La nation québécoise vue du Canada

En effet, il y a une meilleure avenue



RÉPLIQUE À CLAIRE L'HEUREUX-DUBÉ ET AL. Un groupe de 7 signataires comprenant l'ex-juge de la Cour suprême Claire L'Heureux-Dubé et le sénateur Serge Joyal vient de publier une opinion intitulée «Le Québec nation? Il y a, c'est certain, une meilleure avenue!» Ils affirment d'emblée que «le génie de la Constitution du Canada est de garantir(...) au coeur de notre identité comme nation(...) la protection...

Here's a question: Is Canada a nation?



With the Liberal party busy tying itself in knots over whether Quebec is a nation, speculation in certain media quarters has turned to the opening this presents for Stephen Harper to campaign in the next election on a One Canada message. Fat chance. No Canadian political leader has crafted such an appeal in decades. Either they don't believe it, or they don't dare say it, but it is a strange fact that among C...

Une occasion ratée



Michael Ignatieff a-t-il d'ores et déjà, à cause de son appui à la reconnaissance du Québec comme nation, perdu la course à la direction du Parti libéral du Canada? Ses adversaires le voudraient et font tout pour qu'il en soit ainsi, y compris faire monter au front le fils Trudeau pour dénoncer l'impie et lui faire payer le sacrilège commis. Les gants de boxe sont tombés depuis déjà longtemps dans cette course qui s...

La justice immanente



À voir le Parti libéral du Canada se déchirer à propos de la reconnaissance de la nation québécoise, on ne peut s'empêcher de croire à l'existence d'une justice immanente qui finit par nous rattraper un jour ou l'autre. N'eussent été l'obsession de Pierre Elliott Trudeau et son empressement à profiter de la déroute du gouvernement Lévesque, après la défaite référendaire de mai 1980, pour rapatrier la Constitution et...

Bob Rae has the right approach to Quebec



A wise Quebecker of my acquaintance, who has had considerable experience in federal-provincial relations, maintains that we only run into trouble in this country when French- and English-speaking Canadians are talking about the same thing at the same time. By that standard, we should be heartened that the 25th anniversary of Pierre Trudeau's constitutional agreement with nine provinces - infamously known in Quebec...

How many nations are there in Canada?

Declaring Quebec a 'nation' would open the door to aboriginals and many others


How many nations are there in Canada? This question merits a response in light of the debate within the federal Liberal Party about whether Quebec should be recognized as a nation in the Canadian constitution. The issue of such recognition for Quebec is rooted in Canada's political history. In the early 19th century, the infamous Lord Durham contended that there were two nations warring within the bosom of a...

There's no Quebec 'nation'



The debate around the "Quebec nation" was on the wrong track from day one, for the simple reason that there is no such a thing as a Quebec nation. Apart from its meaning as a "sovereign country," the word "nation" designates a people bound by history, language and territory. In this sense, the "nation" that is referred to is the French-Canadian nation, formed by the descendants of the French colonizers of "Nou...

Débat au Parti libéral

Le Québec nation? Il y a, c'est certain, une meilleure avenue!



En 1900, à l'occasion de l'Exposition universelle à Paris, le Canada distribua une médaille commémorative en bronze portant l'inscription «Le Canada est une nation». C'était une grande fierté pour ce jeune pays de 33 ans, à l'aube de ce nouveau siècle, de joindre sa voix au concert des «nations». Cette nouvelle nationalité avait une origine unique et un sens bien particulier. Ses fondateurs avaient une vision, le mi...

La nation divise le pays!



Les anglophones préféreraient accorder le statut de nation aux Métis et aux autochtones plutôt qu'aux Québécois Ottawa -- On s'en doutait, mais un vaste sondage pancanadien le confirme: la reconnaissance de la nation québécoise plaît aux francophones du pays mais agace profondément les anglophones. Ceux-ci sont même davantage prêts à accorder le statut tant convoité aux Métis et aux autochtones qu'aux Québécois. ...

Canada suffers from post-Meech Lake trauma

That's why the ROC is so reluctant to reopen constitutional debate


There must be an explanation why this country's constitution has become an immovable object of fear rather than a living, breathing object of change. It's clear that the current debate over the recognition of Quebec as a nation will lead to nothing. So here's the diagnosis: when it comes to the C-word, the Rest of Canada suffers from a serious case of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, that makes it fear ...

L'Halloween du grand sorcier Ignatieff



Sur la grande scène politique où l'on reprend le même spectacle, année après année, dans cet étrange pays où nous habitons, seuls les comédiens changent. La pièce, elle, est toujours la même. On la rejoue sur de petites ou de grandes scènes, toujours dans le même décor. On fait d'ailleurs des auditions en ce moment. Il s'agit de distribuer un grand rôle, celui de chef du Parti libéral du Canada, qui deviendra forc...

Being equal, as Canadians, doesn't mean being the same



The ties that bind us together as Canadians are much stronger than the forces that divide us. Thanks to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canadians are united by an equality of citizenship. It is the federal government's role to maintain our unity by working with other orders of government to ensure that all Canadians stand equal before the trials of life and that all Canadians benefit equally from life's opp...

Pas de statut spécial

Reconnaître le Québec comme nation au sein du Canada, ce n'est pas faire une nouvelle concession


Bien que toutes les provinces doivent demeurer égales, elles ne sont pas toutes les mêmes. Le Québec possède une histoire unique. Il a fait son entrée dans la fédération en comprenant que ses caractéristiques propres seraient protégées dans le nouveau gouvernement fédéral du Canada. L'unité canadienne a depuis lors nécessité la reconnaissance de cette entente. De plus, les Québécois en sont venus à se reconnaît...

Tout cela pour rien!



Si l'on en juge par un sondage Ipsos-Reid publié mardi dans le National Post, les libéraux ne gagneront pas grand-chose - même pas au Québec - en reconnaissant le caractère "national" du Québec, comme les y invite l'aile québécoise du parti et le candidat au leadership Michael Ignatieff. Quarante-deux pour cent des Canadiens (et 44% des électeurs libéraux) seraient moins enclins à voter pour le parti si le proc...

The Quebecois - Canada's Palestinians



And just like Quebec, Palestinians prefer to blame all others for their mess, then they do themselves, even though like Quebec, they squander one opportunity after another simply because of mass political incompetence, corruption and ethnocentric nationalism.

Old dogs, old tricks, and a PM curiously unruffled

Harper wisely stays away from an existential debate over Quebec


Will everybody calm down about Belinda Stronach if somebody refers to a Liberal man as a dog? All righty then: here's Jean Lapierre, Paul Martin's hand-picked Quebec lieutenant in 1990 and 2004, returning to his strategy of constitutional blackmail like a dog to its vomit. Lapierre has taken to darkly warning Liberals that they must not fail to pass a resolution "recognizing" the Quebec "nation." "Every time t...

Une aventure

Répondre aux véritables priorités de notre époque est une voie bien plus sage que de s'engager dans une aventure constitutionnelle


J'ai consacré une bonne partie de ma vie à travailler à des dossiers constitutionnels au Canada et un peu partout dans le monde. Les débats au sujet du vocabulaire et des concepts constitutionnels ont une façon toute particulière de prendre les devants et, du même coup, de devenir brûlants. Nous devrions, pour un certain temps, prendre un peu de recul. Les expériences de Meech et de Charlottetown ont duré p...

Pas rapport : Bob Rae



Note qui n'a rien à voir avec les élections américaines : Je viens de terminer l'intéressant livre de mon collègue Paul Wells «Right Side Up» sur la chute de Paul Martin et la montée de Stephen Harper. Je sais que ça fait étrange de lire cela à Washington, mais j'avais commencé le livre avant de partir. À la page 273, on y trouve une affirmation surprenante de Bob Rae, surtout quand l'auteur dit l'avoir obtenu...

Vive la langue française



The story of French. This is an extraordinarily ambitious project that few historians would have dared tackle. Academics tend to recoil from vast, sweeping topics, preferring to focus on smaller, more circumscribed areas - so your typical historian would have considered writing about, for instance, French as it was spoken between 1855 and 1875 in one village of the region of Poitou. But Jean-Benoît Nadeau an...

Vote for Mike? No way

Par Lyn Cockburn


Thanks a bunch, Mr. Ignatieff. Bad enough you insulted the entire state of Israel, but now you've brought up that wonderfully divisive issue of Quebec sovereignty. What, you didn't think mentioning Quebec and nation in the same sentence is problematic, creates possible constitutional issues and is, to put it delicately, dumb? I remember where I was on Oct. 30, 1995. I was out of the country, just like you. ...

What's all this about Quebec nationhood?



You can't get much farther away from Quebec -- and still be standing in Canada -- than being out here in British Columbia. Moreover, living in this spectacularly beautiful province, we've traditionally looked southward and westward, rather than toward goings-on in Quebec and Ontario. So I expect that many of us have not been paying much attention to the proposal of the Liberal Party's Quebec wing to recognize Q...

Revue de presse

Le casse-tête québécois



Vous ne le saviez peut-être pas mais «le Québec d'aujourd'hui est très dangereux». C'est du moins la conclusion à laquelle parvient le chroniqueur ultraconservateur du Calgary Sun, Ted Byfield. Selon lui, le Québec a complètement renié sa culture et son histoire. Il en veut d'abord pour preuve l'interdiction faite aux écoles évangélistes d'offrir une éducation qui fasse fi du programme provincial. Byfield ne peut pas c...

Don't break up Canada



If Quebec is a nation, where are its borders ? Are French-Canadians who live in Ottawa part of the Quebec nation or part of the Canadian nation ? There are one million people in Quebec who are not French-Canadian. And there are a million French-Canadians outside Quebec. What nation will they be part of ?

Quebec a nation? In a Dominion of Canada

Par Neil Reynolds


OTTAWA - We are, beyond all doubt, two nations, precisely as Arthur Lower, the celebrated historian, described 60 years ago. "There are, as yet, two Canadas, inhabited by two peoples," he wrote. "In the strictest sense, there can be no History of Canada. There can be histories of French Canada. There can be histories of English Canada. There are can be histories of Canada written by French authors or English auth...

Pas question de «nation» québécoise



Nous comprenons que beaucoup de Québécois veuillent vivre dans un pays indépendant. Cependant, si le Québec devait être désigné comme « une nation au sein du Canada » - une formule très ambiguë -, mes voisins se demanderaient sûrement si les fédéralistes québécois ont aussi le sentiment de faire partie de la nation canadienne et s'ils croient toujours que le gouvernement d'Ottawa est leur gouvernement national.

Liberals engaged in damaging debate over Quebec



By combining a policy convention with a leadership vote, the federal Liberals were hoping to kill two birds with one stone: Elect a new leader and present the country with fresh ideas. Now, that decision is coming back to haunt them. If the party had not put those two events back to back later this month, it would not have found itself embroiled in a self-destructive debate over Quebec's place in the federation...

Will Quebec genie fit back into bottle?

Divisive Liberal debate unlikely to die quietly


The economist Adam Smith once noted that when people of the same trade meet, they tend to conspire against the public interest. Something similar is happening in the Liberal Party, where representatives from a number of leadership camps are currently discussing an amendment to a resolution that will be raised at the party's convention later this month which recognizes Quebec as a "nation." It is inevitable that al...

What Quebec can learn from Scotland



The open letter sent by former Quebec premier Bernard Landry to Stephen Harper last week brought forth a snort of disbelief from me -- as I suspect it did from other Scots and, for all I know, Catalonians. In it, Landry said that Quebec was in search of its sovereignty, "like Scotland or Catalonia," as if both of these jurisdictions were havens of freedom compared to his own garrison province. In reality, Quebe...

The Iggy and the damage done



MONTREAL - Welcome to the Ignatieff nation. Having lived outside the country for the last 30 years, Michael Ignatieff may not have known what he was starting in September when he published his campaign manifesto, Agenda for Nation Building. He said then he spoke "for all those Quebecers who say Quebec is my nation, but Canada is my country." This is a variation on an old rhetorical theme: "Le Quebec, c'est ma...

Oust Liberal 'nation'



Editorial - Just because the federal Liberals are having a national unity crisis is no reason the rest of us have to have one. The latest mess developed because Liberal leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff has proposed reopening the Canadian Constitution to recognize Quebec as a "nation" within Canada. That idea is as stupid as it sounds. It was proposed by Ignatieff to get his flailing bid for the party leade...