[c. 10,000 words] [October 22, 2002] [End]

There are five other items in our Canada area:  "Statehood for Quebec", "Welcoming Canada Home", "Private Action for Canadian-U.S. Union", "A Modest Proposal for Redrawing the Map of Canada as Seven States and One Territory of the United States", and a printable flyer with tear-off tabs. There is also a discussion filled with ideas on how Quebec could, very profitably, make itself champion of French in the Western Hemisphere at Letters 45A-H of the "Letters from the Chairman" page, clickably indexed at "Haiti (and Quebec)" in the index at that site. See "What's New" for anything that might have been added since.

Post a flyer?

The old day is ending in Quebec.

Friendly suggestions for Quebec separatists
from the Expansionist Party of the United States

Winning the United States
to Quebec Separatism

The success or failure of Quebec separatism may depend on who wins the battle for U.S. public opinion. XP here suggests some approaches and information that can be useful in persuading Americans to support Quebec separation from Canada. There is some repetition between arguments, because some ideas work in more than one place, and understanding the fullness of one approach requires inclusion of an idea that may also be useful in another approach. Americans uncertain about whether they should favor or oppose separation of Quebec from Canada may find this section of XP's homepage of special interest.

Quebec's voters can comfortably contemplate being flanked east and west by a hostile Canada only if they can trust in a friendly U.S. to the south. Further, the economic viability of a sovereign Quebec rests upon free trade with other parts of North America. Though English Canada is a small market that Quebec can readily dispense with, Quebec must have ready access to the huge U.S. market, and preferably to Mexico's large market as well, as a full member of a new NAFTA. Distant markets, in Europe or Asia, cannot replace North American trade. Thus, English Canadians must not be permitted to poison the United States against Quebec's drive for independence, nor against an independent Quebec's membership in a wide, Western Hemisphere trading bloc.

English Canadians like to think that they have a special "in" with Americans by virtue of a shared language. Quebecers must not "write off" the U.S. on that account, however, because the existence of Canada as a country separate from the United States has always been something of an annoyance to the United States, and there is a lot in Canadian-U.S. history that argues for the United States' siding with Quebec and against Canada.

English Canadians have tried to characterize Quebec separatism in U.S. eyes as willfully and irredeemably destructive, and draw a parallel between separation of Quebec from Canada today and the attempted secession of the South from the United States in 1861. You mustn't let them frame the debate in terms of loyalty vs. treason, bilingualist tolerance vs. French chauvinism, constructiveness vs. destructiveness, or Good Guys vs. Bad Guys.

In appealing for U.S. sympathy, Quebec has the most powerful argument in the world: by un-creating Canada, Quebec will be creating a new North America, more sensibly organized than the bizarre pattern today, in which people who speak the same language are divided but people who speak different languages are thrown together. Quebec's separation would so disrupt Canada that it is likely that several or even all of the remaining provinces would apply for statehood in the United States, and thus fulfill, at last, the dream of the Founding Fathers: a united Anglo-America under the Constitution of the United States.

In that such a larger American Union would be Quebec's best friend, largest trading partner, and protector against any military danger, it is very much in Quebec's interest to promote integration of English Canada into the United States. If Quebec points out that its separation would greatly aid such a progressive reworking of the map of North America, it stands to win over large segments of U.S. public opinion to Quebec's side.

Accession of English Canada to the Union would make the United States the largest country on Earth, add over 20 million speakers of U.S.-accented English to its population, and hugely increase its resource base. You must make Americans understand that it would be insane for the United States to cheer for Canadian unity, because Canada was created by the British Empire against the United States, and the line drawn by that Empire to keep the resources of the north beyond U.S. reach still keeps those resources beyond reach. The breakup of Canada, by contrast, would likely result in erasing that line and bringing all those resources into the U.S. realm. Thus it is not the unity of Canada (against U.S. annexation) but the breakup of Canada that is in the United States' best interest. So much is it in U.S. interest, indeed, that the U.S. should be doing everything in its power to help Quebec separate!

Quebec sovereignty would, in fact, be in everybody's interest:

• in Quebec's best interest, because Quebecers would finally be masters in their own house, free of the "minority" mentality and the need to fight for every scrap of cultural power they need, while enjoying all the benefits of free trade with the richest nation in the history of the world;
• in the United States' best interest, because it stands to pick up some or all of the remaining pieces of Canada and thus become significantly bigger, richer, more powerful and even more prestigious; and even
• in English Canadians' best interest, because they would finally be free to focus all their attention on their own problems and pursue their own fulfillment in their own language, without feeling the slightest shame in not knowing French. English-Canadians would be free from endless bickering with Quebec, and they could either maintain a unilingual English nation within NAFTA or, if they so desire, follow their heart into the Union.

Good borders might make good neighbors but the border in place today is not a good border, because it divides people who should be together and unites people who want nothing to do with each other. Moving the border makes all the sense in the world, for all three parties. It's a win-win-win situation. No losers. If the debate is conducted on the right premises, then, Quebec must prevail.

But English Canada won't speak to those issues. Rather, it will attempt to mischaracterize Quebec's motives, cast it as a treasonous villain, and imply that its actions could lead to war, vast economic dislocation, and possibly even a refugee problem on the United States' northern border. They may hint that if the U.S. is discomfited by a few thousand seaborne refugees from Haiti and Cuba, it could be massively disrupted by a flood of refugees from a Canadian civil conflict across our long land frontier.

The leadership elite of the United States does not want to see Quebec separate if that would produce a Canadian civil war, with all the economic and population displacement that that could mean. In light of the massive outflow of refugees from tribal carnage in Rwanda that flooded U.S. news with images of hordes of miserable people pouring over the borders into Rwanda's neighbors, it is easy for U.S. policymakers to visualize hundreds of thousands of Canadian refugees pouring across our own porous border into tent cities to be erected on U.S. territory and maintained at U.S. expense.

All you need do to address this concern is to point out that the interest of the United States lies not in preventing Quebec's separation, but in preventing English Canada from making war upon Quebec, which the U.S. can do simply by publicly guaranteeing the democratic right of self-determination to the people of Quebec — and privately telling Canadian federalists that the United States will not permit a military occupation to undo a democratic referendum. You can quite legitimately argue that defending Quebec against all enemies, including English Canada, would be in the United States' best interest.

You must reassure the U.S. leadership elite that Quebec is not an incipient Cuba of the North, by swearing fealty to NATO, NORAD, and our shared traditions of democratic pluralism and free-market economics, albeit with that governmental moderation of the harshest aspects of free enterprise that the U.S. has come to expect of Canada.

  =    ?

You must first, however, make plain to both the U.S. leadership and ordinary Americans that Quebec is not the present-day, Canadian equivalent of the Confederacy that tried to break up the United States in 1861. Be clear on this: Canadian federalists will do everything in their power to make Americans view Quebec as the Confederacy of our time and thus to be stopped at all costs.

The American mind will, naturally, attempt to put Canadian events into a U.S. context, in order to make them comprehensible. The first inclination will therefore be to equate Quebec "separatism" with the attempted "secession" of the South in the Civil War. The U.S. mind will thus be inclined to see Quebec as villain, and Quebec separatists' disrupting the Canadian Confederation as the exact equivalent of Rebel traitors' trying to destroy the American Union.

Further, some people here see a threat to U.S. territorial integrity if Quebec should succeed in separating from a federal union that Americans (wrongly) think is exactly parallel to their own, because it would, to their mind, establish the principle that any member of any federal union has the right to leave anytime it wants. Such people would therefore oppose Quebec separation on the ground that it would inspire separatist movements within the United States, perhaps even instigate a second Civil War here, as Southerners decide that "the South will rise again!" Never mind that there are no serious separatist movements in the South and that separatist noises from Hawaii and Alaska are only noise, since the U.S. Civil War settled once and forever that no State can leave the Union. We must deal with what people feel, and fear — that is, we must deal with irrational emotions, not just with rational political discourse.

  =   ! 

Confederation = Confederacy = U.S. Enemy

To still U.S. fears, you must correct the misperception that Quebec separation is the exact equivalent of Southern secession. You must show,

• first, that the U.S. Union and Canadian Confederation cannot be compared;
• second, that Quebec certainly cannot be compared to the Confederacy — quite the contrary: it is Canada's "Confederation" that can more properly be compared to the "Confederacy"; and
• third, that the period of U.S. history to which the drama now unfolding in Quebec should be compared is the American Revolution, not the Civil War, with Quebec playing the role of the Thirteen Colonies and Canada the role of the British Empire. You must make plain that Quebec never had the sovereign right to yield sovereignty to a larger entity — or refuse so to cede — and never consented to the Confederal arrangements made in its name. All Quebec wants to do now is establish its long-denied sovereignty, so that it can choose of its own free will whether to pursue a perpetually separate course among the nations of the Earth or at some point in the future freely and maturely to merge its sovereignty into a larger sovereignty of its own choosing — which might just end up being the United States. (This last point is an excellent debating argument for a U.S. audience, whether you presently anticipate that Quebec might outgrow independence or not. No one can see into the future, and it might happen that once Quebecers have established their sovereignty, they will relax, realize they don't need to be a little country to themselves, and choose to join the Union. (See presentation, "Statehood for Quebec".) It may, in short, be that all they really need is the right to make their own choice about what country they want to belong to, rather than having had that choice made for them by a European Empire over a century ago.)

To draw the analogy to the American Revolution you will need to educate Americans about part of their history they don't really understand. In doing so, however, you will stir American pride in the enormous accomplishments of their Founding Fathers, and that glow will bathe you in its warmth.

You need to make at least the following points.

(1) Canadian Confederation was never a union in the way that the United States has always been. The "provinces" that formed Confederation were not sovereign at the time they did so, but only colonies, and all they were doing was tinkering with a colonial organization chart, not creating a new nation. Canada was created by the British Empire for the British Empire, not by Canadians for Canadians.

Before Canada adopted its own flag in 1965, many English Canadians proudly flew the "Union Jack", Britain's national flag, even in the Province of Quebec. They did not feel that Canada needed either its own flag or its own real nationhood apart from the glorious British Empire, even when that Empire became more a memory than a reality.

The Father of Confederation, John A. Macdonald, was born in Scotland (unlike the Founding Fathers of the United States, all of whom were born in America — Alexander Hamilton was born in the West Indies, but that is part of the Americas; he was not European). Macdonald was a devoted Imperialist and he created Confederation not to establish Canada's independence but to prevent it. To make the argument even more pointedly, he created Confederation to keep Canada from becoming independent of the British Empire by becoming part of the United States.

Macdonald proclaimed, only months before his death, in office as Prime Minister of Canada:

"A British subject I was born; a British subject I will die. With my utmost effort, with my latest breath, will I oppose the 'veiled treason' which attempts by sordid means and mercenary proffers to lure our people from their allegiance".

He made this passionate statement in opposition to free trade with the United States — in March 1891, 24 years after Confederation. The Prime Minister of a genuinely sovereign Canada could not die a British subject. Yet Macdonald did die a British subject, because Confederation did not establish Canada as an independent country, just a stronger British colony. His reference to "'veiled treason' which attempts by sordid means and mercenary proffers to lure our people from their allegiance" was a swipe at people who thought that Canadians' best interests would be served by annexation to the United States. And the "allegiance" he spoke of was allegiance not to an independent Canada but to the British Empire, the very same Empire that tried to crush the Thirteen States. Americans will not look fondly upon people who call upon Canadians to be faithful to the memory of an avowed enemy of the United States.

(2) Many members of the English-Canadian ruling class, who trace their ancestry to "United Empire Loyalists", have gone so far as to suggest that the Revolutionary War was a Civil War of the British Empire in which the Thirteen United States were the early equivalent of the Confederacy in rebelling from the British Empire and, as traitors to King and Country, destroyed a union greater far than the United States has ever been: The British Empire. They blame all subsequent failures of the British Empire on the example set by those first "turncoats", not on the intrinsic viciousness and selfishness of the British ruling class.

It is worth reminding Americans that the British launched several attacks upon the United States from Canada during the Revolution, attacks in which Quebecers played essentially no part. Britain could not recruit armies of Quebecois against Americans; but they did use Quebec territory (which they had not long before conquered from France) and the great harbor at Halifax, Nova Scotia to wage their war against the United States!

By contrast with the cooperation of early English-speaking colonists in Quebec and Nova Scotia, French-speaking Quebecers did not rally to the British war against America. Quite the opposite: their 'mother country', France, rallied to the U.S. side and turned a desperate guerrilla war into a smashing success. Without French help, the U.S. almost certainly would have lost the Revolution. And a very large part of France's reason for fighting on the American side was to get even for the loss of Quebec. Remind Americans of that.

Montreal's French-dominant Basilica of Notre Dame, one of the many gems of La Belle Province.

(3) Quebec owns an enormously powerful weapon in the word "Tory". To the extent it can identify the English-Canadian ruling class with "United Empire Loyalists" — the Tory scum the U.S. forced out by the tens of thousands after the Revolutionary War — Quebec will utterly nullify U.S. sympathy for English Canada in its quarrel with Quebec. Tell Americans that one of Canada's major parties thru much of its history, the "Progressive Conservatives", called themselves "Tories"! Use this powerful weapon to demolish English Canada in the eyes of American patriots. Use it as a battering ram to smash open the locked doors of Confederation and thus escape the dungeon of confinement within small-minded, mean-spirited Canada.

Tories enthusiastically co-conspired in the crimes of the British against the United States in the Revolutionary War. Some 4,435 Americans died at their hands, when the U.S. had only about 2.5 million people. That is the equivalent today of about 450,000 Americans being killed by the British and their "Loyalist" allies, the "Tories" who fled to Canada after the war.

Few Americans realize the extent of the losses the U.S. suffered in that long-ago war, in part because the absolute numbers were so small. Only by comparing the relative numbers, as above, do we get a sense of how terrible that war was. In November 1997, PBS first broadcast a series about the Revolutionary War era (Liberty! The American Revolution) which brought home some of that horror. Remind Americans what the British and their Tory allies did to them. Get a transcript of the episode "The World Turned Upside Down", which spoke to the atrocities committed by Tories in the South, a region extremely powerful in U.S. national politics today.  In one particularly grisly passage, that program describes a ruined farmhouse in which the severed heads of a butchered patriot family were displayed on the mantelpiece to greet returning patriot soldiers. Bring home to Americans the indisputable fact that the English-Canadian ruling class in part derives from and actually honors the memory of those vicious enemies of the United States. Now those same Canadians want the U.S. to side with them, our ancestral enemies, to put down another would-be breakaway colony. I don't think so.

(4) Whereas Canada was a group of colonies long after its ostensible organization into a single country, for almost five years after their Declaration of Independence, the states of the "United States" were for all practical purposes 13 separate countries, each sovereign to itself.

Prison outside Montreal, from the air.

Some had had a separate colonial existence for over 150 years. The British colonial authorities, who always operated on the "divide and rule" principle, did nothing to promote a common identity among colonials (that is, until the success of the U.S. federation impelled them to form a counter-federation of British colonies in Canada; indeed, Quebec separatists might usefully employ the term "counter-federation" for "Confederation" when talking about Canada in this context). The Declaration of Independence proclaimed the independence not of a single political entity, the United States, but of thirteen separate nations. The language of the Declaration is clear:

"these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; . . . and that as Free and Independent States, they have full power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do [emphasis added]."

Though Americans today misinterpret the word "state" to mean, "subdivision of the single sovereign entity the United States", the Declaration intended no such sense but rather the sense in which the "State of Israel" and "State of Kuwait" use the word: to mean what speakers of English call a "nation". (Note that tho Israel and Kuwait both call themselves "State" and are both in the Middle East, they are certainly not part of the same country but are in fact enemies.) When the Declaration of Independence said that the States had the right to levy war and so forth, it meant that each state had the right to do such things, in the same way that each other independent "state" (like Israel or Kuwait now or France or Spain then) had the right to do them, independently of any other entity.

The term "United States" in fact alternated in the text of the Declaration with "United Colonies". There was no political entity called the "United Colonies"; there was equally, at that time, no political entity called the "United States". The "States" or "Colonies" were "united" in purpose, not within a single political structure, in the same way that the Allies of World War II were united in purpose but not in political structure. The Allies called themselves the "United Nations", but that did not mean that Britain, Brazil, the U.S. and the other Allies had merged politically in a supranational federal union.

The formal title of the Declaration of Independence is "In Congress, July 4, 1776[:] Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America". Compare the "Declaration of the United Nations" issued on January 1, 1942 by the twenty-six Allies (interestingly, to numerologists, twice thirteen), which pledged them all to continue the war against the Axis to success, and not, any of them, to make a separate peace. As the "United Nations" in 1942 was a wartime alliance without any overarching political sovereignty, so too was the "United States" in 1776 only a wartime alliance without any overarching political sovereignty.

The document itself offers visual proof of the primacy of "State" as against "United", because, as you can plainly see from the illustration to the right, the words "of the Thirteen United" are written much smaller than all the other words of the title.

Point out as well that the term "United States" appears only in the title and formalistic conclusion of the Declaration of Independence, not in the main text. Nowhere does the Declaration claim to establish a political entity that displaced the governments of the separate colonies or limited their sovereignty. Modern-day Americans assume that what was being established was the single political sovereignty "the United States", but what the Declaration actually declared was the sovereignty of thirteen separate countries.

In 1776 neither the "United Colonies" nor the "United States" had a common constitution, and the Continental Congress was not so much a legislature as an organization, the Continental Army not so much a unified force as an alliance of separate national militias. George Washington was, thus, not so much the Commander-in-Chief of the United States armed forces as the equivalent in 1780 of the Supreme Allied Commander in World War II.

  =  

This is not a quibble but is vitally important as regards Quebec's status vis-a-vis Canada. Only a sovereign state has the authority to yield its sovereignty to a larger entity. The Thirteen States were independent, from each other as much as from Britain, so had the right to yield their sovereignty if they so chose. When they decided of their own free will to create a Federal Union, they knowingly submerged their separate sovereignties in a common sovereignty, and the legislatures of all the States ratified both the first and second constitutions of that Union, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution of 1787. Quebec, however, was never sovereign, so could not consent to arrangements highhandedly made for it by its colonial overlord, the British Empire — the very same colonial overlord whose highhandedness toward the Thirteen Colonies caused those Colonies to rebel.

When Pierre Elliott Trudeau finally "repatriated" the constitution (or "patriated" it, since it hadn't started in Canada) in 1982, Quebec did not agree to it. Quite the contrary, Quebec made plain that it would not ratify unless the constitution were changed to add provisions that acknowledged the special nature of Quebec and gave Quebec greater powers than other provinces. Those changes were never made, tho the so-called "Meech Lake Accord" did put such proposals before the provinces for ratification. Quebec's legislature ratified that Accord, but the Accord overall failed because two provinces, Manitoba and Newfoundland, rejected it. Canadian federalists then came back with a new Accord, hammered out in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, which they submitted to a national popular referendum. Every major politician in Canada urged the people to vote "Yes", but the people of Quebec and, stunningly, those of most other provinces gave it a resounding "No". So the Charlottetown Accord, which would have brought Quebec happily under the Canadian constitution, failed. With it, Quebec's consent to that constitution also failed. To this date Quebec has never ratified the Canadian constitution. How can Quebec be bound by a constitution it has REFUSED to ratify?

This is an argument Americans can follow readily and sympathize with.

(5) Even if Quebec were to be said to be subject to the Canadian constitution — which it is not — some Canadian legal scholars do not see that constitution as banning separation, whereas the United States Constitution does. Even the 1998 ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada is equivocal on that point. It says on one hand that there is no right of Quebec to separate but on the other that if Quebecers vote to separate, the Federal Government of Canada and the other provinces must negotiate the terms of that separation!

The Union that the Thirteen (separate and fully sovereign) States formed was, from the outset, designed to be "perpetual". That point is made definitively by the very title of the first constitution the new Nation did agree to, the "Articles of Confederation and perpetual union . . .". Though the present Constitution nowhere uses the term "perpetual" for the Union, it doesn't put any time limit upon the Union either, nor does it provide an escape clause for States wishing to leave the Union. What the Constitution does not expressly permit, it forbids. That's the way the U.S. Constitution works. Had the Framers of the Constitution intended that states be permitted to leave the Union, they would have provided an express mechanism by which they could do so, just as they provided a mechanism by which the Constitution could be amended (or abolished, a radical form of amendment). There is no "escape clause", no separation mechanism written into the U.S. Constitution.

In view of the historical context, then, the Preamble's reference to creating "a more perfect Union" clearly means a more perfect perpetual union than that created by the "Articles of Confederation and perpetual union". The conclusion is inescapable that the Framers of the present Constitution intended not to dissolve the "perpetual union" established by the Articles of Confederation and create a weaker union in its place but to create a stronger "perpetual union".

The United States' revered first President, George Washington, had some powerful things to say about all this in his Farewell Address (September 19, 1796). Early on, he wishes to his fellow citizens "that your union and brotherly affection may be perpetual; that the free Constitution which is the work of your hands may be sacredly maintained" (emphasis added). Though I have never seen the whole of the British North America Act, my understanding is that Confederation's amalgam of British colonies was not expressly made perpetual; Canada's first constitution was not the work of Canadian hands, but of British hands (it is an ordinary act of legislation by the British Parliament); and Canada's second constitution, that of 1982, which was made by Canadian hands, was never consented to by Quebec.

President Washington went on to speak to early regional tensions, which the British Empire was actively seeking to exacerbate. He warns the "West" (in those days, the area from the Appalachians to the Mississippi) that "the secure enjoyment of indispensable outlets for its own productions" depended upon "an indissoluble community of interest [with the East] as one nation" (emphasis added). Any other arrangement for the West, "whether derived from its own separate strength or from an apostate and unnatural connection with any foreign power [by which Washington meant the British Empire], must be intrinsically precarious."

Montreal, Quebec's commercial giant, needs no English-Canadian intermediary to manage its dealings with NAFTA nor any other part of the outside world.

Though Canadian nationalists might want to make the same argument to keep Canada together (that Quebec needs English Canadian provinces as "indispensable outlets for its own productions"), NAFTA offers Quebec the equivalent of an internal market of 392 million people without so much as one English-Canadian consumer. Though malicious people in English Canada might want to persuade the U.S. and Mexico to deny to an independent Quebec admission to NAFTA, there is no reason in the world why either the U.S. or Mexico would do that once Quebec independence had actually been established, since the economic and political interests of both the United States and Mexico require stability and general prosperity in our part of the world. No. NAFTA would surely include Quebec whether it be a part of Canada or apart from Canada.

Quebec's economic interests lie not in artificial east-west commerce within sparsely populated Canada but in natural north-south commerce with the vastly populous regions of the United States, Mexico, and points south in the Hemisphere-wide free trade area now emerging. Despite the best efforts of English-Canadians to represent themselves as "domestic" to Quebec but the United States as "foreign", Quebecers have the good sense to know that Americans are probably far fonder of "Québec" than are English Canadians, and far more willing to accept the otherness of others, in Quebec or out.

Unlike Canada, there is no dominant ethnic group in the United States, an enormously diverse society comfortable with diversity. Quebec's being French is no more difficult for us to deal with than Puerto Rico's being Spanish yet nonetheless enjoying an economic and political association with the U.S.

Returning now to George Washington's advice to his compatriots as he readied to leave office, the first President gets to the heart of the difference between Canada and the United States in these words:

"To the efficacy and permanency of your Union [the U.S.] a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliances, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute. They must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay [the Articles of Confederation] by the adoption of a constitution of government better calculated than your former for an intimate union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns.

"This government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support."

What Washington was saying is that the U.S. Constitution was ratified by all the States, after vigorous and sometimes even stormy debates, pro and con, in all the states. The people had before them, in the Federalist Papers, copious explanations of the provisions of the Constitution and the reasons for those provisions. After these spirited debates, every single state ratified the U.S. Constitution, without reservation and without imposition from above by any great power.

The Chateau Frontenac Hotel looms over Quebec's Lower City.

By contrast, the British North America Act of 1867 was effectively imposed upon Canada by Britain (which, to borrow from Washington, 'influenced' and [over]'awed' Canadian colonials into accepting a reorganization authored by London, which wanted a more powerful colonial regime to withstand pressures from the U.S. Realize that in 1867, the year Canadian Confederation was concluded, the U.S. had recently emerged whole from the Civil War and that very year purchased Alaska from Russia, which made Britain fear that an energetic U.S. to the south and west of its North American dominions would want to connect those two areas by adding the regions between.

Britain did not offer its individual Canadian colonies independence on their own, either as an equal first choice nor as a later alternative if they could not agree upon a form of Confederation. If it had, Quebec might well have left the Empire in 1867, and the history of this continent would have been hugely different.

Confederation conferred imitation independence upon Canada in order to put a legalistic bar in the way of U.S. Expansionism. You see, the United States could easily justify taking territory from a European empire that stood in the way of the march of democracy. Canadians were not, after all, represented in the British Parliament; they would, however, be granted full representation in Congress once their colonies were reorganized as states after forcible takeover, purchase, or other means of transfer out of the British Empire and into the American Republic. Indeed, the Articles of Confederation (1781) anticipated accession of the Canadian colony to the Union:

ARTICLE XI. Canada acceding to this confederation, and joining in the measures of the United States, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this union[;] but no other colony shall be admitted into the same unless such admission be agreed to by nine states.

But if Canada were an independent, democratic country, the U.S. could not use anti-imperialism to justify marching in and taking over. The British ruling class knew that, so created Canada into a pseudo-independent 'country' that was actually to be controlled as to foreign policy, defense, trade, and other fields by London. Canada didn't achieve anything like real sovereignty until the early 1930s, some 65 years after Confederation; and did not gain even the right to amend its own constitution until "patriation" in 1982. Until then, only the British Parliament had the right to amend Canada's constitution!

Canada's independence from Britain, and thus Quebec's independence from domination by a British commercial class, was a sham, and Quebec was overawed by the huge and manipulative British Empire. Americans today think of Britain as a little island off the coast of France, but in 1867, the "sun never set on the British Empire", the greatest overseas empire in the history of the world, which controlled a fourth of the world's population — and not for their own good but for the benefit of the British ruling class. Little Quebec had no say in how it was to be governed, who its trading partners were to be, and who was to control its business. All that was controlled by London and its imperial plants (English "Canadians") in the Quebec colony.

When even English Canadians tired of "The British Connection" and moved to 'patriate' the constitution 115 years late, they tried to win Quebec's consent to English Canada's plan for division of powers between the federal and provincial governments, and English Canada's ideas on an amending formula, but could not. Quebec did not ratify the re/patriated constitution, so it has no obligation to adhere to it, any more than someone who refuses to sign a contract can be held to its terms.

As Washington's Farewell Address plainly shows, the Founding Fathers from the beginning understood that they were creating an indissoluble Union of equal States that, consensually and in full knowledge of what they were doing, forever yielded their separate sovereignties to a conjoint sovereignty when they merged. That was never the case with Canada. None of the colonies that formed Canada was ever sovereign, so none had any sovereignty to yield.

(6) It is crucial that Americans be made to understand that Canada's original organic act was an ordinary piece of legislation by the British Parliament designed not to create an independent country but to reorganize several weak colonies into a single larger and stronger colony better able to withstand pressures for and temptations to annexation to the United States. The British North America Act, as its very name indicates, was designed to preserve Canada as a British Dominion, not to create a new nation that would take Canada out of the Empire.

The British Government merged four colonies into one to serve the interests not of the colonists but of the Empire — against the interests of the United States and, as it happens, against the interests of Canadians themselves, who would be richer and happier inside the U.S. than out, especially inasmuch as they wouldn't spend more than a century worrying, as Canadian publications put it from time to time, "Can Canada survive?" Nor would they have suffered decades of intercommunal recriminations and travails in a hopeless attempt to create Canada into a bilingual and bicultural nation from coast to coast to coast (Atlantic to Pacific to Arctic, like the United States). Canadians would have had decades of political and cultural peace of mind had they long ago joined the Union, and Quebec would likely be thriving as a bilingual partner in a great and tolerant cultural union. If we do today what our ancestors should have done a century and more ago, fifty years from today Canadians will find it hard even to imagine, much less really understand, why their ancestors fought the inevitable so bitterly and so long, when the inevitable turned out to be terrific.

(7) The people of the United States spend very little time looking backward, into history. They like to think that historical ignorance keeps them from being captive to the past. But it was the Spanish-born American philosopher and poet George Santayana who said,

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

It is one thing knowingly to forgive a past transgression and be forever thereafter on guard against recurrence. It is quite another either not to know about or to forget a wrong done you in the past and thus allow another, of the same type, to be done to you in the future.

Canadian Confederation was instituted immediately after the horrendous U.S. Civil War, when the United States was only starting to try to heal its grievous political, economic, and, above all else, emotional wounds, so was not remotely ready to bounce back to an earlier, ebullient expansionism. French-Canadians saw the recent, violent episode of their southern neighbor as a cautionary tale: put aside thoughts of a temporary dalliance with the United States as the way to escape the British Empire, because if ever you enter the American Union, you will never be allowed to leave.

They thus quietly but unhappily consented to be indefinitely coopted by English Canadians into consenting to a Confederation they could never transform into a French-speaking nation but in which they would be consigned to little more than manual laborers or, as they liked to put it, "hewers of wood and drawers of water". Thus have English Canadians and their devious teacher, the infinitely disingenuous British Empire, used the United States as bogeyman to keep Quebeckers in hand, docile subjects of English-Canadian domination.

This is the Red Ensign, which served for decades as the unofficial flag of Canada. English Canadians who were not comfortable flying the Union Jack bare, because they wanted some local identification, nonetheless felt comfortable flying a Red Ensign (the flag of the British "merchant navy", and formerly one of three ensigns of the Royal Navy — a red ensign, a blue ensign, and a white ensign) "defaced" with a Canadian coat of arms. They rationalized that the fact that it included a tiny reference to France (three fleurs-de-lis in the shield) would make it acceptable to Quebecers. But it was rarely or never used in Quebec except by adamant Anglophones. We show the flag large so visitors to this site might see the fleurs-de-lis. Contrast the size of the British symbols, and especially the dominant Union Jack.

The Red Ensign should have been seen by Americans as a "red flag" waved in their face to taunt them with the fact that Canada retained a "British connection", but it hasn't been seen so, in part because the U.S., unlike the British ruling class, long ago forgot about the bad old days of British attempts to destroy us, and moved on. However, Francophone Quebecers don't have so short a memory. They remember full well the humiliation English Canadians inflicted upon them in insisting upon British symbols as Canadian national symbols. To this day, English Canadians insist on inflicting the "Queen" of England upon the conquered peoples of French Canada (Québecois and Acadiens). Few French Canadians find a British "Queen" an acceptable head of state for "le Canada", even if she is a direct descendant of William, Duke of Normandy ("William the Conqueror"). But, then, William was Norman, French for "Norseman": a Teutonic Viking in ancestry, not Gallic French at all.

Quebecers should make plain to Americans that when English Canadians cozy up to the United States to try to draw the U.S. in on their side of the argument between French and English Canada, they are doing so not for U.S. interests but for anti-U.S. interests. They want the U.S., paradoxically, to bolster its own enemies against the best interests of the United States, which are that all of Canada, or at least English Canada, join the Union.

(8) English Canadians want Quebec to believe that the U.S. would actively work with Canadian federalists to keep Canada together by force: that the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard would cinch a noose around an independent Quebec's neck in close coordination with the Canadian armed forces, and thus a Quebec that attempted a unilateral declaration of independence would face not just English Canada, which it might easily defeat in a civil war (due to lack of stomach for such a war on the part of many English Canadians, the geographic concentration of Quebec forces, Quebecers' emotional devotion to protecting their homes, etc.) but also the ('monstrous', 'militaristic') United States, a superpower whose people (are supposed to) enjoy inflicting violence upon the defenseless. This is an outrageous implication that Quebecers must not believe. It is also a vicious implied slander of Americans, and Americans need to understand that they are being slandered by the very English Canadians who use the U.S. to scare Quebec.

English Canadians do not control the U.S. Government nor media, tho they certainly do have outsize influence with both. There are many English Canadians in U.S. media, working hard, if sub rosa, to poison U.S. public opinion against Quebec and in favor of Canadian nationalism — which is, curiously, nationalism against the U.S. that Americans are nonetheless supposed to promote!

In the unlikely event of a Canadian civil war, the United States would likely cleave to a policy of strict neutrality and nonintervention — in part because there would almost certainly be powerful forces within the U.S. on both sides of the controversy, with as many people being tempted to defend the underdog (Quebec) as to preserve Confederation. Especially would this prove the case once Americans were told by defenders of Quebec that the real prize in this war is not Quebec for Canada, but Canada for the United States!, so the U.S. should be helping Quebec and even using defense of Quebec as pretext for invading and taking over Canada by force, then never letting it go. Columnist, television pundit, and presidential-candidate Patrick Buchanan has publicly proclaimed himself in favor of annexing Canada. He's not alone.

Hispanics, soon to be the largest minority in the United States, may have reason to side with Quebec against Canada, in part because Spain as well as France sided with the Americans against Britain.  One website claims that "Over 4000 Spanish soldiers died while prisoners of war on English prison ships in New York Harbor after being captured while fighting for American independence."

Given likely sympathy for Quebec's cause among many American minorities and other groups, Quebecers can easily turn this bogeyman around and ask English Canada:

"Do you really want an American army of tens or hundreds of thousands to intervene in a Canadian civil war? What guarantee do you have that they will leave at its end? Isn't it at least as likely that they will stand aside to watch English Canada and French Canada fight it out between them, then take over both?"

You can use the example of Ireland vis-a-vis England. 800 years ago, one party to an Irish civil war asked the English for help. The English were glad to help — that is, to help themselves to war-shattered Ireland!  And they haven't left YET!

(9) The pretense that prime minister after prime minister from Quebec proves the power of Quebec has always been hollow, first because Government is not the be-all and end-all of society but actually quite small a part of economic and cultural activity, even in Canada; and second, because English Canada resolutely refuses to speak French but is content to impose upon Quebec the obligation to use English if it wishes to speak to the rest of Canada.

Every now and then some alarmist, anti-bilingual English Canadian publishes a book like Bilingual Today, French Tomorrow (BMG Publishing Limited, Richmond Hill, Ontario, 1977) that purports to see the real goal of bilingualism as making English Canadians into Francophones and thus Canada into a wholly French-speaking country. But such alarms are preposterous nonsense that no serious person takes seriously. English Canadians are not about to abandon the most useful language in history, which they share with a huge neighbor in whose culture they are thoroughly immersed. It is not English Canada whose language is in danger, but Quebec.

(10) When the British Empire, all around the world, failed despite the best efforts of latter-day British Imperialists to learn the lessons of American separation, and Canada became nominally independent in 1931 by action of the Statute of Westminster, another act of the British Parliament, Canada's independence was neither complete nor clearcut. Canada had no constitution of its own, but only the British North America Act, which had never been ratified by a referendum of the Canadian people, voting either nationally or, more democratically and representatively, province-by-province. The British sovereign remained the official head of state. The Union Jack still flew over much of English Canada, either as a flag to itself or as part of the Red Ensign. (The flag of the Province of Ontario is a red ensign to this day, and the flag of Newfoundland and Labrador is a fancifully reworked Union Jack. See illustrations below.) Most English-speaking Canadians continued to see Canada as a Dominion of the Empire, save that the Empire now technically had two elements, "the Empire" proper (Britain and its outright colonies) and "the Commonwealth", a gathering of "Dominions" faithful to the Empire though administered separately.

Plainly British, this is the present-day flag of Ontario, Canada's most populous province and both the geographic and figurative keystone of Confederation. It is based on the Red Ensign formerly used for all of Canada, but employs Ontario's coat of arms rather than Canada's. There are no fleurs-de-lis here!

Even after the "patriation" of the constitution in 1982, a British woman residing in Britain remained the legal head of state of a supposedly independent Canada. Brian Mulroney even asked this foreign woman to intervene in Canada's Senate to appoint Conservatives to break a deadlock with Liberals left over from a prior government — which she did. To this day, British foreigners dominate Canada symbolically. Elizabeth Windsor and John Macdonald stare out at Canadians from their currency, and Ms. Windsor, who would not for an instant even consider moving to the country of which she is supposedly "Queen", nonetheless dares to intrude into Canada's internal politics. That was proved by an interview she unwittingly gave to a Montreal radio scammer who pretended to be Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. The interviewer was able to expose Windsor's willingness to do whatever she could to keep Canada together — a clear invasion of Canadian politics by a foreign national which shows yet again that even today Canada is not fully sovereign.

Flag of Newfoundland, a disguised Union Jack.

If English Canadians should suggest that the Britishness of Ms. Windsor is irrelevant to her role as "Queen of Canada", ask them how they would feel if instead of the Queen of England the monarch of Canada were the President of the United States. Would such a monarch be seen as genuinely Canadian? Would a Canada that proclaimed its faithfulness to such a monarch be seen as truly independent? Of course not, to both questions.

In the same way, would English Canadians be comfortable with the President of France serving as monarch of Canada? Canada did after all start as a French colony, and its name comes from the French version of an Algonquian word, not directly from Algonquian. Reserving the honor of Canadian head of state to the head of state of the country that first brought European civilization to Canada (France, not Britain) would merely be a recognition of history and tradition, wouldn't it, in the same way as the retention of "The British Connection" is merely a grateful nod to history and tradition. Or would it?

Why not have the President of France serve as King of Canada? How would that be any more objectionable than having the Queen of England serve as Queen of Canada? Well, you see, that would offend the English-speaking majority. Never mind that having a British monarch offends the French-speaking minority. They're not important in the English-Canadian view.

Flag of BRITISH Columbia, incorporating the Union Jack.
In 2005, 138 years after Canada's purported independence,
Canada's third most populous province still calls itself British!

Canada had no dramatic moment at which its people triumphantly created a new nation, the way the United States did in its Declaration of Independence. Rather, Canada gradually drifted away from Britain, without ever renouncing the Empire, its independence coming piecemeal. Canada didn't even have its own flag until 1965. Until 1982, any change to the BNA Act, Canada's functional constitution, had to be made by the British Parliament!

(11) Further, unlike the U.S. South, which attempted to leave the Union to preserve slavery, Quebec's desire to leave Canada, a country its colonial government only grudgingly consented to be part of to begin with, has nothing to do with defending any hideous institution but just with establishing a political entity that conforms to the cultural geography of the French nation of North America.

(12) Canada was a shotgun wedding in which Quebec was forced to consent to perpetual domination by English Canada by the threat held over its head that the alternative was to be absorbed and assimilated by the United States. Never was Quebec offered independence to itself. Had Britain been sincere in its pretended desire to help Quebec preserve its culture, it could perfectly well have granted Quebec independence on its own, and even have negotiated a British-U.S. accord to guarantee Quebec against forcible annexation by the U.S. (There is a precedent. In the 1840s Britain had persuaded the U.S. to forswear any attempt to annex any part of Central America in exchange for a pledge by Britain not to expand its Mosquito Coast colony to embrace all of Nicaragua, and perhaps more. That this was a terrible deal the U.S. stupidly fell for is irrelevant to this discussion. The point is that if Britain had  really wanted to give Quebec an independence the U.S. would not interfere with, Britain could perfectly well have negotiated a similar deal with the United States.)

Quebec was given two choices: continued domination by a small English-speaking majority within Confederation or continued colonial subjection to the vast British Empire. Quebec chose domination by a nearer and smaller colonialist regime over domination by a more distant but hugely larger colonial overlord.

(13) The British Empire lost its North American dominions anyway. Since the Empire that Canada was created to preserve is long gone, the perpetuation of Canada serves no purpose, so makes no sense.

(14) Worse, Canada was created by the British Empire out of hostility to the United States. It was part of an encircling chain of defenses the British erected around the United States to limit its expansion, from Canada on the north to the ministates of the West Indies on the south to the microstates of the Pacific on the west. And, as mentioned above, Britain even tricked the U.S. into renouncing any ambitions it might eventually have had for annexing Central America.

Using the Civil War as a comparison for Quebec's efforts at independence now, entails a certain risk of reminding Americans of the hugely destructive role of Canada and its imperial overlord in the Civil War: The British Empire tried everything short of war to break the United States up. British newspapers gleefully mocked the U.S. as "the Untied States". British shipyards built warships for the Confederacy with the implicit approval of the British Government. British merchantmen ran the blockade of Southern ports. The British Government gave active aid and comfort to Confederate agents in Canada. Americans need to know that the British Empire was the longest and worst enemy the United States has ever had, and Canada is a vestige of that Empire's malice toward the United States.

The British ruling class realized, round about 1865, that the Empire might not be able to keep Canada, but it was determined that the U.S. was sure as hell not going to get it. The United States should be delighted to see Canada, a monument to anti-American British spitefulness, destroyed.

Indeed, it is not the slightest dishonest nor an exaggeration to any degree to equate Canada's endless efforts to maintain its independence from the United States with the Confederacy's war to separate from the United States.  In both cases, a needless and pointless extra nation in North America whose only purpose was NOT to be part of the United States, is the issue.

In the case of the Confederacy, there was at least a reason, if an evil one, for seeking independence: to preserve Negro slavery, which the Union righteously sought to abolish. In the case of Canada, however, there is absolutely no reason for Canadians to fight against inclusion in the power center of the most powerful Nation in the history of the world. Canada serves no purpose whatsoever. It impoverishes Canadians, who would be significantly richer, using a substantially more valuable dollar, if they were part of the United States. It keeps Canadians in perpetual emotional and political tumult, as they try to rationalize their irrational division from English-speaking neighbors with whom they have everything in common in favor of political union with people they cannot even communicate with, in part because they don't know their language, in part because even when they learn French, they discover that they have little to talk ABOUT, and what they do have in common they also BOTH have in common with the United States.

No, Canada is independent of the United States ONLY because the ruling class of the British Empire in 1867 hated the United States and willed eternal enmity of the 'Yankee turncoat' to their 'faithful sons and daughters' in Canada. That might make sense if the British Empire still existed and were still an enemy of the United States. But (a) the British Empire self-destructed decades ago out of unwillingness to admit "colonials" to Parliament — Canadians as much as Americans — and (b) after 1900 Britain and the United States became the best of friends, whose "special relationship" is arguably even stronger than the relationship between Canada and the United States, and certainly stronger than that between Canada and Britain!

So why is a line in the dirt drawn 133 years ago by an Empire now long dead still controlling the political and economic relations of 333 million people 3,000 miles from Britain?

(15) As the Thirteen Colonies wearied of British domination and manipulation, and so declared their independence, Quebec has wearied of British and now English-Canadian domination and manipulation, and wishes to declare its independence. The creation of the United States was not a negative and destructive thing. The creation of an independent Quebec is not negative or destructive either.

Quebecers wish only, to borrow from the United States' Declaration of Independence, "to assume among the Powers of the Earth the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them". As a new nation, Quebec will enter into normal diplomatic and commercial relations with all friendly countries, and fulfill all its responsibilities under NAFTA and NATO (if, as seems wise, Quebec decides to remain part of NATO, a sensible move in providing guarantees against violence from English Canada — remember, France is an influential member of NATO).

(16) Quebec, like the U.S. when it threw out the British, will abolish the pretense of monarchy and declare itself a republic. Monarchy has no place in the Western Hemisphere, or in any modern, democratic nation on Earth.

(17) An independent Quebec would be a staunch ally of the United States in the UN, NATO, OAS, IMF, World Bank, OECD, WTO, and other international bodies. In troubling times, the U.S. can use every friendly vote it can find.

(18) Bilingualism is a serious imposition on ordinary people. It's hard to master one language, and almost impossible for most people really to master two, unless they are taught both languages very young and have occasion to use both regularly. The burden of bilingualism has fallen disproportionately on speakers of French, who are surrounded by English north, south, east and west of them. While businessmen engaged in international commerce may have to know English, there is no reason people not engaged in foreign commerce or tourism should be forced to learn two languages.

Bilingualism adds millions of dollars of needless expense to everything, from packaging of thousands of products to the salaries of bureaucrats — in that fluently bilingual civil servants in Canada are paid a premium even if they rarely or never use their second language on the job. Bilingualism is, further, unfair to English Canadians who don't know French, because they have effectively been barred from the highest offices and civil service posts of their own country, all of which are held by bilinguals. Prime Ministers from Quebec have held power for 33 of the last 35 years! (This is an especially powerful argument for the United States, which is hostile to bilingualism here.) And finally

(19) It may well be that once Quebec leaves Canada, most or all of English Canada will petition Congress to join the Union, thus fulfilling hopes that all the Founding Fathers had for the American Union as early as 1754, when at the Albany Congress Benjamin Franklin proposed a Plan of Union for all of Britain's colonies in North America.

Admitting English Canada as several states and territories would nearly double the physical size of the United States, bring in hugely rich lands and waters, unite almost all the speakers of English on the mainland of North America, and bring a surge in pride, power, and economic dynamism, all in partnership with Quebec thru NAFTA.

The United States has everything to gain and nothing to lose from Quebec's drive to independence. Far from opposing or even standing quietly aside, the United States should be actively urging separatists on, and doing everything in its power to help Quebec separate.

Explained in these terms, Quebec's case would receive enormous sympathy from ordinary Americans and from the American leadership elite.

Some further thoughts:

(a) If Quebec is to assume its proportionate share of Canada's bloated national debt, Quebec should be granted its proportionate share of Canada's territory and resources with which to pay off that debt. How is "proportionate" to be determined? If English Canada should suggest that Quebec accounts for 30% of Canada's economy, and so should assume 30% of the national debt, Quebec should reply that it is therefore entitled to 30% of Canada's land area and the territorial waters adjoining that land.

Some English Canadians might try to turn Quebec's long-asserted claim to being one of Canada's "two founding peoples", against you, and assert that since Quebec was one half of the bilingual partnership that accumulated the debt at issue, much of it incurred in promoting bilingualism, Quebec should assume 50% of Canada's national debt. To bolster that position, they might argue that most of that debt was racked up by governments headed by Prime Ministers from Quebec.

Quebec should rush to consent to assume half of Canada's national debt, but only on the condition that it be given half of all of Canada's federal lands!

No matter how English Canada proposes the debt be shared, Quebec should insist that it receive in return a proportionate share of Canada's mineral, timber, water, fishing, and other wealth. That is, Quebec has about 25% of Canada's population but only 16% of its area. Is it reasonable for Quebec to take on debt disproportionate to its resources? If the Government of Canada mortgaged its national treasure, it must give a proportionate share of the collateral on which that mortgage loan was extended to whosoever assumes a share of that debt. Indeed, how could Quebec pay off such debt except by exploiting the resources mortgaged by the borrowers?

If the Canadian Government is unwilling to give Quebec any part of English Canada, Quebec should accept at most 16% of Canada's national debt, which accords with its proportion of Canada's area.

By asserting a claim to a big chunk of, say, the oil areas of the Yukon and gold- or diamond-producing areas of the Northwest Territories, Quebec can gain bargaining power with which to press its claim to Labrador. In deciding what area(s) to demand, there's no reason Quebec should be limited to contiguous areas. After all, Alaska, a State of the U.S., is separated from the "Lower 48" by part of Canada. So, different parts of an independent Quebec could be separated by part(s) of rump-Canada, After all, one part of Canada, the Atlantic Provinces, would be separated by what might become only the main part of Quebec.

By using this powerful national-debt argumentation to press for a share of Canada's Northwest and Yukon Territories, Quebec can neatly fend off the preposterous demands of some mean-spirited English Canadians that Quebec give back Ungava and even cede to English Canada a southern corridor between Ontario and the Maritimes. Quebec could even be magnanimous and offer to settle its rightful claims to a proportionate share of Canada's territory and resources for only Labrador and Baffin Land.

There's no reason Quebec should accept English Canadians' using Britain's historic negotiating stance: "What's mine is mine. What's yours is negotiable." No. Let Quebec be the one on the offensive:

"We are one of Canada's two Founding Peoples. We could simply demand half of all of Canada's land, water, natural resources, and movable assets as our share of 'community property' in this 'divorce'. Instead, we may settle for a share commensurate with suchever share of the national debt as you seek to saddle us with. The territorial integrity of Quebec, however, is not negotiable. We will accept no 'Polish corridor' thru Quebec, no dismemberment ostensibly to benefit aboriginals (but really Canada), but will insist on a fair share of the resources of the nation we helped build, and which would have failed without us, long ago having migrated piecemeal or entire into the United States. Rather than demand half of Nunavut, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, we might settle for all of Labrador, which would round out our borders very nicely. If you press us, however, we will demand half of the federal territories, and take our case to the World Court if you refuse."

Since no one knows how the World Court will decide any question brought before it, Canada might be loath to risk that.

(b) Quebec must avoid antagonizing the United States. We are your oldest and best friend, and your best hope for economically sustainable independence. The mere fact that most of us speak English does not make us the enemy. We are comfortable with linguistic diversity, and to us, French is the prestige language par excellence. Fancy restaurants and boutiques across the U.S. affect French names, and the rich and upper middle class send their children to French class even tho Spanish would be far more useful to them. Kal Kan, a California enterprise, is distributing Whiskas brand cat food within the U.S. in cans with trilingual labels: English, Spanish, and French.

English Canadians of the more vindictive sorts may try to manipulate the United States into opposing the dissolution of Canada by appealing to linguistic bigotry, but such appeals will fail if Quebec plays it cool and reassures Americans that its quarrel is with English Canada, not the United States. Besides, you can easily win all the friends you need in the U.S. by publicly encouraging English Canada to finally accept its destiny by merging into the center of the English-speaking world by joining the United States:

"Go, with our blessing. Speak English. Fulfill your destiny: join the United States. Then we can all get rich together, in NAFTA, but each enjoy our own culture without imposition from the other. After Quebec leaves, if you don't want to learn French, you won't have to. No guilt, no hassle, no French on the cornflakes box."

Be sure to use the word "destiny" in such encouragements, for it will suggest "Manifest Destiny" to Americans even if "manifest" is unspoken.

(c) Reminded that keeping Canada together can be done only at the expense of denying fulfillment of the long, historical hope that Canada will eventually join the United States, few people in the United States will opt to keep Canada together. Especially is that the case if continued Canadian unity should mean a return to anti-U.S. nationalism. Remind Americans of the bad old days under Trudeau (and make the point that he was a federalist, not a sovereigntist), when Canadian nationalists taunted and hassled the United States endlessly, about everything. Point up to the Cuban émigré community across the U.S. and to conservative Republicans that Canada has gone out of its way to trade with and prop up Fidel Castro's Communist regime in Cuba. Assure Americans that Quebec doesn't have to distance itself from the United States artificially, the way English Canada has at times, because Quebec's differences are genuine and self-evident. Most of the world might confuse English Canadians and Americans, but nobody confuses English and French.

$C or $US

(d) Why in the world would an independent Quebec want to keep the Canadian dollar? If Quebec felt it economically unwise and culturally unnecessary to have its own currency (the "champlain", "lasalle", "cartier", "leveque", "nordique" or what-have-you), surely it makes much more sense to adopt the U.S. dollar, the world's most powerful and prestigious commercial currency, than the weak and utterly prestigeless Canadian dollar. Adopting the U.S. dollar would both minimize the number of currency conversions and simplify their calculation in Quebec's external trade, since (i) much of that trade will be with the U.S. to begin with and (ii) every currency on Earth is stated in terms of the U.S. dollar. Telling the United States that an independent Quebec would use the U.S. dollar as its currency would also score points with the U.S. business community and appeal to U.S. national pride.

The road to Quebec independence may very well pass thru the United States. English Canada has, ever since the American Revolution, used fear of the U.S. as a bludgeon to bully Quebec into accepting endless domination by speakers of English within the framework of Canada. English Canadians have been quick to use our numbers to bolster their case. Instead of saying, "There are three times as many of us [English Canadians] as of you", they have said "There are more than 50 times as many of us [speakers of English in North America] as of you [speakers of French in Quebec]". It's time to turn that around, and use the United States as a bludgeon to win concessions from Canada.

Map showing what Canada would look like without Quebec.

Tell English-Canadian negotiators that with NAFTA and, thus, the 400 million-person U.S. and Mexican markets, Quebec doesn't need the Canadian market at all. If the U.S. takes a liking to the idea of Quebec separatism, English Canada has no economic nor military weapons to prevent it. Your rich and powerful Uncle Sam will protect you.

Quebec should assure the U.S. business community that just as Americans are able to do business in various non-English-speaking countries of Europe, Latin America, and elsewhere, so too will they be able to do business very comfortably in Quebec. You are not a bunch of Maoist revolutionaries out to expropriate U.S. investments and carry forward a Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution on our doorstep. You are, instead, pragmatic businessmen and democratic politicians who want to see a prosperous Quebec in a peaceful North America.

The same argument can simultaneously be made to the Anglophone community within Quebec. English has no official standing in Latin America, but English-speaking businessmen live very comfortably there, relaxing in their own clubs, doing business with each other in their own language, sometimes in very elaborate and wealthy communities that unite Americans, Canadians, Australians, Britons and so on. It would be the same in an independent Quebec.

Here is a visual that Quebec separatists should not hesitate to use to their advantage,
in order to remind Americans that they too hated being treated like colonials.

Do not hesitate to remind Americans of their own history, of how they were abused by the British and had to throw them out by force. Quebec wishes, after all, to free itself from the descendants of Tories (who to this day are found throughout the English-Canadian Establishment), but by peaceful means.

Do not hesitate, either, to point out that Canada has not always been a friend to the United States. Find and give high publicity to egregious anti-American rantings from Canadian nationalists who happen also to be current-day leaders of the anti-Quebec forces, and you can make very plain that these are not friends of the U.S. and don't have the United States' best interest at heart when they try to manipulate the U.S. into working to keep Canada together. (I hope the leaders of the Quebec independantistes don't have any anti-U.S. writings or utterances in their past that can be used by Canadian nationalists to poison attitudes here.)

The United States can be your best friend or your worst enemy. If you misplay 'the American card', you may move Congress to declare that an independent Quebec would not be part of NAFTA, and produce hostile rhetoric from the American leadership elite that would in turn produce intransigent behavior and even militaristic threats from English Canada, maybe even to the point where private forces might try to recruit an army of English-speaking volunteers from the United States to "put the frogs in their place".

The flag of Quebec, with its unambiguous and unashamed visual reference to Quebec's historical origin as New France, is today the flag of one province of 10 in Canadian Confederation. Someday it may be the flag of a Republic of Quebec, one of 190+ members of the United Nations Organization, or even that of a State of Quebec, one of 51 in the United States. Only the people of Quebec have the right to choose their future. That does not mean the United States must stand aside as tho their choice makes no difference to us, because the breakup of Canada holds enormous promise for the United States. We should help Quebec to independence — and thereby help English Canadians finally to see their own best interests.

Quebec and Canada can separate like the Czech Republic and Slovakia — or like Bosnia and Serbia. Nationalism does strange things to some people, especially when extreme manifestations of nationalism are encouraged by great powers nearby. But the restraining hand of a calm great power can prevent excesses.

All great changes are irksome to the human mind, especially those which are attended with great dangers and uncertain effects. — John Adams, April 22, 1776 (But Adams, second President of the United States, and other early U.S. patriots were able to make a huge change despite its huge dangers, and the world is infinitely better off as a result.

If there is any way I can assist you in freeing Quebec from Canada, do not hesitate to ask.

Cordially, L. Craig Schoonmaker, Chairman, Expansionist Party of the United States

P.S. I strongly suggest you drop the accent from "Québec" and "Montréal" in all English-language materials you may intend for a U.S. audience. It is a red flag in the face of English-language chauvinists.

Check out a printable flyer that advocates Canadian accession to the Union, which contains tear-off tabs for posting on bulletin boards. If you'd like to post that flyer in your area, please (a) fold back and forth several times on the line between the tab area and main text so that if someone rips off a tab, a chunk of the message won't come off with it; (b) cut each tab free from the others; and (c) put the flyer up only in permitted display areas, such as bulletin boards you are authorized to post to, public kiosks, etc.

(This is the end of this section.) [Return to the top of this page.] [Go to main XP homepage.] [Go to "Statehood for Quebec"] [Go to "Letters from the Chairman" (and search there for "Haiti (and Quebec)")] [Go to "Welcoming Canada Home"] [Go to "Private Action for Canadian-U.S. Union"] [Go to "A Modest Proposal for Redrawing the Map of Canada as Seven States and One Territory of the United States".] [Go to a printable flyer with tear-off tabs.] [See "What's New" for anything that might have been added recently.]

[Flags courtesy of the wonderful "Flags of the World" website: http://fotw.vexillum.com/flags/.]