...is contained in an article in last week's Maclean's by Tom Flanagan. Money:
Harper's recent motion has nothing to do with deux nations. Look carefully at the wording: "That this House recognize that the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada." It does not say that Quebec is a nation, which would have implications of statehood, because Quebec is a territory with a government. It says that the Québécois are a nation, emphasizing people rather than government. And it is also significant that Harper used the French word "Québécois" even in the English text of the motion. This emphasizes that we are talking about a group of people with some common linguistic and cultural characteristics, not about a government. The Québécois, moreover, are not described as a nation tout court, but as "a nation within a united Canada," emphasizing that the concept of being Québécois has meaning only as part of Canadian history.
Makes perfect sense to me.
And yes, I hope this is the last time I write anything about this topic in a long, long time.
# posted by Adam Daifallah : 7:30 PM
