Anglophones au Quebec: anglophones in Quebec.

The popular media is attracted to the extremes. It's not surprising, then, particularly if we have access to only English-language media, that we get a skewed picture of Quebec. While it's true that only some 7 percent of Quebec anglophones and allophones voted OUI in the 1995 referendum, Howard Galganov and William Johnson are not representative of Quebec anglophones, just as Guy Bertrand does not well represent Quebec federalists. As Dermod Travis says below, "Part of the reason for the hardening of attitudes is that English Canada hears about Quebec from [people] who are not really representative of the average Quebecer."

For this third Inroads roundtable, we bring together five anglophones who are, we hope, more representative of the average anglo-Quebecois. This does not mean that they speak with one voice. At one end is a person who voted OUI in the 1995 referendum; at the other, someone willing to consider partition's strategic value.

The following is an edited version of the discussion that took place, in Montreal, the evening of January 21, 1998. The participants were:

Howard M. Greenfield is a lawyer in private practice. In 1985 he was instrumental in establishing a legal clinic for illegal migrants eligible under the amnesty program. He is a former president of the Equality Party, was interim regional director of the Montreal Chapter of Alliance Quebec in 1995, and has appeared before the Beaudoin-Dobbie Committee on Constitutional Reform. He is legal counsel for various cultural and non-profit organizations.

Julius Grey has been a practicing attorney since 1974 and a member of McGill University's Faculty of Law since 1977. From 1977 to 1985, he was a lecturer at the Universite de Montreal. He is the author of Immigration Law in Canada as well as many articles. He served as president of the Canadian Human Rights Foundation from 1985 to 1988, and was president of the Task Force on Canadian Federalism from 1990 to 1992.

Peter Scowen has worked as a journalist in Quebec since landing a job at the Sherbrooke Record in 1983. He covered the Quebec City region and the National Assembly for CBC Radio from 1985 to 1987, and was co-owner and editor of a weekly, The Stanstead Journal, from 1987-1991. He has served as editor-in-chief of two alternative Montreal weeklies, the Mirror and, currently, Hour.

Carolyn Sharp is editor-in-chief of the French-language current affairs monthly Relations. She is an active member of the Federation des Femmes du Quebec and of the Women's Ecumenical Network of Quebec. She has a daughter who attends a French-language high school.

Dermod Travis was born in Alberta, studied International Relations at the University of British Columbia, and was a senior policy analyst for the Alberta Liberal Party. In 1990 he moved to Montreal where he established Public Interest Research Associates. With other young, bilingual Montrealers he co-founded Forum Action Quebec in 1994, a non-partisan organization that promotes cross-cultural dialogue on issues facing Quebec and Canada.

Arthur Milner (chair) is a playwright and director, and an editor of Inroads. Originally from Montreal, he has lived in Ottawa since 1971. He returns regularly to Montreal where he is associate dramaturg with Playwrights Workshop Montreal and teaches playwriting at Concordia University.

INROADS: We're meeting in the aftermath of the ice storm. Did the response to the storm stimulate any thoughts about Quebec?

CAROLYN SHARP: There was a self-sufficiency, a lot of bricolage [doing it yourself]. An ability to figure out solutions. It reminded me of when, a few years ago, the Conseil des Affaires Sociales went to the Gaspe to find out what sort of training people wanted, and got a lot of requests for butchering courses. We couldn't figure it out, there aren't any butchering jobs there. But people said that if they knew how to butcher properly, they could put the stuff they hunted in the off-season into freezers and the inspectors wouldn't find it. That's the kind of self-sufficiency I've been seeing. Where I work, people who had electricity found that no one without electricity wanted to come stay with them. There were a million and a half people without electricity in below-zero weather and a few thousand people in shelters. They all wanted to stay home.

JULIUS GREY: People in Quebec reacted to the crisis exactly the same way anyone else in North America would have reacted. They managed rather well. But they would have managed rather well in Toronto or Boston.

PETER SCOWEN: I was struck by the ease with which Bouchard called in the Canadian Army and how he was willing for them to have power of detention or arrest. At first he said, "We pay taxes so we have a right to them," but he knew there was no political gain in making an issue of it. But he seemed comfortable, philosophically at ease.

DERMOD TRAVIS: We're still trying to get through the crisis, but I think afterwards people are going to be angry. In the long run, there's going to be more questioning of institutions like Hydro-Quebec.

SCOWEN: There's a sense that in questioning Hydro-Quebec you're questioning the foundation of separatist politics, the Quebec sait faire, the state-knows-best attitude surrounding separatism.

HOWARD GREENFIELD: Premier Bouchard knows how to transcend certain parochial debates and turn things to his own political account. I'm not saying this cynically--in a sense, I take my hat off to him. A couple of other reflections: first, the buzzwords. [journalist] Michel David pointed out in Le Soleil that at the provincial level you heard "solidarity" and, at the federal level, "security"--with respect to bringing in the troops; second, with all these emergency edicts and legislative or executive devices, it smacks of the War Measures Act atmosphere. Of course, the enemy is different this time.

SCOWEN: It struck me that we could give soldiers the power of arrest so quickly. If you're an 18-year-old reservist who plays war games every second weekend and suddenly you've got the power to handcuff someone...

TRAVIS: I think it was appropriate to call in the army and they handled that the right way. I was concerned about the "management by decree," the idea that Cabinet can pass as many laws as it chooses without public debate.

GREY: They didn't actually legislate by decree. They're now purporting to pass Hydro plans by decree but the Hydro Act may give them such powers. What was interesting was the question of removing people from their homes against their will. I tend to think they can in certain circumstances but...

SHARP: How many people were actually removed from their homes?

GREY: Maybe one family. And that family had small children so you really had no choice.

SHARP: A CBC reporter commented that Bouchard became a sovereignist during the War Measures Act when he saw soldiers in the streets--and now he was going to see the soldiers again. The reporter asked, "How's this going to affect him?" I wanted to say, "Can you not see the difference?" I work in French-speaking milieu and I didn't hear anyone question bringing in the army. I woke up one morning and there were piles of branches every 10 feet in front of my house. It made me feel good that someone had started cleaning. The comment at my workplace was, "It's good to have people who are trained to deal with emergencies, but why do we also have to give them war training?"

INROADS: What's your relationship to Quebec? Is it your province or your country?

SCOWEN: That kind of question drives me nuts. What can you say? Quebec is a province. I live in it. Canada is divided into 10 provinces and some territories and I live in one of the provinces. Until further notice. Certainly the provincial government has far greater impact on your life. The federal government is taxes and passports and that's about it.

SHARP: What about television and radio? That's the federal government.

SCOWEN: You don't see it. You're not dealing with the federal government when you turn on your television.

GREY: I have grave misgivings about the tendency to worry constantly about who you are or what your allegiance is. When it comes to Canada and Quebec, we should stop analyzing ourselves. That's one of the games played by ultra-hard-line federalists who say we're Canadians first, and by hard-line sovereignists who say we're not Canadians at all. It's perfectly possible to feel an equal allegiance to both. But I would say that it's impossible to ignore Quebec as a fundamental allegiance if you insist on living in French and English. Quebec is about the only place where you can live in French and English except for parts of New Brunswick, where you wouldn't want to live, and maybe Ottawa.

SHARP: Where you'd want to live even less.

GREY: I think Quebec's is an allegiance stronger than that to other Canadian provinces. With respect to Saskatchewan or Manitoba, that's not a fundamental allegiance--it's more like a municipal or local allegiance. In Quebec there's a sense of belonging to both, without any contradiction.

GREENFIELD: Most English-speaking Quebecers can rank their allegiance and these days they will say that they are Canadians first and Quebecers second--that they're Canadians living in Quebec rather than Quebecers living in Canada. It's unfortunate because it prevents them from seeing the predicament of French-speaking Quebecers. They assume that if a French-speaking Quebecer cannot rank his allegiance the same way then he's not a true Canadian. Which plays into the hands of people like Preston Manning and gives rise to some fundamental problems in Quebec politics like partition.

SCOWEN: It's a moronic way of identifying your allegiance. "Federalist" and "separatist" are very good terms.

GREENFIELD: That's a political appropriation of vocabulary. Most English-speaking Quebecers don't think of themselves as federalist first. They say they're Canadians. In other words, the form the Canadian state takes is really secondary to their sense of belonging to something beyond the borders of Quebec.

SHARP: Identity is a complicated issue. As someone who wasn't born here, who's an anglophone, and who spends most of her life in French, I feel uncomfortable when people call me an anglo-Quebecoise. I don't feel part of the English Montreal community. I'm militantly Quebecoise. I work in a francophone milieu and my child goes to a French-speaking school. I fight the use of Quebecois as a synonym for French Quebecer.

TRAVIS: I chose to live here. I feel comfortable living here. The society in which I now live shares some values with people in other parts of Canada but there are also characteristics that distinguish it. And I find it sad that we're always put in the position of being either a federalist or a separatist when probably 70 percent of Quebecers could find something acceptable to the greater whole. I think there's an obligation for people to build a consensus here and then say to the rest of Canada, "We believe this will work in Quebec and we believe that it works for English Canadians as well." There are for me certain givens: Quebec is surrounded by a sea of English and has to be able to protect its language and culture.

SCOWEN: You said, "I chose to live here." As a born-and-raised Montrealer, I notice this all the time, as if it's a political statement--that you choose to live here in spite of the difficulties. You hear it a lot from out-of-province anglophones who live here and you think, "So what? I don't care where you choose to live. You live here. Get on with it."

SHARP: But if you're from away, you've made a choice.

GREY: You may have made a choice or a choice may have been made for you by your employer. That's not important. My position is simple: if Quebec separates, I stay. The only thing that would make me leave--and I could leave Canada for the same reason--is if a totally unpalatable regime came into power. But I think the present Quebec government has lost an opportunity. The English are paranoid. The partitionist hysteria drives me up the wall. And, if there were separation, I would resist because I don't want to live in a ghetto. The last thing I want is partition, another Belfast. That said, the English are hysterical for a reason. The referendum was a frightening experience. The government should have acted with total and clear generosity. It's the person who has made the gain that should take the first step towards reconciliation. And what did this government do? It moved against English signs and hospitals. They were bloody-minded on humanitarian exemptions on the school issue. They extended the powers of the language inspectors. The Party wanted that, not the government. The Parti Quebecois has a very democratic structure, which is not always a good thing. So they were hostages to Bruno Viens [former president of the "hard-line" Montreal Centre council of the PQ] and people like him. What they should have done, and it would have taken courage, was to stare down Bruno Viens and say, "No, that was the '70s, the situation is different. The French language is secure." The French language has to be protected. There's no question about repealing linguistic protections, especially the one that's absolutely crucial--that immigrants have to go to French schools. And even that has to be understood within a North American context, in other words, that people aren't going to be deprived of the opportunity to learn English. But the opportunity to make an historic compromise was missed. If Mr. Bouchard had taken a firm stand against the language crazies that surround him, he would have had the English, not voting for him, but moving towards a reconciliation.

TRAVIS: I had dinner with Bruno Viens. At 9:30 he said, in perfect English, "I now will do what every good Quebecer does Thursday at this time. I must go home and watch ER." I asked if anyone from Alliance Quebec had ever approached him to talk about how the English and French communities might work more closely together. Never. We've had this debate for 30 years and besides a few small efforts the debate has taken place by somebody taking a shot in The Gazette and somebody at Le Devoir taking a shot back. We have a week of shots but we don't have a lasting dialogue that could build confidence.

GREENFIELD: I don't think any advantage is to be gained by characterizing separatists as paranoid or partitionists as hysterical. Each of those positions should be addressed on its own merits. Certainly separatism is defensible and I don't like to see economic terrorism used against separatism because I think it can be defeated by something more noble. By the same token, I don't like to see partition assailed by those who speak of ghettos where others see communities, or try to assimilate this to Belfast or the Balkans.

TRAVIS: Partition is the worst nightmare of all the possible scenarios.

GREENFIELD: I would describe partition as a strategy of "mutually assured destruction" that ensures that neither side makes the first move. The vast majority of partitionists speak of it as a contingency plan. In other words, they don't accept that Quebec can leave with its borders intact.

SCOWEN: If Quebec negotiates its separation from Canada, the issue of borders will have to be negotiated. So it is an issue. I don't like partition because everything partitionists detest about separation they are willing to embrace in an opportunistic fashion. They won't admit it but it's not really about federalism--it's basically an ethnic English thing.

GREENFIELD: What I don't like about partition is that it's primarily an English-speaking movement and it tends to demonize, not just separatists, but also French-speaking federalists who cannot rank their allegiances as clearly as can English-speaking Quebecers.

GREY: The partition movement represents a radicalization and that always happens before a catastrophe. Not that there is a catastrophe every time there is a radicalization, but it is normal--when things are coming to a head about something like nationalism--that both sides become radicalized. One of the peculiarities about nationalism is that people who are bewitched by it understand the folly of every other outbreak of nationalism but cannot see their own. I don't consider all separatists as necessarily nationalists. It's legitimate to take a position that it would be better to have this border for such and such a reason. But what we have been seeing since '95 is a combat between two groups of nationalists who rely on deep-rooted prejudices and fears.

SCOWEN: Since the referendum, there's been a recognition--at least by me and people around me--that there's nationalism on both sides. The finger is always pointed at Quebec as the evil nationalists, but hard-core Canadian federalism is also a kind of nationalism.

SHARP: Nationalism isn't necessarily a bad thing. Pride in one's collective identity is important. Having borders allows people to have collective projects.

SCOWEN: Whet I mean by nationalism is the instinct to see anything that is not of the same culture as a danger and a threat.

SHARP: That's one form of nationalism. If nationalism is a bad thing, then why not become Americans? As soon we ask that question, we find we do believe in some form of nationalism.

GREY: My answer is: because of the type of social system in the United States.

SHARP: What about the decision to have signs in French--to create a French face in Quebec? I support that.

GREY: I agree. The problem was the word "only."

SHARP: I believe in some limits on other languages. This is the only French-speaking society in North America, with pressure from the rest of Canada and even more from the States. What annoys me is that we go after the place that sells Hebrew monuments but meanwhile McDonald's has gone back to using an apostrophe.

GREY: I certainly would go after McDonald's before the Hebrew monuments, but there's nothing more preposterous than a government going after apostrophes.

TRAVIS: What I found interesting about Bill 40, which brought back the language inspectors, was that a coalition of French and English came together to say that they didn't want the Commission back. But the minute the hearings were over, that coalition disappeared.

GREY: You can have inspections. Every law has inspections. But they gave themselves the right to demand documents from a business without a court order.

GREENFIELD: There are any number of statutes in Quebec or anywhere else which offer administrative officials broad powers of investigation if it's suspected that laws are not being followed. Where it becomes inflammatory is when you're dealing with a political issue like language. But I think English-speaking Quebecers are prepared to accept the imposition of French on signs as a political compromise and out of respect for the majority. There are a few ideological souls who insist on the right to unilingual English signs, but when you eliminate English from signs you obviously have a problem.

SCOWEN: I have no problem with Bill 101. It's a very successful law. My test for whether Quebec is going down the right track is whether debates and issues have remained democratic. And they have. Bad things have happened but they've always been corrected. Whether it's because of Supreme Court rulings, or public outcry, or by people coming to their senses, the worst things have never stuck.

GREY: Most of what the nationalist movement achieved at least for the first 20 years of the Quiet Revolution is entirely positive. But it's possible that the revolution has done its thing. The theory of hard-line is that you have to pretend that things are worse than before--even though all the statistics point to Quebec being more French. But the terrible thing about the PQ is this strange correlation where it's the hard-liners who have the necessary social policies.

SHARP: How do you explain it?

GREY: Naivete. Nationalism appears to be an attractive anti-establishment position.

SCOWEN: It gets them elected.

GREY: There are people in every society who are nationalistic simply out of instinct. I fully accept that Bruno Viens is not racist. But this French militancy is stronger than they are. And with respect to social programs it's counter-productive. A break in Canada in the next year or two is completely irrational from the point of view of those who want to keep the social programs. They should be allying themselves with the fairly considerable centre-left English population.

SHARP: To say that someone like Francoise David [high-profile former president of the "radical" Federation des Femmes du Quebec] is simply irrational...

GREY: You have to explain why she's irrational. She has an inner thing that is stronger than herself which makes her adopt two positions--social programs and the separation of Quebec--which are incompatible.

SHARP: There are rational constructions of the argument on both sides.

TRAVIS: I don't think they're incompatible. Quebec has the necessary infrastructure, population and wealth to make it as a sovereign country. There'll be a short-term price, but they can do it and I'll stay if they do. Do I think that is the best option? No. I think there's a better approach. I lived in Alberta during the Meech Lake period, and I always found it amusing to watch people from Ontario and Quebec come out west to sell us Meech Lake. There was always a subtle message to the salesmanship--that good Canadians support Meech and therefore we were bad Canadians. It was very patronizing. We ended up talking about east-west or French-English relations instead of what Meech Lake would mean to our day-to-day lives. There are legitimate concerns in the west, in the Maritimes and in Ontario in terms of protection of their own culture and about the division of powers. We tend to focus on Quebec and the Constitution, without recognizing that we can build into the process finding a place for English Canada's identity and the aboriginal identity. But I want to get back to Julius' missed opportunities. Many people in the anglophone community know about Bill 178 and Bill 101 and Bill 140, they know every bit of language legislation, but they wouldn't have a clue what a single mother on welfare gets, or about Lucien Bouchard's policy on water privatization or [education minister] Pauline Marois' plan to reorganize schools. These are missed opportunities to develop cross-linguistic coalitions on issues that truly matter. I agree with Julius that the stronger should reach out to the weaker. But if the stronger is not reaching out, the weaker should take the initiative to start a dialogue.

GREY: Dialogue is always useful but the English have absolutely nothing more to give. Language legislation cannot go further in restricting the use of English. It can go in new directions, to make certain that French has its place on the Internet and so on. But the political dialogue must be started by the Quebec government. And I know there are people in the government who want to, but they would have to face down Bruno Viens and people like him.

SHARP: I have heard the name Bruno Viens more this evening than in a whole year at Relations. He seems very important to English Montrealers.

SCOWEN: There is a place the English can go further in Quebec. My new word for 1998 is "integration." I've begun to think that the actual separatists in Quebec are the real anglophones--like the British and the Alliance Quebec core. They've decided that integration happens to Greeks and Italians and people from strange countries, but not to them. You can never be part of the mainstream, you can never get involved in the greater debates in your society if you insist on being separate from that society. There are a group of young, English-speaking Quebecers--they call themselves the Quebec-Wide Movement or something like that--that have been pushing for a single school board, English and French all mixed up together, so that their children will grow up with French-speaking friends, be part of the French-speaking mainstream, speak French in school, at business, and be comfortable with it. Take someone who is first-generation Italian or Greek. At home they speak Greek, but they also learn English and they've gone through the French school system. They now have French friends who are going to move on through Quebec society. They maintain their Greek culture at home to the extent that they want to. And the question is, why is it so impossible for the English to imagine that they could continue their traditions and culture if their children went through the French school system? They would remain as anglophone as they wanted to remain. They'd still have family outside the province, or in other parts of the world. The whole English position in Quebec is "we do not want to change." This whole thing about "we've learned French, aren't we great," to me that's just a shill. What they're really saying is "don't bother us anymore."

GREY: I agree with you. I've always maintained it was a mistake to guarantee English rights in education instead of guaranteeing a single system that would be 80-percent French. Integration is essential whenever different groups live in a society. It involves participating in Quebec cultural events, going to the Theatre du Nouveau Monde and reading the French press. There are the two solitudes and the solitude is worse on the English side. Because we are in North America, francophones hear American music and go to American movies.

SCOWEN: Why aren't you a member of the PQ?

GREY: Because I do not agree with separation.

SCOWEN: So join the Party and tell them that.

GREY: The PQ is a legitimate party which has as Article One of its program the separation of Quebec. They have every right to do it.

SCOWEN: But its option isn't firm. Do you think that everyone who votes for the PQ thinks Quebec should separate?

GREENFIELD: Rene Levesque changed the PQ for three or four years. If a number of people who had a major bone of contention with Article One were to join the PQ because they could break bread on other basic issues, then you might be able to open up a dialogue instead of having all the federalists in the Liberal camp and all the separatists in the PQ camp.

INROADS: You've mentioned the possibility of a consensus in Quebec. What are the elements of that consensus?

SHARP: We live in a province with three big blocks. You have a block that believes in political sovereignty no matter what and a probably slightly larger federalist block. In the middle you've got this mass of people who are looking for a consensus.

TRAVIS: I think you could get a 70-percent consensus if it meant there was a country with an ocean on one side and an ocean on the other side and an ocean on the north.

GREY: And a very autonomous, very powerful Quebec.

SHARP: The problem isn't finding a consensus in Quebec. The problem is that that consensus is totally unsellable in nine other provinces and two territories.

TRAVIS: I don't agree.

SHARP: I've lived in Toronto and I'm convinced of it.

TRAVIS: I was born in Alberta. I've watched people from Peter Lougheed and Rene Levesque to Ralph Klein and Lucien Bouchard develop remarkable friendships and partnerships. I've always felt that it has something to do with Quebec feeling isolated from Ottawa because of language and culture and Alberta feeling isolated from Ottawa because of distance.

SCOWEN: One of the main hurdles is Quebec's English community--not just the hard-liners. If French-speaking Quebecers saw an English community that was willing to integrate in very tangible ways, such as a single school board, that would relieve a lot of their fears.

GREY: If you tried to get a single school board you'd get total opposition from the English and French teachers' unions, because they would be scared of losing their jobs.

SCOWEN: But if it were a legitimate part of the discussion, if English Quebecers looked at integration as a possibility, that would help. Now, every time the issue comes up they go to the Supreme Court.

SHARP: I don't think it's an internal problem. I don't hear anybody on the French side talking about eliminating English school boards. Something along the lines of asymmetrical federalism would have rallied the majority of Quebecers, and I still think it would, but I don't think it's going to happen.

GREY: If English Canada were told that it's this or separation, you could sell it. The first rule is, Canada remains as a country from coast to coast. Second, Quebec is fundamentally French speaking and the protection of the French language remains--as well those court judgments that make it conform with fundamental human rights. Third, there are certain small constitutional adjustments, like immigration and a few other things...

SHARP: What about communications?

GRAY: I don't see why. The CBC is important--particularly to francophones outside Quebec.

SHARP: Quebec's control over communications has been a major issue for both the Quebec Liberals and the PQ.

TRAVIS: If we can envision a country with 10 equal provinces we can also envision a country with three equal cultures or peoples.

GREY: I'm not a bleeding heart. There are two fundamental cultures.

TRAVIS: English, French, and also aboriginal.

GREENFIELD: If you want to talk about language groups or fundamental languages, that's fine. If you're talking about fundamental cultures you run into a real problem. Trudeau repudiated biculturalism and opted for bilingualism, which made a good deal of sense, because, as somebody once said, "when I hear the word culture I reach for my pistol."

GREY: That was Goebbels.

GREENFIELD: Yes, and I know that you know that. And I think we should steer away from the notion of culture in any sense of constitutional consecration like the plague.

SHARP: If you want to rally francophones, there has to be an admission that French is the vulnerable official language and there has to be a commitment of the whole country...

GREY: That commitment exists.

SHARP: I don't think it does. I sat on the board of a French-language day care in Toronto. We were trying to create a French milieu so little kids could learn their language and the inspectors come and for three hours do activities with us in English. And when we said we wanted a day care for children who have French spoken in the home, we were told it was discrimination and we had to serve the whole community.

GREY: The problem is with Howard's fear of the word "culture." There is a fundamental difference between Quebec and Canada. However much English Canada pays lip service to Ukrainian or Italian, in Edmonton everybody is speaking English. In Quebec, the denial of a common culture is basically a denial of the priority of French. Part of the compromise is the recognition of something more in Quebec than merely another language. We will have to recognize in some way that there are two fundamental cultures. If you want to make it three, I don't particularly care, but it's unreasonable to pretend that the aboriginal cultures, especially each one of them separately, are in the same position as English or French. And it's not doing a service to those kids to bring them up in Mohawk.

GREENFIELD: A constitution in a liberal, western democracy delineates the rights and responsibilities of government vis-a-vis its citizens and, if it's a federal state, it divides up the powers between the regional and the federal governments. If you give the Constitution broader shoulders than that, then you've not giving citizens rights so much as you're giving governments innominate powers. In that case, you're asking the courts to supplement the political will which was absent when the legislators got around the table in the first place. Every constitutional thrust aimed at giving Quebec special status or unspecified powers would have left definition of those powers to the discretion of the courts. That's not the way to go. The courts will always be called upon to define fuzzy boundaries, but you run the risk of bringing the courts into disrepute if you expect them to resolve major issues which take political will. Instead of giving unspecified powers to government, there should be a societal consensus on what rights groups of citizens should have with respect to language or anything else. And the government should have obligations but not unspecified powers.

SCOWEN: But if that's not being bought by a group of people and they think there needs to be some kind of gesture...

GREENFIELD: All sorts of things are not being bought by different people at different times. You move on, because you do what's right.

GREY: I think that the consensus is not very far from the status quo as far as the division of powers is concerned. The basic division of 1867 left macro-economic powers in Ottawa and you can't run a federation any other way. And it left the organization of local institutions in the hands of the provinces. That will not be changed fundamentally. The emotional debates are around the periphery. Every constitution starts with a few platitudes. So, unlike Howard, I don't feel there is anything wrong with a recognition of English and French as the two fundamental cultures which built this country.

SHARP: You won't get away with that in the rest of the country.

GREY: That alone? If people present Quebec as it really is, as a democratic place, if members of the English minority go out and sell Quebec to the rest of the country...

SHARP: Part of the question has to be: does the rest of the country know what it wants? Can it reach a consensus and say to Quebec "can you live with this?"

GREY: You get a consensus when the average person in each group prefers the average person in the other group to his own extremes.

SHARP: I think you'd run into multiculturalism.

TRAVIS: No. Not any longer.

GREENFIELD: Lawyers and politicians tend to think they can resolve certain issues with a few well-chosen words in a document. I'm suspicious of some of the words that people are trying to place in a document as fundamental as the Constitution because it creates unreasonable expectations. If it were simply a question of getting an extra 8 percent voting NO so we could defeat the next referendum, I might hold my nose and concede it, but I suspect the problem is more deep-seated than that.

SCOWEN: There has to be a recognition that this is not just Quebec's problem. If people across the country had a better understanding of how the country came about and what Quebec was at the time of Confederation, they would realize that there is an argument to Quebec's being distinct, and may come to recognize Quebec's desire for separation as a legitimate Canadian phenomenon. If I left Quebec because of the politics, I'd leave Canada. Because I blame the rest of the country as much as I blame Quebec for this dispute.

GREENFIELD: I agree. I just don't think believe in the Constitution as some form of psychotherapy that can adequately address what you consider to be a deeper problem.

SCOWEN: But we have a state, or a "wannabe" state, that revolves around culture. What do we do?

GREENFIELD: Don't acquiesce. Make the opposing case. You're young and therefore it seems like a sempiternal debate for you. But the separatist movement is relatively recent. We don't have to kowtow to those who are the most shrill.

SCOWEN: What if this strategy doesn't work?

GREENFIELD: This is not a strategy. Strategy cheapens what I'm saying. It's an objective. The objective is to move on and I think we are moving on.

SCOWEN: Through a series of circumstances separatists could get 50 percent plus one. Right?

GREENFIELD: You can't play the game of "the sky is falling, the sky is falling." That's pandering to the lowest common denominator and making important decisions based on temporizing considerations...

SCOWEN: What are you talking about--just not having politics anymore?

GREENFIELD: I'm talking about not having our politics predicated on the lowest common denominator.

SCOWEN: Where exactly is that going to happen?

GREENFIELD: It happens all the time.

TRAVIS: I have the greatest respect for Howard, but I join in a consensus that I believe that Howard would not accept. We have to recognize that consensus does not equal unanimity and that we're going to hear people from both sides saying this will never work.

GREY: Howard is right that you don't solve major problems with constitutional words. But there aren't major problems. All this arose because in 1960 the income of an average Quebec francophone was approximately 60 percent of the income of an average anglophone. The latest census shows equality of income. The present generation of PQ leaders is stuck in the days of their childhood when there was massive injustice. The next generation is not going to be as nationalist as this one and the strident attitudes will be gone. It's a matter of waiting another five or ten years.

SHARP: I'm not sure. If you'd asked me in 1984 "will there be more sovereignists in 1994," I'd have said "no." There's a core of nationalism in Quebec that has reincarnated itself in different generations in the context of the global ideological forces. In an era of decolonization it started to talk about independence. It's going to take on a new form in the context of globalization. It used to be that when you immigrated, you lost contact with where you came from. Now you talk on the phone to your grandmother in Morocco and watch movies from the local video store in Arabic. There's a negative economic globalization but there's also a transformation of our world that's radically shifting the identity of young Quebecers. Are young Quebecers going to find it makes sense to call themselves Quebecers? Are they going to think it makes sense to call themselves Canadians? Who knows?

GREENFIELD: The separatist movement shouldn't be underestimated and it shouldn't be dealt with as simply a socio-economic agenda dressed in linguistic/cultural clothing. There's an extent to which that is true but that doesn't mean that it has become a spent force.

GREY: I don't deny the possibility that the separatists could win an accidental victory--because of particular circumstances, the particular leadership or some stupidity of the federal government. And I certainly do not deny the possibility that they may come back in 20 or 30 years for totally different reasons, for instance the Americanization of the rest of the country or a sudden demographic drop which really frightens Quebecers as far as maintaining French as a majority language. But my point is that symbolic recognition can work precisely because it isn't trying to paper over a major economic or social difference.

SHARP: We're not talking about what Canada itself is becoming. I've heard people say, "My country is gone. The Free Trade Agreement eliminated my country." It's a serious feeling among left-wing union people in the rest of the country, in the women's movements...

GREENFIELD: Surely that's excessively ideological.

SHARP: I'm saying that there are internal tensions in English Canada about the future of this country, and by focusing on Quebec the rest of the country doesn't focus on those issues. Knowing what Canada's social project is is just as important for solving this thing as knowing what the linguistic project of Quebec is. The other thing that fuels my pessimism is the extremely low percentage of allophones outside Quebec who speak French. Recent immigrants in the rest of the country see francophone Quebecers as part of the establishment and don't understand why French should have any different status than their own language. You can say multiculturalism has gone away, but that was the theme at last year's Canadian Council of Churches triennial assembly. Maybe multiculturalism makes sense in Toronto, but they don't get it when you say it doesn't make sense in Quebec.

GREENFIELD: Multiculturalism is the mouse that roared. The federal budget for multiculturalism is probably less than what Quebec spends on changing garbage bags in a year.

GREY: Carolyn is quite right: Canada's mission has become blurred since the Free Trade Agreement. I think you could form a coalition around social programs-- on medicare, on reasonable protection against unemployment.

SHARP: One of the most eloquent plaidoyers [pleas] I've heard for federalism was from Doug Hall, a United Church theologian who teaches at McGill. He talked about why as a Christian he believes in Canada--not because of nationalism, but because of the international role Canada has played. He finds a symbolism there that I think is sellable in Quebec.

SCOWEN: Quebecers feel very positively about peacekeeping missions and the social programs. They believe Canada's a good country, but that hasn't eliminated the threat of separation.

GREENFIELD: Maybe Quebecers have a job of getting their own act together before they make identity politics demands on those outside Quebec.

INROADS: Are there conditions under which you would vote YES? Might you reach a point, as Lucien Bouchard did, where you'd say, "We've tried to find accommodation with the rest of Canada and Canada is unwilling or unable, so an acceptable deal is hopeless and I will now vote to separate"?

GREY: There is a circumstance under which I would vote YES. But it doesn't have to do with the rejection of a compromise. It has to do with a serious move to the right.

GREENFIELD: That's one of the problems with Canada. Good people like Julius decide Canada's a bundle of social programs and if you have a government that overturns them, well, you destroy the country rather than trying to defeat the government.

TRAVIS: I think Julius is right. There are certain social programs that have become institutions--they're about who we are and what we are.

GREENFIELD: That's identity politics. It becomes a little too reified.

GREY: Medicare is a moral issue.

GREENFIELD: There are a lot of moral issues. People who want to open up debate on all kinds of things get very sacred cowish about other things that might need revision.

SCOWEN: I have a very difficult time with the question. I hang out with a younger, apolitical francophone crowd who are generally fed up with the PQ leadership. They also feel there's a certain dogma that has to be followed about sovereignty and if you step outside that--you're berated for longer than you'd like to be. When they look at a ballot that says YES or NO, they let their emotions decide, and what's been said in the past week will affect how they vote. That's why we have to act urgently with some beau risque thing in the Constitution. You could expect the worst: you could put a clause in the Constitution that could lead, as [former Equality Party leader] Robert Libman said, to the Quebec government forcing anglophone women to abort their children. Or you could say, "Wait, this is a pretty democratic bunch of people." Maybe putting words on paper isn't the answer. People say to me, "If more English people were like you, I wouldn't be a separatist." It's almost idiotic in its simplicity, but it's an emotional thing--so that they don't feel isolated, so that they feel some sense from the rest of Canada, particularly from the English in Quebec, that there's a willingness to try to understand. If that happens, I'd never have to vote YES.

INROADS: But if...

SCOWEN: If there was some kind of consensus where a vast majority of people from all different cultures, communities wanted independence, I imagine that I would be involved in that, and I would probably vote YES. But I don't think I could bring myself to do it. I'm as tribal as anyone else. I've got an aging mother who's unilingual and scared shitless by all this. She doesn't understand it, she's done her best, she's lived here all her life. I'm not going to abandon her. I would certainly vote NO if I thought it was going to be close. Because a marginal YES victory is way more dangerous than a marginal NO, as far as I'm concerned.

TRAVIS: I tend to be in the same camp as Peter. When I was born Rene Levesque was a Liberal and Jean Chretien had just been elected to the House of Commons. Jean Chretien is still in the House of Commons, and we've gone from having no credible sovereignist party to a party that almost won a referendum. Whatever we've been doing for the last 30 years isn't working. The priority of reasonable people should be to build a consensus so that we don't have to confront the question. But if I saw a clear, unequivocal rejection from English Canada--that there is no place for Quebec to protect its language and culture in a preamble to the Constitution--I would be hard pressed to vote NO.

INROADS: Is there a situation in which you would vote NO, Carolyn?

SHARP: I don't think this society is willing to play its hand again. With Meech Lake, Bourassa put a list on the table. There was a consensus here about Meech. Now the ball is in the court of the rest of the country. But I think there's a geography forming in the rest of the country in which Quebec is not included. Members of my husband's family drive through New York State on their way to Vermont rather than dropping by to see us in Montreal. These were Trudeau Liberals. They've said, "We don't come to see you in Montreal because we're so angry."

GREY: That's surely unusual.

SHARP: I go and speak to church groups in Ontario and the anger and hostility I run into is amazing. There's a rejection of Quebec by the rest of the country, a hardening of the edges, a refusal of any form of recognition. Would I settle for asymmetrical federalism? Yes. I think my society needs a consensus. But right now, I don't see any signs of hope.

TRAVIS: Part of the reason for the hardening of attitudes is that English Canada hears about Quebec from [anglophone rights activist] Howard Galganov and others who are not really representative of the average Quebecer. There are probably more Canadian Press stories in La Presse every day then there are La Presse stories in Canadian newspapers in an entire month.

SHARP: I remember Royal Orr [journalist and former Alliance Quebec president], who's certainly not a sovereignist, saying during the referendum that there were things from Toronto that he wouldn't put on the local news because they were so slanted. There's a notion at the CBC that it's legitimate to present a clear pro-federalist bias.

SCOWEN: It's shameful that people are hardening their attitudes. It comes out of simplistic, lowest-common-denominator silliness--that Quebec is a spoiled brat full of French people who don't know what they want but just want more and more. It's condescending, it's patronizing, it's a subtle kind of racism. The very first thing the rest of Canada has to understand is that separatism is a legitimate movement, it's a Canadian movement, it comes out of the creation of Canada, it was the bringing together of two groups. It's the essence of Canada.

INROADS: Thank you.