Wednesday, Jan. 31, 1996
VANCOUVER - Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard will wind up regretting his remark that Canada is divisible because it's not “a real country,” Prime Minister Jean Chretien said yesterday.
Chretien told a Vancouver phone-in radio host that Bouchard's comment will cost sovereignists support, both among Quebecers who like their multicultural society, and among world leaders who fear Bouchard's logic will fuel secessionists in their own countries.
On Saturday, Bouchard told a news conference that, unlike Quebec, “Canada is divisible because it is not a real country. There are two people, two nations and two territories. And this one is ours.”
Big mistake, Chretien told CKNW radio host Bill Good. “Mr. Bouchard made an error, in my judgment, when he said that Canada is not a real country. Because he suddenly caused for himself a lot of problems, because you don't have many countries in the world where you have only one people. There is virtually none.
“You know, even in France, they have the problem in the press these days in Corsica. In Spain, they always have problems with that; in Belgium, where the French and the Flemish are. Even in Scotland, let alone India.
“So, you know, this notion that every language should have its own country around the world, that means there will be 500 or 600 countries at the United Nations very soon.”
Chretien also asked which “we” Bouchard is speaking for when he says that one of the territories in Canada is “ours.”
“Because by 'we' I hope he meant the anglophones of Montreal, I hope that he meant the natives in the North, I hope that he meant the Italians and the Portuguese who are in Montreal.”
Chretien's comments on the number of countries in the world that would be cut up if Bouchard's logic were rigorously applied highlight a dimension of the sovereignty debate that has received little attention until now: the question of international recognition if Quebec tried to attain sovereignty through a unilateral declaration.
An aide to a cabinet minister whose job requires foreign travel said that in almost every meeting with foreign diplomats, the first questions Canadian officials face are about the Quebec-secession issue.
The aide said foreign leaders are very nervous about their perception that a regional minority, voting along ethnic lines, could break up a large prosperous country with a simple majority on a question chosen by the secessionists.
And more and more often, the aide said, Canadian officials are encouraging their counterparts to make their concerns public.
Official recognition by other countries is crucial in any attempt by secessionists to form a new country. International law grants no automatic right of secession; without widespread international recognition, the secession in a very real sense hasn't happened.
Bouchard's logic has also heartened a politically powerful group within Quebec that has announced its plans to stay in Canada if Quebec separates. The Toronto Globe and Mail announced Tuesday that Quebec's Cree leaders are arguing that by Bouchard's own logic, a sovereign Quebec wouldn't be a “real” country if it contained the vast, and ethnically distinct, regions of northern Quebec. So Bouchard's comment - designed to quell growing talk about “partitioning” a seceding Quebec - would play into the hands of the most experienced and politically savvy partitionists, the Quebec Crees.
Chretien said internal and international dissent might finally convince Quebecers that secession is a serious business with unpredictable ramifications. “It might be that this debate, at this moment, about the partition, will force a lot of Quebecers to think that it's not an easy thing to break up a country that is a member of the G7,” the Group of Seven industrialized countries.
“You know, when I go abroad, everybody shakes their heads: 'What's going on? What's wrong with you guys in Canada?' You know, they all look up to Canada as the envy of the world and here we're fighting to split.”