With his strong disdain for regionalism, especially in the form of Quebec nationalism, during the 1979 federal election campaign Trudeau dismissed Joe Clark’s “community of communities” vision of Canada as tantamount to reducing Ottawa to little more than a “headwaiter to the provinces.” The country was on a knife edge, with Trudeau ever steadfast in his rejection of special status for Quebec, but saying, in a rare display of accommodation, that a “No” vote in the 1980 referendum would be interpreted as “a mandate to change the constitution, to renew federalism.”
The much more decisive 1980 “No” vote (60:40) was, of course, followed by Quebec’s “humiliation” at the 1981 constitutional conference. Ever since, regardless of the party in power in Quebec City, “parallelism”—the notion that Quebec identity demands that it craft and administer its own programs parallel to, and not in tandem with, either the federal government or the other provinces—has become orthodoxy in Quebec politics.
Never before had Canada’s elites lined up so solidly behind a single initiative as they did the Meech Lake Accord. All three political parties, business leaders, and virtually every newspaper endorsed it. When Elijah Harper, the Cree member of the Manitoba legislature who held up an eagle feather protesting the Accord, together with Newfoundland’s Clyde Wells, killed the deal, it was viewed as a short pause in the movement forward, a minor irritant to be overcome through a national referendum on the Charlottetown Accord. That unassailable agreement would finally bring Quebec fully into Canada’s bosom.
On Charlottetown, the initial opposition was the lonely voice of Reform Party leader Preston Manning. His message was straightforward: “For the love of Canada, vote ‘No.’ ” While there was plenty in the accord to satisfy Manning (and his like)—Senate reform, unanimity for constitutional amendments, etc.—to him, special status for Quebec was un-Canadian. It was a simple and powerful point that soon resonated among special-interest groups, and those representing women, the poor, and aboriginals added their voices to the mounting opposition. Their concern was less about Quebec’s special status, and more about the failure to grant rights broadly, with fears that the fine print allowed provinces to opt out of federally sponsored social safety-net programs.
In the end, Charlottetown marked both the defeat of asymmetrical federalism and the notion that Canada was a pact between English and French. Instead, English Canada endorsed a vision of symmetrical federalism, where all provinces were to be treated equally. For their part, Quebecers simply viewed Charlottetown’s demise as emblematic of a Canada determined to blunt their national aspirations. Bloc Québécois member of parliament Gilles Duceppe announced: “The way I see it, the population is standing in a kind of steam bath armed with baseball bats. The first to open the door gets one heck of a shot in the mouth.”
The failures of Meech and Charlottetown alienated Quebecers and emboldened Western Canada. The formation of the Bloc Québécois and the entrenchment of the Reform Party redrew the map of electoral politics and, in the 1993 election, led to the near destruction of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. The near-tie result of the 1995 Referendum on sovereignty proved that Quebec separatism was alive, and ignited a flurry of debate inside the federal Liberal caucus concerning the next move on the constitutional chessboard.
Prime Minister Chrétien and his chief strategist, the cerebral gutter-fighter Stéphane Dion, came up with a Plan A and a Plan B. The first was a series of efforts to placate Quebec; if that failed, the second would bring the province to heel. The ill-fated sponsorship program and a parliamentary declaration that Quebec was distinct was the carrot; the stick was a Supreme Court ruling on the legality of Quebec’s right to secede and the Clarity Act, a stern piece of legislation that spelled out precisely the terms and consequences of separation.
Having personally experienced the hothouse environment that is the prime minister’s office, I learned to expect the unexpected. Nonetheless, I was astounded by the audacity of Chrétien’s Plan B. In the early 1990s, our polls showed that nearly one-quarter of Quebecers were “soft separatists” who held conflicting views about Canada and sovereignty. They aspired to a more independent Quebec, sure, but only if an economic union (including a common dollar and passports) with the rest of Canada was part of the arrangement. We were always wary of turning soft separatists into hard ones. Chrétien and Dion read the situation differently. They gambled that by telling Quebec an ambiguous referendum question would not be tolerated, and that there might be no economic union if they voted against Canada, the soft separatists would relent and the endless threats would cease. Like Mulroney before him, it was now Chrétien who rolled the dice.
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