Date:         Wed, 10 Jul 1996 10:11:23 -0800
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Glen Buhlmann <gbuhlman@direct.ca>
Subject:      Quebec Separation (was Re: Firearms and Inuvik?)

Ron Lussier wrote:
>
> I realize that this is *way* off topic, but I never understood why the
> Canadian government was so opposed to recognizing Quebec as having a unique
> culture.  It seemed like a reasonable thing to do.
>
> Ron
>
> P.S.  I'm descendant from the French canadian diaspora (the Rhode Island
> cajuns.)
> --

Well it's not so much that we don't want to recognize them as a unique culture.
It's just the power that they want to go along with it.  Quebec IS a unique
culture.  There is no way anyone can say that Montreal and Toronto are the same
culture.  The problem is that the rest of Canada does not want to give up the
governmental power that Quebec wants.  You see there is also no way that anyone
can say that Vancouver and Toronto are the same culture (not a put down to
Toronto Michael - we're not better, just different).  You see there are lots of
issues here.  Quebec wants everyplace in Canada to require bilingual everything
(street signs, business signs) but they want it to be illegal to have any
English on business signs in Quebec.  Now this is a huge problem in places like
Vancouver.  There are about 20000 times more people that speak Cantonese and/or
Mandarin here than French.  So of course we're going to get a little upset that
we would have to pay extra taxes to make all street signs French when there is
such a small population of French speaking people here.  And if Quebec got the 
governmental power they wnated then this would be the least of the problems facing 
non-French speaking Canadians.

It's a real complex issue and I haven't even scratched the surface of all the
concerns of all the different groups invloved (First Nations in Quebec voted
overwhelmingly not to separate with Quebec -- they have land claims that cover
about 80% of the province which would need to be resolved by the federal
government before any new international border could be drawn).

--
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