I know this is an old issue, and nobody cares about Ignatieff, but I’m egocentric and so still feel the need to add my two cents (soon rounded down to zero) to this subject. What Ignatieff said, to me, is entirely in line with the official position of the Liberal Party of Canada, but that doesn’t mean it’s true. Basically, what he said is that since the referendum in 1995, the federal government has been divesting power down to Quebec, and that this means Quebec is now de facto quasi independent. He thinks this is only a stepping stone to total independence, which will almost necessarily happen in time since francophone Quebecers and other Canadians now have nothing in common and do not care about each other.
Ignatieff is largely right that francophone Quebecers and other Canadians don’t care about (or even like) each other. I know there are cases of dual allegiance like mnemosyne, but as for me (even as a fully bilingual Quebecer) the rest of Canada just baffles me, and I know the reverse is also true. For most Canadians, Quebec is a bunch of lazy racists who use threats they have no intention of following upon to extort money without which they’d be a third-world shithole, and to many Quebecers the rest of Canada is a bunch of uncultured, hypocrite navel-gazers who have no care for anything that’ll happen more than a year in the future. (And despite what mnemosyne may say, I still think we’re way more – actually too much – tolerant of you than you are of us. As a proof, the Canadians’ stereotype of Quebecers was obvious to me, while I had to think long and hard to find a Quebecers’ stereotype of Canadians, and I’m still not satisfied with it. And this despite the fact that you also stereotype us as hating you, which I can assure you is not true.)
However, Ignatieff is wrong that this, and the fact that Quebec – and other Canadian provinces – have a large amount of internal autonomy necessarily leads to complete independence. This, of course, has at least since Trudeau been the position of the Liberal Party. They’ve always thought that anything that might distinguish one province from the other was a slippery slope to the nation’s complete destruction. But the fact is this just isn’t how Canada works. Canadian francophones and anglophones have always lived in largely separate bubbles and not cared about, or even disliked, each other. What Ignatieff claims is a consequence of the 1995 referendum (the disvestment of federal powers to Quebec) is actually much older: for example, Quebec actually established its own immigration policy as early as 1978, as many commenters pointed out in response to him. None of this led to the disintegration of Canada: if anything, some of it is why Quebec is still part of Canada today. I think I can speak for a certain number of Quebec francophones when I say that the less we hear about the rest of Canada, the more federalist we get. While sovereigntists would like Quebecers to rise up with the project to establish a new country for our people, with no hard feelings for the other peoples living in Canada, the sad fact is that we only vote for sovereignty when we’re angry and perceive that this country despises us, doesn’t consider us to be true Canadians and doesn’t want us here. I know it’s true for me, and the fact that support for sovereignty rose up to nearly 65% in the wake of the Meech Lake accord’s rejection and was still almost at 50% at the referendum supports my point.
To make a long story short, Ignatieff is wrong. But his analysis is certainly what I’d expect from a federal Liberal.