The Marxist Quarterly Autumn 1965

Because Canada is a political nationality, any form of political duality must be rejected . . . Because there was no one cultural nationality, there should be cultural duality to do justice to French Canada and to maintain the political unity of Canada.

Thus the Winnipeg Free Press (May 17, 1965), summarizing the distinguished historian, Professor W. L. Morton, in his brief to the B-B Commission.

"Any form of political duality must be rejected": this is the crucial evasion. The accompanying proviso that "there should be cultural duality" is merely the classical "concession" of upholders of the status quo. "Because" there exists a Canadian state ("political nationality") the conclusion is drawn that we must deny the existence of two national communities cohabiting within its boundaries. This is likewise the stand of Canadian Labor Congress research director Eugene Forsey: "The constituent units of this country are not "French Canada" and "English Canada.* They are the ten provinces." (Canadian Forum, Nov. 1964)

Denial of the presence of two nations within one state serves to justify rejection of the democratic principle of national self-determination. Quebec is simply "a province like the others"; or, if one were to indulge in a bold but fleeting Pearsonian extremism and admit that "Quebec in certain respects is not a province like the others, but the homeland of a people" -- then one may accord it certain cultural attributes, but not (heaven forfend!) the political right of national self-determination.

* * *

Following the NDP national convention last summer Le Devoir (July 16) commented on the party's visible difficulty "in ridding itself of a fundamentally centralizing orientation and philosophy." On social security, national resources, economic planning, the Quebec delegates were at odds With the rest of the convention. "It would seem that the majority cannot manage to make the connection between the verbal sympathy expressed in generous if vague statements about the aspirations and conditions in Quebec -- and the consequences that logically should flow therefrom in the program and approach of the party . . . Yet a party which at its founding recognized the existence of 'two nations' cannot logically allow itself to be-

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NOTE AND COMMENT 37

come, on basic issues, the expression of only one of them."

Actually, acceptance by the NDP of the "two nations" concept has as yet been grudging and uncertain. If the pressure of events has resulted in some headway being made towards a fuller recognition of the reality, the political conclusion on the right of the French Canadians to self-determination has still not been drawn. For the NDP, the national question remains essentially a matter of "two cultures": the approach, in other words, of Mr. Pearson's "bi-culturalism." And, since it stops short of a real recognition of the presence of two nations, the NDP is content to remain within the traditional framework of the federal-provincial set-up. Quebec is envisaged as "a province like the others" in every vital respect but one: this province, it urges, should possess a "special status within Confederation" as regards "the safeguarding and evolution of French culture and traditions."

Rather more than this is needed, if a firm basis is to be reached for a coalition of the progressive and democratic forces in the two Canadas: the necessary condition for achieving a new relationship of equality, embodied in a new Constitution and opening up new avenues of structural social change.

S.R.


 

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-- This OCR was prepared by Kathleen Moore in August 2014 for the legal research purposes of Habeas Corpus Canada. --