Yup, since the two aims were seen as antithetical. You can't have the
leader of the provincial seperatist party running around with the belief
that good government was even a possibility within Canada, since if it's
possible, that basically removes your reason for wanting to leave in the
first place. To think that good government in a non-sovereign Quebec is
even possible is thus a priori ruled out, which explains the abysmal
performance of the Bloc Quebecois as the official opposition in parliament.
>It was a time bomb. Nine of the ten provincial premiers symbolically
>signed it (which was not required, since it would be the fundamental law
>of the land either way), but Quebec, at that point led by the sainted Rene
>Levesque and possessed of quasi-separatist sentiments (separatism has
>never been as clear-cut as it is at the moment; previous efforts have
>centered around strange intermediate proposals known as
>"soverignty-association", the details of which were never quite clear),
>refused to sign for reasons that I believe were basically symbolic and
>related to other issues of the moment -- in fact, it seems somewhat
>doubtful that Levesque himself would have wanted his gesture to be
>amplified into the rhetorical monster it has become, 13 years later. But
>the current rhetoric endlessly repeats the claim: "Quebec was excluded
>from the constitution".
Actually, off the start, _all_ of the provinces were excluded from the
process. Trudeau was proceeding unilaterally, and there was even a Supreme
Court decision regarding his actions. Eventually, 9 of the 10 provinces did
agree to the Constitution, only after many of the provincially-sponsored
aspects of it (amending formula, for example) were incorporated into it.
Quebec was of course the only exception, which made it the third time in a
row that they weren't happy with the proposed changes. What was different,
of course, was that the two times prior to 1982 (1971 and 1964) the whole
thing was scuttled because Quebec wasn't happy with things. Up to 1982,
there had been 7 attempts since the 1920's to introduce significant
constitutional changes (the main sticking point being that all
constitutional amendments had to be approved by Britain, although there were
other issues to resolve as well, but fixing that one was seen as
instrumental to tackling the others).
Constitutional conferences have basically created quite a little niche for
themselves in this country in the past 30-odd years, and I think that the
frustration and possible resentment many people feel towards Quebec is
driven by this constant "navel-gazing," and they just want it to be over.
For my part, I think it's too facile to say that this has been driven purely
by Quebec's demands; introspection of this nature is distinctively and
inherently Canadian, and isn't going to end whether Quebec votes "yes" or
"no." But there have been relatively few moments where it wasn't at or near
the top of the national agenda, and that has just plain worn a number of
people out, on all sides of the debate.
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Darren Osadchuk dosadchu@sol.uvic.ca http://www.xtc.net/~osadchuk/
In other words, human essence - not human nature in general (which does not
exist) nor the sum total of qualities and shortcomings in the individual,
but the essence of who somebody is - can come into being only when life
departs, leaving behind nothing but a story.
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