Get Rid of Quebec

[ft.niagara]

That is why I sometimes despair for Canada when even the kind of intelligence that participates in these forums cannot grasp what I post about the too great powers of the provinces - the source of almost all of Canada's ills.

What TOO 'great powers"? language? try and write as though the other party does not know what you are talking about

[seabee]

In canada there is a country within a country.

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?

[Bakunin]

In canada there is a country within a country.

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?

What i mean is that normally a country as 1 culture, 1 language etc..

Nation would be a more suitable word.

In fact, i was referring to what pearson used to say about quebec: a nation within a nation.

In evry country where there are more than 1 nation, there are inevitably problems. Why ? cause they all tend to imitate the nation-state.

Right now we have a very bad kind of government. The federal has all the power he wants and almost illimited ressources. If his budget doesnt balance, he just give less money to the provincial government. That form of government already scrapped our healthcare, it will continue to destroy canada if we doesnt limit their activity.

In my opinion you must have 1 government 1 vision to serve the aspiration of a nation. But on the other way, a canada's wide provincial cooperation that could take the form of a confederation where evry province would work on a vonlontary basis to serve the interest of its citizen looks interesting to me. The mistake would be to stay with a system that generate a great amount of conflict with its unilateral vision.

[Guest eureka]

Ft. Niagara, I have written at great length on several of these discussions about the powers of the provinces. Provinces have jurisdiction over, Health, Education, Welfare, Civil Rights and a long list of others. And, they have often abused these. Quebec daily abuses them as the case I make shows quite clearly.

Would you think, perhaps, that Texas might have had a Spanish speaking majority at the time of its conquest? Should it therefore have had the power to proscribe the English language and proclaim that it is a "country within a country." Should it have had the power to enforce conditions that would allow only Spanish speaking immigration or the forced education of others - including English speaking immigrants in Spanish schools?

That is what we are looking at.

This "nationhood" claim would be amusing if it were not simply the consequence of two generations of "brainwashing" of French Quebeckers. The French of Quebec are simply part of the French Canadian minority group: a group that because of its role in th founding of Canada (not Quebec) has been treated as an equal partner.

The "ultra nationalists" of Quebec have fought a desperate campaign to convince their ethnic group that it is Quebec and Canada as a partnership and that somehow there are also French speakers in other parts of Canada who do not matter because they are not Quebeckers.

They would abandon those to their fate. That is because their real concern is the construction of a French state out of a fantasy. Their is no historical or gegraphical validity to their ambitions: no legal, either.

I think it was on this thread earlier that I had written about the FACT that French was given official status in Quebec in 1867. For nearly thirty years prior to that, English was the only official language. And, before that, there were no such things as Official Languages.

French was given equal and official status in Quebec where there was a sufficient concentration of French speakers to warrant it. But that concentration was not of the proportions that it is today. Some thirty plus % of Quebeckers were English speaking at Confederation. It was still around twenty percent only thirty years ago. MOre than half of those English speakers have left the province because of the language laws since 1974.

As I have said many times, Quebec nationalists are extremely fortunate that the English could move easily. Otherwise, there would have been a civil war that could only have resulted in the loss of status of French Quebec.

[caesar]

But what is a country for you ? isnt it people who share a culture a language, media and etc...

NO, where did you get that idea????? Variety is the spice of life. Canada is not the only country with more than one official language; a variety of cultures, and religion. Heaven help that we share one media. Fortunately, we enjoy not only our own heavily monopolized media (Can West) but can seek information from around the world from various media sources.

[Bakunin]

But what is a country for you ? isnt it people who share a culture a language, media and etc...

NO, where did you get that idea????? Variety is the spice of life. Canada is not the only country with more than one official language; a variety of cultures, and religion. Heaven help that we share one media. Fortunately, we enjoy not only our own heavily monopolized media (Can West) but can seek information from around the world from various media sources.

Then if variety is the spice of life, why do we get a federal government to keep us from expressing ourself. Why do we always have to go in court to keep the federal government from taking over provincial juridiction.

How come the federal government said it would pay 50% of health cost wich is the biggest expense for canadian, then goes down to like 15% without lowering their taxes and then force the province to keep the system entirely public ?

[seabee]

So many things to correct, so little time...

This "nationhood" claim would be amusing if it were not simply the consequence of two generations of "brainwashing" of French Quebeckers.

"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"]

The French of Quebec are simply part of the French Canadian minority group: a group that because of its role in th founding of Canada (not Quebec) has been treated as an equal partner.

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.

...there are also French speakers in other parts of Canada who do not matter because they are not Quebeckers.

They would abandon those to their fate.

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.

I think it was on this thread earlier that I had written about the FACT that French was given official status in Quebec in 1867.

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.

[Guest eureka]

Seabee!

I had always thought you something of a nut but you did not appear to be stupid.

Does your post say anything at all?

Just for your information, I drove Reed Scowen out of the limelight in Quebec. I took him, and his views, apart so often in print and in person that Claude Ryan was compelled to shut him up and to stop using him as his token Anglo.

The only useful thing Scowen did was his study of the devastation of the Montreal economy in 1979. In that are all the figures about the departure of Head Offices from Montreal following the language "laws."