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Separatist movement quebec
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From the 1960's to the 1990's, Canada has had a struggle to keep their country united, specifically Quebec and the First Nations. The 2 nations have both had their respective issues with the government. For example, the First Nations were not considered as First Nations, but Indians. They were forced to hold a status card to show proof that they were defined as an Indian. As time progressed, the Indian Act was made, which gave bands of the First Nations more authority, but no living conditions were improved. The people of Quebec did not carry any status card for proof of their identity. Instead, they wanted to separate from Canada and be independent instead of being recognized and treated fair. However, some issues have similarities. The people …show more content…
of Quebec and the First Nations have conflicted with recognition, loss of culture, and conflict against to the government acts. Recognition within the nations were not as easy as they hoped. Quebec wanted to excommunicate with Canada and wanted to be a distinct society. However, they needed the approval from Canada and the federal government. The government recognized Quebec's request and held a referendum. As a result, Quebec gave an over exaggerated statement to separate which lead to the voted to stay in Canada. If Quebec wanted to hold another referendum, they must ask a clear question for the people to understand. This is known as the Clarity Act. Though Quebec held a referendum, the First Nations were recognized by the federal government by their identity. In 1969, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau introduced The White Paper, which included a repeal to the Indian Act, eliminate reserves, and transfer the Indian Affair to other provinces. Although the First Nations accepted it, they felt like it was an assimilation and opposed to be absorbed in the Canadian society. Upon the results of recognition, both Quebec and the Natives were not happy with the government's decisions. Although they were recognized by the government on negative terms, things did not get more easier as time progressed.
Both Quebec and the First Nations were losing their culture. As referred previously, the First Nations felt assimilated and drawn into Canada's society by Trudeau's White Paper. Quebec, however, was seeing more english speaking canadians bringing their culture in a dominate french-speaking country. Quebec felt threatened and assimilated that they held two referendums for Quebec to seperate from Canada. However the people of Quebec opposed to both referendums. Eventually the French had a sigh of relief as Bill 22 and Bill 101 were announced. Both bills state that business, buildings, and schools were in French. The First Nations did not get any bills to keep language. Sadly, their language and culture is slowly fading by Canadian culture. With the two stated bills, Quebec has revitalized their …show more content…
culture. The First Nations and the people of Quebec have had their respective issues with the government, however the government did not take things easily.
Both First Nations and Quebec had their own pressuring groups (Quebec: FLQ & FN: National Indian Brotherhood) to pressure the govenment to their demands. In 1970, the FLQ (Front de Liberatioin du Quebec) was formed to pressure the government to seperate Quebec from Canada. During the weeks, the FLQ captured and assassinated provincial cabinet minister Pierre LaPorte. Trudeau was asked on how far he was going to go against the FLQ, his response was "Just watch me." Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act in order to stop the FLQ. Eventually the War Measures Act prevailed and the kidnappers of LaPorte and other politicians were arrested. The First Nations shared a similar crisis in 1990. The town wanted to build and expand a golf course on land used by the Mohawk tribe. The Mohawks disputed and filed a land claim, however that claim was denied by the government which lead into a 78-day standoff between the police and the Mohawks. The Mohawks set up blockades on bridges in which people can not leave nor enter the area. This ongoing dispute lead to the death of Colonel Marcel Lemay. Both sides felt sypathetic to his tragic death. As a result, the government gave the Mohawks their land as rightfully so. Both results of The Oka and October crisis leads to the government victorious and both having significant conflicts in
Quebec. The cultural identity of both Quebec and the First Nations vary. However the recgnition, loss of culture, and conflict show that both nations have similar issues. Though they have gone through significant conflicts, both Quebec and The First Nations still make Canada what it is today.
...ereignty. As mentioned Quebec does not have complete sovereignty and it shares its powers with the federal government (Johnson). Strong words like Johnson's found in the mass media are very significant to issues such as this. As elected representatives the government will not act against the wishes of the majority of citizens. Therefore if the Canadian citizens claim that Native Sovereignty in Canada can not coexist with Canadian sovereignty than it will not.
To answer this, one must address the severity of the crisis, as well as the degree to which the War Measures Act would alleviate the situation. This proves to be an unexpectedly difficult task, as it is impossible to accurately capture the zeitgeist of such a turbulent time period without being subject to bias. However from a purely objective standpoint, the evidence clearly identifies that there was no insurrection, nor was one likely to take place. Trudeau relied heavily on galvanizing the risk that the FLQ posed to the Canadian public. However, this came to be a detriment to his case when the supposed danger was discredited. According to most authorities, the FLQ “was a collection of scattered, radical grouplets who communicated amongst themselves with great difficulty and apprehension”(Conrad et al). It is of course, rather difficult to carry out widespread insurrection without a cohesive unit to do so. Trudeau’s speech relied heavily on the notion that the FLQ posed a greater threat than they realistically did, and by the end of the crisis it was clear that his claims were null. However, Trudeau did not operate alone in his endeavors. The crisis was rapidly escalated in scale by local and national media alike. The media “Fed the notion of a hydra head conspiracy, unknown, unknowable, but of course infinitely dangerous”, an error that almost did more to aid in the FLQ’s influence over the country, than it did to call in any sort of justifiable action (Bothwell, 447-50). This combined with rumors of Quebec dissolving their government due to the “severity” of the situation, a rumor that was initially reported to be started by Trudeau (although it was enforced by numerous parties”) in order to gain the support of the public for the actions he was preparing to take (Clement). It is generally agreed upon that War
To start off, I’ll be writing about the life of people in British North America and its significance towards unifying Canada, as well as background knowledge of conflicts that existed. Life in British North America was changing at an alarming rate. New technology and services were being introduced such as railways and steamships. Industries such as building, producing and farming were being introduced. This was in part due to the many immigrants from Britain and France who’d settled. This was dreadful for the First Nations as their land had been taken away even more so than before. More resources were needed for the growing crowd so trade agreements were made. As more people came, the First Nations were even more distanced from the Europeans. Meanwhile, the French and the British wanted the other’s culture to be erased from the
Although Quebec is in Canada, a majority of Quebecers do not identify with the national identity of Canada. Both societies create a sense of identity as well as nationalism (Hiller, 295). Hiller mentions two approaches to assessing Canadian identity; the unitary approach and the segmentalist approach (Hiller, 277). The unitary approach suggests that society consists of people who regardless of their ethnic back ground, identify as belonging to the national society, while the segmentalist approach concentrates on groups and communities that share racial, linguistic, occupational, or cultural similarities (Hiller, 28). While most Anglophones are more unitary or pan-Canadian, Quebec heavily identifies with the segmentalist approach. This dissimilarity of identity perspective may be problematic for the country, at the same time however, it can also be viewed as a struggle where contradictory parties find a way to compromise and reshape Canadian society together (Hiller, 277). Canada’s former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau made it his objective to unite Quebec with the rest of Canada. In 1969 Trudeau’s government implemented Bill C-120, otherwise known as the Official Language act, which made French an...
On October 5, 1970, British trade commissioner James Cross was kidnapped in his Westmount home by members of the terrorist group Front de liberation du Quebec. The FLQ Manifesto called for non-democratic separation to be brought about by acts of terror. From 1963 to 1967, the FLQ planted 35 bombs; from 1968 to 1970 they planted over 50 bombs. By the fall of 1970 the terrorist acts of the FLQ cells had claimed 6 lives. The kidnappers' demands included the release of a number of convicted or detained FLQ members and the broadcasting of the FLQ Manifesto. The Manifesto was read on Radio-Canada. Then, on October 10th, the Quebec minister of justice guaranteed safe passage to anywhere in the world for the kidnappers in exchange for the safe release of Cross. That same day Pierre Laporte, a famed Quebec reporter, author of The True Face of Duplessis, and the minister of immigration and labour in the Quebec government, was kidnapped by a different FLQ cell on the lawn of his suburban home. Laporte's kidnapping triggered a phone call from Liberal Premier Robert Bourassa asking Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to prepare the Canadian Armed Forces for action in Quebec and to declare War Measures. Two days later, October 12, Trudeau summoned armed troops to guard potential targets in Ottawa and Montreal such as cabinet ministers, John Diefenbaker, who was on the FLQ hit list, and federal buildings. On the following day, October 13, Peter Reilly of CJOH and I were at the west door of the Centre Block of the House of Commons. Reilly was asking Trudeau some basic questions in a laconic, unemotional style about the army and tanks being in Ottawa. Suddenly we were joined by CBC reporter Tim Ralfe who asked Trudeau a very emotional question about his decision to invoke the War Measures Act. Pierre Trudeau interview
The Quebec referendum that was held in 1995 was a second round of vote that was meant to give the residents of the Quebec province in Canada the chance to determine whether they wanted to secede from Canada and thus establish Quebec as a sovereign state. Quebec has had a long history of wanting to secede from Canada, considering that it is the Canadian providence that is predominantly inhabited by the French-speaking people, whose political relationship with the rest of the Canadian provinces, mostly inhabited by the English-speaking people has been characterized by conflicting ideologies . Thus, the 1995 referendum was not the first political attempt to have Quebec gain its own independence. The discussion holds that the Quebec 1995 referendum would have had both positive and negative implications. Therefore, this discussion seeks to analyze the political consequences that would have f...
Some Quebecers thought that separation was the only solution. They thought that as long as Quebec was associated with the rest of Canada, French-Canadians would never be treated equal. The FLQ (Front De Libération Du Québec) was founded in 1963. It was a smaller, more forceful group of separatists. They were a collection of groups of young people whose idea was to use terrorism to
Canada likes to paint an image of peace, justice and equality for all, when, in reality, the treatment of Aboriginal peoples in our country has been anything but. Laden with incomprehensible assimilation and destruction, the history of Canada is a shameful story of dismantlement of Indian rights, of blatant lies and mistrust, and of complete lack of interest in the well-being of First Nations peoples. Though some breakthroughs were made over the years, the overall arching story fits into Cardinal’s description exactly. “Clearly something must be done,” states Murray Sinclair (p. 184, 1994). And that ‘something’ he refers to is drastic change. It is evident, therefore, that Harold Cardinal’s statement is an accurate summarization of the Indigenous/non-Indigenous relationship in
... A successful strategy in the accommodation of national minorities within a liberal democracy could be founded upon mutual trust, recognition and sound financial arrangements. However, a certain degree of tension between central and regional institutions may remain as a constant threat in this complex relationship since they entertain opposing aims. The federal governments determination to protect its territorial integrity, and its will to foster a single national identity among its citizens clashes with Quebec’s wish to be recognized as a separate nation and decide upon its political destiny and to foster its distinct identity (Guibernau pg.72). Moreover, if the ROC and the federal government can come to an agreement on terms that satisfy the majority and an identity that encompasses the heart of a country; Canada will continue to exist with or without Quebec.
Throughout the history of Canada the indigenous population of the country have been voiceless. They have been both suppressed and oppressed by the Federal and various Provincial governments within Canada. Many organizations tried to provide a voice for the native population but failed in their attempt. These organizations eventually merged together to become what is now known as The Assembly of First Nations. The Assembly of First Nations gives voice to the issues and problems facing the different components of the aboriginal community in Canada.
Living in Canada, there is a long past with the Indigenous people. The relationship between the white and First Nations community is one that is damaged because of our shameful actions in the 1800’s. Unnecessary measures were taken when the Canadian government planned to assimilate the Aboriginal people. Through the Indian Act and Residential schools the government attempted to take away their culture and “kill the Indian in the child.” The Indian Act allowed the government to take control over the people, the residential schools took away their culture and tore apart their families, and now we are left with not only a broken relationship between the First Nations people but they are trying to put back together their lives while still living with a harsh reality of their past.
Our government’s predecessors have attempted to eradicate Canada’s first people, which is not only an insult to the indigenous people of the past, but to the present. This country did not start off as a joint endeavor of the two general groups of people that inhabited it during its birth, but decimation and forced assimilation of great traditions and people. The assimilation of a great culture, the destruction of oral histories, and the forced loss of language destroyed the chance trust. Only by teaching disgust towards that type of attitude and action, by not excusing it or attempting to justify, will begin a new age of
Canada is known by outsiders to be a very peaceful country. But if you ask any Canadian they well tell you that is unfortunately not the case. For there is a large ongoing conflict between Canadians. The conflict is between the French and the English, or more specifically between Quebec and the rest of Canada. As a result of this conflict, along with some wrongdoing and propaganda. Quebec has considered and has gone as far to hold referendums over Separatism (Surette,2014). Separatism is that the province of Quebec separates from the rest of Canada to form its own country. Which would have immense effects on indubitably Quebec but also the rest of Canada (Martin, 2014). This report will focus on the root causes and origin of Quebec Separatism, the current state of Quebec Separatism and finally how we as a society can act towards Quebec Separatism.
In this paper, I plan to take a deeper look at this situation and try to figure out what it would actually be like if Quebec was its own country. & nbsp ; & nbsp ; & nbsp ; & nbsp ; & nbs The premier of Quebec, Lucien Bouchard, has been attempting to separate from Canada for quite sometime. If he had it his way, this topic would be old news by now. His main problem is the Federalist, English speaking citizens of his province. They have been very vocal on their stance to stay apart of Canada. They have sent around several resolutions stating this.
government, t. p. (n.d.). Quebec Nationalism - Quebec History. Faculty.marianopolis.edu. Retrieved May 27, 2012, from http://faculty.marianopolis.edu/c.belanger/quebechistory/events/natpart4.htm