On the Scene: Mon Dieu! Montreal!

PATRICK Buchanan caused a great stir north of the border recently with two columns urging the U.S. Government to welcome any Canadian provinces that applied to join the American Union. This is hardly surprising. Canada, like certain obscure sea creatures, has evolved with vital organs outside of its skeletal structure, in this case south of the 49th parallel. Canadians really care what Americans think, partiularly at this moment, when Ottawa is going through one of its increasingly frantic efforts to find a constitutional formula that can keep Quebec and English Canada in harness. (Domestic critics can be dealt with more readily. Buchanan kindly wrote that my book The Patriot Game: Canada and the Canadian Question Revisited, published in Canada in 1986, had “predicted what is now unfolding.” Every Canadian paper that I’ve seen omitted this passage when reprinting him.)

Injecting new ideas into public debate is the supreme function of the newspaper columnist. Politicians and civil servants absolutely will not take the risk. Thus Washington’s long series of noises in favor of a united Canada is merely a faithful rendition of official timidity. So reluctant is the State Department to contemplate any change north of the border that in 1980 it apparently refused even to draw up a contingency plan to cover the real possibility that the Parti Quebecois might win the referendum that year on negotiating a partial divorce—“sovereignty association”— from Canada. (The referendum lost, but it got about half the French-speaking vote, and the issue is now hotter than ever.)

PB

About the Author

Peter Brimelow

PATRICK Buchanan caused a great stir north of the border recently with two columns urging the U.S. Government to welcome any Canadian provinces that applied to join the American Union. This is hardly surprising. Canada, like certain obscure sea creatures, has evolved with vital organs outside of its skeletal structure, in this case south of the 49th parallel. Canadians really care what Americans think, partiularly at this moment, when Ottawa is going through one of its increasingly frantic efforts to find a constitutional formula that can keep Quebec and English Canada in harness. (Domestic critics can be dealt with more readily. Buchanan kindly wrote that my book The Patriot Game: Canada and the Canadian Question Revisited, published in Canada in 1986, had “predicted what is now unfolding.” Every Canadian paper that I’ve seen omitted this passage when reprinting him.)

Injecting new ideas into public debate is the supreme function of the newspaper columnist. Politicians and civil servants absolutely will not take the risk. Thus Washington’s long series of noises in favor of a united Canada is merely a faithful rendition of official timidity. So reluctant is the State Department to contemplate any change north of the border that in 1980 it apparently refused even to draw up a contingency plan to cover the real possibility that the Parti Quebecois might win the referendum that year on negotiating a partial divorce—“sovereignty association”— from Canada. (The referendum lost, but it got about half the French-speaking vote, and the issue is now hotter than ever.)