Toward a Canada-Quebec Union

Jean-Guy Quenneville is an associate professor of political studies at
the University of Saskatchewan.

Resnick’s preface to this book states, “But I never believed that
Meech Lake, had it passed in the end, would have brought us more than a
phony peace in constitutional matters. . . . As it is, we have spared
ourselves unnecessary delay.” While not altogether insensitive to the
claims and expectations of French-Canadians, Resnick declares that
“Quebec’s survival [after separation] is its own affair,” and goes
on to argue generally that a federation of any variety that would
recognize Québec’s minimum requirements is already a lost cause in
English-Canada. He then logically goes on to infer that
“English-Canada’s survival [after separation] is its own affair,”
but he wants English-Canadians to immediately start acting as if that
were already the fact. In brief, he wants to finesse the actual
separation and to proceed right away with the negotiations necessary to
bring the parts together again in a willing Canada-Quebec union.

This endeavor, this effort at abstraction, is of course a valid
exercise, a routine for political scientists. Are politicians likely to
heed this advice and proceed with that salutary exercise? I sincerely
hope so, but I doubt it. Would the general voting public be induced to
take the time and expend the mental effort needed? Even if that were the
only price to pay to hold our country together? Read a book—a very
thin one at that? No?