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The Politics of Routine and the Functionality of Solitudes

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The Politics of Routine and the Functionality of Solitudes Robarts Centre Research Papers The Politics of Routine and the Functionality of Solitudes August 2005 Daniel Drache, Senior Research Fellow and Associate Director Blake Evans, Research Assistant York University, Toronto www.robarts.yorku.ca Copyright Daniel Drache August 2005 The Politics of Routine and the Functionality of Solitudes by Daniel Drache with Blake Evans* Since the collapse of the Charlottetown Accord and the Quebec referendum of 1995, Canada has been in the grips of the politics of routine. This has taken the form of one-offs, ad hocery, deal-making, and a general retreat from the high-road of the politics of vision. Nor has economic integration proven to be much of a nation-builder. Instead, Ontario remains a distant shore on Quebec's horizon, and Quebec is at best little more than a phantom presence in the provincial imagination of Ontarians.1 Canada’s solitudes have been much written-about, but have been the subject of very little systematic analysis. Conventional thinking says that solitudes are dangerous, anti-social, and indicative of Canada’s national failures.2 However, this paper argues counter to conventional wisdom, that despite their imperfections, the solitudes have been a functional and practical form of political accommodation in Canada. We will begin by measuring the social indicators of our solitudes in order to assess how deeply they run. We then evaluate the degree of cultural interaction at the level of Canadian elites, civil society, and governments. We will then explain what we call ‘the politics of routine’, and seek to explain their impact on Canada’s economic and political union. Lastly, we will explain how the solitudes have an undeniable functionality, and that this functionality forms the core of the politics of routine. While these politics of routine are not the ideal political arrangement for either side, they do form a basis upon which to build. Social Indicators of the Solitudes Solitudes can be studied, analyzed, critiqued, and measured, and the social indicators of Canada’s solitudes tell a powerful story. Increased bilingualism and intercultural dialogue have not created the kind of momentum or familiarity that would transform small everyday contact into something much more. 2 Federal bilingualism is one of the crown jewels in Canada’s national unity strategy, and was meant to correct the linguistic imbalance documented by the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism.3 It was also meant to facilitate conciliation and dialogue between Canada’s two solitudes. While bilingualism has increased on both sides of the Quebec/Ontario border, clearly it is not a two-way street. As of 2001, 43% of Canadian francophones were reportedly bilingual, compared with only 9% of anglophones. Similarly, the bilingualism rate in Quebec rose to over 40%, while the rate outside of Quebec has been virtually stuck at 10.3% since 1996. Ontario ranked slightly better than average outside of Quebec, with 11.7% of Ontarians listed as bilingual.4 In short, the level of bilingualism, as well as the rate of its increase, is highest in Quebec. While Ontarians and Quebeckers are now more apt to understand each other, bilingualism has not significantly deepened our relationship. What’s more, it would appear that Quebeckers and not Ontarians are the ones making major strides towards bilingualism. Several government programs at both the provincial and federal levels attempt to promote intercultural dialogue through such means as language and education exchanges, and work- programs. Heritage Canada estimates that in all, 9000 young Canadians participated in their programs aimed at promoting “a greater appreciation of linguistic duality” in 2001-2002.5 Another example is the Canadian Unity Council’s “Summer Work-Student Exchange” program, which exchanges roughly 500 high school students and 200 university students each year between Ontario and Quebec.6 Summer work exchanges have become more popular, but they remain disappointingly underutilized.7 Bilingualism is not a high priority for the 18-24 year-old crowd. Equally troubling are the many barriers to interprovincial educational mobility, such as out-of-province supplement charges. McGill remains Canada’s foremost university educator of 3 out-of-province students.8 When fully bilingual Ontarians do send their college-aged children to Quebec, they go to McGill, rather than to Université du Québec à Montréal – not to mention Quebec’s university network outside of Montreal. English-speaking Canadians have very little incentive to learn or to live completely immersed in French. The world of academia is similar. Few Quebeckers attend the Learned’s Conference of the Humanities; only 745 of the approximately 7044 delegates, or just over 10%, were from Quebec.9 By the same token, few English Canadians attend the annual Association francophone pour le savoir (ACFAS) convention. In fact, ACFAS’s publication, Découvrir, has only 6% of its total distribution to Ontario, and 3.3% to other Canadian provinces.10 This is because in general, Canadian academics and researchers in the social sciences don't closely follow Quebec intellectual life, infrequently have close colleagues in Quebec, and rarely read their books and articles. Those who do maintain interprovincial contacts most often do so in an ad hoc manner, rather than in an institutionalized one.11 Constitutional law, Canadian federalism, and urban renewal studies in Montreal-Toronto-Vancouver, are bright spots of collaboration in an otherwise mono-linguistic academic landscape. Even cultural studies, which should be bringing Quebecers and Anglophone researchers together, infrequently do so.12 Similarly, Montreal’s Le Devoir, the intellectual flagship of Quebec’s elites, has a tiny daily circulation of below 5000 outside of Quebec, representing around 16% of their circulation, much smaller than the Anglophone Montreal Gazette or the less influential La Presse or Journal de Montréal.13 In comparison, the Globe and Mail and National Post weekday editions have a circulation in Quebec of almost 23 000, or 7.2% of national circulation, and 19 000 or 6.4% respectively.14 Together, English Canadian views are diffused widely in Quebec, with over 40 000 readers per day. By comparison, Quebec views have almost no presence in the rest of the country. The most well-known Quebec journalist is Chantal Hebert, who is a Toronto Star 4 national columnist and a frequent guest on CBC’s The National. There is no Anglophone equivalent in Quebec, with the possible exception of Graham Fraser, Toronto Star’s Ottawa bureau chief. The gulf between English Canada and Quebec, in terms of national reporting, is not a divide, but a chasm. One of the single largest divides is rarely commented on: rural citizens occupy sharply divergent spaces in Quebec and Ontario’s political landscapes. In 1995, North Bay native Mike Harris and his Common Sense Revolutionaries were able to connect the 905-area, suburban Toronto, and vast rural Ontario to ride a wave of right-wing popular discontent to power.15 Small-town Ontario is a bastion of social conservatism, and is often anti-French, anti-Quebec and anti-Catholic. The Christian evangelic movement still has a mass following in rural Ontario. Rural Quebec is the political constituency par excellence of the Bloc Quebecois and of the PQ.16 Their values are social democratic, nationalist and most importantly, they are not religious like their Ontario counterpart. They support gay marriages, were against sending Canadian troops to Iraq, and support strong redistributive social programs. These rural solitudes are the backbone of Quebec and Ontario’s respective distinctive cultures. They’ve aren’t likely to change anytime soon. Are our Civil Societies “Bowling Alone”? Quebec and Canadian anti-globalization movements inhabit very different organizational worlds. They co-operate when they must, but they lack the organizational will to form longer- lasting bases for cooperation. The Council of Canadians, one of the most important civil society organizations and very active on the issue of Canadian sovereignty, has almost no presence in Quebec. Of their 70 chapters across Canada, only two are in the province of Quebec, one of which is in Montreal and 5 the other is in the Eastern Townships.17 At the same time, Quebec has produced its own civil society organizations to defend its sovereignty against Americanization and continental free trade. The Réseau Québecois sur l’intégration continentale is the best known, but there are dozens more, and none of them are linked to any pan-Canadian movement.18 Student groups are equally marked by Canada’s two solitudes. Canada’s major student group, the Canadian Federation of Students, represents 450 000 students at over 60 colleges and universities across Canada. However, only three of their locals are in Quebec, and none represent francophone educational institutions.19 This organization only played a minor role in supporting the recent student strike in Quebec, the biggest mobilization of students in Canada in decades. The strike lasted for months, and over 120 000 francophone students participated. McGill and Concordia barely joined in.20 In this case, the solitudes occurred within Quebec, as much as outside it. Quebec and Canadian labour have institutionalized the solitudes within their organizations. For example, the Fédérations des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec (FTQ) has held a special autonomous status within the Canadian Labour Congress since 1974. It has operated under a “Sovereignty-Association” type of arrangement since 1993.21 Quebec’s two other major labour centres, the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) and the Centrale des Syndicats du Québec (CSQ), have no Canadian counterpart. They are 100% pur-laine Québecois, even if many of their members are recent immigrants. The labour movement is unique in accepting Canada’s dualism, and making it work to its benefit.22 Certainly Canadian labour has not followed its American counterparts into irreversible decline, as about 30% of the Canadian workforce has access to collective bargaining.
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