The Secession of Quebec and the Future of Canada

Terry A. Crowley is an associate professor of history at the University
of Guelph and the author of Agnes Macphail and the Politics of Equality.

This study by political scientist Robert A. Young ranks among the very
best of the plethora of recently published books on Canada’s future in
the face of the 1995 referendum on Quebec’s independence. The author
sets himself a deceptively simple question: What will happen if Quebec
votes to secede from Canada? The answer he provides is complex,
comprehensive, well balanced, and stated with appropriate nuance.

Following his sweeping introduction to the political, constitutional,
legal, economic, territorial, and societal factors that impinge on the
separation question, Young discusses the peaceful, if sometimes
acrimonious, devolutions that took place in Austro-Hungary, Norway and
Sweden, Malaysia, and Czechoslovakia. In the book’s final section, he
attempts to show how, in the event of a Quebec vote for secession,
negotiations might proceed and what would be on the table for
discussion. Although it tends to underestimate notable stumbling
blocks—e.g., the question of Quebec’s borders, aboriginal claims,
and the constitutional requirements of unanimous consent from the
federal government and the other provinces—this book offers a
masterful analysis of an extremely difficult question.