Quebec will hold a referendum on independence "National Assembly are not just destabilizing towards the end of this year. Events since the Canadian imperialism - combined with the
September 1994 election of a bourgeois crisis in Mexico they render the North American nationalist-separatist majority in the province's Free Trade Agreement very, very fragile.
International Viewpoint #265 April 1995
The line-up of social forces is clear: the federalist option is supported by almost all the major Canadian companies, including the French-speaking part of the Canadian bourgeoisie. The Liberal Party of Canadian Premier Jean Crétien is at the head of a consensus grouping the French and English-speaking Liberal parties, the Progressive Conservative Party (in power from 1985-93) the Reform Party (right wing populists in English Canada) and the English Canadian social democratic formation, the New Democratic Party (in power in three provinces, including Ontario and British Columbia, the two most important provinces in English Canada).
The independence project in Quebec is supported by a minority of the Frenchspeaking bourgeoisie, which would like to become a national québécois bourgeoisie, the entire French-speaking trade union movement, the vast majority of popular and local organisations, the women's associations, a majority of Frenchspeaking artists, the non-sectarian left, and all the student organisations except those grouping business and economic students. This bloc is led by the Parti québécois (Quebec Party) of Provincial Premier Jacques Parizeau, supported by the Bloc québécois party in the federal assembly.
The English Canadian trade union movement has an ambiguous position. The Canadian Labour Congress defends the right of self-determination for Quebec, but pronounces itself clearly in favour of an unitary Canadian state. And the 'labour' New Democratic Party is virulently pro-Canadian.
Opinion polls show the Quebec population 55-45% against independence - with 97% of English-speakers in Quebec, and recent immigrants not yet assimilated to the majority English or French communities pro-federalist, and a majority the French-speakers in favour of independence. The final result could go either way. A junior imperialist...
The Canadian state is an unique imperialist state. Created by the British by Michel Lafitte Colonial Office in the mid-19th century, the Canadian state has always contained a large French-speaking minority hostile to the British Empire. From the very beginning the multi-national Canadian state has been founded on inequality — a real prisonhouse of peoples.
The Canadian bourgeoisie constituted itself only after the state has been set up
14 Québec Premier Jacques Parizeau votes in the 1994 provincial election (СТК/AP) Constantly threatened by their more dynamic southern brothers, the Canadian bourgeoisie exploited the new state to build up strong, "national' monopolies in the banking and transportation sectors. At the end of the 19th century the state had only 11 banks, two railway companies and three maritime transport companies. Already at that time the bigger Canadian banks were penetrating the LatinAmerican markets, constructing the major part of the rail, port and electric infrastructure.
At the beginning of the 20th century, having definitively minoritised the Frenchspeaking population?, the Canadian bourgeoisie de-coupled themselves from the British Empire, and linked up to the United States of America. Despite numerous conflicts, that faithful
Québec attachment remains to this day.
This relationship has not reduced the Canadian bourgeoisie to the status of local comprador agent for U.S. interests — 75% of the global assets of Canada companies are 'locally' owned. Canadian companies are big investors abroad too - in 6th place after the U.S.A., Japan, Germany, France and Great Britain. Canada is the biggest investor in the United States, and that country's biggest trading partner. Canadian financial capital is Mexico's second largest creditor, controlling 6% of the country's foreign debt.
As well as the G7 summits of the world's seven richest countries, Canada participates in the U.S. nuclear weapons' structure NORAD, while Canada's Communication Security Establishment is tightly linked to the United States' National Security Agency. The Parti québécois' project
A powerful nationalist movement developed in Quebec during the 1960s. Important sectors of the French-speaking civil service hoped to create a Quebeker bourgeoisie using the support of the provincial government. Former minister René Levesque abandoned the Liberal Party to create the Parti québécois (PQ), which soon hegemonised the new nationalist movement. The beginning of the end of the extra-parliamentary proindependence movement can be dated to 1970, when many militants were repelled by the kidnapping of the British Consul and the local Minister of Labour by the Quebec Liberation Front (FLQ). And after the strike wave of Spring 1972 was defeated, all the trade union federations gave their open or indirect support to the PQ
Elected at the provincial level in 1976, the PQ cemented its support among the vital forces of the Quebec nation (except those bourgeois sectors most closely linked to Canadian imperialism) through a series of social-democratic type reforms. Nevertheless, they lost Quebec's first referendum on sovereignty, in May 1980. For many people, this was the end of the
21
Write to Box 52131, Stn. St Fidele, Quebec, Quebec G1L 5A4 Canada.
International Viewpoint #265 April 1995
Quebec national struggle.The federal (Liberal) government, supported by the social democratic provincial governments in English Canada began to redefine the Canadian constitution in 1982-83.
The Parti québécois looses the 1985 provincial elections to the Quebec Liberal Party.
While the large Canadian bourgeoisie gropes its way towards a neo-liberal perspective, and a perspective of total continental integration, the Progressive Conservative Party, power in Ottawa for the first time since the great depression tries to solve the "constitutional question." Two proposals of constitutional reform implying economic centralisation and cultural decentralisation are proposed. One after the other they are rejected: massively in Quebec, and by a small majority in English Canada.
The reasons for this rejection are different in each of the two major nations. Québécois rejected centralisation, while the big guns of the "no" campaigns in English Canada were opposed to any concession to Quebec, even on the purely cultural level.
Growing chauvinism in English Canada provoked a rise in nationalist feelings in Quebec. Conservative and Liberal deputies in the federal parliament deserted to form the Bloc québécois (Quebec Bloc - BQ), led by former Federal (Conservative) Minister Lucien Bouchard. The BQ is currently the second largest party in the federal parliament in Ottawa. Over 1/2 million people demonstrated in Montreal on 24 June 1991 (Quebec's national day). And in 1991-92 over 1 1/2 million people signed a petition in favour of a referendum on sovereignty.
But if Quebécois bourgeois nationalists have understood one thing, it is that they can't risk being carried into power on the back of a mass mobilisation. In this epoch of great imperialist blocs, extra-parliamentary demonstrations are the last thing that the imperialist power centres want to see. A not unimportant part of the French-speaking bourgeoisie in Quebec would like to control their own state, to ensure a better insertion in NAFTA as a new, small, independent but nonFor more information threatening partner, who has the right to some limited autonomy. The creation of large trading blocs, and the reduction of the role of nation states in favour of supranational economic mechanisms seems to be encouraging this kind of limited bourgeois independantism in many parts of the world.
To carry this off, the part of the Québécois bourgeoisie which has "nationbuilding" aspirations needs the support of the trade unions and the popular movement. This is a parliamentary system. But the bourgeois cannot allow their supporters to get too active, and to start carrying forward their own hopes and aspirations. So far, the bourgeoisie has been able to count on the collaboration of the trade union leadership, which has been very quick to forget the union's former opposition to NAFTA. *In the dominated nation, Quebec, the fact that 80% of the boss class is foreign gives a real boost to popular nationalist currents (which have always been hegemonic in the workers' and popular movements). In the dominant nation, English Canada, the Canadian nationalism of the leadership of workers' movements, trades unions and the social democratic forces has linked the working class to the interests of "its own" imperialist bourgeoisie.
Between 1991 and 1994 the Parti québécois and Bloc québécois played a parliamentary game. They participated in a series of commissions of enquiry, which served to quieten down the movement. They put all their hopes on the 1994 provincial election, which they win by a very narrow majority of votes. Mass mobilisation is no longer in the air.
The pre-referendum process
This is when the Quebec provincial government prepares draft legislation which begins with a declaration of Quebec as a sovereign country (pays souverain), but contains only measures which would maintain the status quo. A sovereign Quebec would not only stay in NAFTA, NATO and all of imperialist Canada's other clubs, but maintain the Canadian dollar, double citizenship, and all existing Canadian laws. A "special economic association" would be negotiated. At the beginning of 1995 a series of governmentnominated regional commissions carried out a limited public consultation on this set of proposals, on the basis of which the government will fix the final version of the question to be put in a referendum to be held in all parts of Quebec by the end of 1995.
All pro-federalist forces, be it the federal government, the Quebec Liberal Party or the New Democratic Party in English Canada, claim that no form of accession to independence for Quebec is legitimate under Canada's constitution, and have boycotted consultations so far. Of course, when the campaign gets going, these forces will become the official or informal "Vote No!" committee, whatever the question put to the people of Quebec.
Bribery, intimidation, economic threats, the possibility of military intervention; the unofficial anti-autonomy campaign of the Canadian bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia and the mass media has already taken a "hard" line. Public debt is high? Quebec's fault! Unemployment and interest rates? Same story. An independent Quebec would face an economic disaster, they say. Senior citizens would loose their old-age pensions, they warn (federal government plans to cut pensions to almost nothing by 1998, but these scaremongers don't seem too concerned about that). Young people will lose the right to go find work in the rest of Canada, they warn (not that this means a lot to most young Québécois, since you can't work in French in the rest of Canada). And so on, ad nauseam. A vulgar kind of campaign, but one that is marking points, since the Québécois bourgeois nationalists are only promising the status quo, which doesn't
Socialist Challenge: The Magazine (quarterly) C$ 12 or equivalent
Write to Socialist Challenge at Box 4955, Vancouver, V6B 4A6, Canada.
Tel. (604) 687 3113 Email haythom@ sfu.ca
La Gauche (monthly)
Tel. (418) 522 0165 *
22 exactly mobilise people, and doesn't even reassure them.
Recognising their weakness in the opinion polls, a current of bourgeois nationalists around Bloc québécois leader Lucien Bouchard and Quebec vicepremier Bernard Landry propose to dilute the draft sovereignty legislation into the
referendum on the sovereignty of Quebec, and the decision to enter the Parti de la
Démocratie Socialiste (PDS, formerly NPD-Québec). Congress noted that, unfortunately, the time has not yet come for a similar left regrouping in English Canada.
International Viewpoint #265 April 1995 old "sovereignty-association" formula which lost in 1980. But as far as imperialism is concerned, this formula is probably even less acceptable than it was
For the moment Jacques Parizeau, provincial Prime Minister, rejects this dilution, though he has suggested that a question combining total sovereignty with a social and economic status-quo could What about the left?
Our own Marxist-revolutionary current in the Canadian State adopted the demand for Quebec's independence as its own at the end of the 1960s. We think the Canadian state - a 'prison house of peoples' has to be broken up so that the Québécois and English-Canadian working classes can finally break their habit of collaboration with their respective 'national' bourgeoisie. After this, all kinds of new voluntary cooperation and federation are possible, provided they are based on equality.
The struggle for the break-up of the Canadian state can only improve conditions for the struggle for socialism, through a frontal attack on Canadian
The Party of Socialist Democracy (Parti de la Démocratie Socialiste - PDS) supports the "Popular Network for the Yes
"so that the sovereignty of Quebec is not just an exchange of one flag for another, but a popular and egalitarian sovereignty, with solidarity to defeat exclusion in society" A key demand of the network is a Constituent Assembly, elected on the basis of proportional representation. representatives must be women.
The network is currently being founded across Quebec, in a very modest way. We know that the leadership can't tolerate disorder on its left-wing. But we are sure that several hundred militant women and men will see in the network a solution to the current absence of an autonomous working class "yes" campaign. The PDS hopes to present a platform which will regroup the left, and map out the major contours of a project for a new society for the working class and popular sectors.
The predecessors of the PDS won between 1.5 and 7% of votes in the last elections in the Ridings (electoral constituencies) where they presented
Québec candidates. Under Quebec's British-based "first past the post" electoral system, this doesn't give the party a deputy. But this is a respectable score, especially since voting in the sovereignty referendum will be very, very close. And if it is dynamic, the network may prove itself a step towards the political independence of the Québécois working class. *
1. The Canadian state is a federation, with most power concentrated in the federal capital of Ottawa, but 10 provincial governments with real powers of their own. Quebec has 7 million citizens (out of 27 million in the Canadian state), of which 80% are French speaking.
2. Western Canada forbade French schooling at the end of the last century, and Ontario, the country's industrial heart land, closed its French schools in 1913.
3. The main trade union bodies are the Féderation des travailleuses at des travailleurs du Québec (FTQ - affiliated to the Canadian Labour Congress but enjoying real autonomy, 400,000 members), the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN - the former Catholic labour federation, similar in many respects to France's CFDT, 250,000 members) and the teaching professions' Centrale de l'enseignement du Québec (100,000 members). Over 200,000 workers in Quebec are members of non-affiliated unions. In English Canada, the Canadian Labour Congress is the only significant union grouping.
4. Quebec's law on popular consultation allows for a short official campaign, animated by officially-recognised and financed "Yes" and "No" committees. Third parties are not formally allowed to intervene, but the federal government is above this legislation, and has never hesitated to spend millions of dollars of taxpayers money to oppose Quebec independence.
Socialist Challenge/Gauche socialiste Congress imperialism aimed at the state which brought it into being and protects its
Montreal (M.L.) - Delegates from Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa, Hull,
Montreal and Quebec city met in Montreal from 18-20 February for the 3rd congress of
Gauche socialiste/Socialist Challenge, the Canadian state's section of the Fourth
In this context, we can only choose to support all concrete measures which
International. About half the participants were under 30 years old, and more than half of the delegates had never participated in a congress of the organisation before. The new advance the independence of Quebec. The
Central Committee is 47% female, just short of the parity we set as our goal.
first measure of the draft legislation of the
Parti québécois government is to declare a
The main resolution dealt with the crisis in NAFTA. Delegates recognised that the sovereign Quebec. We agree. This is the
North American trade bloc faces a double challenge: economic disaster in Mexico and best way, at the moment, to fight against the mass movement provoked by the Zapatista revolt there, and the question mark
Canadian imperialism, and even to defend over the future existence of the Canadian state posed by the referendum on the
Mexicans against the combined imperialist forces of NAFTA. A struggle for the
The resolution reaffirmed two fundamental strategic elements of Fourth Internationalist independence of a dominated nation can thinking in the Canadian state. Firstly, the recognition that Canada is an imperialist only de-stabilise NAFTA. U.S. President state, secondary and vulnerable compared to its southern neighbor, but powerful
Bill Clinton understands this, which is nevertheless. And secondly, the central importance of the national question in the why he openly supports the unity of the struggle for socialism in the northern 'prison house of nations' which Canada has been
Canadian state.
since its very beginnings. The campaign for the unconditional right of the Québécois
But, if we want to have a chance to and native peoples to self-determination was approved as a central element of our organization's intervention in Quebec and English Canada.
win the referendum, we must refuse the proposals to maintain the status quo which
The global balance of forces has shifted in favour of the reactionary camp over the last form the rest of the provincial few years, congress noted, but at the same time there is a limited radicalisation of government's draft legislation. Quebec's working class vouth and students against their marginalisation. The signs are to be trade unions and popular movements have found in mobilizations against the Axworthy "reforms" and the resulting massive cuts in consistently denounced NAFTA, NATO, social security and higher/further education, in ecological struggles, in the renaissance neo-liberal economic strategies, and of English Canada's militant student movement, in anti-racist struggles, and in the
Canadian monetary policy, but the opposition to the repression of immigrants, women, gays and lesbians.
leadership of these movements says
Congress supported the decisions of the Quebec wing of the organisation Gauche nothing about the PQ project which would socialiste, (which has full tactical autonomy) in its orientation to the upcoming maintain all this. And you simply cannot convince a majority of people to leap into the unknown, faced with the threats of
Canadian imperialism, with the declared goal of not changing anything sovereignty of Quebec, due later this year.
*
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
23