Gotta love this: Prime Minister Carney's recent talk at the Quebec Citadel on the Plains of Abraham has launched a high-level discussion of the fundamentals of Canadian history. The latest to weigh in is Stéphane Dion, political scientist, cabinet minister, ambassador, and Liberal Party leader, who published an opinion piece in the National Post yesterday.
(The Post wants me to create an account, but the essay is available here even if you don't.)
In his essay Dion sometimes flies a bit high (as he sometimes did as Liberal leader)
I will argue here that, in judging Canada’s past, which Quebec nationalist circles reproach for conquest and assimilation, one must consider the tragic nature of universal history.
and
If we had to consider all countries born from past conquests as illegitimate and undo them, we would turn the planet upside down! It is only recently, during the 20th century, that conquest war was outlawed in international law.
And then there is something about the czars. But he gets into his stride in hitting back against the Parti Quebecois mantra of Quebecers permanently opprimés et humiliés. Here is the gist of it:
If the French-Canadian population has been able to maintain itself and grow, it is thanks to its admirable persistence, its faith, its clergy, but also because it wisely leveraged British institutions before helping to give rise to Canadian democracy, one of the oldest in the world.
What was exceptional in Canada was not the desire for assimilation expressed in the Durham Report. That was in the air at the time. What was exceptional is that this report was set aside by the Baldwin-Lafontaine agreement, and then the Macdonald-Cartier agreement, which led to the federation we have today.
This is pretty good history. In the 1840s events cited by Dion, the British conqueror relinquished to Canadians self-government, and on an electoral franchise that gave full voting power to (more or less) every French Canadian household. Even tenant farmers on seigneurial estates voted -- a voting power far broader than existed in Britain or indeed nearly anywhere in the world at the time. Henceforth it was mostly impossible to govern Canada without francophone participation and consent. Quebecers have long had power in Canada, and power to run their own affairs in Quebec as well
And that was kinda the point of Mark Carney's history lesson too -- to which I was giving some love the other day -- with a link to Carney's full text if you need.
