Posted on 10/30/2005 7:56:43 AM PST by Heartofsong83
New deal needed to put unity issue to rest once and for all Divided we fall Calgary Sun October 30, 2005
One decade ago today Canadians coast-to-coast watched a cliffhanger vote on the fate of our country unfurl as Quebec separatists lost their bid for independence by just 1.2% of the vote.
The nail-biting tally — 50.6% to 49.4% — shook our nation to the core.
It also embittered Parti Quebecois Premier Jacques Parizeau’s supporters who came so close to fulfilling their dream to split from Canada.
There were reports that had the PQ won by even the slightest margin — say just the 1.2% by which they lost — Parizeau would have immediately declared unilateral independence and thrown our entire nation into chaos.
No one knows how the federal government would have responded to such an apocalyptic event — or even whether Ottawa could have prevented Parizeau from carrying out his threat.
Prime Minister Jean Chretien had sauntered through the referendum campaign with indifference.
It was virtually the 11th hour when he and his cabinet realized this was not going to be like the 1980 referendum when the federalists won by a healthy 20% lead.
By the time Chretien woke up to reality, the federalist campaign was in a shambles. Our nation held together by the skin of its teeth.
The aftermath of those horrifying days lives on to this day.
Scandal after scandal has unfolded through Justice John Gomery’s inquiry into the sponsorship program — a $250 million project designed by Chretien, deputy PM Sheila Copps and finance minister Paul Martin to make Quebecers feel prouder to be part of Canada.
The disgraced program — in which some $100 million was illegally diverted into dubious projects, the bank accounts of public relations and advertising agency owners, and even Liberal party coffers — has infuriated many Quebecers and revived separatist fervour.
Quebecers resent the shoddy attempt to buy them off.
That’s why Gilles Duceppe’s Bloc Quebecois party won 54 of his province’s 75 seats in the 2004 federal election, up from 38 in the 2000 election, and why the Parti Quebecois is again on the move.
Separatist fever is growing in Quebec rather than diminishing.
Even in Alberta, separatism is starting to look like an option.
It’s true that since the 1995 debacle Ottawa passed the Clarity Act — actually thought up by Conservative leader Stephen Harper and Reform party founder Preston Manning — which throws roadblocks in front of a referendum win.
Still, federal Liberals refuse to look at the root causes of separatism.
Take out the radical fringe of the separatist movement — the pseudo-intellectuals, anarchists, coffee-house dreamers, nostalgia poets and singers — and what is spurring the movement today is Ottawa’s clumsy encroachment into areas of provincial rights.
Ever since Pierre Trudeau took office in 1968, the Liberals have seized traditional responsibilities from the provinces and centralized them in Ottawa. It’s power from the top down, not from the people up.
Yet we are now hearing common-sense calls to fix this situation — and make this country work once again.
Just this month Manning and former Ontario Premier Mike Harris, in The Fraser Institute study Canada Strong and Free sent out a call for an end of federal encroachment into provincial areas of responsibility and for “rebalancing federalism.”
They point out the one area —education — that has remained totally in provincial hands and unscathed by Ottawa’s intrusions and dictates is the most successful and lauded by experts here and around the world.
That’s a beacon of light in a land divided by political squabbles and regional jealousies.
Of all the shambles afflicting our nation today, health care is top of the list, and, coincidentally, the area Ottawa dominates the most.
Manning’s and Harris’ solution: Give control of health care back to the provinces where it belongs.
The two talk about other areas in their latest work — welfare and child care — that Ottawa again must leave to the provinces.
Federalism, as practiced by the likes of Trudeau, Chretien and Martin, doesn’t work. It is dividing and strangling the country.
The way to bring Quebec safely back into Confederation and prevent separatism from growing in Alberta, is for Ottawa to get out of the way.
It’s time to put the unity issue to rest and get on with meeting the challenges facing our growing nation in an increasingly competitive world.
Large parts of English-speaking Canada would be much better off as part of the United States. Lots are beginning to admit it. Let Quebec go, Canada never has made much sense as a confederation anyway. Allow the provinces to choose. It's just democracy in action.
Starting to agree...
Even within Ontario, there is significant disenfranchisement...
Most of the canadian population is strung along the U.S.
border anyway.
Given that in our times Canadian unity means the usual anti-American, socialist, and socially leftist Liberal drivels from the Southern Ontario-Montreal areas, I will be cheering loud when Canada meets her justly deserved demise.
The Western provinces should form a new nation and the Prairies could kick some remnant socialism off, and Quebec could potentially take off economically if it does a Slovakia (which separated from the Czech Republic under socialists in 1993, but then dumped the socialists and elected the free marketers. Eventually even took the lead over the supposedly less socialist Czech Republic).
Death to Canada! Vive le libre l'ouest Canada!
the good provinces can join the usa.
http://www.unitednorthamerica.org
Looking around this forum, there are quite a few people who see Canada in its present form as a threat to US security. I don't think too many tears would flow if Canada disappeared from the map. Well as long as their looney left don't migrate to Australasia.
The loony left should just settle in Antarctica...
If you notice that, one Canadian FRer that frequently crosses words with you and who rubbishes news about separatism referred by myself falls stone silent on such board. :)
He goes such a great length defending status quo Canada which show he is actually a centrist or moderate left even in his own nation. I wonder what he is thinking when he reads threads like these?
I notice that quite a few of the Canadians have dropped out of the discussion. You would have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to know that Canada has serious internal problems and problems in its relationship with the US. It seems to me that the Liberal Party in Canada tries to hold the nation together around anti-Americanism. This plus the fact that there has been no change of government at the national level in decades augers poorly for the future of a united and democratic Canada. In world affairs Canada is a basket case. They have certainly had a pasting in this forum over the past couple of days.
Do you think the Penguins would want them?
Maybe all that frozen Antarctican bacteria wouldn't mind...
Doubt - if they live by their words they will freeze to death in a day. But the chardonnays are "Do as I say, not as I do" people, and they will probably "modify" the enviros to such an extent the penguins will be long gone when they settle there.
Thie mentality was manifest in a survey early this year regarding Quebec's attitudes towards the Kyoto Protocol. 75% agree with Kyoto, but 2/3 told the government to get out of their way if this demands them to own one fewer car per family and use more public transport to help achieve Protocol targets. Typical hypocrites.
Ontario will push them away simply because if they join Canada it will tilt the whole thing to their right as well, to their horror! (The US NE is relatively conservative even by Ontario standards)
God Save you! Cause if this is the case, nothing mortal can! :-)
It wasn’t just what the bumper sticker said, but where it was placed and what it was stuck on. The white rectangle that read, "One hundred years is long enough," followed by the website address, www.separationalberta.com, was high up in the rear window of a shiny new, high-end SUV driving through supposedly Liberal downtown Edmonton-- not on a dusty old pickup truck in a small prairie town. And at the wheel was a smartly-dressed soccer mom, her two kids seated behind her, though obscured by the tinted side windows. These days, western independence has a new face. A movement that was once restricted to what central Canadians might call the redneck fringe, has managed to spread to westerners who are, in many cases, urbane, white collar and increasingly too young to be nursing any grudges over the National Energy Program. What’s more, sympathy for breaking up the country along east-west lines is no longer strictly something you’ll find in Alberta. More than ever, support for separation is growing all across the West.
That’s the conclusion of a Western Standard poll, which found that a record number of people in all four western provinces say they are willing to look at separating from the East. According to the poll, which was conducted in July, using random selection methods, 35.6 per cent of westerners agreed with the statement: "Western Canadians should begin to explore the idea of forming their own country." How serious is that? In Quebec, measures of separatist sentiment often find about 37 per cent of Quebecers endorsing independence (though, at times, the numbers have risen as high as 55 per cent, as was the case with a poll conducted by the newspaper La Presse in July)
The research, which was conducted by pollster Faron Ellis, a political science professor at the Lethbridge Community College, was commissioned by the Western Standard to determine how well the federal government under Prime Minister Paul Martin has been managing the issue of western alienation--something that Martin promised to reduce as part of his 2004 election campaign. It demonstrates the highest support level for separation ever recorded in any province. Historically, separatist sentiment has been estimated in Alberta to hover in the single digits. In fact, 42 per cent of Albertans now say they are willing to consider the idea of forming a new nation, independent of Ottawa. In Saskatchewan, 31.9 per cent expressed a willingness. Residents of B.C. and Manitoba were the least likely to say they would consider separation, but significant numbers in both provinces nevertheless expressed sympathy with the separatist cause: 30.8 per cent and 27.5 per cent, respectively. The poll was conducted around Canada Day, between June 29 and July 5, 2005, when sentiment for federation should have been running at its peak. It sampled 1,448 adults and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
(Source: A nation torn apart, Kevin Steel, Western Standard, August 22, 2005
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