The Written Word
for December 26, 1999

Is the new Clarity Act whereby Jean Chretien sets out the Referendum rules for Quebec actually an important document for British Columbia as Gordon Gibson sets forth in the Vancouver Sun today?

I agree with Gordon that it is. It is because British Columbia is slowly but very surely moving towards independence from Canada. Gordon is also right to point out that all that’s holding BC back is sentimentality and inertia.

The sentimentality part is interesting because there is no doubt that Canada is held together by it. Every nation must have a glue that binds it and in most cases there is a good degree of good old fashioned racism involved. And where that ethnicity is diluted – as in Britain with Asians and Blacks and France with Algerians and Blacks – that dilution serves to sharpen the focus on the uniqueness of the country in question.

But ethnicity is no longer a factor in Canada. In the distant past when most Canadians were either of UK or French origin, ethnicity was important because we were sold the idea that an ethnic partnership was in place and that this kept the nation together. That never really was true, however, and the fact of it’s untruth is what threatens the unity of the country at its western extremity.

You see British Columbia never really was part of the so-called duality so blithely sold us by Toronto through the CBC and other sources. And we always knew we were different. We have a sentimental attachment to Canada but it is not the Canada as seen through Central Canadian eyes. The amount of propaganda spewed at us about our binding traditions really did little more than prove that the official ties than bind are shallow to non existent.

One cannot escape one’s history and British Columbia did not come into being because of a western migration of Canadians as the United States expanded by sending their citizens west. We are more like Hispanic America than other western States because we did develop from a much different population base – actually that should be plural. At the time of Confederation in 1871 we were more American than British and when we did become largely British that was because people from Britain came directly to us not after settling in the east.

It is this difference in British Columbia that makes the indifference of Ottawa so dangerous to our unity.

The more and longer Ottawa – and, of course Ontario and Quebec – spend dealing with the great Upper Canada-Lower Canada Debate the more strained our sentimental attachment to Canada becomes.

We are in a period of relative calm. Separatism is on the wane in Quebec. This means things are at their most dangerous.

Why?

Because the next move is obvious to all except those whose duty it is to recognize the next move. Lucien Bouchard, fighting for his life, is not going to go away. The next great effort will be to have one final set of negotiations between Quebec and "Canada" before resorting to another referendum. This means a fresh set of Quebec demands which will include all the old ones warmed over – distinct society, a veto over constitutional change, a permanent 25% of the House of Commons - with some new ones, no doubt, added. These demands will be supported by Jean Charest because he will have no other alternative. It’s likely that the Federal Government will also support them.

Who won’t support them will be British Columbia and Alberta.

Suddenly we will find that our sentimental attachment to Canada has strings – we will be required to temper that sentimentality with a sell-out to Quebec. That won’t sell in BC.

One must also bear in mind that this will come with a regionalized Canadian House of Commons with BC and Alberta having a large representation in Ottawa that does not favour more bribes to Quebec.

In this context, is it hard to see British Columbia becoming distinctly unsentimental about staying in a country that doesn’t represent its values and ambitions? And if that happens, doesn’t the lethargy disappear as well? And then, is the Clarity Act no longer just an impediment to Quebec leaving but a guidebook to British Columbia separation and independence, something it can afford where Quebec cannot?