It’s Time to Determine Once and for All if Canada Wishes to Be One Nation or Two

Blanchet has not embarrassed himself with anything so asinine as that, but his latest policy proposals and his packing them up into a threat against the government do remind us of the redundancy of his political party. The government raised all pensions two years ago, and while it is responsible for completely unacceptable rates of inflation, we cannot justify pouring more gasoline onto the fire of inflation with a premature increase in pensions, especially one inexplicably confined to the youngest pensioners. Blanchet would have been better off proposing a 5 percent increase for all pensioners since it may be fairly assumed that the more elderly the pensioners are, the less able they are to fend for themselves financially.

The supply-managed farm sector is the most egregious instance of protectionism in this country and dooms all of Canada to nonsensically expensive dairy products. This is a subsidy so great that it is routinely mocked by former U.S. President Trump as illustrative of Canada’s extreme trade protection system.

Both these proposals on the part of the Bloc are pre-election vote buying and posturing of the most obvious kind. Even I, well short of being a fleur-de-lys flag-waving Quebec nationalist as I am, would have expected something a little more subtle and ingenious from the Quebec separatists’ agents in Ottawa.

Since these initiatives are not going anywhere, this is a good time to make the point that some kind of showdown is coming with Quebec. It will not be precipitated by separatist MPs in the federal Parliament, but we are finally approaching the time—deferred by the two Quebec sovereignty referendums, and by the patriation of the amendment of the Constitution and the adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms—to determine if this country wishes to be one nation or two.

Most English Canadians have historically felt a greater affinity for the United States than for a Quebec that was constantly agitating over its condition in Canada and threatening to leave Confederation. The rise in violence and corruption in America and the general decline in the quality of its national leadership, as well as Canada’s growth into a population large enough to be relatively self-confident, have somewhat simplified the political scenarios in the event that Quebec asserts its right to secede.

John A. Macdonald was the chief architect of the only transcontinental, bicultural, parliamentary, Confederation in the history of the world and, except for the United Kingdom and the United States, the senior political arrangements of any large country in the world. The core of this Confederation is that in matters of great importance, there must be a majority of both English and French Canadians. Ignoring this in the imposition of conscription in World War I was what chiefly consigned the federal Conservatives to only 12 years in power between 1921 and the election of Brian Mulroney in 1984.

The time is coming when Canada really should decide if this is a permanent arrangement or not. English and French Canada could certainly survive without the other, and there is no shortage of people in either camp who would be happy to give it a try. It is time that we stop dodging and deferring this question, and with cool heads on both sides, determine the way forward. I believe a renewed Confederation will result, but it is time to resolve the question.