Opposed

Warren Kinsella has posted an online petition opposing "the recognition of any province as a 'nation.'" I've signed it -- though as worded it leaves itself open to the objection that what is being proposed, in the resolution currently before the House of Commons, is not the recognition of a province, but of a people. But that objection is hardly a defence.

In the first place, whatever the precise technicalities of the wording, the idea that will enter the political bloodstream is that "Quebec" has been so recognized.

As if the confusion between province and people were not enough, the resolution itself leaves unclear whether it is talking about all the people of Quebec, or just some of them. Indeed, it's arguable whether the resolution means the same thing in English as it does in French. Charmingly, this is because both versions use the same word.

In French, the resolution says that "les Québécoises et les Québécois forment une nation." In English, that "the Québécois form a nation." In French, "Québécois" can mean either "Quebecers," in the sense of all the population of Quebec, or it can mean "francophone Quebecers," or even "Québécois de souche," ie descendants of the original French settlers. It's impossible to tell which meaning is being used without knowing the context, and often difficult to tell even then. Indeed, Quebec nationalist discourse thrives on the confusion, appealing at times to the ethnic or linguistic pride of the province's French-speaking majority, at other times (when confronted with the implications of this) to an inclusive, liberal-minded solidarity among all Quebecers. (The better to take the province's minorities with them when they separate. Hence my definition, adapted from the nationalist boilerplate: "A Quebecer is anyone who wants to be, including those who don't.")

In English, the word is only slightly less ambiguous. "Quebecers" will usually mean all Quebecers, but again can often mean only French-speakers, or only the ethnically French. (See this column by L. Ian Macdonald, for example: "Quebecers constitute a nation in the sense that Acadians do, or the Cree...") "Québécois," on the other hand, when used in English, will almost always mean French-speaking Quebecers, and often carries the ethnic sense -- especially when, as in the resolution, accompanied by the definite article: "the Québécois." The Prime Minister's speech to the House introducing the resolution, with its repeated references to "the Québécois" having a "historic role" in Canada's founding, to "their unique language and culture," suggests he has the ethnic definition in mind, and certainly the linguistic.

Now, the singling out for formal recognition of a particular linguistic or ethnic group as a "nation" would be troublesome enough, in a multilingual, polyethnic country, the whole purpose of which, at its founding, was to form a single "political nationality" transcending language or blood ties. Though not entirely without precedent -- we are in the habit of referring to native tribes as "nations," and indeed to ascribing a different legal status to them on the basis of their race -- it is not, in my view a precedent we should wish to replicate.

That said, it at least has the virtue of recognizing only a part of the province as a nation, and not the province itself. It is when "nations" acquire both territorial and institutional expression -- when nation, land, and power are fused -- that they can become a force for disunity, as the former United Kingdom is now finding.

Which being the case, the alternative interpretation, that we are recognizing all "Quebecers" as a nation, carries its own problems, since it is difficult, politically, to separate the population of a state from the state itself: the two tend to be used interchangeably, as in the United Nations. If you are worried about the implications of recognizing "Quebec" as a nation, you should be scarcely less worried about recognizing "Quebecers." (And, in any event, Quebecers -- French, English, Swahili -- aren't a nation. Unless you mean in the civic sense, which they don't: nobody separates in the name of civic nationalism, except maybe from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.)

But what is worst of all -- what is simply grotesque -- is for the Parliament of Canada to pass a resolution that, deliberately or otherwise, conflates the two: that suggests, if it does not quite say, that French-speaking Quebecers are equal to the population of Quebec: that they are, if you will, the "real" Quebecers, and that everyone else who lives in the province -- the one in six Quebecers who have a mother tongue other than French -- are just so much extra baggage. Which may be what many Quebec nationalists believe -- and all too often let slip in unguarded moments -- but which should have no part of the dialogue of a civilized society.

Why do I suspect the confusion may have been deliberate? If the drafters of the resolution had wanted to be clear that only French-speaking Quebecers were to be recognized as a nation, they could have written it that way. But that would have raised all sorts of uncomfortable questions, such as why, if language was the signifier of nationhood, the francophones hors Québec were excluded -- or whether Canada, lacking a common language, could be called a nation. So instead they retreat behind a wall of calculated ambiguity, in the manner of Meech Lake and Charlottetown.

I am opposed to recognizing any province as a nation. I am opposed to recognizing the population of any province as a nation. I am opposed to recognizing some part of the population of any province as a nation. And I am hostile to any resolution that recognizes a part of the population of a province as a nation, in a way that slyly suggests they represent the whole, but does not have the guts to admit it.

POUR ÊTRE CLAIR: Just to be clear -- there is nothing wrong with French-speaking Quebecers feeling a particular sense of kinship with one another, as a hardy linguistic minority on a continent full of anglophones; there is nothing wrong with Québécois de souche remembering their roots, and feeling a sense of pride in their long heritage in this country that their ancestors did so much to build; and there is nothing wrong with the rest of us applauding that kinship and saluting that heritage. Indeed, we ought to.

But that is not an argument for tossing around such politically charged terms as "nation," or for turning the Constitution into a vanity mirror in order that the "narcissism of minor differences" might catch its reflection.