, under pressure from nationalist criticism, the Lesage government withdrew its support for the draft changes, which were judged insufficient.7 In 1971, the Victoria Charter tried to enshrine a regional veto system that would favour Quebec, but only at the cost of a procedure that was once again extremely inflexible and would provide structural support to the status quo.8 Led at that point by the Liberal Party under Robert Bourassa, Quebec rejected this proposal also, mainly because it did not include sufficient recognition for Canadian duality or give enough scope to the provinces’ powers with regard to social matters.9 During that period, Quebec’s refusal proved to be determining: in the eyes of the members of the federation, in particular the federal government, it did not seem desirable to give Canada a new amending formula without the agreement of the only province that had a Francophone majority and represented, at the time, a quarter of Canada’s population. The customary seeking of Quebec’s consent would, however, be challenged in later years.

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A Bitter Failure for Quebec: From Patriation to the Emergence of a Constitutional “Taboo” Immediately after the referendum on sovereignty-association of 20 May 1980, things began speeding up and becoming more complicated. On the one hand, Quebec had to defend its “conventional” right of veto before the courts in order to fight the attempts to patriate the Constitution without its consent. On the other, the Lévesque government renounced Quebec’s traditional demand for a right of veto, in the hope of building a common front with the great majority of the other provinces, and also in favour of a right to opt out with financial compensation. Those two aspects ended up determining the course of events. the conventional right of veto With regard to the conventional aspect, beyond the content of the future amending formula that was yet to be established, Quebec ardently defended the position according to which it already had a “conventional” right of veto.10 Such a veto was not enshrined in formal constitutional law, but only in constitutional conventions,11 which are unwritten rules drawn from political practice,12 which force the members of the federation to comply with customs. In this case, the custom in question concerned not adopting any constitutional amendment that would limit Quebec’s powers without first obtaining the consent of Quebec’s National Assembly. On 28 September 1981, in a consultative decision with several dissenting opinions, the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed that there was such a convention. It prevented the federal authorities from unilaterally amending the Constitution in a way that would affect the provinces’ powers without first getting “a substantial degree of provincial consent.” The majority of the Supreme Court agreed with the governments of Manitoba, Newfoundland, and Quebec,13 which had challenged, through references submitted to their respective courts of appeal, the unilateral patriation that Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s government was planning to carry out. At the time, all relevant precedent indicated that major changes to the Constitution had to obtain the provinces’ consent. Otherwise, they would violate both the principle of federalism and the precedents that the political players recognized as binding. It was on that basis that the government of Quebec had until then considered that it had a conventional right to veto any amendments to the Constitution that concerned it. The problem was that, because its September 1981 opinion neither specified the exact number of provinces that had to consent, nor said whether Quebec had to be among those to consent, the Supreme Court created the conditions that then allowed the Trudeau government, on the night of 4–5 November 1981, to cut Quebec out of the negotiations on the terms of what would become, in 1982, the new Constitution of Canada.

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This is why, right after patriation, the Quebec government once again asked the Supreme Court to render a decision specifically on the consent of the only province with a Francophone majority. In that second opinion, dated 6 December 1982, the Court recognized that practices and customs argued in favour of Quebec having a right to veto amendments that concerned it. However, the Court said it did not have sufficient evidence regarding the willingness of political actors to be bound by those customs and practices. That was the end. Quebec lost the conventional right of veto that it had always believed it had, and it was confirmed that it would be subject to a foundational law to which its National Assembly had never consented. Taking some distance, in many respects, from the binding scope of constitutional conventions, in the end, the Supreme Court authorized the “power grab” that was the 1982 patriation. Its unanimous opinion was the following: “On the other hand, counsel for the respondent is right in asserting that the constitutional question has become moot. The Constitution Act, 1982, is now in force. Its legality is neither challenged nor assailable. It contains a new procedure for amending the Constitution of Canada which entirely replaces the old one in its legal as well as in its conventional aspects. Even assuming therefore that there was a conventional requirement for the consent of Quebec under the old system, it would no longer have any object or force.”14 As a “fait accompli,” a “revolution” in the legal sense of the term, the patriation – without Quebec’s consent – not only replaced but, in a way, “erased” any conventional requirements that may have existed previously.15 Since the new procedure that was adopted in 1982 swept everything else away, the question of whether Quebec’s consent was conventionally required prior to patriation had become, in the eyes of the Court, “moot.” It was a major loss for Quebec, and it proved that it was very risky for a minority nation to be satisfied with “conventional” protections that, by definition, are dependent on the rest of the federation engaging in fair play with respect to the customs concerned by such conventions. the right to opt 0ut as a substitute In addition to eliminating Quebec’s “conventional” veto, the negotiations on the Constitution Act, 1982, isolated Quebec and reduced its relative power in the future. Although Quebec had constantly repeated that it wanted the amending formula to codify its right to veto any major constitutional change that could affect its powers,16 the formula that was finally enshrined gave it only the right to opt out with respect to such issues. Moreover, the right to opt out would be, in many respects, unsatisfactory insofar as the financial compensation that should normally accompany such a mechanism was, in the final text of the 1982 Constitution, limited to “education or other cultural matters.”17 The root cause of this loss lay in the government of Quebec’s desire to form a unified front with the provinces in the rest of Canada. It has to be

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said that, at the beginning of 1981, Quebec was far from the only province in disagreement with the patriation plan. Alberta, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, and British Columbia were all on the same page. A little later, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia joined the group to form the “gang of eight.” Until the now-famous “night of long knives,” on 4–5 November 1981, the alliance of eight provinces spared no effort to block the unilateral patriation sought by Pierre Elliott Trudeau. It drafted a counter-proposal, the Constitutional Accord of 16 April 1981,18 which all eight signed. Under the influence of Claude Morin, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, the Lévesque government played its cards subtly within the common front. In a spirit of moderation aimed at creating compromise and consensus, Quebec restricted itself to defending only those positions that had already been adopted by another province that was a member of the common front.19 The Lévesque government made major concessions to achieve a common position. The 16 April 1981 Accord specifies that all the provinces are equal and it proposes a minimalist form of patriation:20 an amending formula, without a charter of rights, contrary to what the federal government was demanding, and without renewing federalism, which was the opposite of what Quebec traditionally demanded.21 While the amending formula promoted by the Trudeau government gave Quebec – like all provinces, or “province-regions,” of Canada – a right of veto on the core of the constitutional amendments to come, the Lévesque government preferred to renounce its traditional position in favour of a simple right to opt out with financial compensation.22 The right of veto would have made it possible for Quebec to block, on its own, any future constitutional reforms that went against its interests, but the right to opt out only provided it with the possibility of not having to apply amendments but not of being able to prevent them from being adopted. In this sense, the compromise signed by the Lévesque government in order to strengthen the common front seems like a loss.23 The Lévesque government’s position in favour of a right to opt out – accompanied by real financial compensation – could be defended. In some respects, it was closer to the type of federalism which Quebec has typically favoured. Naturally, a right of veto would have considerably increased Quebec’s position in power relations in the case of future constitutional negotiations, making it possible to exchange Quebec’s support for certain concessions. However, the right to opt out had the advantage of favouring greater flexibility. After all, as soon as the right of veto that Trudeau was offering Quebec was also offered to all the provinces, or province-regions, of the Canadian federation, the chances of success of a deep reform of the Canadian federation were significantly reduced. A source of blockages, the multiplication of vetoes could severely hamper change, whereas the right to opt out was meant to be more flexible and more in line with asymmetry,24 and it would offer Quebec the opportunity to forge a special status for itself.25

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At the time of the “beau risk,” after the Constitution had been patriated without Quebec’s consent, Lévesque’s government made the right of veto (or at least a right to opt out with full financial compensation) one of the four conditions necessary for its adherence to the Constitution Act, 1982.26 That condition was taken up by Pierre-Marc Johnson’s government27 and by that of Robert Bourassa.28 Nonetheless, in 1987, after the Meech Lake Accord negotiations, Bourassa’s government finally came over to a position relatively similar to that of Lévesque’s government in 1981, but that no longer involved an effective right to veto amendments to the distribution of powers.29 In fact, the Meech Lake Accord made essentially two changes to the amending formula that had been adopted in 1982. On the one hand, it “fixed” the shortcomings of the right to opt out provided for in paragraphs 1 and 2 of section 38 of the Constitution Act, 1982, by neutralizing the negative financial consequences associated with exercising that right. In other words, the scope of application of the right to financial compensation, as a complementary condition of the exercise of the right to opt out, was amended in continuity with the content of the 16 April 1981 Accord and the common front of the eight provinces initially opposed to patriation. On the other hand, the Meech Lake Accord also provided for an expansion of the kinds of reforms of federal institutions for which the unanimity of the provinces was required. In practice, the right of veto did not protect Quebec’s rights, powers, and competencies; instead, it would increase Quebec’s weight in possible negotiations on the reform of shared federal institutions (the Senate, the Supreme Court, etc.) while at the same time making the procedure for such reforms more complex and as rigid as possible. Subject in this way to the requirement of unanimity, there was virtually no chance of any reform of federal institutions. Three years later, the attempt to have all provinces ratify the Meech Lake Accord failed. After a great deal of consultation, in the context of the Bélanger-Campeau Commission,30 the Spicer Commission,31 and the Beaudoin-Dobbie Committee,32 the Charlottetown Accord was rejected by referendum in Quebec and in the rest of Canada. The rejected Accord proposed, once again, the same changes to the amending formula:33 the right to opt out with compensation in the case of amendments to the distribution of powers and the expansion of the unanimity rule for certain questions concerning the reform of federal institutions.34 From 1992 to 2017, a kind of implicit moratorium on multilateral constitutional negotiations took form. Of course, bilateral amendments to the Constitution were adopted, such as the one negotiated by Quebec and Ottawa to do away with denominational school boards, and there were ordinary laws and resolutions on issues that were materially constitutional, but that was the end of constitutional negotiations involving all provinces. More recently, in June 2017, Philippe Couillard’s Liberal government returned to constitutional matters through the publication of the policy

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document titled Quebecers: Our Way of Being Canadian. In continuity with traditional demands, the policy states that the right of veto still remains relevant.35 In its constitutional platform, Coalition avenir Quebec also commits to being in favour of a right of veto. It promotes the gradual, pragmatic implementation of Quebec’s constitutional demands, and it makes a clear distinction between changes that would require unanimity and those that could be achieved bilaterally or by marshalling the support of two thirds of the provinces comprising 50 per cent of the population.36

t h e r ig h t o f v e t o as source of m is u n d e r s t a ndi ngs Throughout the history of Canada’s search for a constitutional amending formula, Quebec has always sought to protect its rights, powers, and competencies by a right of veto or a right to opt out. That said, as much as the right of veto has been a central demand, it has also been at the origin of many impediments and misunderstandings. In practice, making that demand has often hindered Quebec’s ability to advance its interests. In the background of the debate on the right of veto, there is, in fact, a clash among fundamentally different conceptions of federalism that, on the level of constitutional negotiations, undermines Quebec’s ability to defend its interests efficiently within the federation. A Conception of Federalism’s “Tell” In many respects, the member entities’ right of veto is a powerful “tell” regarding the form of federalism in question. A priori, a federation, as an association of member states, is different from a confederation, in particular regarding the relationship to the rule of unanimity and, therefore, to the right-of-veto mechanism. A confederation reserves the member states’ “right to have the last word” by enshrining the idea that no limitation of their powers, competencies, or “sovereignty” can be adopted without their unanimous consent. This is why it is possible to claim that a confederation is a union of “sovereign” states. In contrast, federalism supposes equilibrium, autonomy, and cooperation – without subordination. In principle, neither the centre nor the member states have total control over the union’s rules of the game. However, a veto sometimes gives certain members of the federation disproportionate power, and it can considerably slow the building of common institutions.37 Yet, this does not mean that rights of veto are necessarily incompatible with the logic of federalism. To use a notion dear to Sébastien Grammond,38 amending formulas have a “protective” purpose that justifies better defences for the vital interests of a component of the federation. Many reasons can be given for the relevance and necessity of according a veto to certain members

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of a federation. However, what is the rule in a confederation is, in a federation, a very narrow exception applying only to certain matters. In a way, this is the goal of the selective unanimity procedure known as “special arrangements”39 contained in section 43 of the Constitution Act, 1982. It concerns matters “relating to some but not all provinces,” and gives the provinces in question a veto in such cases. Its origin is a “historical compromise” with geographical scope that remains relative. For example, the special conditions under which it was possible for a province to join or be created are, in the eyes of that province or of part of its population, an “essential feature.” A province’s boundaries,40 like its linguistic41 and denominational42 guarantees, are prime examples of such “special arrangements.” Whether or not such arrangements are indispensable can vary, of course, depending on the perspective from which the Constitution is analyzed. An example is how, when the Confederation Bridge was inaugurated in 1997, the requirement to maintain ferry service between the mainland and Prince Edward Island was considered superfluous, even though the ferry service was an “essential condition” for Prince Edward Island to join the Confederation in 1873. It was by following the special arrangements procedure set out in section 43 of the Constitution Act, 1982, that the obligation to provide ferry service was finally repealed.43 In such circumstances, a right of veto makes it easier to protect the vital and primary interests of certain members of the federation. The right of veto can also be imposed in a federation like Canada’s in order to cope with the geographic, demographic, or economic imbalances that characterize such a vast country. Prince Edward Island’s population is only a little over 142,000, but those of Ontario (13,400,000) and Quebec (8,100,000)44 are ninety-four and fifty-seven times greater, respectively. It was in order to take into account the deep demographic disparities among the members of the federation that a number of amending formulas were proposed prior to the one finally adopted in 1982, which gave a veto to Ontario, Quebec, and the other “regions” of Canada.45 A veto for all can also prove necessary in a federation when especially important changes are in question. This was the case for all the matters explicitly mentioned in the paragraphs of section 41 of the Constitution Act, 1982. Those matters include amendments to Part V (in other words, the amending formula46 itself) and to the office of the monarchy,47 which are certainly those most often analyzed. In the specific case of the amending formulas, the fact of granting a right of veto to all the members of the federation is easy to justify on the basis of the key role that those rules play in the federative pact. In a way, these are the most important constitutional norms: those that determine the procedures that must be followed to amend the federation’s constituting rules. Yet, it is strange to see that the procedure established by the Constitution Act, 1982, is itself more rigid than the one that led to its adoption.48 As Henri Brun, Guy Tremblay, and Eugénie Brouillet

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state, “the constitutional reform of 1982 therefore protects Quebec on this point in a way that it was not deemed necessary to respect in 1982, when the constitutional amending formula was amended, since that very action was taken against the will of Quebec.”49 The post-1982 standard thus seems to be in contradiction with the one Canada imposed on itself – without Quebec – on the night of 4–5 November 1981. Another special feature that the issue of the right of veto brings to the surface is the dominant role of federal institutions in the constitutional amending process. With the exception of the amendment of “provincial constitutions,”50 the House of Commons has a true right of veto over all amendments to the Constitution, and this has an influence on federalprovincial power relations. Because their agreement is imperative, the federal authorities enjoy a lot of weight in the process. This supports a centralized conception of federalism. Often modelled on the hierarchical relationships that once existed between London and its colonies,51 this approach gives the central authorities the determining ability to block, if necessary, projects that are not aligned with their interests. Nonetheless, from Quebec’s point of view, the demand for a right of veto can be explained by and justified on many other grounds. In fact, it is based on a completely different conception of federalism focusing on the plurinational,52 or consociate, nature of the federal pact. While territorial federalism, based on the provinces’ equality, tends to be hostile to certain provinces having specific rights of veto, plurinational federalism would, in contrast, be based on the veto process to guarantee the vital rights and interests of each of the peoples at the origin of the constitutional pact. This is where all the ambiguity of the Canadian situation lies, for Canada embraces the federation’s plurinational, consociate dimension only in part. As Dave Guénette has shown,53 the fact that Canadian federalism was the result of a more or less successful, more or less consensual pact between a number of different national communities (Anglophones, Francophones, and Indigenous peoples) should normally have an influence on the constitutional rules that govern the amendment and evolution of that pact. This is why Quebec, as the only province with a Francophone majority, must have access to a fundamental guarantee: a guarantee that specifies that one of the national communities at the origin of the federation cannot withdraw competencies or rights from another national community without its consent. This guarantee is all the more relevant given that it was not respected in 1982 with regard either to Quebec or to any of the constitutional acts that concern Indigenous peoples.54 In sum, the justification for a right of veto for Quebec follows from the constitutive duality of a state that claims to be bilingual, binational, and bijural.55 Quebec, the only province with a Francophone majority, upholds, through this demand, the theory of a “pact between two founding peoples” while remaining aware of the need to open the pact to a new, equal-to-equal

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relationship with Indigenous peoples. The right of veto is all the more meaningful in a federation that is understood as “plurinational,” and the refusal of the other members of the federation shows, in contrast, that there is a blockage with respect to the nature of the federation and its future. The “Contaminating” Effect and Declining Usefulness of the Right of Veto Although Quebec is right to promote a plurinational, consociative conception of federalism, it nonetheless must be admitted that the constancy with which it has demanded a right of veto has often had counterproductive consequences. The demand has had perverse effects that are often underestimated in Quebec. the cumulative effect of the demands To begin with, the “contaminating effect” of the right of veto is underestimated. The unfortunate experience of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords proves this: multiplying vetoes is the best guarantee that the status quo will be maintained. Even if a demand contains only a single amendment requiring the rule of unanimity, that procedural requirement “spreads” to the entire draft amendment, when it could otherwise have been adopted by following the “normal” Common Law procedure (known as “7/50”). After all, the amending formula set out in Part V of the Constitution Act, 1982, provides for “variable” rigidity. It contains three multilateral formulas: the “normal” formula in section 38 (seven provinces representing at least 50 per cent of the population), the unanimity formula in section 41 and, lastly, the formula in section 43 requiring the agreement of the federal government and the province or provinces concerned by arrangements that are specific to them only. Each amending formula has its own area of application. However, in practice, plans to renew federalism do not involve only a single amending formula. There is a strong tendency to unite several in a single “package” – in other words, in an agreement that forms an indivisible whole.56 A consequence of this is that the ratification process is “poisoned” because the strictest rule is applied along with all the cumulative requirements of the other procedures.57 The constraints are therefore much greater and, by that very fact, renewing federalism is much more difficult. The “package deal” that results from this process unites many amendments into a single plan that must then be approved or rejected in the framework of one single resolution. Even if unanimity is not required for some changes, it “contaminates” all the amendments.58 In the specific cases of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords, only the amendment of Part V of the Constitution Act, 1982 (to expand the scope of application of the right to opt out – with compensation – and to

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give all the provinces a right of veto on some aspects of federal institutions) was subject to the unanimous consent procedure. Without those changes, both accords would have been entirely subject to the 7/50 procedure, and that would have sufficed, at least in the case of the Meech Lake Accord, to transform an abysmal political failure into a constitutional success.59 Let us be clear: even though the current amending formula “probably merits improvement,”60  that is obviously unlikely to happen. Since the Constitution Act, 1982, has been in effect, the unanimous consent procedure has always failed. Continuing to require changes to the amending formula (right of veto or right to opt out with compensation), as Quebec did in its latest policy on Canadian relations, is to condemn the effort to failure from the outset. At the very least, such persistence adds to the procedural burden that would not otherwise be necessary if Quebec’s strategy were to avoid combining changes subject to the 7/50 procedure with changes governed by the rule of unanimity. In the institutional environment created by the 1982 Constitution, accountability demands avoiding changes to the procedure as much as possible. a new context to be grasped Beyond the perverse effects of demanding a right of veto over the choice of formula for ratifying a draft constitutional amendment, we can also wonder if such a right is really a priority for Quebec. A number of observations have to be made in light of practices established since 1982. First, the demand for a right of veto is based on a reading of Canada’s constitutional evolution that is flawed in many ways. By insisting on protecting itself through a right of veto, with a view to possible negotiations, the government of Quebec has presumed (as there was a tendency to believe in the years following the Quiet Revolution) that constitutional reforms would follow one after the other. Yet, thirty-five years after the amending formula was adopted, it seems increasingly clear that such revisions are likely to remain extremely rare, at least with respect to the most rigid provisions of the Constitution. It is as if Quebec were seeking to protect itself from a danger (amendment of the Constitution) that is becoming more and more hypothetical, while other threats to its autonomy are making themselves felt every day (federal spending power, non-compliance with administrative agreements, centralizing interpretation of the distribution of powers and of rights and freedoms, etc.). In such circumstances, to demand changes to an amending formula that is practically never used any more would not only reduce the chances of success of a reform of Canadian federalism, but would also be to focus on resolving a problem that arises much less frequently than other defects that affect Quebec’s interests much more adversely. Second, the right of veto that Quebec aspires to was – partially – recognized in a federal act passed immediately after the 1995 referendum on sovereignty-partnership. Enacted in a context that Jamie Cameron

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describes as “post-referendum panic,”61  the Act respecting Constitutional Amendments,62 known as the “regional veto statute,” set out, legislatively, certain rules of conduct concerning the manner and circumstances in which the federal authorities could be brought to exercise their right of veto. Under the Act, the government of Canada cannot table any resolution authorizing an amendment to the Constitution in the House of Commons unless that resolution has received the consent of Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, and the other “province regions”: the Prairies and the Maritimes.63 It is therefore a legislative mechanism by which the federal authorities have “loaned” their right of veto by abstaining from giving their consent to a constitutional amendment that one of the five “regions” does not support. This Act takes the form of a commitment by the federal authorities to take into account a region’s opposition to a draft constitutional amendment, and it therefore devolves, in a way, a federal prerogative to the member states of the federation. Even though the veto provided for by this Act remains precarious,64 even though its constitutionality could be contested,65 and even though the provisions of the Act could easily be repealed, it remains the case that this legislative device shows that the federal authorities feel they are bound by a new practice, by a constitutional convention of the type that Quebec believed, rightly, applied until the Supreme Court stated, in 1982, that evidence was lacking in this respect. Could there be any stronger proof that the federal authorities feel they are now bound to obtain Quebec’s prior consent than the official passage of the regional veto statute by the House of Commons and the Senate, with the approval of the Executive? Moreover, regarding changes to the rights, powers, and competencies of Quebec to which the regional veto statute does not pertain, the Constitution of 1982 nonetheless provides for the right to opt out. The scope of application of that right is perfectly adequate.66 The problem, since 1982, has been that the right to financial compensation – the logical and indispensable complement to the right to opt out67 – has been much more limited. Contrary to the 16 April 1981 Accord among the “gang of eight,” section 40 of the Constitution Act, 1982, provides for the right to compensation only when the transfer of competencies concerns education and “other cultural matters.” That said, as soon as there is a right to opt out, nothing prevents a province like Quebec from negotiating compensation – on a case-by-case basis – if what is in question is an amendment of the competencies concerning issues other than education and “other cultural matters.” Indeed, it is much easier, politically, to negotiate such compensation bilaterally than to obtain unanimous agreement on expanding the scope of section 40. Already protected by the regional veto statute and by a right to opt out (and sometimes by a right to financial compensation) provided for in the Constitution, Quebec would have everything to gain from limiting its claims to those of its demands that do not

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require unanimity. The plan would be to make demands adapted to today’s needs that are sufficient to address the major problems of federalism, while at the same time being strategic and taking care to increase both Quebec’s weight in power relations and the chances of its success in negotiations. Among the other demands that it would be in Quebec’s interest to prioritize, there are, to begin with, the structural framework of cooperative federalism, federal spending power, intergovernmental and administrative agreements, greater powers in cultural matters, and the changes required to create true judicial federalism. In other words, Quebec needs to remember that making changes through the multilateral amending formulas should remain exceptional. Whereas the demands made in the context of the Meech Lake Accord were based on the presupposition that the bargaining was merely the first of a series of rounds of constitutional negotiations, it is now taken for granted that such occasions are likely to be very rare. This is why Quebec would do best to create legal-institutional conditions favourable to permanent changes through bilateral means, in particular by shifting negotiations on reforms away from more complex terrain – where multilateral agreement among all provinces is required – toward the much more functional landscape of special, bilateral arrangements between Quebec and Ottawa. The establishment of a new legal regime for administrative agreements and interparliamentary delegations would make it possible to increase both cooperation and the asymmetrical nature of Canadian federalism. Rather than constantly dreaming about a constitutional negotiation “gala,” Quebec could thereby forge, little by little, the autonomy to which it aspires. To be clear, the purpose here is not to be content with simple administrative agreements, but rather to design a veritable legal regime and constitutional recognition for intergovernmental agreements modelled on those created for Indigenous peoples and “treaties” under section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. After many decades of failed attempts, it is time for Quebec to revisit its strategies and constitutional demands. Among other things, it should put its demands regarding the amending formula (which require unanimity) on the backburner and give precedence to changes under the 7/50 procedure designed to create the conditions for federalism’s subsequent evolution in the direction of Quebec’s interests.

c o n c l u s i on Drawing lessons from the failures in the early 1990s, Quebec will have to make a choice at a future round of constitutional negotiations: remain faithful to its traditional demands and try to persuade all the provinces and the federal government, or simply put its demands concerning the amending formula on hold and significantly increase its chances of success. Protecting

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our best interests sometimes requires a little pragmatism. It is clear that renouncing the right of veto on constitutional changes would not be so serious given that the direction in which Canadian politics have evolved over the last thirty years has shown that constitutional amendments tend to remain extremely rare. After all, a constitutional veto is not very useful in a large whole, such as Canada or the United States, where constitutional reforms are increasingly rare. Yet, this does not mean that Quebec should completely give up changes to the amending formula found in Part  V of the 1982 Constitution, but only that demands requiring unanimity should be set aside for later negotiations. When the rest of Canada makes a demand that requires unanimity – for example, to modernize the monarchy or the duties of the monarch, the governor general, or the lieutenant governors – that will be the time for Quebec to trade its indispensable consent for improvements to the amending formulas. notes 1 Jean Leclair, “Forging a True Federal Spirit – Refuting the Myth of Quebec’s ‘Radical Difference,’” in Reconquering Canada: Quebec Federalists Speak Up for Change, ed. André Pratte (Toronto: Douglas & MacIntyre, 2008), 29–74. 2 James Ross Hurley, Amending Canada’s Constitution: History, processes, problems and prospects (Ottawa: Public Works and Government Services Canada, 1996), 26, https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2014/priv/ CP32-63-1995-eng.pdf. 3 Statute of Westminster, 1931, 22 Geo. V, c. 4 (U.K.). 4 Hurley, Amending Canada’s Constitution, 30. 5 See the chapter by Antoine Brousseau Desaulniers in this collection. 6 Gil Rémillard, “Historique du rapatriement,” Les Cahiers de droit 25, no. 1 (1984): 38–42; Louis-Philippe Pigeon, “Le sens de la formule Fulton-Favreau,” Revue de droit de McGill 12, no. 4 (1966–67): 403–19. 7 Alain-G. Gagnon, “Le dossier constitutionnel Québec-Canada,” in Québec: État et société, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon, vol. 2 (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 1994), 155; Antoine Brousseau Desaulniers, “Le débat constitutionnel chez les responsables politiques québécois à l’aube de la Révolution tranquille (1960–1966),” Bulletin d’histoire politique 23, no. 1 (2014): 187. 8 Marc Chevrier summarizes the nature of the problem in this way: “Although this plan gave a constitutional veto to Quebec, it also gave one to Ontario, the Maritimes, and the West. Everyone was persuaded that those vetoes would cancel each other out and make any future constitutional reform impossible.” Marc Chevrier, Le fédéralisme canadien et l’autonomie du Québec: Perspective historique (Quebec City: Ministère des Relations internationales, 1996), 5. (Translated from the French. Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations of French texts are by the translators of this volume.)

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9 Gagnon, “Le dossier constitutionnel,” 155; Caroline Labelle, “Claude Morin et la question constitutionnelle (1961–1981)” (master’s thesis, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2008), 56, 60. 10 This explicit defence of the conventional veto seems to date back at least to the first Duplessis government in the 1930s. See: Secrétariat aux affaires intergouvernementales canadiennes, Positions du Québec dans les domaines constitutionnel et intergouvernemental de 1936 à mars 2001 (Quebec City: Ministère du Conseil exécutif, 2001), 26. 11 The chapter by Amélie Binette in this collection provides a more in-depth analysis of the role of conventions. 12 Canadian case law has established three conditions for confirming the existence of a constitutional convention. See: Re: Resolution to Amend the Constitution [1981] 1 R.C.S. 753, 888–909. To begin with, there must be precedents (888–98) and the political actors concerned must treat the rule as binding (898–905). The purpose of the third criterion is to identify the reason why the form of behaviour adopted differs from simple practice or custom. The Court recognized that the federal principle could be the origin of a constitutional convention (905–9). 13 Re Amendment of the Constitution of Canada (No. 2), [1981] 118 D.L.R. (3d) 1 (Court of Appeal of Newfoundland and Labrador); Re Amendment of the Constitution of Canada, [1981] 117 D.L.R. (3d) 1 (Court of Appeal of Manitoba); Avis sur le projet de résolution concernant la Constitution du Canada, [1981] C.A. 80 (Québec Court of Appeal). 14 Re: Objection by Quebec to a Resolution to amend the Constitution [1982] 2 S.C.R. 793, 805–6. 15 As Marc Chevrier writes, “the Court would have had difficulty deciding otherwise. Its decision came some eight months after the 1982 reform had been proclaimed, once Great Britain had definitively renounced its residual sovereignty over Canada. If it had cast doubt on the validity of the process, Canada’s entire constitutional edifice would have been undermined. Placed before the fait accompli, the Court could not therefore sacrifice political legitimacy and the spirit of federalism to legal certainty. Moreover, if it had invalidated the 1982 reform, the Court would have had to renounce its role as the constitutional court and guardian of rights, a role conferred upon it advantageously by that reform.” Chevrier, Le fédéralisme canadien, 3 (translation). 16 “Discours de Jean Lesage,” reproduced in Secrétariat aux affaires intergouvernementales canadiennes, Positions du Québec, 27. See also the positions of the first Duplessis government in the 1930s. See ibid., 26. 17 Section 40 of the Constitution Act, 1982 (Schedule B to the Canada Act, 1982, [U.K.] c. 11) is much more restrictive than the scope of application of the right to opt out provided for in subsections 2 and 3 of section 38 in Part V. 18 Constitutional Accord, Canadian Patriation Plan (accord signed by the provinces, except Ontario and New Brunswick), 16 April 1981.

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Rémillard, “Historique du rapatriement,” 68, 80–3. Constitutional Accord, Canadian Patriation Plan, 16 April 1981. Rémillard, “Historique du rapatriement,” 68, 80–3. The renunciation was in this case only partial and symbolic. In the end, Quebec did not ratify the Constitution Act, 1982, because of the compromises negotiated without it and without its agreement. This was the argument that René Lévesque defended in the letters he exchanged with Pierre Elliott Trudeau, from 1 December 1981 to 24 December 1982. On 25 November 1981, the government of Quebec adopted a decree formally opposing the federal resolution aimed at patriating and amending the Canadian Constitution: Government of Quebec, Décret no 3214-81 concernant l’opposition du Québec au projet de rapatriement et de modification de la Constitution canadienne, 25 November 1981; Pierre Blache, “La Cour suprême et le rapatriement de la constitution: L’impact des perceptions différentes sur la question,” Les Cahiers de droit 22, nos 3–4 (1981): 649–66; François Boulianne, “Le rapatriement constitutionnel de 1982: Existait-il une coutume constitutionnelle nécessitant l’accord unanime des provinces pour modifier la Constitution?”, Les Cahiers de droit 55, no. 2 (2014): 329–84; Hurley, Amending Canada’s Constitution, 243–59. As Jacques-Yvan Morin and José Woehrling have pointed out, the right to opt out is only a “purely defensive weapon” that allows a province to avoid the application of an amendment. It does not necessarily favour any increase in provincial powers. Jacques-Yvan Morin and José Woehrling, Les constitutions du Canada et du Québec, du régime français à nos jours, vol. 2 (Montreal: Les Éditions Thémis, 1994), 526. Réjean Pelletier, Le Québec et le fédéralisme canadien: Un regard critique (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2008), 140–1. This is why some of his detractors saw this as a form of à la carte “separatism.” Peter W. Hogg said: “Where opting out is available, there will be a strong impulse to proceed only when the assent of all governments is assured, since the ‘checkerboard constitution’ which would develop through opting out would impose such severe strains on central institutions that are likely to be unacceptable to the federal government and at least undesirable to most provincial governments.” See: Peter W. Hogg, Constitutional Law of Canada (Scarborough, on : Carswell, 1999), 96. See also: José Woehrling, “Fonctionnement et dysfonctionnement de la procédure de modification constitutionnelle au Canada,” in Le fédéralisme de demain: Réformes essentielles, ed. Gérald-A. Beaudoin, Joseph E. Magnet, Benoît Pelletier, Gordon Robertson, and John Trent (Montreal: Wilson & Lafleur, 1998), 336. National Assembly of Quebec, Résolution sur les conditions sans lesquelles le Québec ne peut accepter le rapatriement de la Constitution canadienne, 1 December 1981, https://www.sqrc.gouv.qc.ca/relations-canadiennes/ positions-historiques/motions-assemblee-nationale-en.asp#1981.

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27 What was in question was a right to veto any reform of federal institutions and any creation of new provinces. With respect to the distribution of powers, the demand concerned either a right of veto or a constitutional right to opt out with reasonable, mandatory financial compensation. Secrétariat aux affaires intergouvernementales canadiennes, Positions du Québec, 55. 28 On the occasion of a conference held at Mont-Gabriel in May 1986, Gil Rémillard, then Canada’s Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, stated five conditions that had to be met for Quebec to sign the Constitution Act, 1982, including recognition of the right to veto major amendments to the Constitution: Gil Rémillard, Canadian Minister for Intergovernmental Affairs, speech given on the occasion of the symposium “Une collaboration renouvelée du Québec et de ses partenaires dans la Confédération,” Mont-Gabriel, Quebec, 9 May 1986, pp 4–5, 12, https://www.sqrc.gouv.qc.ca/documents/ positions-historiques/positions-du-qc/partie2/GilRemillard1986.pdf. 29 François Rocher and Gérard Boismenu, “L’Accord du lac Meech et le système politique canadien,” Revue québécoise de science politique, no. 16 (1989): 82; Pierre Fournier, Autopsie du lac Meech: La souveraineté est-elle inévitable? (Montreal: vlb , 1990), 42; Andrew Cohen, A Deal Undone: The Making and Breaking of the Meech Lake Accord (Vancouver: Douglas and Mclntyre, 1990), 272; Mario Fraser, “L’Accord du lac Meech: Dernière bataille idéologique du XXe siècle pour la domination politique du Canada” (PhD diss., Université Laval, 2008), 32–7. 30 Report of the Commission on the Political and Constitutional Future of Québec (Quebec City: Commission on the Political and Constitutional Future of Québec, 1991). 31 Citizens’ Forum on Canada’s Future, Report to the People and Government of Canada (Ottawa: Privy Council Office, 1991). 32 Special Joint Committee on a Renewed Canada, A Renewed Canada: Report of the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1992). 33 Aside from small nuances, the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords were very similar with respect to the changes to be made to the amending formula. However, the 1992 agreement “demoted,” from unanimity to the so-called 7/50 procedure, questions concerning the “composition of the Supreme Court of Canada” currently protected by paragraph 41(d) of the Constitution Act, 1982. 34 Charles-Philippe Courtois, “La question du statut politique et constitutionnel du Québec au Canada est-elle devenue anachronique?”, Bulletin d’histoire politique 23, no. 1 (2012): 219–20. 35 “Québec, because of its nationhood, must have a veto on major constitutional amendments that change the operation of our political system.” Secrétariat aux affaires intergouvernementales canadiennes, Quebecers: Our Way of Being Canadian: Policy on Québec Affirmation and Canadian Relations (Quebec

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40 41

42 43 44

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City: Secrétariat aux affaires intergouvernementales canadiennes/Direction des communications, Government of Quebec, 2017), 54. Coalition avenir Québec, “Un nouveau projet pour les nationalistes du Québec,” declaration submitted to the General Council of Coalition avenir Québec, Laval, 8 November 8 2015, https://coalitionavenirquebec.org/wpcontent/uploads/2018/08/projet-nationaliste.pdf. In many ways, the difficulties arising with respect to modernizing the European Union’s constituting treaties, and their deepening and possible conversion into a “constitution,” flow from the rigidity associated with the rule of unanimity. Patrick Taillon and Jean-Pierre Veilleux, “Un référendum supraétatique pour l’Europe: Les obstacles à l’expression directe d’une volonté populaire à l’échelle européenne,” Revue de la recherche juridique – droit prospectif, no. 2 (2013): 881–924. Sébastien Grammond, “Compact is Back: The Supreme Court of Canada’s Revival of the Compact Theory of Confederation,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 53, no. 3 (2016): 803–6. Reference re Senate Reform, [2014] 1 S.C.R. 704, para. 44. See also: Patrick Taillon and Catherine Mathieu, “Le fédéralisme comme principe matriciel dans l’interprétation de la procédure de modification constitutionnelle,” Revue de droit de McGill 60, no. 4 (2015): 789. Constitution Act, 1982, s. 43(a). Constitution Act, 1982, s. 43(b); Att. Gen. of Quebec v. Blaikie, [1979] 2 S.C.R. 1016; Attorney General of Québec v. Blaikie et al., [1981] 1 S.C.R. 312. Constitution Amendment, 1997 (Quebec), SI/97-141. Constitution Amendment, 1994 (Prince Edward Island), [1994] Can. Gaz. II 2021. Statistics Canada, “Census Profile, 2016 Census,” tables for Prince Edward Island and Canada (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2017), accessed 12 December 2019, https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/index. cfm?Lang=E. Canadian Constitutional Charter 1971, Victoria, 14–16 June 1971, https://www.canada.ca/fr/affaires-intergouvernementales/services/federation/ conference-constitutionnelle-victoria-1971.html; Constitutional Accord, Canadian Patriation Plan, 16 April 1981. Constitution Act, 1982, s. 41(e). Constitution Act, 1982, s. 41(a). The provinces’ interest in protecting the essential characteristics of the monarchy is of course a Canadian particularity that owes much to the historical circumstances preceding patriation. In 1978, through Bill C-60, Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s government tried to change the office of the Governor General of Canada, constituted by the Letters Patent, 1947, to a statutory office. The provinces’ reaction to the proposal was immediate and strong, particularly in the case of Ontario, which had until then been an unwavering ally of the federal government in its patriation plans. At

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the following intergovernmental conference, for the only time in all of the negotiations leading up to patriation, Trudeau’s government faced unanimous opposition, and he backed down. See Hurley, Amending Canada’s Constitution, 52–4; Ministère des Affaires intergouvernementales, Dossier sur les discussions constitutionnelles 1978–1979 (Quebec City: Government of Quebec, 1979), 28; Honorable William Davis, Premier of Ontario, “Monarchy: A Statement to the Federal-Provincial Conference of First Ministers on the Constitution,” no. 800-8/054, 31 October 1978 (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 1978). André Tremblay, La réforme de la Constitution au Canada (Montreal: Les Éditions Thémis, 1995), 87; Patrick Taillon, Les nouveaux obstacles juridiques au renouvellement du fédéralisme canadien (Montreal: Institut de recherche sur le Québec, 2007). Henri Brun, Guy Tremblay, and Eugénie Brouillet, Droit constitutionnel (Cowansville, qc : Éditions Yvon Blais, 2014), 173, para. IV (translation). Constitution Act, 1982, s. 45. David E. Smith, “Empire, Crown and Canadian Federalism,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 4, no. 3 (1991), 451–73; Marc Chevrier, “La genèse de l’idée fédérale chez les pères fondateurs américains et canadiens,” in Le fédéralisme canadien contemporain: Fondements, traditions, institutions, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon (Montreal: Les Presses de l’université de Montreal, 2006), 18. Alain-G. Gagnon, La Raison du plus fort: Plaidoyer pour le fédéralisme multinational (Montreal: Québec Amérique, 2008); Alain-G. Gagnon, L’âge des incertitudes: Essais sur le fédéralisme et la diversité nationale (Quebec City, Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2011). Dave Guénette, “L’exercice de la fonction constituante dans les sociétés fragmentées: La prérogative des élites aux dépens du peuple? Étude des procédures de révision constitutionnelle de la Belgique, du Canada et de la Suisse à travers le prisme du fédéralisme consociatif” (PhD diss., Université Laval, 2020). While it gives the territorial governments no rights with respect to the constitutional amending formula, the Constitution, as it was amended in 1983, enshrines the minimal right of Indigenous representatives to be consulted when a draft constitutional amendment concerns them. The passage of subsection 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982, constitutionalized Indigenous people’s right to participate in constitutional conferences on matters that concern them. According to Benoît Pelletier, that right to be consulted would apply specifically to any amendment to sections 25, 35, or 35.1 of the Constitution Act, 1982, or to subsection 91(24) of the Constitution Act, 1867, 30 & 31 Vict., c. 3 (U.K.). Benoît Pelletier, La modification constitutionnelle au Canada (Scarborough, on : Carswell, 1996), 277–8; Benoît Pelletier, “Les relations intergouvernementales au Canada, vues dans une perspective horizontale,” Seminario internacional la federalización en España: Los déficit de la

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cooperación intergubernamental, 2009, 1–36, https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/ libro?codigo=663257. Chevrier, Le fédéralisme canadien, 4. Hogg, Constitutional Law of Canada, 98. Pelletier, La modification constitutionnelle, 356. To describe the impact of the accumulation of procedures specific to “composite” amendments, José Woehrling and Jacques-Yvan Morin talk about a veritable “multiplying effect on the rigidity of the amending formula and on the difficulties with its implementation.” See: Morin and Woehrling, Les constitutions, 533 (translation); Tremblay, La réforme de la Constitution, 88; Patrick J. Monahan, Constitutional Law (Toronto: Irwin Law, 2002), 186. By June 1990, at least eight provinces had given their consent. Only Manitoba, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland had not yet adopted the required parliamentary resolutions. Pelletier, La modification constitutionnelle, 355. Cameron, “To Amend the Process of Amendment,” in Beaudoin et al., eds, Le fédéralisme de demain, 321. Act respecting Constitutional Amendments, S.C. 1996, c. 1 (the “regional veto statute”). Ibid., s. 1. This veto remains precarious for four reasons. First, it is not enshrined in the Constitution and has no supralegislative authority. Second, if the Parliament of Canada has the power to pass such an Act, it also has the power to repeal its effects if the majority in the Chamber votes to do so. Third, nothing seems to force the government to comply with the Act. The mechanism seems to lack legal sanctions that could prevent the coming into effect of an amendment to the Constitution that would not be in compliance with the provisions of the Act. Fourth, the Act does not set out any definition or specification regarding the mode of expression of provincial “opposition” or “consent” that would require the federal government to exercise its right of veto. Yet, it seems that Prime Minister Chrétien referred, in a press conference on 27 November 1995, to the fact that such consent could be expressed in different ways, such as by an opinion issued by the provincial government, a vote of the legislative assembly of the province, or a referendum. See: Pelletier, La modification constitutionnelle, 341; José Woehrling, “Les aspects juridiques de la redéfinition du statut politique et constitutionnel du Québec,” in Commission sur l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec, vol. 2, 24–5, n.d., accessed 30 January 2020, https://sqrc.gouv.qc.ca/documents/institutions-constitution/ commission-politique-constitutionnel/BC-10-JoseWoehrling.pdf; Monahan, Constitutional Law, 206. Under s. 41(e) of the Constitution Act, 1982, any amendment to any of the constitutional amending formulas requires the unanimous consent of all the provinces. The question therefore arises as to whether the passage of the regional veto statute is a form of indirect amendment of the Constitution.

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See: Courtois, “La question du statut,” 224. Benoît Pelletier and Peter W. Hogg argue that the statute is valid because it makes “no official change to the constitutional amendment conditions established in 1982” (translation). See: Pelletier, La modification constitutionnelle, 328. See also: Hogg, Constitutional Law of Canada, 81. In other words, the statute would not replace the current model by conditions not originally provided for by the constituting authorities: it would simply add to that model. 66 Constitution Act, 1982, s. 38(2) and (3). 67 This is necessary so that the people living in provinces that have exercized their “right to disagree” are not penalized by having to fund both provincial programs and also federal programs, where they would not benefit from the latter. See: Brun, Tremblay, and Brouillet, Droit constitutionnel, 239–41; Pelletier, La modification constitutionnelle, 299; Woehrling, “Les aspects juridiques,” 4.

18 Canadian Federalism since the 1982 Patriation: Advocating a Federalism of Empowerment Alain-G. Gagnon and Alex Schwartz

Originally, the patriation of the Constitution in November 1981 was thought of, at least by its backers, as an opportunity to provide Canadians with a founding moment that could inaugurate new constitutional practices. In particular, Pierre Elliott Trudeau promised to “renew the Constitution” if the “No” side won Quebec’s 1980 referendum on sovereignty-association, and this was seen as a powerful inducement to constitutional reform. However, the end result of patriation was that a large part of the Quebec population, of all political persuasions, ended up with the impression that Canada was no longer in phase with Quebec’s aspirations as representing a founding people. As Peter Russell has pointed out, patriation helped to maintain major tensions between Quebec and its partners in the Canadian federation. More than anything else, the principal consequences of patriation were to reopen old wounds and weaken federal practices. In order to diagnose the shortcomings of post-patriation Canadian federalism, and also to address them, this chapter will take a normative approach. Our argument has three parts. First, we re-examine the possible objectives and functions of federalism, if only to remind ourselves that federalism should therefore not be limited or reduced to a single telos – it should not have only one big objective. Second, we define a set of criteria to be met to translate pluralist federalism into reality – in other words, into a form of federalism that can be endorsed by different philosophical and normative schools and can align, in the best-case scenario, with diverse values and goals. Third, we illustrate how and why Canadian federalism has failed to meet the abovementioned criteria with respect to Quebec’s place in the federation. We defend the argument that the Canadian constitutional order has shown itself to be willfully deaf to expressions of Quebec identity and has

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instead been inclined to defend monist, centralizing perspectives favouring a principle of functional efficiency at the expense of other federal values. In the conclusion, we show how one of the principal theoretical discourses that has emerged in response to the constitutional accord – a theoretical approach that can be called “dialogical recognition” – is likely, paradoxically, to perpetuate the current poverty and weaknesses of Canadian federalism because it tends to favour vague, fuzzy constitutional dialogue to concrete, substantial solutions. In other words, we suggest that dialogical recognition’s procedural accent encourages unproductive federal dynamics, and that it should be replaced by a concrete approach inspired by the concept of “federalism of empowerment.”

co m p e t in g a p p r o a c h es to federali s m 1 According to the broadest, most abstract accepted meaning of the term, a federation is a political entity combining elements of shared government and self-government, and taking the form of two orders of government that are territorially defined and make up political communities that overlap while at the same time remaining distinct. Those communities have obligations and powers with similar (overlapping yet distinct) attributes.2 There is no academic consensus on federalism’s final objective. In fact, rather than try to assign a single purpose or value to federalism as its universal or ultimate justification, theorists have preferred to associate various, sometimes contradictory, goals to federalism. Generally, such attempts align with three broad, normative conceptions of federalism: 1 Utilitarian conceptions; 2 Liberal conceptions; and 3 Democratic-communitarian conceptions. Utilitarian Conceptions of Federalism Utilitarian conceptions of federalism see the system as a means of maximizing general utility. In sum, this means conceiving of federalism as being in service to economic efficiency. For example, federalism would support economic efficiency by encouraging interjurisdictional competition in the context of a common market. Starting from the postulate that people are reasonably mobile, federalism would therefore allow individuals to move and settle in jurisdictions according to the “prices” those places charge for their favorite “clusters” of public goods.3 Federalism would make possible the optimal connections between individuals, laws, and public policies while at the same time encouraging the constituent units of the federation to enter into competition among

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themselves to offer the most attractive clusters of public goods.4 Even if the population is not reasonably mobile, “politically independent provinces may engage in efficiency-enhancing ‘yardstick competition’ as citizens observe what their neighbors are doing and demand comparable service or tax performances from their own elected leaders.”5 Moreover, the competition among the various jurisdictions would encourage innovation. The constituent units would act as “laboratories” for innovative social and economic experiments.6 In the Canadian context, political experiments at the level of the constituent units of the federation have often served as models for the establishment of social programs at the federal level.7 Liberal Conceptions of Federalism Liberal conceptions of federalism justify it as a check against the possible abuses of centralized state power. The various liberal conceptions are united by the idea that federalism prevents power from being concentrated in a single place. James Buchanan’s version of the liberal argument builds on the idea that intra-federal mobility could provide a way out for individuals if their “local” or “state” government were to become oppressive.8 According to this view, federalism “serves as a disciplinary device to limit government inefficiency and corruption.”9 Of course, such mobility within the federation is of little use if the oppressor is the federal government. It is precisely for this reason that Buchanan defends a right of secession for the constituent parts of a federation.10 A more influential version of the liberal conception prefers to link federalism’s worth with the fact that the different governments balance each other. This particular conception is notably prominent in the US Federalist Papers, which defended the idea that individuals’ natural loyalty to the member states would counterbalance any power placed in the hands of the federal government. In other words, trusting the federal government depends in part on “the citizenry’s natural loyalty and attachment to their states as against the federal center”11 (and, in part, on the strength of that loyalty). Jacob Levy recently revived this argument from the Federalist Papers, but added a plurinational dimension. In particular, he suggests that freedom is better protected when individuals’ loyalty is distributed among a number of competing nationalisms: “The unity of nation and state encourages an unhealthy veneration of the state; it joins together loyalties that are more safely separated.”12 Democratic-Communitarian Conceptions of Federalism Democratic-communitarian understandings of federalism portray it mainly in terms of collective self-government. Some of their variations also have aspects more typical of civic republicanism, according to which federalism is seen a means of providing individuals and communities with stronger

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voices. From this perspective, the government units in a federal system give individuals more opportunity to participate in politics actively and effectively.13 Having multiple different levels of government “provides more opportunities for the people to express themselves democratically through the ballot box, increases the weight of each vote, and fosters enlightened and informed democratic participation by situating certain political decisions at a level that is cognitively more accessible to the average citizen.”14 A more communitarian variant of this position places emphasis on a decentralized government’s ability to express the values and interests of a local community more faithfully than a more distant centralized government. Consequently, many of those in this camp consider that federalism is a mechanism that is essential to self-government by minorities in plural societies.15 This type of argument can be more prudential16 or more explicitly normative.17 If we look at things from the normative perspective, the political ideal is a truly multinational federation in which one or more constituent entities have become objects of national allegiance and full instruments for collective action (while continuing to contribute to the broader encompassing state).18

in d e f e n c e o f a m e ta-normati ve t h e o r y o f f e derali s m Rather than adopt one of the above theories, we prefer to cast our vote in favour of a meta-normative theory of federalism; in other words, a model that does not reduce federalism to utilitarian, liberal, or democratic-communitarian goals and objectives but focuses instead on the way the various values and functions of federalism can be upheld and performed simultaneously within a single polity or political entity. To this end, we establish three fundamental principles for implementing a form of federalism that is truly pluralist. The first is the principle of flexibility – in other words, “the capacity to change in relation to changing conditions, to accommodate change,” while respecting the environment.19 Such flexibility presupposes that the balance between the distribution of powers and autonomy can be adapted to a set of changing conditions. This kind of principle is essential to the long-term health of a pluralist federation given that the perception of the price to be paid or sacrifices to be made to achieve the balance between federalism’s different values necessarily changes over time. For example, new technologies can increase the need for centralized coordination. At the same time, changing sociopolitical conditions can exacerbate the effects of centralized coordination on the implementation of independent governance for communities. The second principle is that of robustness. It requires that the federal principle endures over time. Robustness “is a capacity for self-maintenance, self-adjustment, and self-organization in the face of change.”20 Without it, a

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flexible federal system can become so decentralized that it loses the benefits of coordination; or, on the contrary, it can become so centralized that it ceases to be a federation in the true sense of the word. In short, the robustness principle requires that the federal nature of the state – in other words, the coexistence of at least two distinct orders of government without either being subordinate to the other – remains despite any changes in the federal balance. Lastly, the third principle, which reinforces the other two, is versatility. It consists in saying that, if a form of federalism is both flexible and robust in the face of complex circumstances and change, then no one federal value should be allowed to compromise the implementation of the others. Promoting one value may increase the cost of another (for example, achieving individual freedom may have a negative impact on achieving efficiency), but no value should be ranked so highly that the conception of federalism linked with it comes to dominate all the others. This point is particularly important in the Canadian context, where the sense of membership in the Canadian federation is mediated by a “plurality of ways of belonging.”21 In short, the principle of versatility means that federalism ought to be “prismatic”: it ought to be able to reflect the full spectrum of “ways of belonging” that are meaningful to people.22 When they are considered together, the principles of flexibility, robustness, and versatility prove to be good criteria against which real federal systems can be assessed. Whether or not these principles are respected not only allows us to identify the failings of the systems, but can also reveal the sources of those failings. From this perspective, the best way of implementing these three principles in concert seems to be through a “federalism of empowerment.” This approach has been defended by Erwin Chemerinsky in the United States, mainly in order to rebut excessively legalistic interpretations advanced by the US Supreme Court when it was led by Rehnquist.23 Rather than see federalism as a set of rules designed to limit the exercise of power, a federalism of empowerment seeks to promote a common space through which different orders of government can decide whether or not to take action in response to changing needs. Chemerinsky describes the benefits of the system as follows: “A key advantage of having multiple levels of government is the availability of alternative actors to solve important problems. If the federal government fails to act, state and local government actions are still possible. In other words, the greatest beauty of federalism is its redundancy: multiple levels of government over the same territory and population, each with the ability to act.”24 In this light, the principal point of such empowerment is that federalism’s contribution to the notions of general utility, individual freedom, and collective self-government always depends on the real empowerment of more than one order of government. General utility is improved by interjurisdictional competition, but genuine competition is possible only if the

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constituent entities of the federation actually have the autonomy needed to innovate and speak for themselves. If policies are generated only from the centre, the constituent entities risk being reduced to simple branches of the central government. Such “branch office” federalism prevents real competition between jurisdictions. Similarly, as Levy argues, federalism cannot really act as a bulwark against tyranny unless each community is sufficiently empowered to be an autonomous seat of legitimate authority. From the point of view of the Quebec nation, the potential benefits of federalism of empowerment are significant in that it redistributes power to the Quebec state in a way that addresses Quebec’s needs and duties as a modern, pluralist nation. In the next section, we evaluate Canadian federalism according to how it accords with the principles of flexibility, robustness, and versatility. Our analysis focuses especially on Quebec’s place in Canada. There is a very special reason for this: the rise of Quebec nationalism has been the greatest challenge to the theory and practice of federalism in the last fifty years. The “Quebec question” is an existential problem, both for Quebec and for Canada. In addition to being the driving force of the Quebec sovereignty movement, this “question” was also one of the main motivations for the patriation process begun by Trudeau, and it has become the central theme of the subsequent debates on Canadian constitutional reform. Of course, many of the problems we are facing today do not stem purely from QuebecCanada relations, but the Quebec question nonetheless brings out the fiercest competition between the different conceptions of Canada. No other province has challenged the meaning of Canada as Quebec has. Our assessment of Canadian federalism also pays special attention to the role played by the Supreme Court as a key instrument advancing the establishment of the three principles at the foundation of pluralist federalism. Canada does not really have a second legislative chamber that can play this role. Since its creation in 1875, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled on jurisdictional conflicts between the central and provincial governments. That aspect of its duties has even increased over the years. Until 1949, it was possible to appeal Supreme Court decisions to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. Since then, the Court has been the final court of appeal for all constitutional challenges. A number of commentators believe that the Supreme Court has taken a marked centralizing turn with respect to the distribution of powers (thereby contributing to reversing the pre1945 trend, which was more favourable to decentralization).25 Today, the role of the Supreme Court as the final court of appeal on federal practices has become all the more clear, as Quebec governments and representatives have begun to demand full control of their jurisdictions and have sometimes advocated for new competencies. Robert Schertzer described this phenomenon using the image of a tug-of-war between a tendency more favourable to the idea of centralizing powers (during the 1980s and ’90s) in order to

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end the constitutional bickering once and for all, and (since the turn of the 2000s) a stronger will to recognize powers by favouring dialogue among the various conceptions of federalism.26 In this chapter, we argue that the Supreme Court has used its powers to defend the fairest possible position as Canada’s protector of pluralist federalism. However, the challenges facing the Court remain immense because they are rooted in the institutional structure. The fact that all Supreme Court justices are appointed by the federal government, without any official consultation with Quebec (until 2019 at least) or the other provinces, necessarily has consequences on the way the federation functions. This defect has been known at least since 1956, when the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Constitutional Problems (the Tremblay Commission) said that the Supreme Court was too dependent on the federal government and therefore could not be considered an impartial arbiter in disputes between Ottawa and the member states of the Canadian federation. It is therefore not surprising that the analysis that follows shows that Canadian federalism – over the last thirty-five years at least – has not adhered (or has not been able to adhere) to the three principles of flexibility, robustness, and versatility.

t h e im p o v e r is h m e n t of federali s m When Rigidity Prevails over Flexibility It is partly true that the federal pact at the origin of Confederation was adapted to the circumstances of English-French linguistic and cultural pluralism that existed in 1867. The simple fact that there was a province with a Francophone majority and provincial powers over civil and property rights made it possible for there to be a substantial degree of minority self-government, the maintenance of a French civil law tradition, and the development of a mainly Catholic, Francophone society. These conditions were sufficient, from the beginning, to make Quebec a “distinct society” within the broader Canadian context, but they could have sufficed for long if Quebecers had continued to think of themselves in ethnocultural terms alone. Until the 1960s in Quebec, the British North America (bna ) Act was generally perceived as a bulwark against the federal government’s centralizing ambitions.27 That situation changed considerably over the course of the 1960s, with the rapid rise of a self-confident, secular, territorially anchored Quebec nationalism. The educated, secular middle class driving such neonationalism came to see the Quebec state as an essential vector for progressive change and as being able to modernize Quebec. Explicit calls for Quebec’s independence were being made at the same time as efforts to rethink the terms of the Confederation. Increasingly, Quebecers began to consider the 1967 Constitution not as a guarantee of autonomy but as an obstacle to Quebec’s economic, social, institutional, cultural, and legal development.

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Today, the vast majority of Quebecers consider the Quebec state to be one of the main institutional cores of solidarity and an intermediary capable of building a unique nation with far-reaching socioeconomic and cultural ambitions.28 An equally significant number of Quebecers also reject pursuing these nation-building goals within the current organization of the Canadian federation, and some remain attracted by the ideal of a sovereign, independent Quebec. The 1982 constitutional patriation was an opportunity to amend certain federal mechanisms in reaction to the growth, maturing, and institutionalization of Quebec nationalism. It was probably the biggest change to have occurred in the last hundred years within the political environment specific to Canadian federalism, but patriation proved to be a lost opportunity. Instead of recognizing Quebec’s reality, the agreement that resulted from the First Ministers’ Conference of November 1981 was the symbol of a closedminded reaction denying that there was any such reality.29 On an even more fundamental level, the fact that the agreement was imposed without the consent of Quebec’s political representatives was a rejection of the idea that Quebec’s specificity would be given constitutional meaning. In addition, the very content of the constitutional agreement subjected Quebec’s national reality to the projected vision of coast-to-coast bilingualism, a cultural mosaic, and “pan-Canadian constitutional patriotism” centred on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.30 Yet, as James Tully says, the Charter is not neutral regarding the respective nation-building plans of Quebec and Canada: “When the [Quebec] National Assembly seeks to preserve and enhance Quebec’s character as a modern, predominantly French-speaking society, it finds that its traditional sovereignty in this area is capped by a Charter in terms of which all its legislation must be phrased and justified, but from which any recognition of Quebec’s distinct character has been completely excluded. The effect of the Charter is thus to assimilate Quebec to a pan-Canadian national culture, exactly what the 1867 constitution, according to Lord Watson, was designed to prevent.”31 Coupled with the unravelling of federalist practices in Canada, this intransigence had led many Quebecers to wonder about their relationship to the Canadian whole. Since any possibility of a constitutional amendment able to recognize and accommodate Quebec’s national reality has been blocked, it is clear that, on this point at least, the Canadian federation has failed to live up to the principle of constitutional flexibility. Of course, flexibility cannot be boiled down to one single formal constitutional change. Even if the letter of the law cannot be amended, the Constitution can nonetheless be adapted to the reality of Quebec nationalism through decisions made by the courts of justice. In other words, the Supreme Court could take over and reinterpret the Constitution in accordance with multinational or plurinational terms, which would make it possible to achieve recognition and accommodation (until now very vague) of

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the Quebec reality. In fact, this approach would be consistent with that of the Supreme Court of Canada, which sees the Constitution as “a living tree which, by way of progressive interpretation, accommodates and addresses the realities of modern life” and which therefore incarnates the principle of flexible federalism.32 For the federation to be able to evolve according to the circumstances, the “living tree” approach requires interpreting legislative powers as essentially dynamic.33 The federal balance of powers has been “adjusted” in this way a number of times by judicial interpretation in response to the imperatives of life at the heart of a modern, industrialized social democracy: to accommodate new technologies,34 regulate commercial activities,35 extend the employment insurance plan as more women entered the labour market,36 and ensure that the institution of marriage reflects contemporary social norms.37 It should be noted that, in the same-sex marriage reference, the Supreme Court explains the logic at work behind the “living tree” idea: “A large and liberal, or progressive, interpretation ensures the continued relevance and, indeed, legitimacy of Canada’s constituting document. By way of progressive interpretation our Constitution succeeds in its ambitious enterprise, that of structuring the exercise of power by the organs of the state in times vastly different from those in which it was crafted.”38 It is clear from this that the Supreme Court is suggesting a link between a progressive interpretation and political legitimacy. In other words, if the Constitution becomes too divorced from the realities that it is supposed to regulate, it ceases to be a source of political legitimacy. Strangely, while the progressive interpretation has indeed been used to expand the powers of the federal government,39 the greatest challenge to constitutional legitimacy – namely, the reality of Quebec nationalism – has been more or less ignored by the Supreme Court of Canada. Yet, it is not as though there have been no opportunities to recognize Quebec’s national dimension. In 1982, in Re: Objection by Quebec to a Resolution to amend the Constitution, the government of Quebec asked, in substance, if there could be a convention requiring Quebec’s consent for any constitutional amendment40 given the dualist theory of the Canadian federation (a matter to which it is perfectly reasonable to attach considerable political importance): In the context of this reference, the word “duality” covers all the circumstances that have contributed to making Quebec a distinct society, since the foundation of Canada and long before, and the range of guarantees that were made to Quebec in 1867, as a province which the Task Force on Canadian Unity has described as “the stronghold of the French-Canadian people” and the “living heart of the French presence in North America.” These circumstances and these guarantees extend

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far beyond matters of language and culture alone: the protection of the British North America Act was extended to all aspects of Quebec society – language, certainly, but also the society’s values, its law, religion, education, territory, natural resources, government and the sovereignty of its legislative assembly over everything which was at the time of a “local” nature.41 According to the dualist theory, since Quebec is a full-fledged nation, its constitutional status is not to be determined by the unilateral will of a pan-Canadian national majority. The Court nonetheless decided to bypass Quebec’s national specificity by using the principle that it could not be shown that Quebec’s right of veto had been accepted explicitly by the other members of the federation.42 Yet, there is tension (if not a contradiction) between the Court’s insistence on the need for explicit recognition of Quebec’s right of veto and the relative absence of explicit statements recognizing the convention of a “sufficient measure of provincial consent” mentioned in Re: Objection by Quebec. Moreover, in the patriation reference, the Court did not seem to be bothered by the fact that two earlier attempts at constitutional patriation (in 1964 and 1971) had failed precisely because Quebec had not consented.43 Consequently, if the criteria used in the justification for the patriation reference had actually been applied, those two precedents alone would have been sufficient to shine a light on the convention in question.44 Other objections could be made to the Court’s decision in the Quebec veto reference. To begin with, it greatly weakened the Supreme Court’s legitimacy in the eyes of Quebecers. However, as far as we are concerned, the main problem is that the decision violated the principle of flexibility. A constitutional practice related to a Quebec veto had, in fact, emerged in response to Quebec’s national reality, and the purpose of that practice was to ensure that any constitutional reform would be done on the basis of plurinational cooperation (in other words, with Quebec’s consent). By refusing to consider that practice as a real convention, the Court refused, in fact, to recognize the validity of practices that had been in effect at an infraconstitutional level until the 1981 patriation agreement.45 The 1998 Reference re Secession of Quebec was another opportunity for the Supreme Court to take Quebec’s national status into consideration. The question put to the Court was whether the government of Quebec had the power to impose Quebec’s secession from Canada unilaterally. The Court ruled that unilateral secession would go against the Constitution, but it also found that, if there was a majority vote in favour of secession, the federal government would be obliged to negotiate the terms of separation in good faith. Yet, once again, the Court refused to rule on Quebec’s national specificity or on the political repercussions of Quebec nationalism. Asked whether, under international law, there was a “Quebec people” with a right

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of self-determination, the Court limited itself to answering (in a rather vague manner) that “much of the Quebec population certainly shares many of the characteristics (such as a common language and culture) that would be considered in determining whether a specific group is a ‘people,’ as do other groups within Quebec and/or Canada.”46 However, it was recognized that Quebec is a unique province. The Court spoke at length on the principle of federalism and Quebec’s unique role in the federation: “The principle of federalism facilitates the pursuit of collective goals by cultural and linguistic minorities which form the majority within a particular province. This is the case in Quebec, where the majority of the population is Frenchspeaking, and which possesses a distinct culture. This is not merely the result of chance. The social and demographic reality of Quebec explains the existence of the province of Quebec as a political unit and indeed, was one of the essential reasons for establishing a federal structure for the Canadian union in 1867.”47 The Court also raised the fact that, despite the Quebec government’s refusal to support the patriation process, the province of Quebec was nonetheless bound “to the terms of a Constitution that is different from that which prevailed previously, particularly as regards provisions governing its amendment, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”48 However, the decision contains no discussion of the history of constitutional conflicts, such as the rise of Quebec nationalism, the Quebec Veto Reference, and the failures of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords, which opened the way to the 1995 referendum on secession.49 We can therefore conclude that the Court’s reasoning remained distanced from the Quebec reality and demonstrated closed-minded indifference, which was in contradiction with the principle of constitutional flexibility that we have spotlighted. When Centralization Defeats Robustness As we have shown above, the principle of robustness requires federal systems to maintain their federal dimension over the long term. From a certain point of view, the Canadian federation is in this sense stronger than that of the United States.50 For example, the Canadian provinces have more exclusive powers than their American state counterparts. Moreover, although provincial and federal powers overlap under the Canadian Constitution, federal laws are paramount over provincial laws only in cases of real conflict, in other words, when a federal law and a provincial law are considered incompatible51 or when the provincial law goes against the objectives of the federal law.52 Nonetheless, despite there being formal brakes on the expansion of federal powers, the Canadian government has used its spending power (in combination with other strategies) to influence and control provincial governments in ways that undermine Canada’s federal dimension in general and threaten the existence of the Quebec nation in particular.

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The best example of this tendency is the Social Union Framework Agreement (sufa ),53 which is nothing less than a plan to create a panCanadian national political community. The problem is not so much that of a conflict between centralization and decentralization as between different, competing visions of federalism,54 governance, and the expression of sovereignty.55 The framework agreement would insert mobility as one of the essential characteristics of the Canadian federation, giving it precedence over all other political claims. Article 2 of the agreement says: “All governments believe that the freedom of movement of Canadians to pursue opportunities anywhere in Canada is an essential element of Canadian citizenship.”56 By entrenching its position, Ottawa carried out an incursion into a field of exclusive provincial jurisdiction and, at the same time, strengthened its position with respect to citizenship, which applies identically across the whole of Canada. This undermines the robustness of federal practices by reducing the scope for variation within the federation. When Monism Triumphs over Versatility As we have noted above, until 1949, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council acted as the court of final appeal for cases concerning Canada’s distribution of federal and provincial powers.57 Generally, the Privy Council gave precedence to an interpretation of the distribution of powers that was to the provinces’ advantage, against the federal government.58 The federal powers to pass laws to regulate “trade and commerce”59 and “for the peace, order, and good government of Canada” were interpreted in a narrow manner. The latter power was interpreted as permitting legislation only where there was an identifiable gap in the distribution of powers or where federal law was needed in response to an emergency. At the same time, and in comparison, the provincial power with respect to “property and civil rights” was interpreted very broadly. The Privy Council’s explicitly decentralizing jurisprudence followed, in part, from a formalist reading of federalism that considered that legislative powers had to be distributed in such a way that they would be exclusive to a specific order of government, in line with the powers listed in the bna Act. That certainly left little place for adding to federal powers. The formalist approached survived for a time after constitutional authority was transferred to the Supreme Court of Canada. For example, in 1951, the Supreme Court was still using such formalist language: Parliament can legislate only on the subject matters referred to it by section 91 and … each Province can legislate exclusively on the subject matters referred to it by section 92. The country is entitled to insist that legislation adopted under section 91 should be passed exclusively by the Parliament of Canada in the same way as the people of each Province

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are entitled to insist that legislation concerning the matters enumerated in section 92 should come exclusively from their respective Legislatures. In each case the Members elected to Parliament or to the Legislatures are the only ones entrusted with the power and the duty to legislate concerning the subjects exclusively distributed by the constitutional Act to each of them.60 However, at the beginning of the 1960s, with a rise in movements supporting the provinces’ elevation, commentators, political scientists, and legal experts began to predict the imminent decline of the “classical federalism of ‘water-tight compartments’ with provincial legislatures and federal parliament carefully keeping clear of one another.”61 One might imagine that a shift from formalism to a more evaluative approach would be conducive to flexibility, making it easier to adjust the federal balance in light of changing conditions, including the circumstances of national pluralism. From the perspective of versatility, however, there is a real danger here because open-ended evaluation may allow the system to be captured for certain purposes or values to the exclusion of others. As Jean Leclair reminds us, “the Privy Council’s presumably more formal approach to federalism had the virtue of forcing courts to define what lay within the exclusive power of the provincial polities.”62 However, the Supreme Court’s subsequent jurisprudence has generally reflected a single-minded utilitarian concern with functional efficiency at the expense of democratic-communitarian concerns. This has allowed federal power to encroach on what would otherwise be provincial jurisdiction. Two decisions of the Supreme Court warrant particular attention here. In General Motors of Canada Ltd v. City National Leasing,63 the Court held that the federal power to make law for the “general regulation of trade” could support federal competition legislation even though the regulated business activity in question occurred locally within the province. The government of Quebec objected that, while the power respecting trade and commerce allowed for pan-Canadian competition legislation, the legislation should be “read down” so as to apply only to international and interprovincial commercial activity; competition within Quebec ought to be governed by Quebec’s power over property and civil rights. However, the Court rejected Quebec’s argument and thereby departed from “more than 100 years of constitutional interpretation in which the federal government’s power to regulate trade and commerce in section 91(2) of the Constitution was limited to the interprovincial and international flow of commerce.”64 The Court justified its decision on utilitarian-functionalist grounds. It said that the object of the challenged legislation was “the economy as a single integrated national unit rather than as a collection of separate local enterprises.”65 According to the Court, this object required a uniform effort because “the failure to include one or more provinces or localities would jeopardize successful

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operation of the legislation in other parts of the country.”66  Being skeptical about the ability of the provinces to act collectively for the sake of the “national interest” (understood in a pan-Canadian sense), the Court held that the incursion into provincial jurisdiction was justified. Significantly, the decision was a function of the perceived inability of the provinces to adopt a truly “national perspective that could transcend their own regional interests.”67 The second important decision is R. v. Crown Zellerbach Canada Ltd.68 In it, the Supreme Court held that the federal government’s power to make laws for “peace, order, and good government” included a plenary power over marine pollution, even within provincial boundaries, on the basis that the matter in question was of “national concern.” Again, a kind of utilitarian functionalism underpinned the decision. The regulation of marine pollution was characterized as functionally indivisible and, therefore, a matter that could be regulated effectively only from the centre by the federal government. However, the consequences of Crown Zellerbach are even more drastic than those of City National Leasing because the jurisdiction it supports is exclusively federal. The unwieldy centralizing potential of this doctrine was the focus of Justice La Forest’s admonitory dissent: “By conceptualizing broad social, economic and political issues in that way, one can effectively invent new heads of power under the national dimensions doctrine, thereby incidentally removing them from provincial jurisdiction or at least abridging the provinces’ freedom of operation … Here, it must be remembered that in its supposed application within the province the provision virtually prevents a province from dealing with certain of its own public property without federal consent.”69 These concerns were later vindicated in Ontario Hydro v. Ontario (Labour Relations Board),70 where the standard was further relaxed to allow for federal jurisdiction over labour relations at Ontario’s nuclear power plants. Significantly, whether or not the object of legislation was part of a single and indivisible subject matter was not treated as the threshold question of national concern but as a limiting condition “to determine which provincial powers the existence of a national concern allowed Parliament to plunder.”71 The Supreme Court’s reliance on a utilitarian-functionalist criterion of “provincial inability” has been criticized as vague and “highly subjective.”72 Functionalism can easily come to dominate the meaning of federalism, to the detriment of other federal values. As Katherine Swinton suggests: “Applying either the national dimensions doctrine or the new general regulation of trade doctrine shifts powers to the federal government which the provinces would otherwise have exercised exclusively. When the Court invokes these doctrines, it acts as a constitutional reformer or designer. In the case of the national concerns doctrine, the Court reforms or designs with no textual guidance as to what is national, in contrast to the interpretation of the distribution of enumerated powers, where there is some indication of criteria of national and provincial salience.”73

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The consequences of a centralizing constitutional drift for the national interests of Quebec are especially serious. The idea of provincial incapacity is not objective or value-neutral, as between different conceptions of the Canadian federation. In City National Leasing, for example, provincial inability was understood, in part, as the inability to adopt a “national” pan-Canadian perspective.74 This doctrine leaves little or no room for the “national” perspective of Quebec. For this reason, not only is the triumph of utilitarian functionalism over other normative conceptions of federalism in the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court a deficiency in terms of versatility, but it also undermines the ability of the Canadian federation to respond to the circumstances of national pluralism and further contributes to the alienation of rights holders in the Quebec political community.

c o n c l u s ion We have discussed the idea that the Canadian federation has some major deficiencies insofar as it has failed to respect the principles of flexibility, robustness, and versatility. We have also illustrated that, to a large extent, these deficiencies stem from the 1981 patriation agreement on the 1982 patriation of the Constitution. Flexibility was compromised in a missed opportunity to adapt the federation to the national reality of Quebec. The robustness of Canadian federalism has been further eroded by the centralizing efforts of the federal government. The Supreme Court has undermined the versatility of the Canadian federation by over-expounding a utilitarian jurisprudence emphasizing functional efficiency at the expense of other federal values. Such deficiencies have political consequences. Because the patriation agreement was premised on a failure (or refusal) to acknowledge the distinctive national reality of Quebec, scholarly criticism has often focused on the question of recognition.75 We agree that recognition (or its lack) is a crucial element in this story, but the discourse of recognition may actually have negative consequences in theory and in practice. There is a danger of “fetishizing” recognition, of elevating symbolism and idealizing perpetual dialogue, while sidelining what are arguably more important, concrete questions of power and power relations. The precise significance of recognition in constitutional politics remains ambiguous and essentially symbolic. Is recognition a means to an end, or is the struggle for recognition valuable regardless of the outcome? James Tully seems to defend the latter, describing the “intersubjective activity” of struggling over recognition as “an intrinsic public good”76 and “the continuous contests of mutual disclosure and acknowledgment” as “ends in themselves.”77 What is the actual benefit for minority nationalists? Tully suggests that “participation in the intersubjective negotiation of identity” is an essential prerequisite to development of “the sense of self-worth of

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individuals and groups which empowers them to become free, equal and autonomous agents in both private and public life.”78 We see two problems in our colleague Tully’s understanding of the issue. First, despite his emphasis on egalitarian dialogue, the relationship between the participants in such “agonic games” remains vertical: there are those who are in a position benevolently to bestow recognition, and there are those who seek it. In other words, it is a contest wherein one team has a numerical advantage and writes the rules of the game as it is being played, to serve its own interests.79 Second, in conceiving of the dialogue of recognition as an end in itself, we (as theorists, social scientists, jurists, or citizens) may abandon the tough work of actually thinking through the problem of national pluralism in substantive terms.80 The solution we prefer prioritizes empowerment instead of recognition. This approach aims to articulate a substantive vision of what the endgame ought to look like: a multinational federal vision in which different national communities are equipped with the powers they need to flourish, to develop legitimate contexts of choice, and to realize comparable possibilities. As we have argued, federalism can be endorsed from utilitarian, liberal, and democratic-communitarian perspectives and enlisted simultaneously to serve each of these goals or values. The idea of a federalism of empowerment embraces this pluralism. The practical challenge in a modern federation such as Canada is to find a balance between the pursuit of various goals and values while remaining flexible, robust, and versatile.81 Naturally, this is easier said than done. notes 1 This chapter summarizes and updates the authors’ analysis, published as “Canada since Patriation: Advancing a Federalism of Empowerment,” in Patriation and its Consequences: Constitution Making in Canada, ed. Lois Harder and Steve Patten (Vancouver: ubc Press, 2015), 244–66; and in Spanish as “El federalismo canadiense desde la repatriación: Promover el federalismo del empoderamiento,” in Sistemas federales: Una comparación internacional, ed. Wilhelm Hofmeister and José Tudela Aranda (Madrid: Fundacion Konrad Adenauer/Fundación Manuel Gimenez Abad, 2017), 253–71. The analysis is reiterated with the permission of the publisher and remains copyright © ubc Press 2015. All rights reserved. 2 Daniel Elazar, Exploring Federalism (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1987); Alain-G. Gagnon, “The Political Uses of Federalism,” in Comparative Federalism and Federation: Competing Traditions and Future Directions, ed. Michael Burgess and Alain-G. Gagnon (New York: Harvester and Wheatsheaf, 1993), 15–44. 3 Albert Breton, “A Theory of Government Grants,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 31, no. 2 (1965): 175, 187.

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4 Robert P. Inman, “Federalism’s Values and the Value of Federalism,” ces ifo Economic Studies 53, no. 4 (2007): 522–60. 5 Ibid., 525. 6 See: New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 US 252, 311, per Brandeis J., dissenting. 7 Alain-G. Gagnon, “The Political Uses of Federalism,” in Burgess and Gagnon, eds, Comparative Federalism, 15–44; Peter Hogg, Constitutional Law of Canada (Toronto: Carswell Legal Publications, 2009), 343. 8 James M. Buchanan, “Federalism as an Ideal Political Order and an Objective for Constitutional Reform,” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 25, no. 2 (1995): 19–28. 9 Inman, “Federalism’s Values,” 525. 10 James M. Buchanan, “Federalism and Individual Sovereignty,” Cato Journal 15, nos 2–3 (1996): 259–68. 11 Jacob Levy, “Federalism, Liberalism, and the Separation of Loyalties,” American Political Science Review 101, no. 3 (2007): 465. 12 Ibid., 466. 13 Daniel Weinstock, “Towards a Normative Theory of Federalism,” International Social Science Journal, no. 53 (2001): 77. 14 Ibid. 15 Alain-G. Gagnon, “Quebec: The Emergence of a Region-State,” in “Special Issue on Stateless Nations in the 21st Century: Scotland, Catalonia and Quebec,” Scottish Affairs 37, no. 2 (2001): 14–28; Alain-G. Gagnon, Minority Nations in the Age of Uncertainty: New Paths to National Emancipation and Empowerment (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014). 16 Donald Horowitz, “The Many Uses of Federalism,” Drake Law Review, no. 55 (2008): 953–66. 17 Will Kymlicka, “Le fédéralisme multinational: Un partenariat à repenser,” in Sortir de l’impasse: Les voies de la réconciliation, ed. Guy Laforest and Roger Gibbins (Montreal: Institut de recherche en politiques publiques, 1998), 15–54; Wayne Norman, Negotiating Nationalism: Nation-building, Federalism and Secession in the Multinational State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Helder de Schutter, “Federalism as Fairness,” Journal of Political Philosophy 19, no. 2 (2011): 167–89. 18 Alain-G. Gagnon, The Case for Multinational Federalism: Beyond the AllEncompassing Nation (London: Routledge, 2010). 19 Evan Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology and the Sciences of Mind (Cambridge, ma : Harvard University Press, 2007), 195. 20 Ibid. 21 Charles Taylor, “Shared and Divergent Values,” in Reconciling the Solitudes: Essays on Canadian Federalism and Nationalism, ed. Guy Laforest (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993), 183. See also: Dimitrios Karmis, “The Multiple Voices of the Federal Tradition and the Turmoil of Canadian

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24 25

26 27

28 29

30

31

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Federalism,” in Contemporary Canadian Federalism: Foundations, Traditions, Institutions, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 53–75. See: Elazar, Exploring Federalism. Erwin Chemerinsky, “Dunwoody Distinguished Lecture in Law: The Values of Federalism,” University of Florida Law Review, no. 47 (1996): 499–540; Erwin Chemerinsky, “Federalism as Empowerment, Not Limits,” University of Kansas Law Review, no. 45 (1997): 1219–40; Erwin Chemerinsky, “The Rehnquist Revolution,” Pierce Law Review 2, no. 1 (2004): 1–16. Chemerinsky, “Dunwoody Distinguished Lecture,” 538. For a discussion on this topic, see: Peter W. Hogg and Wade K. Wright, “Canadian Federalism, the Privy Council and the Supreme Court: Reflections on the Debate about Canadian Federalism,” University of British Columbia Law Review 38, no. 2 (2005): 329–52. Robert Schertzer, The Judicial Role in a Diverse Federation: Lessons from the Supreme Court of Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016). Ivan Bernier and Andrée Lajoie, Le droit de la famille et le droit social au Canada (Ottawa: Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, 1986). Alain-G. Gagnon and Raffaele Iacovino, Federalism, Citizenship, and Quebec: Debating Multinationalism (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2007). See: Donald V. Smiley, “A Dangerous Deed: The Constitution Act, 1982,” in And No One Cheered: Federalism, Democracy, and the Constitution Act, 1982, ed. Keith Banting and Richard Simeon (Toronto: Methuen, 1983), 74–95; Peter Russell, “Bold Statecraft, Questionable Jurisprudence,” in Banting and Simeon, eds, And No One Cheered, 210–38. Guy Laforest, Trudeau et la fin d’un rêve canadien (Quebec City: Septentrion, 1992); Sujit Choudhry and Jean-François Gaudreault-Desbiens, “Frank Iacobucci as Constitution Maker: From the Quebec Veto Reference to the Meech Lake Accord and the Quebec Secession Reference,” University of Toronto Law Journal, no. 57 (2007): 168. James Tully, “Let’s Talk: The Quebec Referendum and the Future of Canada,” Austin and Hempel Lectures, Dalhousie University, Halifax, and University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, 23 and 27 March 1995, 8. Reference re Same-Sex Marriage, [2004] 3 scr 698, para. 22; Eugénie Brouillet and Alain-G. Gagnon, “The Canadian Constitution and the Metaphor of the Living Tree,” in Revisiting Unity and Diversity in Federal Countries, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon and Michael Burgess (Boston: Brill, 2018), 116–40. According to J. Beetz, in Martin Service Station Ltd. v. Ministre du Revenu national, [1977], 997. See, for example, Toronto Corporation v. Bell Telephone Co. of Canada, [1905] C.A. 52 (P.C.), which recognized the central government as having the power to legislate in telecommunications matters on the basis of the fact that,

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under section 92(10) of the Constitution (then the British North America Act, 1867), the provinces do not have the power to regulate “works and undertakings connecting the Province with any other or others of the Provinces” or works “for the general Advantage of Canada or for the Advantage of Two or more of the Provinces.” See: General Motors of Canada Ltd v. City National Leasing, [1989] 1 scr 641, in which the court concluded that the federal power to regulate trade under section 91 of the Constitution could be extended to any other matter necessarily associated with economic and commercial exchanges. Reference re Employment Insurance Act (Can.), ss. 22 and 23, [2005] 2 scr . 669 recognizes that the federal government has the power to legislate on maternity and paternity benefits. Reference re Same-Sex Marriage, [2004] 3 scr 698. Ibid., para. 23. Katherine Swinton, “Federalism Under Fire: The Role of the Supreme Court of Canada,” Law and Contemporary Problems 55, no. 1 (1992): 128. See Amélie Binette’s chapter in this collection. Re: Objection by Quebec to a Resolution to amend the Constitution, [1982] 2 scr 793, 813 (the court’s emphasis). Re: Objection by Quebec, 817–8. Smiley, “A Dangerous Deed”; Russell, “Bold Statecraft, Questionable Jurisprudence.” Choudhry and Gaudreault-DesBiens, “Frank Iacobucci as Constitution Maker,” 176–7. G. Alan Tarr, Robert F. Williams, and Josef Marko, eds, Federalism, Subnational Constitutions and Minority Rights (Westport, ct : Praeger, 2004). Reference re Secession of Quebec, [1998] 2 scr 217, para. 125. Ibid., para. 59. Ibid., para. 47. Choudhry and Gaudreault-DesBiens, “Frank Iacobucci as Constitution Maker,” 93. Alain-G. Gagnon and Richard Simeon, “Canada,” in Diversity and Unity in Federal Countries: A Global Dialogue on Federalism – Forum of Federations, ed. Luis Moreno and César Colino (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010), 110–38. See: Multiple Access Ltd v. McCutcheon, [1982] 2 scr 161, 191, by Dickson J. See: Banque de Montréal v. Hall, [1990] 1 scr 121, 155, by La Forest J. On 4 February 1999, the Framework Agreement was initialled by the federal government and all the provinces except Quebec. The government of Quebec refused to sign because it saw in it major losses for Quebec and could not accept that the central government would be able to interfere in social policy, a jurisdiction essentially exclusive to the government of Quebec. See: https://

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www.sqrc.gouv.qc.ca/secretariat/salle-de-nouvelles/communiques/details. asp?id=38. Gagnon and Iacovino, Federalism, Citizenship, and Quebec, 49. Michael Burgess and Alain-G. Gagnon, eds, Federal Democracies (London: Routledge, 2010). Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat, “Agreement – A Framework to Improve the Social Union for Canadians,” 4 February 1999, https://scics.ca/en/product-produit/ agreement-a-framework-to-improve-the-social-union-for-canadians. See also: Andrée Lajoie, “Le fédéralisme au Canada: Provinces et minorités, même combat,”, in Le fédéralisme canadien contemporain: Fondements, traditions, institutions, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon (Montreal: Les Presses de l’université de Montreal, 2006), 185. Eugénie Brouillet, La négation de la nation: L’identité culturelle et le fédéralisme canadien (Quebec City: Septentrion, 2005); Hogg, Constitutional Law of Canada, 339. In Re Board of Commerce Act Canada 1919 and Combines and Fair Prices Act, [1922] 1 A.C. 191, the Council found that the federal legislation, which had been ratified by the Canadian Parliament, creating a Board of Commerce responsible for investigating anti-competition practices, was simply ultra vires. Attorney General of Nova Scotia v. Attorney General of Canada, [1951] scr 31, 34. See the discussion in Multiple Access Ltd v. McCutcheon, [1982] 2 scr 161. Jean Leclair, “The Supreme Court of Canada’s Understanding of Federalism: Efficiency at the Expense of Diversity,” Queen’s Law Journal, no. 28 (2003): 431. General Motors of Canada Ltd. v. City National Leasing, [1989] 1 scr 641. Swinton, “Federalism Under Fire,” 127. General Motors of Canada Ltd v. City National Leasing, 680. Ibid. Swinton, “Federalism Under Fire,” 133. R. v. Crown Zellerbach Canada Ltd, [1988] 1 scr 401. It should be noted that Beetz, Lamer, and La Forest JJ. expressed strong dissent in this decision. R. v. Crown Zellerbach Canada Ltd, 452. Ontario Hydro v. Ontario (Commission des relations de travail), [1993] 3 scr 327. Gerald Baier, Courts and Federalism: Judicial Doctrine in the United States, Australia and Canada (Vancouver: ubc Press, 2006). Leclair, “The Supreme Court of Canada’s Understanding of Federalism,” 428–9. Swinton, “Federalism Under Fire,” 132. Ibid., 33. Michel Seymour, ed., The Plural States of Recognition (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

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76 James Tully, Democracy and Civic Freedom, vol. 1 (Cambridge, uk : Cambridge University Press, 2008), 189. 77 Ibid., 208. 78 Ibid., 169. 79 Alain Noël, “Ideology, Identity, Majoritarianism: On the Politics of Federalism,” in The Global Promise of Federalism, ed. Grace Skogstad, David Cameron, Martin Papillon, and Keith Banting (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 166–87. 80 Gagnon, Minority Nations; Michel Seymour and Alain-G. Gagnon, eds, Multinational Federalism: Problems and Prospects (Basingstoke, uk : Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 81 Ferran Requejo, Fédéralisme multinational et pluralisme de valeurs (Brussels: Les Presses interuniversitaires européennes and Peter Lang, 2010).

in c o n c l u s io n : an overture

The Pressing Need for Federalist Forward Thinking in Quebec and the Rest of Canada André Burelle

By way of a contribution to the history of contemporary federalist thought in Quebec, allow me to recall, in broad strokes, the lack of both federalist and sovereigntist forward thinking during the thirty years that I was closely involved in Canada-Quebec constitutional and political debates.

t h e b ir t h o f a new world On the federalist side, after the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission was aborted, the advocates of federalism, both in Quebec and in the rest of Canada, faced a situation that was unforeseen and particularly disturbing: the accelerated erasing of both provincial and national boundaries by the technological, economic, and financial forces of globalization. The result was that, even in the glory days of the Pepin-Robarts Commission, Marc Lalonde’s A Time for Action (Bill C-60), and Claude Ryan’s Beige Paper, the great mission to be accomplished by those who wanted to reform Canadian federalism was simply to “contain” federal spending power and try to reconcile the multiculturalism preached by Pierre Elliott Trudeau with the original multinationalist approach embodied by the Canadian confederal pact of 1867. No one really anticipated how the World Wide Web and international free trade would break down provincial and national boundaries. And no one realized how the member states of the Canadian federation would have to coordinate the exercise of their territorial sovereign powers to tackle the increasing global problems of our times. When I was tasked, as a senior public servant in the Federal-Provincial Relations Office (fpro ), with reflecting on the content of the Meech Lake Accord in order to correct the 1982 constitutional patriation imposed on Quebec, I had to deal with a lack, in both Quebec and the rest of Canada, of realistic new ideas

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1 for reconciling the individual rights protected by the Canadian and Quebec charters of rights and freedoms with the collective rights guaranteed to Canada’s founding peoples under the Constitution Act, 1867; and 2 for ensuring the collaborative exercise of the sovereign powers of the provincial and central governments (a) to resolve issues that increasingly transcend the strictly territorial powers of the two orders of government of our federation (the environment, free flow of goods, capital, and persons, etc.); and (b) to consolidate the Canadian social union based on the major economic and social mutual assistance programs that Canada adopted in the wake of the Second World War and that are threatened today by a form of globalization allergic both to community solidarity and to state rules imposed on wild capitalism.

t w o f o r m s o f c h r o ni c bli ndness To limit my comments to the Meech Lake period (which had nonetheless begun in a spirit of renewal), I was then struck by the inability, or even refusal, of federalist reformers to imagine the future of Canada in a context of antigovernment globalization. In my view, this was due to the prevalence of two ideological mindsets that are as subtle as they are insidious. The first of these mindsets took, and still takes, the form of what I would call the rear-view mirror reflex of the legal experts who advise our governments. Overly cautious, they are unable to propose the slightest constitutional innovation if they cannot invoke ironclad precedents to prove their case in advance. Yet, rethinking the future of a country means, by definition, venturing off the beaten path to propose something new. The simple truth is that this requires great creativity and a willingness to take “calculated risks.” These are not aptitudes cultivated by our faculties of law, where Common Law predominates and prudence is too often confused with jurisprudence, and this leads to timid conservatism in constitutional matters.1 The second mindset took a more ordinary, but just as insidious, form that I would call the habit of political thinkers and leaders in Quebec and the rest of Canada of wearing blinders. Their tunnel vision resulted, and still results, in a myopic vision of the future and a weak memory of our collective past. Even those who rejected the “fixation on the immediate” most often engaged in debilitating bon-ententisme. To “keep peace” among Canadians, they preferred to sweep problems that shocked and divided under the carpet, even if that meant sacrificing the past and future to the present. This explains why courage and forward thinking were in short supply among our intellectual and political leaders when it came to taking on, even

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at the time of Meech Lake, two crucial challenges that Canada is confronted with more than ever today. I would sum them up as follows: 1 How can we find a way that is both moral and truly egalitarian to reconcile the collective rights of the founding peoples of Canada with the “one nation” conception of Canadian citizenship that Ottawa and the rest of Canada forced on Quebec when the Constitution was patriated in 1982? 2 How can we find a way that is both fair and efficient to manage the interdependency of the provinces and the central government in this time of irresistible globalization when there are mounting problems that transcend both provincial boundaries and Canada’s borders, and that can be solved only through concerted exercise of the sovereign powers that the Canadian Constitution distributes to the provincial legislatures and the Parliament of Canada? After the Meech Lake and Charlottetown failures, innovative ideas for helping Canada deal with this two-pronged challenge were so few and far between that the fpro research group I was heading had to put on the table the key concepts at the centre of the draft federal response to the BélangerCampeau report.

s u p r a n a t io n a l c iti zenshi p and j u s t ic e b a s e d o n equi valence This is how we came to propose the concepts of “supranational citizenship” and “justice based on equivalent rights and treatment” of individuals and federated communities to guarantee, in a modern Canada, what Laurier called “union without fusion” of the founding peoples of our country. For, treating dissimilar peoples and provinces in an identical manner and trying to merge them together into an amorphous multicultural Canada, as Trudeau-style, centralizing nation-building and Charter devotees proposed, meant, in the eyes of Quebecers, and in our eyes, tossing away the rejection of the American-style melting pot that was at the heart of the Canadian social and political contract of 1867.2 In fact, the fpro in Montreal was a voice in the wilderness when it came to the need to reconcile multiculturalism and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms with recognition of Quebec as a distinct society within Canada. From the point of view of the academics in the rest of Canada who had converted to Trudeau’s anti-communitarian reading of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, what we were proposing was heresy. At the same time, in Quebec, the sovereigntist intelligentsia was thinking about only one thing: inventing a “collective us” and a “Quebec civic nation”

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deliberately cut off from its French-Canadian roots to shelter the theorists of a Quebec “civic nation” from accusations of ethnicism, or even racism, made by right-minded Canadian Trudeauists. The result was that the only two “thinkers” the Bourassa government could borrow from to give itself an “interculturalism”-inspired policy on immigration and integration (the Énoncé de politique en matière d’immigration et d’intégration) in 1990 were two academic outsiders: Jesuit Julien Harvey and sociologist Gary Caldwell, with their concept of “Quebec’s common public culture.”3 As for me, as negotiator of the Canada-Quebec Accord relating to Immigration and Temporary Admission of Aliens, I ended up talking myself hoarse trying to explain to the leaders of a federal apparatus instinctively authoritarian and forgetful of our history 1 that the multinational federal Canada of 1867 was born under the aegis of the supranational British citizenship that was enjoyed at the time by all members of the Empire and that made it possible for Indigenous peoples and Franco-Catholic Canadians to define themselves, prior to the 1948 law on Canadian citizenship, as distinct nations within a federation dominated by the Anglo-Protestant Loyalist Canadians fleeing the American Revolution of Jefferson and company;4 and 2 that the Constitution Act, 1867, had used the Aristotelean notion of proportional equality to recognize that the justice rendered with respect to people in Lower Canada under the Civil Code of Lower Canada would be considered as broadly equivalent, but not as identical, to the justice rendered under the Common Law with respect to the people of the other provinces. The only “Aristotelians” whom I was able to call on for help on this crucial question were the second-generation feminists who were submitting demands to the Advisory Council on the Status of Women in Ottawa, not for identical but for equivalent rights and treatment in order to achieve “real equality” with men. In other words, they were seeking a form of equality that would take into account the biological and psychological differences between men and women to create a true “level playing ground” between the two complementary halves of humanity.

ma n a g in g in t e r d e p e ndence through e u r o p e a n - s t y l e j o in t d eci si on-maki ng As for the means to put an end to the overbearing federalism denounced by Bourassa and to ensure fair, efficient, modern management of the interdependence of the sovereign partners in the Canadian federation, it was

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a complete wasteland, not only in the rest of Canada but also in Quebec; and more understandably with respect to the marginalized First Nations of Canada.5 When I spoke to academics at Queen’s about Canada’s chronic shortcomings with regard to the federal principles of subsidiarity and nonsubordination, they looked at me as if I were speaking Greek. When I drew attention to the urgent need to give Canada a mechanism for managing the interdependence of the sovereign partners in the Canadian federation, given the continent- and planet-wide problems that called for concerted use of the sovereign powers of both orders of government, I collided with Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s slogan Who will speak for Canada? and the unremitting unitary dream of John A. Macdonald’s heirs.6 It was not much better on the Quebec federalist side. In Robert Bourassa’s Quebec Liberal Party, Claude Ryan had his heart set on unconditional opting out with full financial compensation. As a champion of liberal values, Ryan celebrated the moral superiority of a Canada that practised distributive justice between individuals and between rich and poor provinces thanks to equalization and major pan-Canadian social programs. However, at the same time, he rejected any idea of common standards, even if they were to be minimal and decided jointly in a European manner by the provinces and the federal government, that would guarantee the maintenance of such programs against the threat of the each-to-his-own attitude that periodically rises to the surface in the federation’s richer provinces. As for the Parti Québécois, in the 1980s, there was complete refusal in its policy conventions to think through the sovereignty-association proposal inherited from René Lévesque. After having removed the association plank from the Parti Québécois’ official platform, Jacques Parizeau was compelled to improvise when Lucien Bouchard forced him to add the promise of a social and economic partnership with the rest of Canada in order to save the hardcore sovereigntist option from impending defeat in the 1995 referendum. And, to my great surprise, constitutional expert Daniel Turp, who was then a Bloc Québécois mp , came to talk to me about the concept of “partnership management of interdependence” between the sovereign partners in a Quebec-Canada economic and social “union.” He was seeking to give some minimum content to René Lévesque’s sovereignty-association as resuscitated by Bouchard. Faced with the sovereigntist ranks’ obstinate refusal to consider an association that was too “federating,” Turp begat a hollow shell (since it entailed no rules and no co-decision mechanisms for managing interdependence): a wishful-thinking proposal born from the contradicting views on the matter of the Bloc Québécois and the Parti Québécois. From reading recent interviews with Louis Bernard by historian Michel Sarra-Bournet, I learned that Parizeau had created a temporary secretariat for examining the post-sovereignty economic relations of Quebec, with the mandate to secretly prepare negotiations to establish a partnership with

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Canada. This example of sneaky ad-libbing at the eleventh hour is a good illustration of the lack of forward thinking among even the most brilliant minds in the sovereigntist movement, as well as in the federalist camp, during the 1995 referendum.7

a c a d e m ic s a n d d e c i s i on-makers i n v it e d t o t h in k o u t si de of the box To tell the truth, none of that should have surprised me. When the research group I was directing in Montreal decided to hold a series of low-key seminars to submit our plan to modernize the Canadian federation to seasoned experts, it called to the table around fifty of Quebec’s academics, former deputy ministers, and opinion leaders. We found that most of our guests had never reflected on the ideas we were asking them to critique. When we talked to them about using the joint decision-making processes employed by the member states of the European Union as a template for managing the interdependence of the member states of the Canadian federation, in full compliance with the federal principles of subsidiarity and non-subordination, their eyes went blank. However, as soon as we gave examples of continental and planetary problems that were beyond the jurisdictions of both the provinces and the federal government, they had tons of ideas about how to refine our proposals and make them saleable in Quebec and the rest of Canada. Moreover, when we talked about justice based on equivalent instead of identical rights and treatment for individuals and federated communities, they had a whole range of examples to show that such proportional equality is at the very foundation of our system of taxation and redistribution of wealth. They helped us frame our arguments in plain language and provided us with supporting explanations for a form of equality that could compensate for some of the gravest historical inequalities between the citizens and communities of a single country. During our discussions with these critics of our proposals, we nonetheless noticed that equivalent rights and treatment meant, to them, a form of equality. Talking about asymmetrical rights and treatment indicated there was a will to take into account the different situations in the provinces, but it did not convey the notion of “proportional equality.” Speaking about asymmetry even seemed to lead them to believe that we were talking about a form of preferential treatment, and therefore a form of injustice, when we said that Quebec was not a province like the others. In the end, with respect to both form and content, the academics, former ministers, and senior public servants, as well as the thinkers from the business world and community groups, truly improved our proposals and provided us with insight into how to give greater credibility to the plan to rebalance the federation that the fpro had designed in response to the Bélanger-Campeau report.

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Having had this experience, I consider that it is exactly this sort of forward-thinking research that Quebec and the rest of Canada need, if they are going to succeed in inventing a viable shared future in line with both their history and the multinational and supranational spirit of our time. The exercise would not be a waste of time, as some seem to think.

an u r g e n t n e e d f o r forward-thi nki ng f e d e r a l is t r e s e a r c h i n quebec and t h e r e s t o f canada Elsewhere in this book, I have recalled the fact that, to the surprise of the Chrétien government, the Supreme Court opened an undreamt-of door for Quebec’s demands in 1998 when it ruled, in Reference re the Secession of Quebec, that Ottawa and the rest of Canada would have a legal obligation to negotiate in good faith a draft constitutional reform approved by the majority of the population of Quebec. That created the opportunity for a federalist referendum on the win-win rebalancing of the federation prepared by the fpro and proposed in my book Le mal canadien in response to the Bélanger-Campeau report. As I have said before, such a referendum is, in my opinion, the only truly effective tool still available to Quebec to get things to move in Canada.8 I would simply like to add that, to prepare the way for such a win-win referendum, it is clear that the proposals made over twenty years ago by the research group I was piloting in Montreal would need to undergo a serious update. Given the current situation, I do not see how such work could be done within the federal apparatus. It is therefore up to you, as academic researchers, to decide whether it is worth the effort and whether you wish to revive the reforms that we proposed to the Mulroney government as a response to the Bélanger-Campeau report. If you decide that it is worthwhile, think especially hard about the reality check that your ideas will have to be subject to, in the work you do. Constituted outside the university elite, the fpro research group that I directed decided to invite eminent academics from Quebec and the rest of Canada, along with former ministers, senior public servants, and influential people in the field, to work together to dissect the plan to rebalance the federation, which it was our mandate to prepare in response to the BélangerCampeau report. I suggest the roles be inverted, and that it be up to you, academia’s elite researchers, to involve critical advisers in your conversation to help you engage in the outside-of-the-box thinking that Quebec and Canada so urgently need. All an old veteran can tell you is that, if you decide to discreetly invite to your seminars those accustomed to exercising power at the grassroots level, you will find yourselves summarily ejected from your comfort zone. And you will be surprised to see how well you fare off your beaten path, as

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you experience, in their company, the pleasures of looking to the future in a way that is open to adventure but at the same time rooted in the history and major trends that shape Quebec, Canada, and the planet as a whole in these times of destabilizing globalization. I wish you this grace, as we used to say, for Quebec’s understocked constitutional arsenal would be much improved by such a new weapon of democratic “persuasion,” which our elected representatives could use responsibly if they ever find the courage to think ahead of their time. n o tes 1 One example of something new that gave cold sweats to legal experts in Ottawa was the idea of rewriting section 95 of the Constitution Act, 1867, to replace the competing federal-provincial powers with respect to immigration by a more clear-cut yet collaborative distribution of sovereign powers between the federal government and Quebec. It was accepted only thanks to the efforts of a fearless young lawyer on the federal team that I was leading, during the negotiations on the Canada-Québec Accord relating to Immigration and Temporary Admission of Aliens. Since the Meech Lake failure had made it impossible to constitutionalize the Accord, the cooperative distribution of sovereign powers over immigration that it establishes between the federal government and Quebec now has quasi-constitutional status, according to the documents from Ottawa. This is because the Accord, as concluded, provides that the parties to it may not reopen it unless they agree ahead of time on how they will close it again – a political means of anchoring it that is effective but not very orthodox in the eyes of some constitutionalists. 2 On the concept of “supranational citizenship” that we proposed, see: André Burelle, “Plusieurs ‘cultures publiques communes’ peuvent-elle coexister au sein du Canada ‘chartiste’ et multiculturel de Pierre Elliott Trudeau,” in Du tricoté serré au métissé serré? La culture publique commune au Québec en débats, ed. Stéphan Gervais, Dimitrios Karmis, and Diane Lamoureux (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2008), 165–82. 3 Gary Caldwell, Canadian Public Culture: The Rules of the Game in Canadian Public Life and Their Justification (Sainte-Edwidge-de-Clifton, qc : Fermentation Press, 2012). 4 On the benefits of the rule of law, the system of law, and the parliamentarianism that went hand-in-hand with granting supranational British citizenship to French Canadians after their defeat on the Plains of Abraham, see the famous speech to the glory of English-style political liberalism that Wilfrid Laurier gave in Quebec City on 26 June 1877. On this, see: André Pratte, Biographie d’un discours: Wilfrid Laurier à Québec le 26 juin 1877 (Montreal: Boréal, 2017). 5 Things have improved in recent years on the Indigenous front. Two remarkable legal experts, Hadley Friedland (University of Alberta) and Val Napoleon

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(University of Victoria), have undertaken comparative research on the customary law of Indigenous peoples in the rest of Canada. Based on the traditional narratives, dances, and songs that those nations use to transmit their customary law, Friedland and Napoleon, and their students, have sought to identify a number of principles of equivalent justice between the more formalized common law of the rest of Canada and the more fluid Indigenous law, which is also more fragile because it has been the victim of discontinuity owing to the residential school system, with its goal of assimilation. This exercise in comparative law could lead to the appointment to the Supreme Court of an Indigenous justice responsible for decisions in cases where Indigenous customary law applies. When will such a search for equivalency begin to create bridges between Quebec civil law and the customary law of Indigenous peoples living in Quebec? See: http://fngovernance.org/ncfng_research/ val_napoleon.pdf (accessed 12 December 2019). 6 The fpro researchers in Montreal studied the interstate, joint decisionmaking mechanisms invented by the European Union, in order to apply them to the management of the interdependence of the federal government and the federated states in the Canadian federation. However, those mechanisms have evolved and, for some years, alongside joint decision-making, the European Union has been using the “open method of coordination.” It would be a great project for a bright student to do field research on these mechanisms at work and draw lessons that could be used to ensure modern management of interdependence between the central government and the sovereign states in a federation like ours. Such a project should also include an examination of Belgium’s system of cooperation accords on certain matters between the federal government and the federated states. 7 Michel Sarra-Bournet, Louis Bernard: Entretiens (Montreal: Boréal, 2015), 150–1. 8 See: André Burelle, “Le référendum gagnant qu’on refuse aux Québécois,” Le Devoir, 11 December 1998.

Contributors

amélie binette is enrolled in a joint PhD in law at Université Laval, in

Canada, and the Université d’Orléans, in France. Her research centres on dated and obsolete aspects of Canadian constitutional law through the filter of normative strength and densification, as well as on the sources, practices, and dysfunctions of Canadian federalism. With professors Patrick Taillon and Guy Laforest, she recently co-edited Jean-Charles Bonenfant et l’esprit des institutions (Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2018).

frédéric boily is full professor of political science at Campus Saint-

Jean at the University of Alberta, and holds a PhD in political science from Université Laval. His research focuses on conservatism, populism, and the right wing in Canada and Quebec. He is the author of  Le conservatisme au Québec: Retour sur une tradition oubliée  (Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2010), which won the Canadian Political Science Association’s Donald Smiley Prize in 2011. He is also the author of La Coalition Avenir Québec: Une idéologie à la recherche du pouvoir (Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2018) and  Droitisation et populisme: Canada-Québec-ÉtatsUnis (Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2020).

antoine brousseau desaulniers is a postdoctoral fellow at the École nationale d’administration publique (enap ) and is affiliated with the Group d’études et de recherche sur l’international et le Québec (gériq ). He organized the Journées d’études sur l’histoire de la pensée fédéraliste contemporaine au Québec, a workshop series on the history of contemporary federalist thinking in Quebec. His work, which has been published in many scholarly journals, including the Bulletin d’histoire politique and Politique et sociétés, focuses on the transformations of Quebec political culture with respect to Canadian constitutional issues in the twentieth century.

406

Contributors

andré burelle is a philosopher by training who served as Prime Minister

Pierre Eliott Trudeau’s advisor and French speechwriter, from 1977 to 1984. Appointed Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet in 1989, he participated in the Meech Lake Accord discussions and, on behalf of the federal government, negotiated the Canada-Québec Accord relating to Immigration and Temporary Residence of Aliens, signed in 1991. His many publications include Le mal canadien: Le droit à la différence à l’heure de la globalisation, and Pierre Eliott Trudeau: L’intellectuel et le politique, all published by Fides.

jean-philippe carlos holds a PhD in history from the Université de Sherbrooke and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at York University in Toronto. He is particularly interested in the history of the Quebec independence movement and the history of French-Canadian traditionalism.  He recently co-organized the symposium Les Révolutions tranquille au Québec et au Canada, from a national and international perspective, at the Université du Québec à Montréal.  He has also published several scientific articles in scholarly journals, including the  Canadian Historical Review, Mens: Revue d’histoire intellectuelle et culturelle, and Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française. françois-olivier dorais is associate professor at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, where he teaches Quebec and Canadian nineteenthand twentieth-century history, as well as regional history. His research interests are divided between the cultural and intellectual history of ideas in Quebec, historiography, and the history of minority Francophone communities in Canada. He is a member of the editorial boards of Recherches sociographiques and Mens: Revue d’histoire intellectuelle et culturelle. alain-g. gagnon is professor in the Department of Political Science at the Université du Québec à Montréal and has held the Canada Research Chair in Quebec and Canadian Studies since 2003. He has also been the director of the Research Group on Plurinational Societies (grsp ) since 1994 and of the Centre d’analyse politique – Constitution et fédéralisme (cap-cf ) since 2018. In 2016, Gagnon received the Governor General’s International Award for Canadian Studies. He became a member of the Ordre de la Pléiade in 2018 and an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2019. Many of his publications focus on minority nations in federal democracies. Gagnon is the author of more than five hundred publications in political sociology, political economy, federal studies, and Canadian politics. bernard gagnon is professor at the Université du Québec à Rimouski and a researcher with the Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur la diversité et la démocracie (cridaq ). He has devoted several works to the

Contributors

407

thought of Charles Taylor, including: “Marcel Gauchet et Charles Taylor: Regards croisés sur le pluralisme axioloique des sociétés démocratiques,” in Expliquer, comprendre et débattre autour du religieux, edited by Bernard Gagnon, Daniel Proulx, and Samia Amor (2020); “Reconciling Diversity and Solidarity? A Critical Look at Charles Taylor’s Conception of Secularism,” in Democracy, Law and Religious Pluralism in Europe, edited by Ferran Requejo and Camil Ungureanu (2014); “Le multiculturalisme (selon Charles Taylor) est-il une idéologie (selon Fernard Dumont)?” in the Cahiers Fernand Dumont (2014); and “Charles Taylor: Écrits sur la nation et le nationalisme au Québec,” in the Bulletin d’histoire politique (2015).

valérie lapointe-gagnon is associate professor of history at Campus

Saint-Jean at the University of Alberta. She inquires into the intellectual and political history of contemporary Quebec and Canada, constitutional issues, and gender matters in the world of ideas. She is the author of Panser le Canada: Une histoire intellectuelle de la commission Laurendeau-Dunton (Éditions du Boréal, 2018).

chantal maillé is professor of women’s studies at Concordia University. She holds a PhD in political science and is scientific co-director of the Réseau québécois en études feminists (réqef ). Her current research focuses on intersectionality and new understandings of questions of difference in Francophone feminisms. She has authored and co-edited a number of works, including Le sujet du féminisme est-il blanc? (2015) and Revealing Democracy  (2014). Her more recent texts have been published in French Politics, the  European Journal of American Studies,  Women: A Cultural Review, Québec Studies, and the Bulletin d’histoire politique. félix mathieu is assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Winnipeg and a regular member of the Centre d’analyse politique – Constitution et fédéralisme (cap-cf ). He is the author of Taking Pluralism Seriously: Complex Societies under Scrutiny (McGillQueen’s University Press, 2022) as well as co-author, with Evelyne Brie, of  Un pays divisé: Identité, fédéralisme et régionalisme au Canada  (Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2021). His work focuses on nationalism, federalism, and the management of diversity in multinational democracies. dr serge miville is president and vice-chancellor of the University of

Sudbury and a former research chair in Franco-Ontarian history at Laurentian University. His research focuses on the intellectual history of minority Francophone communities, including the relationship between Quebec and Franco-Ontarians, activism, the mobilization of historical narratives, and historians as public intellectuals.

408

Contributors

stéphane paquin is full professor at the École nationale d’administration publique (enap ) in Montreal. He has written, co-written, or edited thirty-

six books, including Theories of International Political Economy (Oxford University Press, 2016), and many more articles about Quebec’s international relations. He has received numerous awards, including a Canada Research Chair in International and Comparative Political Economy and a Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the State University of New York. He has taught at many universities, including Northwestern University, in Chicago, and Sciences Po, in Paris. In 2014, he was president of the local organizing committee of the ipsa World Congress of Political Science, held in Montreal in 2014.

jessica riggi is a PhD candidate in history at the Université du Québec à Montréal (uqàm ) and a member of the Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur la diversité et la démocracie (cridaq ). Her 2016 master’s thesis examined the representations of the Canada-Quebec constitutional conflict as conveyed by Quebec political leaders between 1985 and 1991. Her doctoral research, under the direction of Stéphane Savard and Dany Fougères, currently focuses on the process of politization, democratization, and government management of the environmental risk represented by mining waste in Abitibi-Témiscamingue between 1960 and 1990.

françois rocher is full professor at the School of Political Studies at the

University of Ottawa, where he held the Jean-Luc Pepin Research Chair. His research interests focus on multiethnic and plurinational diversity, citizenship, constitutional policy and politics, Canadian federalism, and Quebec nationalism. In May 2016, the Société Québécoise  de  science politique (sqsp ) awarded him the  Prix d’excellence,  to recognize his exceptional contribution to the advancement of political science. He served as president of the sqsp from 2001 to 2002, and of the Canadian Political Science Association (cpsa ) from 2018 to 2019.

stéphane savard is full professor in the Department of History at the

Université du Québec à Montréal. He is a member of the Centre d’analyse politique – Constitution et fédéralisme (cap-cf ) and the Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur la diversité et la démocratie (cridaq ), and director of the Bulletin d’histoire politique. Savard specializes in the post-Second World War political histories of Quebec and Canada, specifically the history of Quebec political culture. Savard is coauthor, with Martin Pâquet, of Brève histoire de la Révolution tranquille (Éditions Boréal, 2021) and author of Hydro-Québec et l’État Québécois, 1944–2005 (Septentrion, 2013).

Contributors

409

dr alex schwartz is senior lecturer in public law at the School of Law, University of Glasgow.  His  research incorporates a variety of approaches  (including empirical and computational methods) to  address questions in the fields of constitutional law, constitutional design, and judicial politics. His scholarship has appeared in  leading academic  journals, including the Law & Society Review,  Law & Social Inquiry, and  the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, and he is co-editor, with Colin Harvey, of  Rights in Divided Societies  (Hart, 2012).  On matters of constitutional design,  Dr  Schwartz  has provided expert advice to the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Government of the United Kingdom, and the Max Planck Foundation for Peacebuilding and the Rule of Law. jean-charles st-louis holds a PhD in political science from the

Université du Québec à Montréal. He was a postdoctoral researcher (frqsc) in sociology at the Université de Montréal from 2018 to 2022. His work is situated at the crossroads of the critical sociology of nationalism, the political study of language, and discourse analysis. St-Louis’s research projects focus on the rise of utilitarian and neoliberal discourses on migration in Quebec. He is also investigating the various forms of critical counternarratives of the nation-state that have manifested within Quebec society.

patrick taillon is professor of law and co-director of the Centre d’études en droit administratif et constitutionnel (cedac ) at Université Laval. He is

also a member of the Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur la diversité et la démocratie au Québec (cridaq ). He teaches constitutional and administrative law. In France, Taillon is a regular contributor at the Annuaire international de justice constitutionnelle  (aijc ) at the Louis Favoreu Institute, University of Aix-Marseille. In 2012, he published Le referendum expression directe de la souveraineté du peuple? Essai critique sur la rationalisation de l’expression référendaire en droit comparé (Éditions Dalloz), a major work that examines the judicial impacts of majority decisions taken through referendums. In addition to referendum democracy, his research interests include past and future constitutional developments, ways of exercising constituent power, and the renewal of Canadian federalism.

Index

Acadian, 76, 161 Act of Union. See Union of 1840 Action démocratique du Québec (adq ), 9, 74, 93–107, 127, 154, 314 administrative agreement, 84–6, 102, 109n18, 343n7, 363, 365 Alberta, 103, 105, 357 Allaire, Jean, 97, 299 Allaire Report, 70n55, 97 Alliance Quebec, 188–9 amendment: Act respecting constitutional, 74, 84, 345n40, 364; constitutional, 37, 54, 74, 98, 322, 331–2, 333–6, 352, 355–66, 381–4; draft constitutional, 363–4, 371n54, 401; formula, 34, 37, 41, 133n52, 332–6, 352–66, 369n33, 371n54, 372n58; Fulton-Favreau formula, 34, 36–8, 123, 133n52, 184, 354 America. See United States of America Angers, François-Albert, x, 96, 115–27 Anglophone, 51, 61–3, 119, 136, 138–48, 165, 189, 332, 335, 361; Anglo-Canada, 57; AngloCanadians, 125, 252–3; AngloProtestants, 398; Anglo-Quebecers,

53, 57, 63; Canada, ix, 62–3, 119, 136–48, 332; community, xi, 51, 141, 189, 260, 361; Montreal, 51, 65n6, 189, 255; vote, 51–2 Aquin, François, 40 Arès, Richard, x, 95–6, 123, 132n44 assembly: constitutive, 35–6; legislative, 32, 34, 59–60, 79, 97, 100, 148, 157, 157n63, 191, 255, 298, 319, 339, 372n64, 383, 386, 397; legislature (see legislative assembly); National Assembly of Quebec, 16, 32, 51–7, 63–4, 97, 100, 104, 144, 183, 185–90, 193, 208, 247, 336, 355–6, 381 assimilation, 122, 152, 251–2, 255, 403n5 Association canadienne-française de l’Ontario, 191–2, 203n60 Association catholique de la jeunesse canadienne-française, 120 Association féminine d’éducation et d’action sociale, 205 Atikamekw-Montagnais Council, 190 Atkinson, Gordon, 61, 64n1 Australia, 190 autonomy, 21, 33–42, 56, 73, 75, 80–4, 87–8, 93–107, 116–20, 162–3, 167, 170–1, 194–6, 225– 39, 251–2, 276, 292, 294, 305,

412

Index

332–6, 342, 359, 363–5, 377–9; cultural, 254; financial, 100 autonomism, 82, 93, 96–9, 102–6, 126; neo-autonomism, 72 B&B Commission. See LaurendeauDunton Commission Bacon, Lise, 215 Balfour Declaration, 353 Beau risque, 72, 358 Beaudoin-Dobbie Committee, 358 Beaudoin, Gérald A., 106, 144–50 Bédard, Jean-Marie, 164 Bégin, Monique, 206, 209, 215 Bélanger-Campeau Commission (on the Political and Constitutional Future of Quebec), 16, 19, 23, 52, 58–9, 60, 65n11, 70n54, 73, 185, 358, 397, 400–1 Bélanger, Michel, 23, 60 Belgium, 301–2, 324, 403n6 Bennett, Richard B., 294–5, 318 Bernard, Louis, 399 Bertrand, Jean-Jacques, 39–40; government of, 183 biculturalism, 137, 148–9, 151, 165 bilingual, 51, 55, 145, 148, 154n3, 278, 361; bilingualism, 3, 91n45, 137–9, 145, 153, 165, 169, 187, 191, 202n53, 262, 296; Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (see Commission) bills. See legislation (Quebec) Bissonnette, Lise, 208–10, 248 Blanchard, Bernard, 189 Blanchet, Yves-François, 5 Bloc Québécois, xi, 4–5, 74, 399 Bloom, Casper, 188 bon-ententisme, 272, 396 Bouchard, Gérard, 160, 175, 284 Bouchard, Lucien, 74, 97, 109n19, 296, 399

Bouchard-Taylor Commission (on Cultural and Religious Accommodation), 159, 175 Bourassa, Henri, 120, 127n3, 131n30, 273, 279, 281, 289n64, 295 Bourassa, Robert, 5, 7, 40, 42, 51, 53, 57, 60, 66, 67n24, 97, 102, 120, 152, 183–4, 333–4, 346n44, 354, 358, 398–9; government of, 66n16, 184, 398 British Columbia, 74, 357, 364 British North America Act. See Constitution of Canada: Constitution Act, 1867 Brunet, Michel, 247–68, 283 Cameron, David R., 148, 150 Cameron, Neil, 60–1, 63, 64n1, 71n67 Canada: bicultural, 58, 278; English, xi–xii, 24, 31, 37–8, 57, 101, 116, 123–4, 137–54; multinational, 7, 20, 78, 81, 88, 95, 165, 192, 196, 252, 304, 333, 381, 389, 395, 398, 401; rest of, 5, 7, 10, 24, 25, 34–7, 55, 57–8, 62–5, 81, 88, 98, 107, 125, 142, 164, 169–70, 337, 356–8, 395–402; United Canada, 4, 55, 58, 60, 74, 116, 165, 170, 188, 194–5, 249, 262; union of, 23, 260, 384 Canada Development Corporation, 123 Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, 215, 398 Canadian Alliance, 74 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 3, 18, 51–2, 54, 56–7, 59, 66n15, 69n44, 84–5, 91n45, 101, 170, 191–2, 296–8, 357, 381, 384, 397 Canadian Economic and Social Union, 23–5, 172, 385, 396

Index Canadian Institute of Public Affairs, 36 Canadian Society of Economic Science, 117 cap-cf See Centre d’analyse politique – Constitution et fédéralisme caq. See Coalition avenir Québec Cartier, George-Étienne, 19–20 Casgrain, Thérèse, 206, 209, 211, 219 Castonguay, Claude, 41 Catholic: Catholicism, 118, 120, 213; Church, 117, 120; intellectual, 117–18; liberal, 272; social doctrine, 117, 120, 130n22; thought, x; ultramontane, 128n7 centralization, 3, 95–6, 116–17, 121–3, 129n9, 167, 251–6, 280, 288, 293–5, 384–5 Centre d’analyse politique – Constitution et fédéralisme (cap-cf ), 290, 303–5 Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur la diversité et la démocratie (cridaq ), 299, 304 Chapais, Thomas, 272–3 Chaput-Rolland, Solange, 106, 135–54, 154n1, 156n51, 158n77, 197, 204n78, 209, 248 Charest, Jean, 9, 57, 73, 77, 303, 314; Charest Report, 57; government of, 5, 9, 86 Charlottetown Accord, 5, 7, 23, 52–3, 58, 61–3, 65n11, 72, 132n45, 136, 195–6, 296, 298, 301, 334, 358, 362, 369n33, 384, 397 Charter of the French Language. See under legislation (Quebec) Chartrand, Michel, 164 chief electoral officer, 51; chief justice, 335, 341

413

Chrétien, Jean, 4, 8, 372n64; government of, 4, 24–5, 73, 401 Cité libre (journal), 20, 122, 128n4, 163, 270, 274, 282, 284n5, 286n34 Clarity Act, ix, 25, 74, 97 Coalition avenir Québec (caq ), xi, 4–5, 9, 72, 93–4, 96, 99–107, 111n60, 127, 154n1, 303, 314, 359 colonialism, 143, 227, 228; postcolonialism, 125 commissions. See Bélanger-Campeau Commission (on the Political and Constitutional Future of Quebec); Bouchard-Taylor Commission (on Cultural and Religious Accommodation); LaurendeauDunton Commission (Royal Commission of Inquiry on Bilingualism and Biculturalism); Massey Commission (Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters, and Sciences); Pepin-Robarts Commission (Task Force on Canadian Unity); Rowell-Sirois Commission (Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations); Royal Commission on the Status of Women; Spicer Commission; Tremblay Commission (Royal Commission of Inquiry on Constitutional Problems) Commitment Canada, 188–9, 193 Common law, 61, 335, 396, 398; procedure, 362 Commonwealth, 323 Communist Party of Quebec, 190, 194 Confederation, 3, 18, 34, 36, 41, 54, 83, 96, 99, 116, 118, 124–5, 164, 193–4, 256–7, 278, 281, 330–2, 335, 359–60, 380

414

Index

conferences: Charlottetown, 168, 259; constitutional, 41, 50n85, 139, 144, 184, 346n44, 371n54; federal-provincial, 39, 335; of first ministers, 38, 381; imperial, 317, 353; intergovernmental, 325, 371n47; Quebec, 259 Congress on Canadian Affairs, 137 Conquest of Quebec, 82, 150, 152, 208 conscription, 117, 209, 294; crisis, 147, 272, 295 Conseil de la langue française, 159 Conseil du statut de la femme, 216 Conservative Party of Canada, 3, 74, 98, 144; Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, 74, 248 conservatives, 74, 87, 102, 121–2, 124, 126–7, 187, 209–14, 236, 244n58, 273, 280. See also nationalism Constitution of Canada: Constitution Act, 1867, 33, 72, 79, 85, 91n45, 106, 116, 118, 120–1, 136–40, 147, 168, 193–5, 252, 255–60, 294, 316–20, 330–42, 353, 380–5, 392, 395–8, 402n1; Constitution Act, 1982, 57, 91n45, 98, 167, 333, 342, 343n7, 345n40, 356–66, 368n22, 369n28; new, 35–9, 139, 151, 192, 352, 355; recognition in, 4, 7, 23–5, 52, 56–9, 62–6, 80, 86–8, 122, 136, 168, 172–5, 196, 237–8, 301, 332–3, 340–2, 352, 365, 375, 381–3, 388; reform of, 35, 54, 139, 176, 184, 195, 236, 256, 361, 366, 374, 379, 383, 401; revision of, 38, 86, 136, 139–40, 144, 363; unwritten norms, 331, 335, 338, 347n63 constitutional: convention, 335–42, 364, 367n12; duel, 7, 32; patriotism, 170, 381 Cook, Ramsay, 262, 280

Couillard, Philippe, 88, 94, 95n5, 303, 314; government of, 88, 203, 333 Council for Canadian Unity, 188, 193 Council of Quebec Minorities, 189, 192, 203n60 Council of the Federation, 73, 85, 88, 151 Creighton, Donald, 277 cridaq. See Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur la diversité et la démocratie decentralization, 14n23, 23, 36, 60, 63, 95, 97–8, 119, 121, 163, 176, 194, 203n72, 249, 379, 385 de Gaulle, Charles, 38, 262 democracy, 77, 131n33, 174, 274, 348n80; participatory, 173, 186–7, 191, 200n24; personalist, 21; radical, 163; social, 173 departments (Canadian government): External Affairs, 325–6; FederalProvincial Affairs, 34; Industry, 123; Intergovernmental Affairs, 327n8; Justice, 343n7 derogation clause, 59 DeSantis, Rita, 189 Desjardins, Richard, 224–38 Dion, Léon, 106, 135–6, 140–1, 146, 150, 185, 197, 198n10, 273, 286n34 Dion, Stéphane, 8, 11n4, 109n18 diplomacy, 313, 315–16, 325; federal, 323 distinct society, 5, 7, 18, 23–4, 56–8, 62, 66n17, 67n27, 67n29, 74, 78, 81, 84, 103, 136, 159, 168–9, 170, 175–6, 303, 380–1, 397; clause, 53–8 dualism, 39, 101, 140; duality, 39, 42, 56–8, 67n27, 118, 136–7, 143, 147, 149–52, 164, 166–7, 169,

Index 172, 325, 332, 338, 341, 354, 361, 382 Dumont, Micheline, 205–6, 210–11, 214, 218–19 Dumont, Mario, 94, 97–9, 102, 105–6, 127, 299, 303 Dunton, Davidson, 295 Duplessis, Maurice, 33–4, 93–6, 102, 104–5, 121–3, 251–2, 334, 367n10; era of, 197n1 duplessisme, 105; anti-duplessisme, 137 Durham Report, 147 education, 9, 38, 95, 136, 143, 149, 163, 176, 186–91, 278, 283, 296, 314, 316, 322–7, 333–4, 356, 364, 383 England, 236, 334, 337 English-speaking Townshippers’ Association, 189, 192, 203n60 “equality or independence” doctrine, 38, 40 Equality Party, 9, 51–64, 65n6, 65n8 equalization, 86, 100, 102, 399 Estates General of French Canada (États généraux du Canada français), 35, 117, 124, 138, 258 Europe, 20–1, 117, 316 European Economic Community, 20 external affairs, 316, 323–6 Falardeau, Jean-Charles, 269, 273 Fathers of Confederation, 83, 118 federal-provincial relations, 8, 37, 40, 151 Federal-Provincial Relations Office (fpro ), 16, 18–20, 23, 395, 397, 400–1, 403n6 federalism: asymmetrical, 53, 135–6, 159–60, 171–2, 175, 192, 294, 303, 365; bicultural, 282 (see also Laurendeau-Dunton Commission); binational, 229, 282, 361;

415

communitarian, 21–2, 95–6, 98, 100–1, 106, 112n66, 118, 192, 226, 239–40, 294–5, 375–7, 389; dualist, 279–80, 294–5, 340, 382–3; multinational, xi, 20, 25, 160, 192, 195–7, 203n62, 285n10, 292, 294, 303, 333; pluralist, xi, 9–10, 95–6, 101, 118, 224–6, 233–8, 294, 303, 374, 377, 379– 80; plurinational, 294, 361–2, 376, 381; profitable, 31, 40, 303; renewed, 60, 63–4, 75, 120, 123, 140, 148, 160, 183, 189, 194, 247, 257, 303–4, 353; territorial, 192, 203n62, 293, 361; unitary, 57, 118, 152, 159, 161, 256, 288n57, 330, 335 federation: asymmetrical, 169, 172, 175; multinational, 7, 22, 81, 88, 95, 160, 252, 305, 333, 342, 377, 381, 389, 395, 398, 401; pluralist, 118, 226, 238, 377; plurinational, 263, 294, 361–2, 376, 381; reform of, 16–18, 23–5, 75, 160, 163, 176, 369; territorial, 293 Fédération des femmes du Québec, 205–6, 209, 215–16 Fédération des Francophones hors Québec, 191 feminism, 205–7, 210–12, 215–17, 219–20; antifeminism, 211–13, 219; difference feminism, 212–14, 221n33; egalitarian, 213, 215; federalist, 211; radical, 212, 214 Ferland, Jean-Baptiste-Antoine, 272 Filion, Gérard, 96, 248 finance, 18, 84–5, 120, 322, 355; financial compensation, 355–8, 364, 369n27, 399; resources, 33, 36, 83, 86 Finestone, Sheila, 216–17 First Nations, 61, 77, 190, 399. See also Indigenous Peoples First World War, 294, 317

416

Index

fiscal, 84, 95, 102, 122; imbalance, 33, 83, 84; resources, 23 Ford, Doug, 103, 105 foreign affairs, 320, 324, 325 founding: nation, 118–19, 164; people, 3, 17–19, 25, 31, 35–6, 79, 88, 118–19, 120, 131n30, 133n50, 137, 164, 167, 192–3, 196–7, 295, 361, 374, 396–7 France, 79, 162, 236, 260, 316, 323–4 Franco-Ontarian, 190 Francophone, 77, 139, 141, 147–9, 153–4, 165, 322, 325, 332, 335, 361; communities, 105–6, 147, 190, 192, 288n57; majority, 101, 236, 352, 354, 356, 361, 380; minorities, 59, 147, 251; outside Quebec, 59, 105, 251; province, 141, 152; Quebecers, 63, 101, 169 Francophonie, x, 106, 111n64, 150, 290, 326, 352 free trade, 18, 23, 395 freedom, 35, 40, 59, 82, 87, 120–1, 123, 126, 137, 142, 153, 160, 191–2, 226, 229, 235–7, 224n53, 261, 272, 275–6, 336, 376, 378, 385, 387; individual, 52, 55, 60, 261, 378 Frégault, Guy, 247, 273, 283 French Canada, 8, 36, 76–7, 95, 112n68, 118, 121, 124–5, 130n16, 137–8, 141–2, 164, 166–7, 250, 257, 262, 277–8, 281–2, 324 Front de libération du Québec, 125 Fuyet, Hervé, 190, 194 Gagnon, Alain-G., 290, 297–304 Gérin-Lajoie, Paul, 34, 36, 39, 314, 316–17, 320–6; doctrine, 313–14, 316, 318, 323–6 Godbout, Ernest, 36 Graham, Gwethalyn, 137–8, 141

Grand Council of the Huron Nation, 190, 195 Gratton, Michel, 188 Great Britain, 271, 294, 367n15 Great Depression, 120, 135, 253, 281 Grenier, Fernand, 192–3 Gros-Louis, Max (Oné Onti), 195 Groulx, Lionel, 117, 119, 150, 272, 275, 280–1 Groupe de recherche sur les institutions et la citoyenneté, 298–300 Groupe de recherche sur les sociétés plurinationales, 290–1, 297–304 Groupe Réflexion Québec, 299, 301 Hamelin, Jean, 10, 269, 273, 276–8, 281, 284 Harel, Louise, 215 Harper, Stephen, 98; government of, 4, 74 Harvey, Pierre, 125 Holden, Richard, 55, 59–60 House of Commons of Canada, 32, 73–4, 81, 84, 144, 209, 338, 361, 364 immigration, 31, 103–5, 140, 149, 168, 171, 173, 184, 186, 261, 271, 291–2, 331, 333, 398 independence: idea of, 4, 38, 40, 60, 143, 153, 167, 187; indépendantisme, 116, 124–6, 136, 140, 142–3, 152–3, 162, 164, 166–7, 175, 226, 233, 238, 241, 257, 278, 303; movement, 4, 33, 62, 125, 142, 230, 303 Indian Act, 18, 171 Indigenous Peoples, ix, xi, 18, 23, 77, 96, 103, 151, 167, 170–1, 176, 189–90, 195–6, 228, 234–6, 292, 298, 300, 361–2, 365, 398 Institute for Research on Public Policy, 302 Institute of Applied Economics, 117

Index Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, 302 intergovernmental: affairs, xi, 9, 73, 80, 109; agreement, 175, 331, 365; cooperation, 85–6, 163, 173; relations, 10, 79–80 International Labour Organization, 317–18 Inuit, 77, 190, 195–6 James Bay, 190, 196 Jasmin, Judith, 137–8 Jefferson, Thomas, 398 Johnson, Daniel, Sr, 6, 33, 35–9, 100, 102, 122, 143, 183, 195, 262; government of, 37–9, 122, 183 Johnson, Pierre-Marc, 87, 333, 358 Jolin-Barrette, Simon, 104, 111n64 Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, 316, 318–20, 326, 379, 385 judicial review, 331 justice, 335–8, 341, 380, 387 Karmis, Dimitrios, 95, 293, 300 Kenney, Jason, 103 Kilbourn, William, 279–80 L’Action nationale (magazine), 116, 122, 123, 124, 126, 138, 259, 262 L’Allier, Jean-Paul, 41 La Forest, Gérard, 387 Labrousse, Ernest, 275 Lacoste, Paul, 140 Laforest, Guy, 73, 97, 153, 160, 296, 298–9, 300, 302 laicity, 4, 101, 105, 137, 159, 173, 175 Laing, Gertrude, 135, 138 Lalonde, Marc, 395 Lamontagne, Maurice, 107 Landry, Bernard, 4, 248 language: common, 106, 384; English, 81, 138, 189; French, 5,

417

51, 59, 74, 76, 81, 85, 119, 174; policy, 51, 63–4, 184 Lapointe, Ernest, 317 Laporte, Pierre, 36–7, 39, 47n45 Laurendeau, André, xi, 6, 20, 93–4, 96, 102, 105–6, 135, 138–46, 151, 154n3, 185, 192, 248, 295 Laurendeau-Dunton Commission (Royal Commission of Inquiry on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, or B&B Commission), 3, 10, 35, 37, 42, 124, 135–40, 143–8, 151, 153, 185, 192, 256, 277, 279, 282, 295, 325, 395 Laurier, Wilfrid, 19, 295, 397, 402n4 Laurin, Nicole, 224–6, 229–34, 238 Lavoie, Jean-Noël, 194 Lavoie-Roux, Thérèse, 209 Layton, Jack, 5 Le Bouyonnec, Stéphane, 103 Le Devoir (newspaper), 37, 96, 98, 103, 122, 138–9, 149, 208–9, 248, 257, 261, 275, 290, 299 Legault, François, 4, 94, 99–105, 303; government of, 105, 303 legislation (Quebec), 9, 104; Bill 21 (An Act respecting the Laicity of the State), 4–5, 104; Bill 96 (An Act respecting French, the Official and Common Language of Quebec), 104, 106; Bill 99, 97; Bill 101 (Charter of the French Language), 19, 51–2; Bill 150 (An Act respecting the Process for Determining the Political and Constitutional Future of Quebec), 52, 60, 62; Bill 178, 51–2, 55, 60, 63 legislature, see assembly Lesage, Jean, 5, 31, 33, 35–6, 38–9, 183–4, 316, 326, 354; government of, 122, 152–3, 183–4, 316, 333, 354 Lévesque, Georges-Henri (father), 251–2, 272–3

418

Index

Lévesque, Gérard-D., 40–1 Lévesque, René, 6, 24, 34, 37, 39–40, 142–3, 152, 207, 247–8, 259, 263, 368n22, 399; government of, 150, 184, 193, 197, 199n14, 333, 355, 357–8 liberal, 35, 95, 136, 170, 218, 229, 251, 291, 375–7, 382, 389, 399; individualism, 8, 19–21, 228, 239n7; liberalism, 170, 228, 270, 275, 296; neoliberalism, 8, 10, 18–20, 269 Liberal Party of Canada, 3, 35, 112n66, 153, 184, 209, 261, 263; in government, 4, 63, 73–4, 104, 107, 144, 209, 314n Libman, Robert, 54–63 Ligue d’action nationale, 116–17 London (uk ), 296, 318, 326, 353–4, 361, 379 Louisiana, 150 Lower Canada, 253, 280–1, 398 loyalism, 75, 87, 272–3; Loyalist Canadians, 398 Macdonald, John A., 253, 256, 258, 260, 317, 399 Mackenzie King, William Lyon, 295, 317 Makivik Corporation, 190, 202n49 Maltais, Armand, 33 Manitoba, 192, 337, 355, 357 Maritimes, 364 Martin, Paul, Jr, 25, 74 Martin, Paul, Sr, 323–4 Masse, Marcel, 39, 41, 248 Massey Commission (Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters, and Sciences), 120, 251–2, 272 McCall, Storrs, 188 McCallum, John, 24 McLachlin, Beverley, 341

Meech Lake Accord, 3, 5, 7, 16, 18, 24, 51–62, 72, 81, 136, 168, 185, 195, 296, 301, 333–4, 358, 362–5, 384, 395–7; generation, 297–8 melting pot, 18, 152, 397 Mercier, Honoré, 102 minority, 124, 161, 189, 292, 388; communities, 59; English-speaking, 60, 133n50, 260, 300; ethnic, 77, 186, 189; French-speaking, 59, 76, 149, 254, 332; groups, 33, 54, 233, 262; language, 91n45, 169; rights, 55, 59–60, 149, 254; status, 332 Minville, Esdras, 117, 119 modernity, 20–1, 106, 215, 224, 231, 274, 294 Monseigneur Grente, 147 Montreal, 16, 18, 38, 51, 101, 137, 164, 188, 208–10, 216, 219, 247, 255, 257–8, 269–72, 302, 315, 326, 397, 400–1 Morin, Claude, 323–4, 326, 357 Morin, Jacques-Yvan, 37, 140, 298, 338 Mouvement national des Québécois, 117, 187 Mouvement Québec français, 117, 187 Mouvement souveraineté-association, 39 Mulroney, Brian, 3–4, 8, 16, 53, 69n44, 296; government of, 23, 25, 401 multiculturalism, 149, 151, 170, 187, 195, 296, 395, 397 multinationalism, xii nation: Canadian, x, 81, 117, 168, 217, 253, 281–2, 295; civic, 77, 162, 164, 397–8; cultural, 19; English-Canadian, 253, 259; French-Canadian, 34, 36, 51, 124, 161, 168–9, 255, 272; minority,

Index 161, 292, 356; pluralist, 379; Quebec, xi, 74, 76–7, 81, 83, 174–5, 230, 232–3, 278, 330–1, 379, 384; “state-nations”, 248, 251–3, 255 National Congress of ItalianCanadians, 189, 192 National Film Board, 81 nationalism: autonomist, 94–5, 99, 118, 120, 125–7, 137–9, 142, 148, 153, 303; Canadian, x, 56–7, 66n15, 252, 261, 277, 279, 296; conservative, 124, 126, 272; economic, 75, 125–6, 163; EnglishCanadian, 142; ethnonationalism, 296; French-Canadian, 31, 75, 77, 93, 105, 118, 126, 161, 163, 250, 261, 263, 277; Laurentian, 272; methodological, 230, 352; new, x, 35, 37, 122, 137, 183, 231, 233, 263; Quebec, 31, 56, 77, 130n17, 137, 139, 142–3, 154n1, 159, 183, 213, 225, 233–4, 238, 379–84 ; survivalist, 271; territorial, 5, 31, 183, 380 New Brunswick, 54, 91n45, 157n63, 192, 372n59 New Deal, 294–5 New Democratic Party, 3, 5, 159, 163–6, 172, 179n52; Social Democratic Forum on Canada’s Future, 172 New France, 260, 265n20, 278, 280 Newfoundland, 55, 67n29, 185, 337, 355, 357, 372n59 North America, 58, 85, 125, 150, 169, 208, 213, 225, 232, 251, 263, 278, 295, 315, 332, 382 Northern Quebec Agreement, 190, 196 Northern Quebec Inuit Association, 190 notwithstanding clause, 51–2, 55, 59, 60, 65n9, 66n16, 104, 172 Nova Scotia, 357

419

October Crisis, 41 official language, 52, 59, 133n50, 140, 144, 151, 191–2, 324, 326. See also bilingual: bilingualism; legislation (Quebec): Bill 96; legislation (Quebec): Bill 101 Oka crisis, 298 Oné Onti (Max Gros-Louis), 195 Ontario, 56, 74, 100, 103, 105, 144, 157n63, 163, 192, 260, 283, 360, 364, 366n8, 370n47, 387 opt in/out: in, 80; out, 35–6, 86, 164, 172–3, 333, 355–9, 362–4 O’Toole, Erin, 102 Ouellet, Fernand, 250, 269, 273–84 pact, 18, 23–4, 78–9, 88, 96, 116, 118, 120–1, 123, 131, 144, 168–9, 192, 196, 227, 254, 260–1, 280, 300, 380, 395 Papineau, Louis-Joseph, 271, 281 Paris, 272, 277, 315–16, 318, 323; Convention, 318 Parizeau, Jacques, 74, 125, 207, 399; government of, 23–4 parliament: British, 271, 330, 334, 353–4; Canadian, 18, 32, 77, 79, 148, 216, 253, 317–19, 330, 338, 372n64, 385, 396–7; colonial, 271; Quebec, 40, 141, 259 Parliamentary Committee on the Constitution, 36, 200n26, 247–9, 252, 255, 258, 266n59 Parti pris (magazine), 125, 143 Parti Québécois, 3–5, 9, 40–1, 53–4, 56–8, 63–4, 72, 74, 87, 93, 97, 99–100, 123, 126, 142, 144, 148, 150, 152–3, 167, 183–4, 188, 193, 206, 211, 213, 215–16, 218, 247–8, 259–60, 263, 282, 314, 399 Parti rouge (Red Party), 95 Participation Quebec, 188

420

Index

partnership, 16, 23–5, 61, 75, 139, 142, 147, 152, 154, 256, 302, 304, 363, 399 Paterson, Alex, 188 patriation, 16, 31–2, 34, 52–3, 57–8, 72, 123, 184–5, 188, 192, 196–7, 259, 296, 298, 331, 333–4, 337–8, 341, 342, 352–66, 374–5, 379, 381, 383–4, 388, 395 Patry, André, 315, 325 Payette, Lise, 206, 208, 213–15 Pearson, Lester B., 3, 35, 138, 279, 323 Pelletier, Benoît, xi, 9, 72–88, 106, 332 Pelletier, Gérard, 20, 287n34 Pepin, Jean-Luc, xi, 144–6, 148–50, 156n51, 295 Pepin-Robarts Commission (Task Force on Canadian Unity), xi, 9, 53, 67n21, 106, 135–6, 144–53, 184–90, 193–5, 203n72, 295, 382, 395 personalism, 20–2, 118–19, 270 pipeline, 5, 107 pluralism, 21, 76–7, 120, 175, 227, 233; communitarian, 299; cultural, 229; national, 386, 388–9 Positive Action Committee, 188, 191, 194, 198n10 postcolonialism, 125 power of reserve, 335–6 prairie provinces, 74, 364 pressure groups, 32, 117, 183–97 Prince Edward Island, 357, 360 Privy Council, 16 Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. See Conservative Party of Canada Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal, 189, 191 Quebec: feminists in, 195, 213, 215, 219–20; independent, 36, 125,

218, 381; international relations, 38, 313–26; New Quebec, 139–40, 283; republic, 256; specificity, 4, 76, 79, 83, 86, 342, 352, 381, 383 Quebec Act, 1774, 331 Quebec-Canada Movement, 188 Quebec Charter of Rights, 98, 396 Quebec City, 31, 196–7, 209, 269–72, 274, 277, 326 Quebec Liberal Party, 4–5, 9, 34–5, 37–42, 51–4, 56–8, 62–4, 72–5, 88, 93–4, 97–8, 100, 152, 183, 197, 206, 209, 218, 303, 314, 316, 399; Special Committee on the Political and Constitutional Future of Quebec Society, 73 Quebec Referendum Act. See under legislation (Quebec) Québec solidaire, 4 Quiet Revolution, 3, 5, 8, 20, 31, 42, 43n4, 58, 75, 77, 99, 122, 127, 137, 186–7, 197, 275, 281, 283, 295, 314–16, 322–3, 332, 354, 363 racism, 18–19, 398 Radio-Canada, 81, 209 Ralliement des créditistes, 40, 49n77, 93 Ralliement national, 126, 183 Rassemblement pour l’indépendance nationale, 125, 154n1, 183 Re: Objection by Quebec to a Resolution to amend the Constitution (legal document), 382–3 Re: Resolution to Amend the Constitution (legal document), 335, 382 Re: Secession of Quebec (legal document), 11n4, 25, 74, 97–8, 383, 401 referendum, 8, 62, 86, 98–9, 100, 105, 331; 1980 referendum, xi, 3,

Index 6, 72, 93, 142, 159, 166, 184, 188– 9, 193–6, 205–20, 248, 259, 263, 355, 364, 374; 1992 pan-Canadian referendum, 23, 60, 63, 298–9, 358; 1995 referendum, ix, 3–4, 7, 24, 72–4, 87, 93, 97, 159, 171–2, 197, 303, 363, 384, 400; federalist referendum, 24–5, 401. See also legislation (Quebec): Bill 150 Reform Party, 103 regions, 17, 19, 23, 54, 85, 119, 150, 161, 163–4, 168–9, 171, 189, 196, 255–6, 259–60, 262, 279, 293–4, 360, 364, 387; “house of the regions,” 85; province-regions, 357; regionalism, 118, 253, 279 Regroupement des femmes québécoises pour l’indépendance, 206 Rehnquist, William, 378 Republic of South Africa, 98 republicanism, 21, 239n7; civic, 376 reserve (Indigenous), 77 residual power, 38, 151, 318, 330 rights: ancestral, 190; civil, 186, 192, 385–6; collective, 52, 56–7, 63, 66n15, 151, 170–1, 261, 396, 397; community, 18, 77, 361, 388; cultural, 19; disallowance and reservation, 136; ethnic, 170–1; fundamental, 59–60, 192, 313; individual, 18–21, 55–7, 60, 77, 95, 167, 170, 227, 261, 396–7, 400; linguistic, 19, 288n57, 353 Robarts, John, xi, 144, 295 Rocher, François, 9, 298–300 Rocher, Guy, 20 Rousseau, Yvette, 206, 215 Rowell-Sirois Commission (Royal Commission on DominionProvincial Relations), 120, 135, 253, 295, 300 Royal Commission of Inquiry on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. See Laurendeau-Dunton Commission

421

Royal Commission of Inquiry on Constitutional Problems. See Tremblay Commission Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters, and Sciences. See Massey Commission Royal Commission on the Status of Women, 206 Ryan, Claude, xi, 7, 20, 37, 87, 105, 152, 207–9, 248, 257–8, 261–2, 275, 334, 399 Ryan, Madeleine, 208–9, 218 Saint-Laurent, Louis, 248, 252 Saskatchewan, 357 Sauvé, Jeanne, 209 Scheer, Andrew, 102 schools: crises, 147; immersion, 169; Indian residential, 171, 403n5 schools of thought, 194, 258, 270, 275, 284n1, 291, 297–8; Laval School, 9; Montreal School of History, 247, 250, 264n1, 269–70, 275, 277, 280, 282–3, 284n1; Quebec school of diversity, 290–305; Quebec School of History, 269–84 secession, 74, 81, 88, 103, 194, 376, 383–4 Second World War, 18–20, 116–18, 120, 250, 253–4, 260–1, 269, 272–3, 281, 294, 396 Secrétariat du Québec aux relations canadiennes, 304 Secretary of State (Canada), 190, 323–4 Séguin, Maurice, 247–51, 261, 264n16, 275, 280, 283 self-determination, 109n18, 124, 173, 196, 228, 284, 292; domestic, 174; external, 174; right to, 7, 124, 164–5, 167, 183

422

Index

Senate of Canada, 61, 67n24, 85–6, 151, 338, 341, 358, 364 separation, ix, 35–6, 39, 62, 126, 136, 140, 142, 274, 277, 338, 383 separatism, x, 39, 296 social program(s), 18–19, 33, 120–1, 135, 173, 254–5, 376, 396, 399 Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste, 117, 134n70, 187, 247, 249, 252–3, 255, 257–9 solitudes, 124–5, 137, 141 Sommet sur le rapprochement des francophonies canadiennes, 106 South Africa, 98 Southern Ontario French-language university, 105 sovereigntists, 4–5, 8, 10, 24, 95, 99, 211, 260, 283 sovereignty, 4, 9, 22, 52, 58, 60, 62, 65n11, 79, 87, 93–6, 100, 103, 105, 107, 108n3, 112n66, 119, 123, 135, 151–2, 174, 205–7, 216, 226–9, 233–7, 313–15, 325, 359, 381, 383, 385; Canadian, 107, 163, 165, 235; colonial, 228; cultural, 102, 183; domestic, 173–4; extreme, 42; Indigenous, 171; movement, 55, 62, 74, 115, 379, 400; parliamentary, 334; pure, 24; sovereignty-association, 6, 24, 39, 69n44, 167, 193–4, 197, 247–8, 255, 259–60, 355, 374, 399; sovereignty-partnership, 363 Spain, 98, 236, 301–2 Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons, 69n44, 185, 189–90, 192, 199n13 special status (Quebec), 5, 31–9, 57–8, 121–2, 135, 140–1, 144, 147, 163– 6, 183, 193, 203n72, 332, 357 Spicer Commission, 358 spirit of 1867, 121, 137–8, 139. See also Constitution of Canada: Constitution Act, 1867

St-Pierre, Christine, 314 state: associated, 106, 123–4, 132n50, 133n55, 140, 143, 255–9, 263; multinational, 160, 174, 252, 292; nation-state, 21, 217, 225, 229, 252, 281, 317; welfare, 18, 120–3, 135, 212, 250, 255 status quo, 24, 35–6, 57–8, 61, 64, 93, 103, 112n72, 136, 139, 168, 170, 172, 189, 193–4, 197, 211, 215, 303, 352, 354, 362 Statute of Westminster, 317, 320, 353–4 Superior Court of Quebec, 51, 64n4, 66n16, 111n60 Supreme Court, 25, 51, 74, 84, 95, 97, 149, 318, 331, 335–42, 355–6, 358, 364, 379–83, 385, 387–8, 401 Switzerland, 22, 98, 324 Talbot, Antonio, 33 Task Force on Canadian Unity. See Pepin-Robarts Commission Taylor, Charles, 20, 24, 159–76, 295 territory, 20, 76, 129n9, 195, 227, 232, 234, 261, 277, 281, 293, 296, 313, 315, 378 third option, 40–2, 48n61, 93–107, 108n3, 192–7, 255; third way, 38, 74, 99, 108n3, 135–6, 140, 149, 152, 154n1, 159 Tisseyre, Michelle, 209 traditionalism, 116, 118, 122, 128n5, 129n7, 272 treaty, 314–15, 317–19, 322; of Versailles, 317; of Washington, 317 Tremblay Commission (Royal Commission of Inquiry on Constitutional Problems), 84–5, 87, 95–6, 117, 122–3, 129n9, 249, 252, 295, 301, 380 Trudeau, Justin, xi, 104, 106, 341; government of, 104, 107

Index Trudeau, Pierre Elliott, x–xi, 3, 6, 8–9, 16, 18, 20, 24, 38, 57, 63, 66n15, 69n44, 95, 122, 132n49, 134n66, 139–40, 143–5, 148, 151–3, 184, 239n7, 249, 256, 259–63, 274–5, 280, 282, 287n34, 288n57, 295–6, 298, 357, 368n22, 374, 379, 395, 397, 399; government of, 3, 39, 144–5, 184–5, 191–2, 197, 199n14, 203n60, 209, 338, 355, 357, 370n47 Trudeauist, 9, 51–2, 54, 63, 295–6, 398 Trudel, Claude, 53 Trudel, Marcel, 269, 273–4, 276, 278–80, 283–4 Tully, James, 167, 224, 291, 299–300, 381, 388–9

unesco, 85 unilingual, 51, 145, 184 Union Nationale, 33, 35, 40–2, 123, 126, 183, 314, 334; in government, 122; Unionists, 33–41, 251 Union of 1840, 257, 332; Act of Union, 257, 260, 281 United Nations, 62, 138, 321 United States of America, 17, 39, 76, 129n7, 138, 142, 143, 154, 161–2, 164, 190, 233, 250, 293, 366, 378, 384; American Revolution, 398; culture 81; federation, 322; government, 317; hegemony of, 163, 168–9; imperialism, 142; as model, 167, 170, 262; republic, 98, 138, 142 unity, 38, 79–80, 88, 94, 119, 152, 176, 227, 230, 248, 252, 254, 262, 272, 278–9, 293, 376; Canadian unity, 33, 53, 55, 62, 94, 145, 165, 177n16, 188, 193, 195, 262, 334. See also Pepin-Robarts Commission Unity Party, 52–3, 65n6 Upper Canada, 253, 281

423

veto, 10, 37, 66n17, 67n24, 74, 163, 183, 324, 333–4, 336, 338, 340, 345n40, 350n120, 352–66, 367n10, 369n27, 383; Quebec veto reference, 384 Victoria Charter, 41, 45n19, 282, 354. See also amendment Voice of Women, 141, 206 Wagner, Richard, 341 Wells, Clyde, 55 Westminster, Palace of, 185. See also parliament Western Canada, 119, 159 Woehrling, José, 298, 300, 338 Yukon, 148 Yvettes movement, 205–20