The Marxist Quarterly Autumn 1965

Current Studies of Quebec

TWO NATIONS, ONE COUNTRY by Nelson Clarke, Progress Books, Toronto, a pamphlet, $0.05.

WHAT DO French Canadians want? Is Quebec really going to leave Confederation? These are the questions which open this modest tract by a leading spokesman of the Communist Party. It sets out the Communist proposals for a democratic solution of the crisis of Confederation.

Such a solution hinges on the necessity of facing up to the fact that Quebec is the homeland of a nation -- not simply a province like each of the other nine political units in the country.

Another set of facts shows that Canada as a whole is dominated by huge American and Canadian monopolies, only a tiny fraction of this vast corporate wealth being in French-Canadian hands. Less than 20 per cent of Quebec's industry is controlled by French Canadians. Personal income per head of population in Quebec is still 27 per cent below that of Ontario. Some 40 per cent of unemployment in Canada is in Quebec. French Canadians would like to decide for themselves on their own flag, the wars they will fight in, the language they can speak on the job as well as in the neighborhood.

The author writes, in reply to this imposing list of shortcomings suffered under Confederation:

We will have to recognize the right of French Canadians to run their own affairs, including their right to separate from us if they so decide.

However to accept separation as inevitable would be wrong. Such separation would make the two parted nations weaker and more easily susceptible to U.S. domination, writes Clarke. The answer lies in working out a new, completely voluntary partnership based on full equality of the two nations, English and French.

This will mean scrapping of the BNA Act, and the writing of a new Constitution.

The best way to write such a new constitution would be by the election of a special constituent assembly in which the people of French and English Canada would be equally represented and in which, through a process of negotiation and discussion they would reach agreement on the best way to organize the government of the country.

The suggestion is made that parliament consist of two houses -- one elected on the basis of population and the other made up equally of members from English and French Canada.

The pamphlet spells out many other details, dealing with the powers of the respective governments of both nations and outlines a democratic people's path towards solution of the crisis of Confederation.

S.Y.D.

 

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