Bar entry to French Meddlers
Keith Henderson - Financial Post, July 27, 1997

Pierre Messmer is a former Prime Minister of France, Phillippe Séguin President Jacques Chirac's personal emissary, Dominique Boché French Consul General. Surrounded by tri-couleurs and fleurs-de-lys, (no maple leaves, thank you), all three were guests of honour at last week's separatist festival to unveil a statue commemorating the 30th anniversary of de Gaulle's most famous anti-Canadian remark, "Vive le Québec Libre." Never say the French government didn't approve - hardly surprising, since Chirac went on US TV during the '95 referendum campaign and announced that the French would recognize a separatist UDI. Canada didn't protest then, and given the Chrétien-Dion penchant for being sweet to the French, Canada won't protest now. More's the pity.

Not that Séguin and Messmer didn't give us plenty to get angry about. Put aside our own tax dollars spent honouring a foreign general who devoted 10 years of French policy deliberately trying to destroy Canada. Consider what our gracious guests said. Waxing poetic about "the collective liberty of nations who have the right to master their destiny" (French code for unilateral secession), Séguin then quoted a little Nietzsche: "The higher one flies, the smaller one seems to those who cannot fly." In other words, separatists fly. Loyal earth-bound Canadians don't fly and so see nothing. The tragic irony behind Séguin's insulting twaddle is that some of the hundreds of veterans gathered in Quebec City to protest this separatist outrage have flown over France, risking their lives so people like de Gaulle, Séguin and Messmer could repay their sacrifices by cocking a snoot at them and emperilling the unity of their country. But then who says French presidential emissaries have to keep their feet on the ground?

Messmer went one better. Constitutions? The rule of law? "Paper barriers blown to the wind," he declared. What counts is "la volonté populaire." The separatist brainstrust beamed. Their frightening revolutionary stance, "Call a referendum; trash the constitution," the tactic dictators like Napoleon and Hitler repeatedly used to put the patina of legitimacy on their coups d'états, had just received more high level French endorsement. To those still on the ground, the consequences of this arrogant anarcho-democrat disease, continental Europe's worst export product, became quickly apparent. Zealous Quebec City police roughed up a poor 65 year-old woman guilty of carrying a Canadian flag to the statue site. The next day separatist goons smashed in the face of an anglo demonstrator at the City Hall steps de Gaulle re-enactment while some of Montreal's finest looked benignly on in full view of the television cameras. But then, why not? What counts is not the law. It's "la volonté populaire."

Where was Ottawa? Stéphane Dion made a few plaintive rejoinders about how our French friends were practising an "uncomfortable" double standard, since the French had declared their own country indivisible and outlawed secession. But the prevailing attitude of federal officials was one of relief. "Look how few really important French dignitaries came," they crowed, as though a personal emissary from the President of France wasn't enough. Dion assured everybody there would be no formal Canadian protest.

Perhaps this is what Lucien Bouchard meant when he said "Canada is not a real country." Real countries don't tolerate what the French have just done. Real countries bar entry to high level officials who come on missions of destruction. Suffering as we do from terminal nice-guy syndrome, Canadians have a hard time with these bitter truths and need to practise a regular régime of 'reverse this' in order to understand how real countries react. Imagine former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau has just been invited to Corsica to take part in a Corsican separatist ceremony. Lloyd Axworthy, personal emissary of Jean Chrétien, is going along. The Canadian ambassador to France intends to be there too. Canada's spent 30 years aiding and abetting Corsican separatism, and Jean Chrétien has already been on "Larry King Live" stating that Canada would be the first to recognize the new revolutionary Corsican state. Take 10 seconds. Ask yourself if the French would let this band of Canadian incendiaries into their country. Now ask yourself why we let Phillippe Séguin, Pierre Messmer, and Dominique Boché into ours.