Pierre Trudeau's son is so disgusted with Harper he's thinking about separatism.

[KamaAina]

For those of you interested in matters Canadian, this is HUGH!!!111!!!!11! I'm SERIES!!11!!1 Pierre Trudeau was the wildly popular French Canadian PM who stood for a united, bilingual Canada (and not incidentally, dated celebrities, thereby making it cool to be Canadian!).

http://news.yahoo.com/trudeau-son-justin-mulls-possible-separate-quebec-192114559.html

The son of one of the greatest defenders of Canadian unity, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, has stirred up a hornets' nest by speculating about backing Quebec separatism if the country moves too far right

Trudeau's 40-year-old son, Justin, now a Liberal member of Parliament, said in an interview with the French-language service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp (http://link.reuters.com/gud66s) on Sunday that he was enormously saddened by the direction of the country under Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

He said that at some point he might even back independence for his home province, French-speaking Quebec. Referendums in Quebec on independence in 1980 and 1995 both failed, the last one by a mere 1.2 percentage points.

"I always say, if at a certain point I thought that Canada was really the Canada of Stephen Harper - that we were going against abortion, and we were going against gay marriage and we were going backwards in 10,000 different ways - maybe I would think about wanting to make Quebec a country," he said.



I can't believe that last referendum was 17 years ago! I remember tuning around the AM dial that night in New Haven, Conn., looking for a signal from north of the border (the U.S. media, of course, would have been completely blindsided by the news that a new, French-speaking country had emerged on the border of upstate New York and New England!).

[southernyankeebelle]

1. Good for them. I wish we could do that somehow. If they would pay me to move to the northeast I

would move.

[orpupilofnature57]

2. 1.2 % is close and obviously merits a vote more

often than every 15 yrs . My great grandfather never stopped speaking French even though he moved here ( N.Y. ) when he was in his twenties and lived until he was 90 .

[KamaAina]

3. As I recall, what swung the vote toward the "non" was the so-called allophones

i.e. immigrants whose mother tongue is neither French nor English. Montreal in particularly is extremely diverse. They saved the day for Canada, to the disgust of the teabagger-style leader of the separatist movement at the time, Jacques parizeau.

[SidDithers]

5. The vote was so close because the question asked was a muddle...

It asked Quebeckers:

Do you agree that Quebec should become sovereign after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership within the scope of the bill respecting the future of Quebec and of the agreement signed on June 12, 1995?.

The Provincial Government in Quebec at the time was trying to have their cake and eat it too. They talked of separation, but were really proposing some sort of sovereignty association. From wiki:

A poll released just weeks before the October 30 vote showed more than 28% of undecided voters believed a "Yes" vote would simply mean Quebec would negotiate a better deal within confederation, meaning that they would continue to use Canadian passports and elect members of parliament in the Canadian House of Commons.[4] Some federalists argued that the referendum question was unclear by mentioning such "partnership" proposals, because no Canadian political leaders outside Quebec had shown interest in a partnership agreement with an independent Quebec.[5] A major theme of the "No" committee during the referendum campaign was to try to convince voters that a majority "Yes" vote would in fact mean full independence for Quebec, with no certainty of a partnership agreement with Canada.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_referendum,_1995

After the Non side won, the Federal government passed the Clarity Act, which was legislation mandating that it wouldn't recognize the results of future referenda, unless a clear and concise question was asked.

Sid

[Alexander]

4. Ironic considering the Bloc Québécois was completely decimated in the 2011 election.

They fell from 47 seats down to 4. Leader Gilles Duceppe even lost his own seat. This is a party that promotes Quebec sovereignty more than anything else.

I don't follow the issue of Quebec on a daily basis, so I don't know if there's a huge groundswell of support for another referendum. But if the 2011 results are any indication, it doesn't look like a lot of people in Quebec want to separate from Canada these days.

[Jello Biafra]

6. We hear about the Separatists movement every 20 years or so....

it still hasn't happened........

[provis99]

7. odd how Justin identifies as French,

given that his birth language was English, and he is 3\4 british and only 1\4 French...

[KamaAina]

8. Well, he is a politician in Quebec

[Swede]

9. Tabarnac!

Harper is really turning up the heat.