Free at Last: Quebec 2007

© Copyright 2004 Ronald Coleman. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Contact the author at:

rlcoleman@falls.igs.net

or fax 613-283-4117

Editor: Neall Calvert

Cover and book designer: Fiona Raven

Back cover illustration: Josue Menjivar

Also by Ronald Coleman:

Just Watch Me! Trudeau’s Tragic Legacy

Oh, Oh Canada! Who Stands on Guard?

A cataloguing record for this book that includes the U.S. Library of Congress Classification number, the Library of Congress Call number and the Dewey Decimal cataloguing code is available from the National Library of Canada. The complete cataloguing record can be obtained from the National Library’s online database at: www.nlc-bnc.ca/amicus/index-e.html

ISBN: 1-4120-1735-1

ISBN: 978-1-4122-1932-7 (eBook)

TRAFFORD

This book was published on-demand in cooperation with Trafford Publishing.

On-demand publishing is a unique process and service of making a book available for retail sale to the public taking advantage of on-demand manufacturing and Internet marketing. On-demand publishing includes promotions, retail sales, manufacturing, order fulfilment, accounting and collecting royalties on behalf of the author.

Suite 6E, 2333 Government St., Victoria, B.C. V8T 4P4, CANADA

Phone  250-383-6864   Toll-free   1-888-232-4444 (Canada & US)

Fax      250-383-6804   E-mail      sales@trafford.com

Web site      www.trafford.com

TRAFFORD PUBLISHING IS A DIVISION OF TRAFFORD HOLDINGS LTD.

Trafford Catalogue #03-2112 www.trafford.com/robots/03-2112.html

10 98765432

Contents

Introduction

1 Trudeau—The Beginning of the End

2 The Year 2003

3 Federal Election 2004

U.S. Views

4 Canada’s Natives

5 Alberta (The West) & Ontario (The Best)

Elections

Equalization and Opting Out

6 The Prime Minister’s Odyssey

7 Quebec (The Best)

Election or Referendum?

No More Co-operative Federalism

France & Quebec

Globalization

Information Era

Free Trade Zone

Quebec Natives

Hydroelectric Power

Neutrality

Negotiations

8 The Maritimes (The East)

The Fishery

Hydroelectricity & Labrador

Oil & Gas

9 B.C., Saskatchewan & Manitoba (The West)

Socialism

10 The North & The Northwest Passage (The Rest)

11 Canadian Constitutional Conference, 2005

Day One

Day Two

Day Three

Aftermath

12 The U.S.A.

Resources

Covert Activity

Overt Activity

The Northwest Passage

13 The United Nations

Security Council

General Assembly

14 The United Kingdom

15 France

16 A New Reality: Quebec and Several American States

17 Alternate Endings

The Prime Minister Succeeds

Status Quo

About the Author

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my wife and sons, and to Canadians who give a damn about the future of our country.

Free At Last: Quebec 2007 would not have been possible without the mindless followership of the last three generations of federal Liberals and their supporters. Their blind belief in illusions like The Just Society, national unity, two founding nations, multiculturalism and the land is strong, created by former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and pursued by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, have made this country’s survival less likely than ever before. Ironically, it was all done in the pursuit of One Canada. Poorly thought out social policies and social engineering have led us to become, in the astute observations of political commentator Richard Gwyn, a society of victims of one variety or another, tripping into the courts to determine whose rights predominate. Canadians, as a result, have lost their resolve to coalesce into a real nation.

Acknowledgments

I want to express my thanks for the excellent work of my editor, Neall Calvert, and my book designer, Fiona Raven.

No brute ever does a cruel thing—that is the monopoly of those with the moral sense. When a brute inflicts pain he does it innocently; it is not wrong; for him there is no such thing as wrong. And he does not inflict pain for the pleasure of inflicting it—only man does that.

—Mark Twain

Introduction

It was never meant to last—it couldn’t and it didn’t. As clouds gathered overhead on St-Jean-Baptiste Day in 2007, one new country was born and one died. It was a marriage one hundred and forty years in the making, and the divorce was imminent from the beginning.

Two cultures that had clashed for years in Europe had brought their hostility in the holds of their ships to the New World. Louisburg, the bastion of France on the Atlantic coast, was razed by the British—for the second time—in 1758, on their way to Quebec. There, in 1759, the French leader Montcalm would make three critical tactical errors that ended in a strategic loss: he combined his professional soldiers with his militia, which led to confusion; he held nothing in reserve; and he then led his troops out of the city to meet the British on the Plains de Abraham—and by doing so he negated the natural defences of the fort. Montcalm was wounded on the Plains and died later in the fort. Wolfe, the leader of the British, died on the Plains. For them the fight for what would become Canada had ended, but for Canada the fight had just begun.

Next it was the turn of the British to make tactical errors resulting in strategic failure. The British proved, over the existence of their Empire, to be damn poor colonizers and even worse conquerors. They should have paid closer

attention to Machiavelli, who would have counselled them to quickly consolidate their holdings by razing Quebec, replacing the existing laws with British Common Law and abolishing the French language. Then the habitants would not rebel in the name of liberty and their own institutions. A governor could have been imposed who encouraged the Anglican religion over the Catholic while ensuring law and order and allegiance to the Crown. That was the way to ensure success. Unfortunately, as was often the case, the British were too concerned with what was happening on their continent to be concerned with this one. France aussi!

So the die was cast from the beginning. The French—the habitants, who eventually became Canadiens and then Quebecois—were never content with their lot. For decades they languished under their seigneurs and the clergy, trapping, logging and farming. And then in the 1960s, when Premier Jean Lesage and his government started the Quiet Revolution, the population attempted a breakout. They wanted more and they knew where to get it. Over the decades since Canada had come into being they had secured some of their desires by skilfully using the vote. Blatant and consistent blackmail usually helped, and Les Anglais capitulated repeatedly to appease them. The Quebec Act, Lord Durham’s report, France’s neglect, and British governors general came out in their favour. But that wasn’t enough. As the French in Canada emerged from their cloistered ghetto, they wanted the liberty that Machiavelli had warned the Prince about.

As contemporary historian Desmond Morton points out in his book A Short History of Canada, it was Quebec’s first political lieutenant, George-Etienne Cartier, who foretold Canada’s future and fate. Cartier had insisted, in making the case to Quebecers in favour of Confederation, that it was only within a new British North America that the cultural nation of French Canada would be safe from American conquest or English assimilation.

1

Trudeau—The Beginning of the End

It was an unlikely Prince, someone who was a mix of both cultures but favoured one, who triggered real breakout for the Quebecois. Pierre Elliot Trudeau set the stage for Quebec separation, even though he fooled most Canadians into believing that he was opposed to it. Sun Tzu, author of the famous military treatise, The Art of War, published in China in 500 B.C., would have been impressed with this man who single-handedly won freedom for his people without any bloodshed.

Trudeau changed Canada and set the stage for its implosion. His economic policies created havoc, raising interest rates and debt to historic highs. His confrontational federalism set the provinces against Ottawa and each other. His chaotic foreign policies served to drive us away from the monarchy and the British Commonwealth and towards the Francophonie. They also aggravated our closest ally, the U.S. The economy sank and unemployment rose. Our dollar started its spiral downward, along with our standard of living.

Originally against taking work to the regions, Trudeau capitulated to his minions and started a series of failed programs to attract work to the backwaters of Canada. He also instituted a system of provincial welfare, poetically called equalization. Billions were wasted. His slogans were unity, social justice and the land is strong, and not one of them was realized. They were illusions and we were duped.

Trudeau’s sleight of hand surpassed even that of Mackenzie King. He marginalized Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia (the West); Newfoundland & Labrador, Nova Scotia, PEI and New Brunswick (the East); the two—now three—Territories (the Rest), and concentrated on Quebec and Ontario (the Best), and in that order. (If you want a comprehensive review of the negatives foisted on Canada by this prime minister, read Just Watch Me! Trudeau’s Tragic Legacy.)

Before Trudeau’s second stint as prime minister, Canada suffered a short spurt of total incompetence by everyone’s favourite political football, Joe Who. It was Joe’s political stupidity that resulted in the loss of a vote of confidence in the budget delivered by John Crosby in 1979. With a minority, a condition normally requiring some co-operation and compromise with the opposition, Joe decided alternatively that the budget would not be altered. Consequently, with a lapse in mathematical calculation on the Tories’ part, the vote went against them.

Had Joe been fast on his feet he might have reminded the Liberals of a similar incident when Pearson lost a vote of confidence in the House but managed to bluff his way out of the predicament and remain in power. Alas, poor Joe was not known for his intellect, and another election resulted. This election, most unfortunately, paved the way for Trudeau to return, after he had resigned his leadership of the Grits. His leadership plunged Canadians into another round of constitutional confrontation resulting in the repatriation of the Constitution and the adoption of a flawed Charter of Rights—and more debt.

Years later Joe returned to lead the Tories further down the trail to oblivion until he finally got the sack and departed from the House. Canadians now await his appointment to the Senate or some other cushy, high-paying assignment. This will be in reward for his being the single greatest reason for the Liberal domination of the House during Jean’s reign. No one has done more outside the Liberal Party to ensure its political dominance.

After Trudeau came Brian Mulroney, another Quebecer. Mulroney ran perhaps the most corrupt governments in Canada. He was on the take even before he took office. So despised was Mulroney when he departed that his Conservatives, the oldest political party in the land, were decimated in the following election, and have never recovered. Mulroney did, however, implement two programs that have affected Canadians everywhere, although they were met with acrimony on a wide scale. The first program, one that brought some prosperity to the land, was the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA). The second that remains, because it is a cash cow for the federal government, was the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

Mulroney carried on the social-welfare system instituted by successive Liberal governments spanning King, Pearson and Trudeau. With little room in the budget for discretionary spending, he doubled the federal debt accumulated by Trudeau. Mulroney decided to leave before he was rejected by the voters.

Mulroney’s successor, Kim Campbell, was soon to set the record for the largest electoral deficit in Canadian political history—a loss of 150 seats. The party did manage to salvage two seats, but the appointed-not-elected prime minister could not retain her own. One historian, it may be Michael Bliss, quipped that despite the monumental losses the party was the first to achieve gender equality in the House of Commons, as one male and one female were re-elected. The media, with a lot of help from herself, turned Kim into the Canadian prototype for blonde jokes.

She couldn’t be criticized too much, though, because she was in love again, and many of us know what that can do to the powers of concentration.

Jean Chrétien, one of Quebec’s favourite sons, took the helm of the Liberals after deposing John Turner and won a majority government. He was so delighted that he packed Kim out of the country to the land of blondes as a bonus. We thought he was being magnanimous—alas, it was really to get her out of the radar range of the Somalia Inquiry. Even so, don Jean had to quash the inquiry when it looked like it was about to get around to calling her, and her aides, to testify (she was the Minister of De Fence at the time of the Somalia murders). Their testimony would have been damaging to senior civilians in the defence department and senior politicos. This was to set the style of the Canadian federal government for the next decade.

Chrétien set Canada adrift—another ten lost years. A scrapper, he resurrected the unco-operative federalism of Trudeau, in sharp contrast to the failed co-operative federalism of Mulroney. Two completely different styles of governance by two different political parties created the same result, however. Neither government nor style was able to capture the imagination of the Canadian people and achieve the desired ends. Chrétien’s governments were noted for little or nothing; Mulroney’s for the failure to pass Meech or Charlottetown. Chrétien, the disciple, had been at the right hand of Trudeau when the Constitution, complete with the Charter of Rights and Wrongs, was repatriated in 1982. No friend of Quebec nationalists, Chrétien oversaw the referendum in Quebec on separation, from which Canada escaped by the slimmest of margins.

Two things resulted from that referendum that appeared to be positives for the federation. First, the Canadian people in general, not just Quebecers, began to take more note of political happenings. Second, Chrétien passed the Clarity Act, which would make for a more open and fair referendum in the future, should there be one. There were also two not-so-good things that resulted. First, other provinces and the natives began to think about separation as well. Second, the fact that there was now a Clarity Act meant that the government was prepared to negotiate separation