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Some Obstacles to Democracy in Quebec

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Pierre Elliott Trudeau
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Extract

Historically, French Canadians have not really believed in democracy for themselves; and English Canadians have not really wanted it for others. Such are the foundations upon which our two ethnic groups have absurdly pretended to be building democratic forms of government. No wonder the ensuing structure has turned out to be rather flimsy.

The purpose of the present essay is to re-examine some of the unstated premises from which much of our political thinking and behaviour is derived, and to suggest that there exists an urgent need for a critical appraisal of democracy in Canada. No amount of inter-group back-slapping or political bonne-ententisme will change the fact that democracy will continue to be thwarted in Canada so long as one-third of the people hardly believe in it—and that because to no small extent the remaining two-thirds provide them with ample grounds for distrusting it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , August 1958 , pp. 297 - 311
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1958

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References

1 L'Administration de la Nouvelle-France (Paris, 1929), 140.Google Scholar

2 Quoted By Wade, Mason, The French Canadians, 1760–1945 (Toronto, 1955), 96.Google Scholar

3 Trudel, M., “L'Essai du régime parlementaire,” Notre Temps (Montréal), 2 04 1955.Google Scholar

4 See Scott, F. R., “Canada et Canada français,” Esprit (Paris), août 1952 Google Scholar; and also Trudeau, P. E., “Réflexions sur la politique au Canada français,” Cité libre (Montréal), 12 1952.Google Scholar I have drawn heavily from this earlier article of mine in a few of the following paragraphs.

5 Durham Report (Coupland, ed., Oxford, 1945), 15.Google Scholar

6 Trudeau, P. E. in La Grève de l'amiante (Montréal, 1956), 59.Google Scholar See also the author's “Obstacles à la démocratie” in Rapport de la Conférence de l'Institut Canadien des Affaires Publiques, 1954.

7 That and that alone can explain why nationalist Quebec has never dared to translate into public ownership and a demand for the welfare state its unending clamour for economic emancipation; and why a people—so moral in other areas—has no sense of moral obligation in its relation to the state.

8 This doctrine was given its classic expression and official sanction in Mr. Duplessis' speeches to the electors of Verchères during the 1952 elections, and to those of Shawinigan during the 1956 elections.

9 See Laurendeau's, André series, “La Politique provinciale,” Le Devoir, juillet et août 1956 Google Scholar, during the course of which appeared the devastating denunciation written by the abbés Dion and O'Neil. See also Pierre Laporte's lengthy investigation “Les Elections ne se font pas avec des prières,” Le Devoir, octobre et novembre 1956. For material on the 1952 provincial elections see Cité libre, décembre 1952, passim.

10 The present paper was first drafted in August, 1956, for a symposium on bi-culturalism, organized by Mr. Mason Wade, to be published in book form at some later date. As time went by I began to add references to current events, but soon discontinued this practice as it added more to the length than to the strength of my demonstration. Consequently my recent and typical instances are more typical than recent.

My original draft was written when the national Liberal party was at the height of its glory. The accusations I shall level at it later on in this paper remain historically valid; but I must recognize that I felt less cruel in writing them two years ago than I do in publishing them now. If it be a sop to anybody, I sadly add that the campaign waged by the Conservative henchmen in Quebec for the election of March, 1958, has hardly given me reason to hope that by the sole grace of the new régime will there be a rebirth of democracy in “la belle province.”

11 For less recent examples of that authoritarian frame of mind, see the author's chapter in La grève de l'amiante, 22–7.

12 This programme apparently is under the guidance of the Comité Interdiocésain d'Action Radiophonique. To sociologists, it is no doubt an interesting example of the intermeshing of two institutions as different as the church and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

13 These quotations are from Le Devoir, 3, 4, 10, 12 juillet 1956.

14 Quoted by Laurendeau, André in a scathing editorial, Le Devoir, 20 juillet 1956.Google Scholar

15 Notre Temps (Montréal), 27 09 1956.Google Scholar

16 With others, Mayo, Elton, The Social Problems of an Industrial Civilization (London, 1949), xiii Google Scholar, has observed that “representative government does not work satisfactorily for the general good in a society that exhibits extreme differences in the material standards of living of its various social groups. … [Nor can] representative government be effectively exercised by a society internally divided by group hostilities and hatreds.”

17 McInnis, E., Canada: A Political and Social History (New York, 1947), 130.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., 138.

19 Quoted by Wade, , The French Canadians, 60.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., 93, 97, 102, 108, 110, 112, 202.

21 Durham Report, 18, 35, 43.

22 It had been advocated many times before: by Sewell and by Craig (1810), by the Duke of Richmond (1819), by Lord Dalhousie (1820). And it had almost succeeded in 1822, when a petition was signed by some fourteen hundred English-speaking Montrealers.

23 As early as 1763 the implicit assumption of British policy was that the French group was to be swamped by immigration (see Mclnnis, Canada, 130). Durham recommended that policy in his famous report (p. 180). And the laws of Canada favoured it until after the Second World War, when P.C. 4849 was amended by P.C. 4186 (Sept. 16, 1948) and by P.C. 5593 (Dec. 10, 1948). In fairness, it must be added that the French on either side of the Atlantic were not militant advocates of migration to Canada; but the fact of inequality under the law is not changed for all that.

24 The following remarks apply mainly to the Liberal party, since for nearly seventy years French-Canadian representation in the others was not numerically significant. At the present time, it is too soon to generalize about the Conservative party.

25 Provincially the Liberal grip on power was only broken in 1936, when an even more “nationalist” party was born.

26 There were some rare exceptions. For instance, a short but meritorious effort was made during the Second World War by groups that founded the Institut Démocratique, but it was soon to perish. To-day, a minority within a splinter group is trying to build a democratic Fédération Libérale Provinciale with the help of a weekly, La Réforme; both are still very far from the electorate, and their days seem numbered. Whether the Liberal débâcle at Ottawa will bring authority to the provincial reformers remains an open question.

27 This is common knowledge among professional politicians. Attempted estimates for the 1952 provincial elections can be found in Pelletier, G. and Trudeau, P. E., Cité libre, 12 1952, at pages 35 and 61.Google Scholar Guesses at amounts spent in the 1956 elections have ranged from $15 million to $25 million, though this seems hard to believe. (See Le Devoir's articles referred to in n. 9.)

28 Quoted by Dawson, R. MacGregor, The Government of Canada (Toronto, 1949), 573.Google Scholar

29 These are miscellaneous examples of fairly recent occurrences. Concerning the “discretion” of the English press in relation to more distant instances, see a pamphlet by Scott, F. R., The Montreal Star and the C.C.F. (Montreal, 1944).Google Scholar See also G. Pelletier, “La Grève et la presse” in Trudeau, comp., La Grève de l'amiante. As of late, this topic has drawn more and more attention. For instance, see the indignant editorials by Vigeant, P. and Filion, G., Le Devoir, 21 février, 7 12 1957.Google Scholar Also, probably for the first time in English, the subject was dealt with in a very remarkable editorial, “The Shame of English Canada,” which appeared in the McGill Daily, Feb. 26, 1958.