My Japanese name is Patrick Nishikawa and I am a Japanese scientist. I was reborn under a Japanese name on March 29 of the 22nd year of the Emperor Heisei known as 2010 outside Japan. Prior to my Japanese rebirth, I was known by my quintessential French Canadian name which I continue to use for scientific purposes. Having left Canada in 1980, I remain a pre-Charter Quebecker of the 1970s in heart and soul.
Federalism
Ideally, a land mass can be made of independent sovereign states which maintain peace and commerce through treaties which are mutually beneficial. The next possible step, for a big sovereign state, is to subdivide itself into more manageable units which are given a certain degree of sovereignty over their own affairs. As soon as the smaller units have partial sovereignty, we have a federation. Not all subdivided states are federations, for example, France and Japan have smaller units known as prefectures, but they have no partial sovereignty. They are just administrative subdivisions and therefore there are not parts of a federation.
There are two issues a federation must confront from the onset. It must establish the respective powers of the federal government and the individual states. Furthermore, it must concurrently decide whether the federation should be symmetric. I use this word as it is often used in “English” Canada or the Rest of Canada (ROC). It implies that provinces should have equal rights and identical areas of jurisdiction. It does not imply that they should be of equal size or importance.
Sometimes, consistent with a certain Anglo-Saxon sense of individual rights, it also implies that individuals should have the same rights irrespective of their province of residence. I will skip this thorny issue for the moment because I do not wish to focus this article on the rights of individuals but on the stability of a federation.
Stability
As a scientist, when confronted with a complex nonlinear system, I often look for equilibrium points. Around an equilibrium point, one can use linear theory to enquire on the stability of the system. For example, a marble sitting at the bottom of a curved bowl is neatly resting at equilibrium. If we turn the bowl upside down and put the marble on the top of the bowl, it sits precariously on the top. One equilibrium point is stable and the other is unstable. Generally, the marble at the bottom of the bowl will oscillate until friction puts it to rest. So, under small disturbances, it will return to its position.
A marble on top of the inverted bowl will go away from its position. It is hard to predict what it will do ultimately unless a far more sophisticated analysis is performed. If a feedback mechanism is used to keep it on top, it can be stabilized as jugglers do with sticks and balls! In nature, birds are intrinsically stable like passenger airplanes, but insects, like modern fighter jets, use a feedback mechanism to maintain stability.
In politics, a stable equilibrium only requires a degree of conservatism to stay more or less where it is. And unstable equilibrium requires coercion to insure stability and is distasteful to most Westerners and particularly to an Anglo-Saxon mind.
Symmetric Federalism is Not a stable Canadian possibility
The real issue for me is whether or not, in the Canadian context, symmetric federalism is a stable system. And if it is not, we should stop deluding ourselves. I believe that it is not a stable system. It is stabilized historically by unpalatable policies; unpalatable to either the English or to the French and sometimes to both. The most distasteful policy that resulted from a belief in symmetrical federalism is probably Official Bilingualism (The Official Languages Act). More dangerous than the bilingualism issue in my view however, is Multiculturalism (The Multicultural Act of Canada in our case). In any event, I want to explain why, even in the best of worlds, Canada cannot achieve “symmetric federalism”.
Symmetry is Doomed
The easiest way to see that it is a doomed policy is to simply imagine that we have achieved a perfect symmetric union and to show that it will lead to an asymmetric situation even if all provinces act in good faith.
Some provinces would have powers they do not want simply to insure that all provinces are satisfied and that the system is symmetric. So for example, Quebec might have powers over immigration and citizenship but so would the provinces that do not care for them.
In the course of time, it is very easy to imagine that some provinces would want to combine their immigration bureaucracies with other provinces to reduce costs. For example, B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba might pool their bureaucracies. Eventually more English speaking provinces might join.
While this would not in itself constitute a threat to the symmetry of the federation, one can argue that this would be very unstable due to the socio-cultural fabric of Canada. Indeed one easily imagines a prime minister who would then convince the premiers of the English provinces to simply surrender this immigration jurisdiction to the federal government. Most likely, voters in the ROC by virtue of being a majority and by virtue of cultural similarity would acquiesce because they would not mind relinquishing a power to a government they ultimately control. Quebec would insist on retaining its own jurisdiction.
In the following example, I do not include the possibility of nefarious intent. This is a Trudeau-free scenario. In a family with 9 boys and one girl, any symmetric arrangement put in place by the parents, giving all children equal rights and privileges, will almost naturally evolve into an asymmetric situation. It is what we physicists, call “spontaneous symmetry breaking”. The 9 boys, like most English provinces, may insist that they are also “distinct” but they are unlikely to suddenly go for a breast augmentation.
The Swiss German majority is full of Cantons that would literally go to war with one another rather than concede a right to the federation. So in Switzerland the situation is often the opposite of Canada: the French minority is more likely to concede rights to the federation than the German majority! Hence symmetric federalism works because the majority group jealously guards its cantonal jurisdictions because of its historical balkanization.
Canada will fail if we continue to delude ourselves
So, in my humble view, there will always be Quebec and the ROC. This is an over simplification but it is a far less dangerous simplification than insisting on a symmetric federation that does not exist and if it did, would not last very long.
In dealing with Quebec, the ROC has failed to take into consideration that Quebeckers act as a block. Whether it is for the BLOC or NDP, Quebeckers for the last 20 years have been voting in federal elections based primarily on the selfish interest of Quebec. This is the deepest legacy of Duceppe and his gang to Canadian politics - the voluntary disconnection of Quebec from the governance of Canada.
Unfortunately the voters of the ROC continue to vote as if Quebec was just another province. But it is not. The ROC needs to have a common front against Quebec otherwise the united political class of Quebec will always succeed in extracting from the ROC more than it is entitled to.
The ROC needs to call Quebec’s bluff on separation. Separatism in Quebec is now a pale joke. It is interesting to see that many serious separatists of the 1960s have either become federalists or have simply dropped out of sight. This was the case of Pierre Bourgeault and, to some extent, the writer Michel Tremblay. Separatism in Quebec has been reduced to a good cop/bad cop routine involving the entire political class of the province.
As previously stated the Official Bilingualism and Multiculturalism laws, just to name two policies, have lead to consequences far worse than expected, thanks again to this delusional belief in a symmetric Canada.
Official Bilingualism - A Symmetrical Nightmare
Official Bilingualism was originally a way to make French Canadians feel at home. Indeed the entire federal bureaucracy was in the 1950s heavily larded with Anglophones.
However, even the 1956 Royal Commission of Judge Thomas Tremblay, made it clear that the problem of the French identity in Canada could not be solved by gimmicks that did not take into account Quebec’s form of nationalism. Trudeau, the ex-fascist, would see to it that solutions would be found outside the clerical nationalism that he now hated with the religiosity of all new converts. Canada would get multiculturalism, official bilingualism and eventually the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Official bilingualism as it is applied in Canada, more perhaps than any other policy, rests on the belief of absolute symmetry between English and French in the Canadian context. But this can only work if French and English had an equal status and an equal degree of difficulty. Perhaps it could have worked if an affirmative action program had been used to help Anglos learn French and feel that they have an equal chance. The world wide importance of English, which has nothing to do with Canada itself, automatically insures the creation of a Mandarin bilingual class mainly composed of Quebeckers and French speakers from the ROC simply because educated Quebeckers will automatically know both languages.
Today, Quebec has most of the necessary powers it needs resting in National Assembly in Quebec City, why do we need such a system? Federal bilingualism should only be a question of federal forms and polite public service. Official bilingualism should not be rigged so as to insure the creation of a Mandarin class of civil servants. It is precisely because Quebec is culturally and linguistically distinct that the Mandarin class is grotesquely unfair. If Quebec was just “another” province, then who would care?
The Supreme Court and the Quebec Court of Appeal – Asymmetry that works
The interaction between the Supreme Court of Canada and the Quebec Court of Appeal provided a perfect example of an asymmetric solution that until recently was believed to work perfectly well.
Still today, more than 99% of the Civil Law cases never make it past the Quebec Court of Appeal, Quebec’s highest federal tribunal. This is not the case for the other provinces ruled by Common Law. The Supreme Court, living in the real world, recognized the specific nature of Quebec and thus the asymmetry was born.
On some occasions, the Supreme Court will take a civil case from Quebec. On such occasions, the three judges from Quebec presumably hold a degree of moral authority than any intelligent person would recognize.
In any event, the judges on this court, dealing mostly with written arguments, are supposed to be the cream of the cream of our judicial establishment. Therefore I assume that the three judges from Quebec never had any problem explaining to their ultra-smart brethren the differences between Tort Law (Common Law) and the Law of Obligation (Civil Law). In fact this happens all the time in the European Union courts in the English language.
Today, in part thanks to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we are also told that we need bilingual judges. Indeed, if a doctor drops his Kirpan or a women refuses to have her Burka taken off for facial surgery, one can imagine that a simple Quebec Law of Obligation case will suddenly generate a “Charter” case thanks to various presumed Charter rights. Thus it makes its costly way to the Supreme Court of Canada.
As court cases become more and more numerous and more connected to Charter rights, the “Official Bilingualism” crowd comes in and demands fully bilingual judges. They would claim that the level of bilingualism needed to understand all the subtleties of a case would require natural French speakers. As a result, a large number of qualified candidates for the Supreme Court would be excluded.
This is ridiculous. Einstein wrote all his paper in German even while in the USA. He had them translated by secretaries and colleagues. Now we are told than a legal Einstein should be prevented from being appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Back to Reality
Although I do not want to go in the details of the “Quebecois Nation” of Harper, I want to say that he acted in full recognition of the present reality. The French Canadian Nation of yesteryear, fanatically attached to the Roman Catholic Church, which embraced even Franco-Americans of New England, is now a thing of the past.
The Quebec Nation of the separatists neither exists as an ethnological entity (too many people with primary allegiance to Canada live in Quebec), nor does it exist as political entity (Quebec is not independent yet). What has slowly emerged from the days following the Quiet Revolution is a French Canadian identity specific to Quebeckers.
That is the Quebecois Nation of Harper. Its members are mostly “pure laines” (pure wool) but also some Anglos and immigrants are more or less part of this evolving entity.
This new entity is strong enough and with enough self awareness to be truly distinct and to act as a block. Harper did not concede anything in recognizing reality. In the words of the conservative American columnist George Will, conservatism is the truth. In other words, true conservatives accept the situation as it is on the ground and apply small but constant pressure to change society in small steps but in a predictable direction. In the long run, these changes can be great but are never truly felt.
The only concession Harper ever made to Quebec was the so-called “fiscal imbalance” payment of 700 million dollars which Charest promptly showered on the voters.
Besides this payment, I am hard pressed to see any concession Harper ever made to Quebec. But the time of truth has arrived. Mr. Harper has a majority. His first test will be the reform of the parliament. Given the powers that are now in Quebec City, it would be a true scandal if Harper bended to Mr. Mulcair’s demands. The demands are ridiculous because if seats were added following Mulcair’s prescription, the only result would be an increase of MPs keeping Quebec’s disproportionate ratio almost intact! Do we need more incompetents in that institution?
Mr. Harper represents all Canadians. But, consistent to his firewall theory, he seems to accept the fact that Quebec is the ultimate guardian of its culture and customs. But it is imperative, in my view, that the ROC also becomes self-aware that it is, as a whole, distinct from Quebec. As such, it must negotiate with Quebec on the grounds that the interest of Quebec will never be completely the same as the interests of the ROC.
Separation and Conclusion
If most people in the ROC were to take the direction I suggest, it could lead to a resurgence of separatism in Quebec. But true separatism, the willingness of Quebeckers to go it alone, is better in the long run than the present situation.
The idea of two national groups, constantly throwing poison darts at each other, cannot in the long run be good for the whole. Both the ROC and Quebec can be successful entities if they accept each other’s existence and act with an awareness that their own identity, is worth preserving and worth developing. They can do this in a confederation or as independent states, but they must do it and they can do it - provided they do not get eaten alive by the multicultural dragon. I will discuss that evil in my next articles.
Sayonara, mata ne,
Etienne Forest is an accelerator physicist who was born during the last year of the Duplessis regime (1959). He is presently a researcher at Japan’s High Energy Accelerator Research Organization and a professor at the Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Kanagawa, Japan. He is known for his work on the application of geometric integration and perturbation theory to the field of accelerator physics. Etienne Forest received degrees from Quebec, France and the United States. He has lived in Quebec, Maryland, California and now lives north of Tokyo. He is, by choice, a multicultural person.
Etienne can be reached at: eforest@hushmail.com
