 PETER BLACK Emergency Exit
Here is my unsolicited review of Jean-François Lisée's polemic on the state of the Quebec sovereignty movement, Sortie de Secours, How to Avert the Decline of Quebec: "Too many graphs, not enough graphic."
Unquestionably, the former advisor, strategist, and speechwriter for Mssrs. Parizeau and Bouchard has delivered an impressive treatise in his 411-page tome, laden as it is with trenchant analysis, piercing insights and unassailable logic, and, of course, 31 charts and graphics.
There are enough nervy and contentious points in the book to keep federalists and sovereignists in a lather for days to come. For sovereignists particularly, Lisée's brick comes at a time when they least need "lead in the wings," as the expression goes.
With the Bill 99 hearings on the anti-Clarity Act law generally falling on deaf ears, perhaps it's best for Lisée's former bosses that his book has at least put the sovereignty cause on the front pages. The irony is that J-FL, the mastermind of the 1995 pre-referendum sovereignty commissions, timed the release of his book, coincidentally or not, to drown out Bouchard's version of the same exercise.
Leaving the more learned and informed dissection of Emergency Exit to others, let me offer one observation: This book is more about Pierre Trudeau than Lucien Bouchard or Jacques Parizeau, for that matter.
What is clear in Lisée's mind is that Trudeau's arrival on the federal scene changed everything for Quebec, and, for the most part, changed things for the worse in terms of constitutional powers, economics, and progress as a people. This, of course, is from the standpoint of a frustrated but unrepentant secessionist.
There's a turning point that J-FL discusses in the first third of the book where he examines how Quebec arrived at its current lamentable state. As the author describes it, Lester Pearson was on the verge of cutting a deal with then-Quebec premier Jean Lesage, who, incidentally, had served as a federal Liberal MP since 1948, and sat next to Pearson in Louis St. Laurent's cabinet from 1953 to 1957. (Lesage became Quebec Liberal leader in 1958.)
Lisée doesn't go into details, but he claims that Pearson, was ready to grant some form of special status to Quebec. There is no question that the aggressive and sometimes violent Quebec nationalism of Pearson's era had the former Nobel Prize-winning diplomat spooked. He was surrounded by Quebec ministers who were not up to the task of dealing with the growing threat of separatism and he may have been tempted to buy some peace with powers.
The scene shifts to January,1965, in Florida. Pearson is desperate to win a majority government that year and shake John Diefenbaker off his tail. He also needs to win big in Quebec to keep the separatist menace at bay and for that he needs a strong leader. As luck would have it, then-premier Jean Lesage, who is also holidaying in Florida, happens to drop by for a visit.
A few margueritas or sarsaparillas later, Pearson is offering Lesage any cabinet post he wants if he should return to federal politics. And what's more, as Pearson wrote, "his return...would be interpreted as indicating that he would become leader when I retired, which I proposed to do as soon as possible."
A "flabbergasted, but pleased" Lesage declined the offer, deciding instead to run in the next Quebec election, which he did and lost, opening the door to a more nationalistic Daniel Johnson, a split in the Liberal Party ranks, and the birth of the René Lévesque-led PQ.
Had Lesage, a champion of special status for Quebec, succumbed to the temptation to become the next French-Canadian prime minister of Canada, thereby most likely eliminating Pierre Trudeau, Jean Marchard, and Gérard Pelletier from the federal scene, where would, indeed, Quebec and Canada be now?
In the final analysis, thirty-five years after Pearson's overtures to Lesage, Lisée is proposing that if Quebecers can't be talked into separation, maybe they would go for special status.
In that regard, given Ottawa's current neo-Trudeau mood, Lisée's Emergency Exit would appear to lead to another dead-end alley.
Copyright © 2000 Peter Black/Log Cabin Chronicles/02.2000 |
