Canada 2013 (World Today (Stryker)) by Thompson Wayne C

Author:Thompson, Wayne C. [Thompson, Wayne C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781475804744
Publisher: Stryker Post
Published: 2013-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

In 2011 the Quebec government announced an ambitious 25-year plan to develop a large part of its vast northern and Arctic region, an area where, in ex-Premier Jean Charest’s words, “we have every resource imaginable.” While industrial activity will be banned in some of the region, mining and industry will be allowed in other parts, all in close coordination with the local aboriginal populations. Not since the northern Alberta oil sands were exploited has there been such a grandiose attempt to develop the sparsely populated north. Charest also argued that this “Plan Nord” will strengthen Canada’s disputed claims to the Northwest Passage. It “is an affirmation of sovereignty.” Charest’s successor as premier, Pauline Marois, vowed to continue this project.

An independent Quebec would have to face the prospect that the Cree and the Inuit, supported by Ottawa, would take back more than half the present province. Quebec’s relations with its 60,000 aboriginal peoples, most of whom prefer to speak English, were already strained over their claims also to be a “distinct society.” Quebec’s aboriginals find their most compelling arguments in the PQ’s rhetoric. Cree Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come asserts: “If Canada is divisible, so is Quebec,” a concept endorsed by Prime Minister Chrétien in 1996.

Inuit leaders have also put Quebec on notice that ‘’we are not coming with you on a journey toward independence,” as Zebe dee Nungak put it. The Inuit of the northern third of Quebec moved a step closer to self-government in November 1999. They signed a political accord with Ottawa and Quebec setting up a commission to facilitate discussions leading to a government in their region called Nunavik. There are no roads linking Nunavik to the rest of the province. To bring the two parts closer together, the Quebec government is working on plans to construct roads to a few Nunavik communities.

Numerous anglophone groups in Quebec, supported by the federal government, picked up on the idea of partition in the event that Quebec breaks away from Canada. Examples are the Quebec Committee for Canada and the Committee for a New Quebec. Both proposed that any area in which francophones are not prominent, including suburbs of Montreal, remain with Canada. PQ leaders dismissed such warnings and proposals as nonsense.

Parizeau shrewdly played on the frictions between Quebec and the rest of Canada in rejecting what he saw as a flawed federalism. His solution: a series of referenda to take over powers from Ottawa, on the way to a sovereign Quebec. The political equation was further complicated by the formation in the federal parliament of a Bloc Québécois, led initially by Lucien Bouchard. The PQ supported it in the 1993 federal elections rather than Mulroney’s Tories, as it had done in the prior two elections. This cost Mulroney valuable backing in Quebec and enabled the Bloc Québécois to become the second-largest party and official opposition in Ottawa.

In 1994 Quebecers had their clearest choice ever. Gone was the fuzzy middle ground of “sovereignty-association” à la Lévesque. The PQ now called for nothing short of separation.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.