Well on our way to Belgiumhood

Somewhere along the way the political class in this country lost the will to live. For a time it suited them to believe they still believed, to pretend that Canada was still the country the Fathers of Confederation created, to pay lip service to the vision of prime ministers from Macdonald through Trudeau: that Canada was a great nation, capable of great things, called by history and immense good fortune to greatness.

But they did not feel it in their gut. Because a nation is hard work. To assert a national will, national objectives, a national interest, in a polyethnic, multilingual, transcontinental country, means upholding a national idea, a transcendent nationalism of ideals, against the more earthly delights of ethnic and cultural tribalism. It suggests that we are tied by something more than blood, something higher than ethnicity. And in turn it demands that we live up to that vision, that we hold a greater ambition for ourselves than mere existence.

But ambition is a burden. And ideas are strictly relative. And everyone knows that real nations are ethnic nations. And in any case it’s all just too damn hard. And so we learned to habituate ourselves to impotence and inertia, to snicker at the grandiloquent boasts of our ancestors (“The 20th century would belong to Canada”? He said that?), even if we did not quite follow the logic of this position to the end.

So let us give thanks for one thing: at least the pretense is over. The Prime Minister’s statement in the House yesterday, a statement no prime minister has ever made before, marks the moment when the idea of Canada finally shrugged, sighed, heaved and expired. The hollowing out of the national idea -- of a vision of Canada as a coherent national entity, capable of acting with a single national purpose -- is now complete. We are well on our way to Belgiumhood, and that suits our political class just fine.

We might at least pause to consider, however, that the motion the Prime Minister of Canada has asked the Parliament of Canada to endorse -- “that Quebecers form a nation within a united Canada” -- is a falsehood. There is no meaningful sense in which Quebecers form a nation -- neither in the ethnocultural or sociological sense, since the province, like Canada, is made up of many ethnic groups and languages, nor in the civic or political sense, since neither history nor political principle would distinguish the nation of Quebec in that regard from the nation of Canada as a whole. Or don’t take my word for it: more than a third of Quebecers -- 34% in a recent CBC Environics poll -- say they do not believe they form a nation. On this, as on so many other questions, the “Quebec consensus” is a fraud.

But fine: some Quebecers think they are. People are entitled to believe what they want to believe. Quebec nationalists are entitled to argue that Quebec is a nation all they want. But somewhere, sometime, somebody has to put the other proposition: that Canada is a nation; that Quebecers are a part of that nation; that they have as much or more in common with other Canadians as they do with each other. Ordinarily, I would expect my prime minister, at least, to do that.

But my prime minister did not do that. My prime minister could discourse at length on his profound conviction, never voiced until now, that Quebecers are a nation, but never once could he say that Canadians are -- only bark out meaningless applause lines like “Canada is the greatest country in the world.”

But what a strategic coup! Crafty ol’ PM: take the Bloc’s impending motion “that Quebecers form a nation” and tack on “within a united Canada.” Who would have seen that one coming? Who, except the Bloc leader, Gilles Duceppe, who instantly pressed his advantage: nations, he reminded the prime minister, “have rights.” Indeed they do. So when the time comes, and the Prime Minister tries to impress upon Quebecers, as he said yesterday -- in English but not in French -- that “all Canadians have a say in the future of their country,” that it is not up to Quebecers to decide by themselves, that no referendum, however contrived, gives them the right to detach a part of Canada from the rest, how will he defend this view: how, when he has formally asserted they are a nation? What overriding national interest will he assert? In whose name will he speak?

But perhaps the Bloc was not his real target. How he has wrongfooted the Liberals! Ha ha! And right on the eve of their convention! Or has he? What price is there now -- politically, I mean -- for endorsing the “Quebec is a nation” resolution? If they were afraid of the Conservatives outflanking them, as the party of national unity, they need be no longer. And now that we are all agreed -- now that every federal party subscribes to the “deux nations” vision of the country, the same poisonous doctrine that Canadians have consistently and forcefully rejected whenever the opportunity has presented itself -- what argument remains against constitutionalizing it? Isn’t that what we have decided the constitution is for: sending flowery billet doux to each other, recognizing each other’s nationhood?

But depend upon it: this can only fan the flames it claims to extinguish. The message the Parliament of Canada is about to send to Quebecers is this: that, as a nation, they have more in common with each other than they do with other Canadians, whom they will increasingly see as another nation altogether; that their relationship with that other nation must, accordingly, be as that they maintain with other nations -- cordial, businesslike, to be sure, but distant; and that, like any self-respecting nation, they can on no account submit to be governed by another nation -- as represented, for example, by the majority of the Parliament of Canada.

Perhaps the Bloc will abstain. But as for the rest, I’m sure the vote will be unanimous.