The Quebecois are different from you and me. They're Quebecois.
Quebec is demanding that the federal government not trim the province's political clout in the House of Commons, warning that it will not be satisfied with the consolation prize of an extra seat or two.
Both the governing Liberals and the Parti Quebecois shrugged off reports that the Harper government might be prepared to add an extra seat for Quebec to soothe critics of the new Commons configuration.
What they want instead is a guarantee that the province will continue to hold 24 per cent of the chamber's seats. Quebec currently has 75 of the 308 seats.
This is the Quebec rule of Canadian politics. If something prejudices Quebec, no matter what it may do to the rest of Canada, it cannot come to pass. The magic shield of "protecting" Quebec culture immediately comes into play. Like a video game where the player's avatar can never be hurt or destroyed. This isn't the first time la belle province's political class have demanded that representation by population be ignored. Whatever the Census might say they'll demand to hold a disproportionate number of seats in the legislature.
In the fifteen years before Confederation one of the hot political issues was rep by pop. The then province of Canada was divided between the majority Francophone Canada East (basically modern day Quebec) and majority anglophone Canada West (Ontario). Each side of the Ottawa River had exactly the same number of seats in the provincial legislature, though as time passed the population of the mostly English speaking West outstripped that of the demographically stagnate East. No matter insisted leading Quebecois politicos like George Etienne Cartier. If Canada East lost its parity in the provincial legislature, then French culture would be destroyed.
The political leadership of Canada West (men like George Brown and Alexander Mackenzie) were blessed with that rarest of political attributes: Spines. Using his paper the Globe, George Brown denounced the lack of rep by pop and eventually forced a constitutional crisis. It's solution was the creation of the Dominion of Canada as a federal system. Strangely French culture has not vanished from us in the time since.
Much has changed in the last century and a half. We have expanded across the continent, fought two world wars and several lesser conflicts with honour and distinction, taken our place among the leading economic powers and created one of the most civilized nations in human history. With success like that you might expect something resembling national pride to have taken hold in the hearts of our people. Nope. Our sense of nationality can best be described as a neurotic hatred of the United States, interspersed with a militant insistence that we have no nationality. Canada as anti-American multicultural hotel. No doubt what the men of Juno Beach were hoping to find when they returned home.
The last half century of Canadian history is a case study in cultural appeasement. The steady surrender by the Anglophone majority of their culture in hopes of placating the Francophone minority. The reason we still have a country, that we have not slipped into sub-arctic Balkans so feared of conservative commentators, is entirely due to the Quebecois. They will certainly seek, by hook or by crook, to advance the interests of their ethnicity under code words like "culture" and "language."
Mercifully the Francophones of this country are essentially civilized people, though perhaps with an advanced case of Euro-style decadence. Gaming the federal system to keep Alberta and Ontario's wealth flowing into their pockets is par for the course. Upending western civilization? Hardly. Instead they are rather appalled by the ROC's insouciance toward the reluctance of many Muslims to properly assimilated into their host societies.
Now imagine the last half century of Canadian history but replace the Quebecois with the Palestinians. Would there still be a Canada to speak of? Or would our post-modern WASP elites have handed over the country lock, stock and barrel (literally) to a militant minority? We have survived not because of the cultural confidence of our leadership but because of the sanity of our avaricious minority.
As with so many things, Stephen Harper has failed to show proper leadership toward Quebec. Pushing through a Commons motion in 2006 declaring Quebec a nation within a united Canada was a further act of appeasement. It lead to a brief upsurge in support for the Tories. The Quebecois electorate is not so much fickle as focused on the long game. A Conservative government, even one as nominally conservative as this one, would never really serve the interests of la belle province.
The shift in relative economic and demographic strength to the West has been the great unsung story of the last few decades. From hinterland to heartland, the Prairie provinces and B.C. can now provide a counter-weight to the influence of self-interested Quebec and pragmatic Ontario. Back in April the Tories proposed giving Albert five and B.C. seven additional seats in the Commons, while Ontario would get another eighteen seats (mostly in the bluish suburbs surrounding Toronto). These new seats would not only recognize demographic reality, they would create the electoral basis of a Conservative Party pre-emience for decades to come.
Whatever pressure may come down upon the Prime Minister he must not, whatever the cost, fail to grant those new seats to the West and maintain Quebec at about its current 75 seats. For reasons of political cosmetics it might be necessary to toss another seat or two to Quebec. That province, however, cannot continue to be over represented. The notion that if la belle province loses its 24% share of the Commons its language and culture will be crippled is sheer nonsense.
The provincial government has innumerable tools to "defend" French language and culture against the nefarious influences of les anglais. What a reduced influence in the Commons will do is limit the province's ability to black mail the ROC. It's unlikely so cautious a politico as Stephen Harper would tomorrow cut-off the flow of largesse. Instead, under the cover of balancing the budget, the inter-regional pork barrelling of equalization and transfer payments would be redirected to other parts of the Dominion. It would be a super-human politician who would actually dismantle such a system. The hope is simply that this money flows roughly to areas of the country where it is generated.
For the sake of the country and his party, Stephen Harper needs to ensure that Quebec stops getting its unfair share. As he has nothing to gain from further appeasing the Quebecois, he might just do the Right thing for a change.
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