The Written Word
for October 17, 1999

I suppose one must give credit where credit is due even though the person getting the credit didn’t really want to do what he did.

After nearly blowing the Quebec referendum of November 1995 Jean Chretien then compounded his sins by passing a motion in the House of Commons that would effectively gave a veto over constitutional change to four regions. After considerable hullabaloo from British Columbia she was given a fifth veto. People in British Columbia who thought about this – which is to say a lot - realized that any vetoes were a bad idea and that Chretien was just balkanizing the country to appease Quebec … his typical policy and the typical approach of Ottawa since Pierre Trudeau left office.

Then two things happened quite beyond the Prime Minister’s control. A very courageous Quebec City lawyer – who had once been a separatist and an insider – changed his stripes and took an application to court to seek a declaration that the country was one and indivisible. You would have thought that any federal government worth its salt would have jumped in the fray to help Guy Bertrand but he was left on his own and discouraged in every way. But the federal government was forced to enter the case … not to have done so if the case had been lost would have been seen as rank cowardice in the face of enemy action … to have not participated in a win would have left all the glory to Mr Bertrand. Besides, the federal government being what it is, nothing is done right in this country unless they have a hand in it. (In fact the very opposite is a much easier case to prove.)

The second major happening was a public exchange of letters between Federal Intergovernmental Minister Stephane Dion and his Quebec City counterpart, Bernard Landry. I do not believe for one moment that Jean Chretien had a hand in this – indeed all the evidence is that he was horrified that one of his ministers would challenge the Quebec government in such a way. For what Mr Dion did, you will remember, was state that if the country of Canada was divisible, then so was a new country of Quebec. The word "partition" finally entered the lexicon of constitutional debate in this country. He was giving voice, frankly, to something I have been saying for years though I quickly say that he certainly didn’t do this for that reason.

In editorials at the time I said of the first matter, the Supreme Court reference, that Quebeckers are law-abiding citizens and will take very seriously any pronouncement of the top court in the land.

I also said, when others weren’t I might add, that Mr Dion’s public letters would make Quebeckers realize that any divorce would not be a pleasant one but very messy indeed. And that this was a very right policy.

The combination of these two events has, in my opinion, driven support for separatism in Quebec to new lows.

This is what makes the new seductions of Joe Clark so dangerous. He is back doing the same thing in Quebec as Brian Mulroney did in 1983 – luring so-called "soft" sovereigntists into his camp with lullabies about new constitutional goodies. I might remind you that one of the "soft" sovereigntists seduced by Brian Mulroney was named Lucien Bouchard.

There is only one way to deal with the separatist situation and that is the way the Ottawa Liberals have, however unwittingly and unwillingly, done over that past three years – with firmness and fairness. If we go back to the "Chamberlain at Munich" ways of the Mulroney years and the early Chretien years we will suffer the same fate the democracies did after Munich.

No one – least of all I – suggests an "in-your-face attitude. Not at all. But Quebeckers must always be aware of simple truths There is no "Rest of Canada" to deal with and there is not going to be an out of court divorce arrangement. That policy has worked under the reluctant leadership of Mr Chretien over the past three years and it will continue to work. All common sense and history tells us that.