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INTRODUCTION Interpreting Québec’s Exile Within the Federation Selected Political Essays I often repeat, half-seriously, that I am a historian of ideas and a teacher of political philosophy, hidden in a political science department. At all Québec universities, as in the rest of North America, much of the business of political science has to do with positivistic approaches, quan- titative methods, and rational choice theories for explaining social behav- iour. Within the discipline, I belong to the minority methodological and epistemological position. To make sense of politics, I believe one has to rely on an interdisciplinary approach. The insights of philosophy, history, literature, sociology, and law can all enrich the search for coherent and meaningful interpretations of political events, phenomena, and doctrines. Such a combination forms the spirit or, as the Germans say, Geist of a humanistic approach to the study of politics. This book is one example of doing political science in such a way, applied to the task of interpreting the situation of Québec and of Québecers within the Canadian federation. The book belongs squarely to the discipline of political science with chapters studying the theory and practice of Canadian federalism, as well as analysing various aspects of nationalism in Québec. It borrows heavily from the domain of constitutional law in chapters dealing with Canada’s fundamental laws of 1867 and 1982. Intellectual history has always fas- cinated me, and I hope that readers who share my interest will appreci- ate the chapters that deal with the figures such as Lord Durham, Gérard Bouchard, Charles Taylor, James Tully, and Michel Seymour. For those who prefer sociology and philosophy, the book contains chapters on political and social integration, trust and mistrust, political freedom, and complex equality. Internal exile, distress, and enchantment are also of course literary notions, and such ideas play a central role in my reflections. Much of Western civilization would continue to exist if Québec and Canada were obliterated from the surface of the earth. Our political exist- ence thus takes place at the margins of History and at the periphery of dominant nation -states such as the United States, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. I nevertheless believe that our political history, with its drama and its problems, can inform political science as a discipline and the international community’s learned public sphere. For thirty years, I 13 Guy Laforest - 9782875742292 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/25/2021 05:20:06AM via free access Interpreting Quebec’s Exile Within the Federation have lectured about this history and about these lessons at most universities in Québec and across Canada. Even in our current circumstances of growing indifference between our societies and scholarly communities, I believe that the conversation must be sustained and that efforts must be made to bridge gaps in our reciprocal understandings. The essays brought together in this book represent another personal effort towards attaining this goal. The first chapter explains its title and goes to the heart of the situation facing Québecers and their place within the Canadian federation. In 1954, Maurice Lamontagne, the late Canadian senator and Université Laval economist, argued that Québec’s situation within Canada is hybrid and ambiguous (Lamontagne 1954). Sixty years later, his reflections still make sense. Geography and the fundamentals of the Canadian constitutional framework are here to stay. Nevertheless, Québec remains awkwardly integrated into the country as a whole. Québec as a political community, and Québecers as citizens and political actors, thus seem to me to be in a situation of internal exile. After explaining at greater length what this notion entails, I attempt to identify the precise changes that could be made to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to rem- edy this situation. The first time I evoked this idea, a few years ago at a Trudeau Foundation event in Winnipeg, some civil servants from the federal Department of Justice told me that it was the first time, in a couple of decades, that they had heard such specific suggestions. I believe that Québec’s self -representation as an intercultural nation should be affirmed in the Charter’s core. It should also be used as an interpretive principle linked to the understanding of the concept of reasonable limits to rights and liberties in the first section of the Charter, in its linguistic regime (sections 16 to 23), and, finally, in its disposition related to promoting the multicultural heritage of Canadians. My ideas concerning the contemporary challenges and utility of federalism are straightforwardly presented in the second chapter. I revised these pages in the weeks following the death of Richard Simeon, one of Canada’s preeminent scholars of federalism, who passed away on October 11, 2013. He will be sorely missed. In both of Canada’s offi- cial languages, with rigour, subtlety, and respect for dissent, Simeon spent forty years putting his brilliant mind to the task of researching the theory, practice, and machinery of federalism in Canada and the world. He promoted the virtues of dialogue and reciprocal understanding. He played an instrumental role in developing the language of trade -offs in the relationships between Anglophones and Francophones and between Canada’s and Québec’s national projects. In the coming years – and in particular at a colloquium taking place in mid -October 2014 in Québec 14 Guy Laforest - 9782875742292 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/25/2021 05:20:06AM via free access Introduction City commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Québec Conference of 1864 that led to the Dominion of Canada three years later, which is being organized by Eugénie Brouillet (the Dean of Law at Laval), Alain-G. Gagnon (UQAM Political Scientist), and myself – we hope to have many opportunities to pay homage to Simeon’s work.1 We often debated the fact that, although I believe that he was right in arguing that provinces profit from high legal, political, jurisdictional, fiscal and bureaucratic capacity, our political system nevertheless remains highly centralized mostly in the organization and management of intergovernmental affairs and in the workings of the judicial branch of government. We last discussed these matters at a conference organized in 2011 by Michael Burgess and Cesar Colino at Howfield Manor, near Canterbury, on the English soil where he was born. The topic of the conference dealt with historical legacies crucial to understanding federal regimes – the topic of the third chapter. In 1998, the Supreme Court of Canada, in its Reference re Secession of Québec, made an insightful contribution to the discussion concerning Canada’s most important historical legacies. It suggested that our political and constitutional order has four foundational principles: federalism, democracy, constitutionalism and the rule and law, and respect for the rights of minorities. Readers will find a deeper analysis of the Supreme Court’s judgment in a later chapter of this book interpreting the ideas of James Tully and Michel Seymour. Although I would never deny the Supreme Court’s authority, I propose a supplementary reading on the topic of historical legacies in the third chapter. First, I identify various dimensions of Canada’s past and present British heritage. I then attempt to delineate the idea of the centrality of the state for the development of an original national project, in the shadow of the United States. Hopefully, readers will agree that I talk about the same country as the Supreme Court. They will also note some nuances and differences. In agreement with the Supreme Court, I recognize that federalism, or the principle of autonomy, represents one of Canada’s key historical legacies. However, contrary to the Supreme Court, I do not believe that, either at the time of the founding or later on in the evolution of the country, it has ever been the equivalent of the Star of Bethlehem guiding our political leaders. On the topic of federalism in Canada, I also discuss the various tensions and interpretive prisms that were central to Simeon’s scholarly endeavours. 1 The colloquium’s program can be downloaded at the following internet address: http:// www.conferencedequebec.org/. The colloquium belongs to the research program of the Groupe de recherche sur les sociétés plurinationales, whose scientific director is Alain -G. Gagnon at the Université du Québec in Montréal. The colloquium is spon- sored by the Government of Québec’s Secrétariat aux affaires intergouvernementales canadiennes (SAIC). 15 Guy Laforest - 9782875742292 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/25/2021 05:20:06AM via free access Interpreting Quebec’s Exile Within the Federation Finally, and hopefully less obliquely than the Supreme Court, I examine the Janus -faced dimensions of Québec for the Canadian national project. In my judgment, it is crucial never to forget that Québec simultaneously reassures and threatens the very idea of a distinct and united Canada. This leads me to explore the topics of English -French duality in Canada and of the centrality of the state for Québec in the pursuit of its own national project. Astute political leaders and thinkers can make these national projects compatible. I argue in the fourth chapter, discussing the historical and legal origins of asymmetrical federalism in and around the British North America Act, 1867 (now the Constitution Act, 1867), that our founders possessed such astuteness. Meeting at Brock University in the spring of 2014, under the presidency of my colleague and friend Alain Noël from the Université de Montréal, the Canadian Political Science Association organized a panel on the ideas of Janet Ajzenstat, whose work in political theory and constitutional history is indispensable to understanding the spirit of our founding (Ajzenstat 2014). The Canadian political experi- ment is linked to a complex issue that has long troubled Ajzenstat: the question of whether or not liberal universalism can be reconciled with particularism (see, also, Ajzenstat 1999; LaSelva 1995; Burelle 2005; Noël 2006).

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