Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
Yes, I know they are definitely in a better position than us.
One major difference is that Switzerland is the product of willful union between quite different peoples, whereas Canada is the product of a conquest of established peoples by a single imperial power. The mythology of Confederation in 1867 attempts to push us mythologically in the direction of "willful union" but there is still a lot of conquest-related baggage that we can't manage to shake.
EDIT: Canada was never really meant as a country to be "shared" equally in terms of opportunity and power between the British and the French, and even less so with Indigenous peoples of course. At best certain minorities needed to be appeased or controlled so that things didn't spill over, but it was always clear who the bosses of the country (the "charter" group) were going to be. Canada did become more enlightened starting around the 1960s and I'd argue has progressively gotten better since that time but there are still deep-seeded things that are difficult to overcome.
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Another issue I think is the elephant in the room, otherwise known as the... United States of America. If the US were a Francophone country, probably the Québécois would feel quite confident about themselves and their future, and would feel quite at ease inside Canada (conquest or no conquest), with no desire to secede. In fact in such a world, it is probably the Anglo-Canadians who would experience lots of angst, afraid to disappear and become assimilated. And I assume lots of Indian and Chinese immigrants in Anglo-Canada would prefer to speak French, the language of Oncle Sam, and not make much effort to learn English, which would add to the anxieties in Anglo-Canada.
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