Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
I am coming at this from a position where I think that for a lot of Anglo-Canadians (even if many would be wont to admit it), Quebec independence
might almost come as a relief.
And I think that this is true of a lot of people who don't necessarily harbour much ill-will towards Quebec. Many don't want Quebec to separate but feel that it's going to happen anyway, at some point in the future whether it's 10 years, 50 years or 100 years.
The idea that it just *might* be Quebec's unavoidable destiny has quite a bit of traction. I admit to thinking this myself sometimes.
And so the reaction of more people than you might think could actually be: "OK, they finally did it. Now at least we can get on with our lives as Canadians".
I am sure some will deny it exists to any appreciable agree but you will sense it if you dig deep enough - and if I hear it as a guy with a French name who lives in Quebec, it's gotta be there if you open your eyes and ears and you're John Smith from Weyburn.
As I said, this is a different crowd and sentiment from the "kick the French buggers out and send 'em back to France" set which also exists but only as a minority in Anglo-Canada.
So if you add everything up I think that in the case of independence the main focus would be on stuff like minimizing the hit to the remaining country's economy (especially Ontario's), maintaining an open land route to Atlantic Canada, and not having an unstable basket case dog's breakfast neighbour nation right in the middle of two constituent parts of Canada (obviously without giving the house away to a departing Quebec, of course).
"Punishing" Quebec for breaking up Canada is probably not too high on the list.
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I've long thought that as messy as the divorce process would be (for both sides), ultimately both Quebec and Anglo-Canada would be better off if we parted ways.
Maintaining free trade and a customs union would I'm sure be a priority on both sides. Quebec would have to figure out what exactly to do with Gatineau--you can't exactly have all those now-foreigners working in Canada's civil service, so there'd be a lot of unemployed people. That could be a great thing for independent Quebec: lots of experienced people to hire as they take on responsibilities that used to be the federal government. But for that to work, Quebec would have to have Gatineau be a substantial administrative centre, which would conflict with Quebec City as the capital. In any case, Quebec would want to ensure they stay; I imagine quite a few would relocate across the river to Ottawa during the divorce period in order to secure their future careers if Quebec didn't make it clear they'd have jobs with the Quebec civil service.
Preserving linguistic minority rights on both sides would probably be important. Canada-sans-Quebec would repeal official bilingualism, but some Ontario-style solution where French-language federal services are guaranteed in areas of the country with sizeable francophone populations would be in order. Along with guaranteed continuation of OB at the provincial level in New Brunswick. In exchange, Quebec would retain the existing service rights of the Anglo-Quebecer community.
One interesting sticking point could be immigration. I imagine the two countries, after the split, would pursue pretty different immigration policies. If there's an open border (which everyone would want as part of that free trade area and customs union), it could wreck the ability of the two countries to do that. One possible solution would be to have freedom of travel between the two countries, but not freedom of migration. You could have the border open with monitoring of potential illegal immigrants.
There'd be some talk in Canada-sans-Quebec about moving the capital, but I imagine it would stay in Ottawa, due to all that has been invested in that as well as nobody being able to agree on where the new capital should be or how it should be moved (ie. people in the east coast would likely protest a plan to move it to somewhere like Winnipeg to create an east-west compromise, everybody else would get mad if it was moving to Toronto, etc.). Splitting up the metropolitan area would create interesting complexities for Ottawa. Cross-border commuting would likely collapse, removing a big and nagging transportation problem. The civil service would lose its Gatinois employees, but it would also lose a lot of its workload too. It would also lose its sizeable office space in Hull. Could end up being a wash, overall (loss of Gatinois employees and Hull office space offset by reduction in the workforce and resulting reduction in office space needs). If the process got too messy or Quebec didn't make believable job assurances for the Gatinois employees of Canada, Ottawa could be inundated with migrants, which could get really messy (as I mentioned above).
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