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Originally Posted by MonctonRad
It might be different if Quebec were an island off the east coast, but, Quebec lies at the very heart of the country, and, quite literally divides the country in two. It would be difficult to remove Quebec from the federation without profound geopolitical consequences.
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That's my main beef with separatism. Atlantic Canada gets physically isolated from the rest of the country. Quebecois separatists always say that they'll honour some kind of free movement arrangement through their territory, but all we have is their word. If Quebec were located where Newfoundland is, or even BC (even losing access to an important coastline), I'd be much more okay with it.
To be frank, I've always understood the case for separatism on a cultural level. It's pretty clear that when I travel east of Montreal into the heart of Francophone Quebec that we have very little in common.
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The marriage is dysfunctional, but, the divorce would be quite messy. There are lots of assets to divvy up, and, nobody has decided yet who gets to keep the family cat (let alone what about the kids). The question is "would it be worth it", and, would you be happy afterwards knowing all the bitterness the "project" would generate. This will not be a Czechoslovakian style velvet divorce. Czechoslovakia had just emerged from Soviet domination, and, international boundaries in eastern Europe have always been quite fluid. We have hundreds of years of shared history here in Canada. Canada is actually one of the older nation states in the world.........
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Yeah, the Velvet Divorce of 1992 took place in a totally different time, and under totally different circumstances. The Soviet Union was finished, and the institutions that shape a nation state were yet to be created. Geopolitics looked like it had been settled (Fukuyama's 'End of History' belief). I'd appreciate someone else's perspective, but I feel like the 1995 Referendum was a product of this short, naïve, anomaly of a period in world history.
The world in 2023 is so different. This is really not a time for small countries to take risks. Frankly, I'm really worried about
Canada's ability to assert itself on an economic stage that will be dominated by the US, China, India and - tenuously - by the Europeans banding together as a customs union/trade bloc in the EU. We all saw what's happening to the UK, a larger economy than us. The USMCA/NAFTA is not the same as the EU. The US sets the terms, and Mexico and Canada fight for favourable arrangements in select industries. If the industry is strategically important to the US, we have to roll over and die. Remember when Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act? There are about
US$1.2 trillion in subsidies to American producers there; about 4x the Quebec annual GDP. When we subsidize VW and Stellantis to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, this is what we're competing against. Quebec learned this painfully when they just didn't have deep enough pockets to let Bombardier to match the subsidies and favourtism the Americans give to Boeing, and had to sell the company for parts.
Even if culture trumps the economy, the economy is pretty damn important. Culture is preserved through future generations. Young people with options in countries that have rich cultures but poor economies vote with their feet, emigrating to other countries and establishing families there, which jeopardizes the long-term preservation of that nation's culture. If grandparents in Montmagny are worried that their children are raising their grandkids in an increasingly English Montreal, then how would they feel if their children had to raise their grandkids in New Jersey or suburban Boston instead?
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