OK, say Quebec did legally break off ties with Canada. How would the following problems be solved?
[ul]
[li]What would happen to the provinces like New Brunswick who would be separated from Canada? Would they join the US?[/li][li]What about national security? Would Quebec’s soldiers in the Candian Army have to leave it? What about the military bases?[/li][li]National intelligence, how would CSIS secrets be shared?[/li][/ul]
How would they solve those (and other) logistical problems?
There has been some talk that the eastern parts of Canada like New Brunswick might want to join the US since they would be cut off from the rest of Canada. But I don’t know how realistic that is.
When the USSR broke up 10 years ago they had to have some system of dividing up the soldiers and even nuclear weapons. I am pretty sure Ukraine ended up keeping some nuclear bombs, not sure about the other new countries such as Belarus.
This is an excerpt from a Canadian newspaper column published March 29, and is a summary of points from a report commissioned by the Quebec government on the logisitics of separation:
Quebec’s borders would be negotiable during secession and could change;
The other provinces would “of course” be involved in secession negotiations. Aboriginal leaders and the northern territorial governments probably would too. Several provinces, including British Columbia and Alberta, could not accept any secession deal unless their own electorates approve it in their own referendums;
Northern Quebec aboriginal communities that wanted to opt out of Quebec’s secession, and keep their immense territories, would have as strong a case in law as would the seceding Quebec government;
The acceptable margin of victory in a Quebec referendum should be two-thirds, not 50%. The results of any negotiations with Canadian governments would then have to be approved in a second referendum;
A seceding Quebec would have to renegotiate all of the hundreds of Canada-U.S. treaties with the United States; under an “optimistic scenario,” this would take at least as long as the secession negotiations themselves. The Americans’ willingness to extend to Quebec the same terms they extended to all of Canada could not be guaranteed.
(excerpts from a column by Paul Wells in The National Post)
Check out a book called ‘Canada Remapped: How the partition of Quebec will reshape the nation’ (ISBN 0-88978-249-0) by Scott Reid. The book looks at how separation might occur, in the context of peaceful and non-peaceful separations in other places.
I find it unlikely that the Parti Quebecois government sanctioned such a report. Sounds more like the federal position. Then again, maybe the separatists have gotten desperate as their popular support has dwindled.
I was going to dig up my copy of the 1997 booklet Quebec and its Territory, but I must have filed it next to my copy of the Hong Kong Basic Law, in history’s dustbin of policies destined to be ignored. Luckily, I found it online.
Here’s a few rhetorical questions they endeavor to answer.
The booklet closes unwisely by noting that **
But of course, politicians will be politicians, and the vote never took place.
Were such a vote to occur, the Supreme Court has ruled in a landmark case that it should be a “a clear majority vote in Quebec on a clear question in favour of secession.” In addition, while involvement of other provinces is vaguely implied, the only negotiation specifically mandated is that “between two legitimate majorities, namely, the majority of the population of Quebec, and that of Canada as a whole”. This is a pretty murky roadmap to secession, but the Court wisely chose not to lay out a list of minimal standards to achieve. Instead, they tried to encourage a negotiated consensus that both parties could ultimately accept. The points Al Zheimers lists are essentially the goal posts marking out one end of the field of negotiation.
Finally, the US would have to renogiate all security arrangements with a totally independent Quebec. But this need not take long, and it is more likely that Quebec would not have a completely separate military. So far as I know, Quebec has no military aspirations except perhaps greater use of French within the Canadian military. Avoiding the headache of setting up its own military forces, and renogiating American treaties, would be a major incentive for the Quebec government to be flexible in its secession negotiations.
I found this amusing:
What does that have to do with international law? :rolleyes: Some politicians are just scared that what they want to do to Canada can be done to Quebec, namely, breaking it apart.
Go to http://www.nationalpost.com/ , click on “columnists” then check out Paul Wells for the complete column. Once it’s been removed as a featured column it is still easy to find in the columnists’ archives.
I stand corrected! Here is the article mentioned. Why the PQ would allow such a report to see the light of day still mystifies me, as it really undermines any chance of ever separating from Canada. Perhaps, as Wells seems to suggest, the leadership has in fact abandoned any such plans as hopeless. This could be a way to rein in the more unruly elements in the party, whose extreme views are costing the PQ votes in the wider electorate.
Any insight from Quebecers?
First place, it is hard to take anything in the National Post very sersiously. It is a right wing rag. Still there is a factual claim made and it is interesting. Another thing to note is that this study quoted dates from 1991 when the government of Robert Bourassa, a strong federalist, was in power, so I hardly think a separatist government would take it seriously. Was it indeed the PQ government that made it public? That would surprise me too.
It has often been said that what a French Canadian wants (I avoid the PC term Quebecois, since this is essntially exclusively an affair of the old stock (vielle souche) French Canadian) is a sovereign Quebec inside a united Canada.
To my mind the hardest thing to settle is the debt. The federal government has already made it clear that Quebec would have to assume its per capita share (about 24%) of the debt, which would be a crushing load, while the PQ has made it just as clear that they have no intention of doing that. They calculate their share as 17% on the basis that that percentage of the national infrastructure is located in Quebec. That might not seem like a major difference, but I don’t see either side yielding.
Even if that were settled, I think that when the reality of having to cross an international border to visit your cousin in Hawksberry sinks in those guys who vote reflexively for separation might have second thoughts when they have to approve a separation agreement.
International treaties would be another problem. Quebec is one of the main beneficiaries of free trade, but the Canadian government has made it clear that they would block the extension of the treaty to an independent Quebec. Then there is the fact that Canada transferred a huge chunk of the north to Quebec in something like 1907. At the time, it consisted mainly of some thousands of natives and zillions of trees, but it is now the source of what I believe is the largest hydro-electric installation in north America, maybe the world and the reason I am paying only about 3 1/2 cents per kWH (yes, 3 1/2 shrunken, wizened Canadian cents) for electricity. Canada has made noises about returning that and the native residents have made it clear that they have no interest in living in a sovereign Quebec, so that is another very sticky point. Compared to which things like divvying up the army and RCMP are a piece of cake.
Oh yes, there are a huge number of quebecois who live in or around Hull and work in Ottawa, many for the federal government. All of them would have to choose between moving to Ottawa and losing their jobs. Naturally, the region around Hull always votes strongly against separation. What a mess it would be.
The original reports were from 1991 and 1992, however the current report now is an update, where they went back to the authors of various sections of the original reports, to bring current the topics about which they had first written. This was released on Wednesday March 27.
It appears that the minister was obliged to release this report because it had been commissioned, and with the $800,000 spent on it, any attempt to ax it would have drawn even more attention. Beyond that, since the authors were respected academics rather than party hacks, there was little opportunity to massage the findings into something more favorable.
While the press release indicates that volumes 1 and 4 are also available in English, the Secretariat did not see fit to make the English translation available on its web page. In any case, here is the report.
As to what michaelbarr said… In spite of what federalist hardliners may think, it would be in Canada’s best interest to have Quebec as part of NAFTA. There may be exceptions in some industries, but once Canada accepts (hypothetically) that Quebec is going to separate, the goal will be what’s best for Canada. This will ease the path for Quebec into most US-Canada treaties.
Back to the OP, I recall when Czechoslovakia split, there was a disparity in the distribution of military resources. The Czech Republic, being on the front lines of the iron curtain, had the lion’s share of offensive and defensive weaponry. Slovakia, on the other hand, had most of the training camps and administrative resources. So the Czechs sent the appropiate percentage of tanks to Slovakia, and the Slovaks sent I don’t know, Tshirts and staplers? to the folks in Prague.
The above is probably correct as to what the Canadian government would do, but what they would threaten and what they would do are not necessarily the same.
BTW, governments have been known to “lose” reports before or failing that to release them late on a Friday afternoon in the middle of August, when everybody is already heading away and not interested in politics. I guess this sort of fits since it was released in the middle of holy week, which is a pretty big deal up here. For historical reasons, since the people are not especially religious.
I predict that there will a referendum in 2012, with a narrow “yes” vote, followed maybe by 2015 with separation. Here’s why. For the last 40 years, every govenment has been reelected once and then defeated. There will be an election in 2003 (unless the current government jumps the gun and has it this year, which is regarded as unlikely) and the Liberals are almost certain to win. They ought to be reelected in 2007 and by 2011, the populace will be so fed up, they will throw them out. Now, everyone has noticed that support for secession shrinks when the separatist PQ is in power and grows when the federalist Liberals are. So the PQ government that is elected in 2011 should plan and hold a referendum as quickly as possible, that is sometime in 2011 or 2012, probably the latter. What happens then is anybody’s guess, but I expect to have checked out by then.