Indepedence for Quebeckers!!

[Asher]

Congratulations.

[Wezil]

Originally posted by Ninot
Aww thanks Ogie

So apparently Quebecois is an official nation in United Canada.

But Anglo Quebecers AREN'T apart of that nation according to Mr. Harper.

I'm kinda annoyed at this. I want to be a Quebecois!!!!

Consider yourself included. As you may have noticed there is no straight answer from anyone as to what this ('nation') means. Ask Harper's ministers and you get a half dozen different definitions of 'Quebecois'.

This was a useful exercise.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Flubber


No shock there-- I believe that Quebec has horrifically bad relations with native groups and a Quebec state would probably not be expected to be as multi-cultural as Canada is

That's not true, the last PQ government did a lot to improve its relations with the Natives. I'd say they did it more to buy their indifference than from a sudden kindness of heart.

[Wezil]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris


That's not true, the last PQ government did a lot to improve its relations with the Natives. I'd say they did it more to buy their indifference than from a sudden kindness of heart.

Do you think the native vote would be significantly different today?

[Fake Boris]

No, the point is rather that the recent deals with native populations were meant to ensure their indifference in the case of a Yes.

[Wezil]

I'd bet the farm they won't be indifferent in that eventuality.

[Ninot]

I think a SMART Quebec government would make a deal with the native populations, giving them more land (its not like the province is heavily populated) and more independance.

[Fake Boris]

We'll see. Some of the recent deals were very generous, leaves one wondering why...

In any case, they won't be indifferent. But it's not beyond reasonable to think that the PQ's greater aim was to avoid the worst (natives seceding from Quebec).

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Wezil
I'd bet the farm they won't be indifferent in that eventuality.

NOR I. Even a few years of Quebec "niceness" probably would not overcome the years of bad relations

[Fake Boris]

The problem with your argument is that both the federal and provincial governments were responsible for bad relations (and to some extent complacent). I don't think the Natives see the federal as the nice giant that tried to protect them against Quebec...

[Wezil]

Lesser of two evils at play perhaps but they are pretty clear on who they see as a greater risk.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
We'll see. Some of the recent deals were very generous, leaves one wondering why...

In any case, they won't be indifferent. But it's not beyond reasonable to think that the PQ's greater aim was to avoid the worst (natives seceding from Quebec).

Its actually a fairly obvious ploy.

All of this quebecois nation stuff is so vague anyway. I think it was obvious that Harper did not want to say "Quebec" was a nation-- with its existing boundaries etc. If he sticks with Quebecois as a nation, it prepared the way for large strips of land with predominantly natives ior even anglo-Quebecers to say in Canada if the Quebecois secede.

After all-- there are huge chunks of Quebec that were not settled and brought into Confederation by the Quebecois.

[notyoueither]

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1164322250839&call_pageid=970599109774&col=Columnist969907622983

A look inside Harper's birth of a 'nation'
PM's surprise gambit on Quebce was actually a long time coming
Nov. 24, 2006. 05:30 AM
CHANTAL HÉBERT

Prime Minister Stephen Harper took the country by surprise this week when he moved to recognize that Quebecers make up a nation, but his decision was anything but sudden.

The debate as to whether to make the overture to Quebec had been percolating within the Prime Minister's inner circle for some months. By this week, the main question facing Conservative strategists had become not if but when Harper would drop his bombshell.

The voyage that took the Conservative government to Wednesday's startling destination really started last June 24 in Quebec City. At the end of that day's cabinet retreat, Harper ducked media questions as to whether Quebec was a nation. Within hours, the Conservatives found themselves at odds with Premier Jean Charest and embroiled in a Quebec storm for the first time since their election victory.

At the time, the Quebec ministers closed ranks around the Prime Minister. But in private, at least one of them gave his advisers a heads-up that Harper risked a public split with part or all of his Quebec caucus on the issue.

At a dinner attended by a handful of provincial and federal ministers from Quebec that same holiday weekend, the Conservatives were warned that they should not hope to navigate through another federal campaign without taking a stance on the province's status.

The Prime Minister's original instinct had been to stay out of that particular fray. But as the debate took on new life under the impetus of the Liberal leadership campaign this fall, that preferred option became less and less realistic.

It also became increasingly apparent that if he had to step in, Harper would choose his Quebec future over his Reform Party past.

For those who paid attention — and there were not many — the signs that Harper was leaning toward aligning his position with that of Charest were there to see. As the Liberals bickered over Quebec, two senior Conservative ministers, Lawrence Cannon and Jean-Pierre Blackburn, publicly endorsed the concept.

Not only were they not reined in by one of the most controlling PMO in recent memory, but Harper himself declined to take shots at those — such as Michael Ignatieff — who were promoting the idea.

When the Prime Minister got wind of an upcoming Bloc Québécois motion on Quebec's national character earlier this week, he knew he would have to make a move. Anything less than decisive action would precipitate his government in the kind of existential crisis that was dividing the Liberal party, as well as hand the Bloc a huge stick with which to beat federalist candidates over the head in Quebec in the next campaign.

In classical Harper style, the decision was a surprise even to some of those who were the most directly concerned by it. At least one Quebec minister woke up Wednesday morning wondering if he would have to resign from cabinet later that day to avoid being forced to oppose the Bloc motion.

But even as he was keeping many senior Conservatives out of the loop, Harper was bringing others in.

The opposition leadership was consulted and Charest was informed.

The PMO also got in touch with Stéphane Dion, to feel him out on the wording of the motion. Dion suggested adding some qualifiers to the word nation, but eventually agreed that he could support the government text.

(But if Conservative strategists assumed that Dion was the leadership candidate most likely to oppose the motion, they were wrong. When interim Liberal leader Bill Graham tried to broker a deal on a Liberal resolution dealing with the same topic on Wednesday morning, it was Bob Rae who proved least amenable to a compromise.)

Still, in a matter of less than 24 hours and in the midst of heavy flak from most non-Quebec media quarters, Harper managed to craft a comprehensive tripartite federalist consensus. At this point, Conservative strategists expect that most if not all government MPs will support the Prime Minister's motion, along with the NDP and a solid majority of Liberals.

But time is also of the essence.

All day yesterday, the federalist parties scrambled to bring about a quick vote on the government motion. One hope was to get it adopted before the Bloc's text comes up for a vote. Another was to make the Liberal resolution on the same topic moot before the opening of the convention next week. The main objective is to get the discussion over with as quickly as possible.

For, in this rare show of agreement, Liberals and Conservatives concur in the sense that the safest way to embrace Quebec as a nation without it turning into a kiss of death for their parties in the rest of Canada is to get it over with as quickly as possible.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1164409810997&call_pageid=970599109774&col=Columnist969907622983

Column: Duceppe's humiliation
Nov. 27, 2006. 02:41 PM
CHANTAL HÉBERT


Ottawa

Today may go down as the worst day in the life of Gilles Duceppe as leader of the Bloc Québécois.

The expected adoption by the House of Commons of a Conservative motion recognizing that Quebecers make up a nation within a united Canada is likely to blunt one of the most potent weapons left in the sovereignist psychological arsenal.

There is not one federalist leader on Parliament Hill and in the National Assembly who will not find it easier to make the case for Canada in Quebec on the strength of this motion.

Its adoption also makes the possibility of another referendum more remote, even if the Parti Québécois comes to power after the upcoming provincial election.

And it is the result of a gross miscalculation on Duceppe's part.

When the Bloc decided to bring the issue of Quebec's national character to the floor of the Commons last week, it fully expected to wreak havoc in federalist ranks.

In his worst nightmares, Duceppe never imagined that the Prime Minister would pick up the gauntlet or that the other parties would rally behind him.

Now, it looks like the Bloc has squandered a key argument in the long battle for the hearts and souls of Quebecers in a failed attempt to score cheap political points.

In the process, it has also legitimized the notion that the rest of Canada has a say in the definition of Quebec's political character.

Last week, PQ leader André Boisclair scrambled to put the best possible face on this unforced error.

He stated that the parliamentary recognition of Quebecers' national character would eventually make it easier for a sovereign Quebec to be recognized on the international scene.

What Boisclair did not say is that the adoption of the motion will make it harder for his party to stage another referendum — or at least one that it can be confident of winning.

In the debate over Quebec's future, symbolism has always trumped division-of-power issues. Until this motion, the sovereignists had entered that field with the advantage.

Without the failure to enshrine Quebec's distinct status in the Constitution in 1990, there would not have been a second referendum or a close vote on sovereignty in 1995.

The sense that Canada is so wary of Quebec's aspirations that it cannot recognize its fundamental nature continues to fuel the sovereignty movement, despite its two consecutive referendum failures.

Today's motion — symbolic as it may be — amounts to cutting off that fuel line.

It also places Canada on the leading edge of the international debate on federalist arrangements.

In the post-Cold War era, the concept that a people can form a nation without requiring all the attributes of a state, and the accompanying one that different nations should be able to live together under the same political roof, have emerged as compelling elements of an alternative model to a world fragmented along narrow ethnic lines.

Spain, which has recently extended national recognition to Catalonia, is finding that it has taken the steam out of that province's secessionist movement, enhancing its own national integrity in the process.

Today, the Bloc will vote for a federalist motion that stands to deflate its cause, an extraordinary twist in an unexpected saga.

In the past, the party has voted against parliamentary motions dealing with the recognition of Quebec's national character.

After the referendum, sovereignist MPs opposed a Liberal resolution that called on the federal government to take Quebec's distinct character into account in its decisions.

But this is different. The distinct society concept was a federalist idea borne out of the desire for a constitutional reconciliation.

From the start, sovereignists dismissed it as an anemic reflection of Quebec's reality.

For years, their leaders have claimed that Quebecers should accept nothing less than the recognition by the rest of Canada that they make up a nation. They have also claimed that it would never happen.

But by the end of last week, Duceppe found himself in a trap of his own making, caught between supporting a federalist consensus on Quebec or voting against a concept he and his fellow sovereignists have promoted.

And so, on the core question underlying the Quebec/Canada debate, that of Quebecers' national identity, the Bloc will stand shoulder to shoulder with MPs from all parties and from across Canada today.

After 16 years, it does seem the Bloc has come full circle. The party wanted to bring the sovereignist battle to Parliament Hill; it has ended up handing new weapons to its federalist foes.

Sounds like Harper had his own reasons for the move, and that it was not the worst thing he could have done.

[Asher]

a SMART Quebec government

LOOOOOOOOOOOL

[SpencerH]

When I lived in Canada (many many moons ago) I would've said (like many westerners) 'let the ****ing frogs go' (despite that I always liked Quebec). Now I'd say that Canada would be a much duller place without em.