seabee

It seems that there is a switch in the Liberal Party's approach; Mrs Stronach's stated reason for crossing (ou pour crosser) the floor was to save "national" unity, thus making the Bloc Québécois, and by extentsion Québec, the new target. If there are to be elections soon, one can expect the Martin clan to blame the sponsorship scandals on Québécois, Martin himself to remind that he is a Franco-Ontarian, not a Québécker, and put the Reform a.k.a. Alliance a.k.a. conservatives as anti-Québec for its stands on Irak, Bush, same-sex marriage, pot, religious convictions, etc. On the other hand, the Bloc will probably insist on Mrs Stronach's inability to speak French, interpret her "national" unity stance as anti-Québec. Who said politics is boring?

A born-again FLQ group has kidnapped Martin and Charest. They ask for a $5million ransom, or else, they will release them.

Against which army? Or would it just jail or shoot "known separatists", or would any unilingual french speaking Québécois be fair target?

This is what the BNA Act of 1867 has to say about it: From memory, the original 1864 plan was for a confederation, but that was dropped by 1867, which would be why Newfoundland and P.E.I. dropped out. Canada is the land of confusion.

It would be wise to carefully read and study both the August 1998 SCC opinion on secession, as well as law C-20, especially the fine print. Definitely, a "retarded" question would not be struck down after the fact. Instead.... find out for yourself. In fact, Québec independantists are quite happy with both the SCC opinion and law C-20; they have studied them. The first is a "how to" guide, the second, a fast track to full independance.

The key word here is "allowed", implying that Canadiens could be "not allowed", or, in other words, were second or third rate citizens, not very far above the status of slave. English presence in today's Canada can be accounted for only by tremendous violence, which could be described as genocidal. That's what conquerors do. So? Previously, it has been even higher than that. It occured after the 1759 ethnic cleansing by the English. The whole region was the property of the British Land Company, which refused to sell land to French-Canadians; racial discrimination at its worst. That may explain why he became an independantist. The area around Sept-Iles (Seven Islands) was thus named in 1535 by Jacques Cartier, and was refered to as such in various documents long before 1760. In 1535, Cartier also named the Trois-Rivières area (Three Rivers) as such. In his 1632 map, Champlain also names this area "Les Trois-Rivières". Two years later, he dispatched Laviolette there to create the town of Trois-Rivières. In 1760, the town's population was about 900. Today, there still are in Trois-Rivières buildings that existed before the Conquest. "Seven Islands" and "Three Rivers" are nothing more than translations of century-old french names. The French (later to become Canadien) presence in Nouvelle-France always was, from the very beginning, a negociated one with the First Nations that were present in those territories at the time. There never was any attempt at a conquest or domination of the First Nation. The only armed confllicts with Amerindians were with the Agniers, a.k.a. Iroquois, a.k.a. Mohawks, who at the time inhabited regions in what is now the U.S. of A., and they always did so as allies of the First Nations inhabitant of Canada. At all times during the French Regime, the Amerindians were "allowed" to remain Amerindians; their rights to do so was never questionned. Except the right to purchase land in certain areas, and to access management-level jobs. Or to use French when applying for a job or purchasing at English-owned businesses. The trick is simple; dispossess the group you want to discriminate against, and then give it "equal rights" they can't use because they are dispossessed.

All the Québécers who were involved in the sponsorchip scandal were federalists. Québécers now consider that federalists give them a bad name. It is a real gift for independantists.

My goodness! How masochistic!

So many things to correct, so little time... "Two generations" is an understatement; already by the time of the 1760 Conquest, both French and British intelligence make clear distinctions between the French and the Canadians. In october 2003, the Québec Liberal Government, under Jean Charest, presented a motion recognizing Québec as a nation. The National Assembly, an expression recognized in the Federal Constitution after a bilateral amendment circa 1965, accepted this motion unanimously, including hard-core federalist anglophone representatives of the West Island. The heavily English commons, of course, rejected this, having been "brainwashed" for generations of anglo-supremacist attitudes and the fantasy of "national unity". The question of whether Québec is a nation or not is only a symptom of a much deeper problem; irreconciliable differences between people in Québec and the ROC. This has been abundantly documented in Reed Scowen's book; "Time to say Goodbye" [ou, "Le temps des Adieux"] Using the same logic, the English in Canada are simply part of the English American group (along with Spanish and Portuguese American groups, America being a Continent), found almost exclusively in the northern part of America. Québec, not being an independant state, does not have the right to its own citizenship and may not have ambassies to protect its citizens when they leave Québec to go to English America, whether it be the United States or other canadian provinces. French was not "given" anything in 1867; it was "given back", after having been taken away by force and violence by the Conquest. Before that, it was a unquestionable right for everyone in Canada, renamed "province of Québec" by the Conqueror, to make the Canadians a people without a country.

The Bloc's stated objective is Québec's independance. It is neither interest nor mandate to worry about what happens to Canada after Québec's independance. Whatever happens to Canada then is entirely up to the federal government and the other provinces. All sorts of solutions are available to "save" Canada, such as restructuring it along the European Union lines. It may be necessary, no matter what happens to Québec, to change and modernize a constitutional act into a real constitution, one not based on a very antiquated monarchichal system of a foreign country. Québec may be just the leader.

To ease the confusion, it might be useful to differentiate between the words "country", "nation" and "state". But then, should the differences be based on conventions (whose?), bad habits, dictionary definitions or legal definitions? In American English or British English?

It is rather incoherent to say: and, in the same paragraph: or, in other words, marginalizing even more the French-speaking minority, implicitly to the point of extinction. Is that what should be considered illegal when done by French-speaking people become quite legal when done by English-speaking people? Sounds like an anglo-supremacist attidude.

It is indeed quite correct to say: But describing Québec as: is just as accurate (or inaccurate) as saying that Canada outside Québec is a "heavily British populated area".

But what about the marginalisation and assimilation of French-speaking people who live in English-speaking areas. Also, it would have been more appropriatate to speak of "French-speaking populated areas". French-speaking Québécois are not citizens of France, they are not "French". They have resented the French for centuries since the 1763 Treaty by which they were abondonned by France. No "Québécois" considers himself "un Français" even if he/she has received "la Légion d'Honneur" from France's Government. Québécois are not French. They are French-speaking, but as different a French as Texan English is different from Oxford English. And they insist on that difference. Would George Bush consider himself British or English?

It seems that when the British conquered le Canada in 1760, they conquered the territory, but not its people. Quite the contrary, in fact.

Another theory can be brought up. Maybe there should be a better investigation with the "Ordre de Jacques-Cartier", or OJC. Diane Francis wrote a book about it.

How can Québec consider itself a “distinct” nation? It’s not because it has a different language, a different history and culture, even different religious beliefs, its Code civil, its own tax collection, its own health system and blood agency, its own police, its different education system, its retirement plan and car insurance, its cinema, television, literature, theater, its own popular music industry, that it is “distinct”. On everything else, it is no different from the ROC, except of course for its Bloc Québécois, a different text of the federal “national” anthem, not a translation, its universal child care program. But on everything else...

The United Nations' definition of genocide refers to the intentional extermination of a group, not only individual killings. The "residential schools" program meets both conditions (b and (e) of the definition. It clearly was a genocide.

The biggest genocide ever occured less than a century ago. In the last hundred years, many genocides have occurred or are occuring in the world. In contemporary Canada, the "residential school" scandal ended only a couple of decades ago and can definitely be described as a genocide by United Nations standards and definitions.

I don't know about the Iroquois, but as far as the Montagnais (Innu) and other Algonquian nations, this is definitely the case. No reason it shouldn't be the case with the Iroquoian nations. They were definitely infinitely more adapted to the "le Canada" environment than the French settler who would never have survived had it not been of the Indians. In fact, some of the early settlers "defected" to the Indians and became one of them. Many more lived with them for prolonged periods of time and embraced the Indian culture. Throughout the French regime, the Amerindians were referred to as "les Sauvages", not to be translated by the English word "savages". At the time, the word "sauvage" meant "without restraints", i.e., free. As a noun, "Sauvages" was always written with a capital S, as is the rule for the name of nations. Many, if not most immigrants who came to settle in Acadia and in Canada did so in order to escape the overwhelming governance they were subjected to in France, and the Indian way of life was an inspiration (except for the Iroquois). As far as I can see, the only net benefit the Indians received was the introduction of iron tools. The settlers benefited a heck of a lot more. I tend to generally agree with that,but with reservations. In the 1604-1665 period, the settlements by the French in Acadia and Canada could have been easily wiped out by the Amerindians; they weren't. And even the Iroquois (.a.k.a Agniers a.k.a. Mohawks) alone could have done much, much more damage to the settlements than they actually did.

It takes a very warped mind to think that victims of genocidal acts are better off. Except, of course, if it is the mind of a genocidal anglo-supremacist, trying to justify its crimes. Why not ask the Beotucks if they benefited from their English conquerors. Oops! I forgot. The "benefactors" hunted them all into extinction. But what a jolly good sport, isn't it? By the way, the Amerindians in Canada were never conquered in combat; they were dispossessed, chased off their fertile land into areas that could barely sustain life, and individuals occasionally killed for sport. Aren't there a couple of such incidents before the courts in Western Canada?

Perhaps the federal government would get Rupert's Land back; but by the same token, Québec would get Labrador back, with it's abundant, unexploited, hydro-electric potential; and also, it would get back Fort-Rouillé, better known today as Toronto, and all that was formerly called Upper Canada. So, Torontonians, better start learning French now; the next referendum, in all likelyhood, will be held June 23, 2008. On a more serious note, however, I think anyone wishing to specultate on the aftermath of Québec's independance should carefully read and study all the implications of the August 1998 Supreme Court of Canada's opinion on the question, as well as Bill C-20, the "Clarity Bill", and wonder why, in private, Québec's independantists view both as victories. One might even wonder if SCC Justice Lamer and Stéphane Dion were not Trojan horses sent into the Dominion to undermine it.

Not all french-speaking Québécois are corrupt; only the federalist ones.

Sometime circa 1980 there was a court case in Montréal in which a gay group sued the Montréal Catholic School Board for illegal discrimination after the Board had refused to rent it a meeting place. The Board recognized the facts but argued that it had the right to do this kind of discrimination on the grounds of its educational vocation as well as its religious beliefs. In the end, the judge ruled that renting locals was neither an educational nor a religious activity, and that as a landlord in the rental business, it had practiced illegal discrimination. The Board never appealed this decision.

Doesn't the 1982 Constitutional Charter of Rights declare in its preamble that Canada recognizes "the Supremacy of God"? Which, or whose God? Is this debate leading to a constitutional change?