THE QUEBEC FACTOR IN CANADIAN-FRENCH RELATIONS

The Canadian Encyclopeadia, II edition, vol. II, Hurtig Publishers, Edmonton, 1988, pp. 835–837.

Charlotte Girard S.M. , Canada in world Affairs, vol. XIII, 1963-1965, Canadian Institute of International Affairs, Toronto, 1979, p. 204.

Girard , op. cit. , pp. 204–206.

Head Ivan L. Trudeau Pierre Elliot , The Canadian Way, Shaping Canada’s Foreign Policy, 1968-1984, Toronto, 1995, pp. 10, 340–341 n. 30. Head and Trudeau are highly critical of those Quebecois, who were thus delighted in playing the role of ‘international bit players’.

Ibid. , p. 20.

Girard , op. cit. , pp. 190, 203. Paul Gérin-Lajoie, Quebec’s Education Minister and a constitutional expert ascertained that Canada’s external soverigntly was divisible into federal and provincial packets, and so, Canada could maintain two divisible personalities in the international fora.

Girard , Ibid. , pp. 153 ff.

Mortimer Edward , “France and Francophonie - Towards a French Cultural Commonwealth?”, Round Table, No. 242, April 1971, p. 205.

Wise Mark , “France and European Unity” in Aldrich Robert Connell John (eds.), France in World Politics, Routledge, London, 1989, p. 42.

Granatstein J.L. Bothwell Robert , Pirouette - Perrre Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy, Toronto, 1990, p. 133. de Gaulle’s animosity towards Canada has clearly reflected in his press conference on September 9, 1968, in which he maintained that the world had already experienced the dissolution all the British colonies including Canada.

de Gaulle Charles , Memoirs of Hope, Kilmartin Terence (trans.), London, 1971, p. 238.

Girard , op. cit. , pp. 159, 171. During his visit to Quebec in October 1963, Andre Malraux exhorted the French Canadians to have confidence in themselves, their resources and their virtues and he reassured them that France ‘wants to accomplish with you (the French Canadians) a great task and for this she needs you’.

Girard , Ibid. , p. 163. This notable development in the Paris-Quebec axis happened exactly after 50 years from 1911, since when the province of Quebec ceased to be represented in Paris. Few years later, the French Canadian Press started referring the Delegation as ‘La Légation du Quebec’.

Ibid. , p. 164. This continued to be the trend in the years to come. The Washington Post dated January 29, 1995 reports that in January 1995, when the then Premier of Quebec Parizeau visited Paris, he was given a treatment usually meted out to the Heads of Sovereign States and he was the first foreign dignitary to enter the National Assembly through the ornate Napoleon Gate since Woodrow Wilson in 1919.

Gaulle De , Memoirs, p. 268.

Girard , op. cit. , p. 170.

Ibid. , p. 175.

Ibid. , p. 178.

Ibid. , p. 175–179.

Ibid. , p. 186–187.

Girard , Ibid. , p. 212.

Hansen Niles M. , France in the Modern World, New York, 1969, pp. 132–133. Lester Pearson, the then Canadian premier declared that de Gaulle’s remarks were “unaccepatable”, wherupon a French official countered that Pearson’s use of the word “unaccptable” was “unacceptable” to the General. Even this mild rebuke was enough to de Gaulle for deciding to call off his visit to Ottawa and to return to France. In a survey conducted just after the visit of de Gaulle, 59 percent of the French Canadians believed that Ottawa reacted harshly to the General’s comment.

Granatstein and Bothwell, op. cit. , p. 120; Marcelrioux, Quebec in Question, Boake James (trans.), Toronto, 1978, p. 112. In 1968, in his year-end speech, de Gaulle expressed the hope that the French people of Canada would obtain a free hand in the management on their national life. Trudeau was said to have agreed with de Gaulle: “The General was speaking of French Canada”, and “not of Quebec”. The essence of Quebec problem lies, in fact, in this distinction.

Schlegel John P. . “Containing Quebec Abroad: The Gabon Incident” 1968 in Munton Don Kirton John , Canadian Foreign Policy - Selected Cases, University of Toronto, Ontario, 1992, pp. 157–160; Head and Trudeau, op. cit., p. 287. Trudeau and Head tried to impress on the federal government of Pearson that much more was at stake here than simply a breach of protocol. They drew parallel with what Canada did to Great Britain in 1923 to now what Quebec was trying to do with French help in I’ affaire Gabon. Canada had taken its first major step towards full independence in 1923 in not dissimilar circumstances when it presuaded the US to sign the Halibut treaty with it, rather than with Great Britain, thus conferring a significant act of international recognition upon Canada as a sovereign state. Gabon’s act, if unchecked and uncontested, they argued, would represent a possibly irreversible first step towards Quebec independence.

Mortimer , loc. cit. , p. 201.

Schlegel , loc. cit. , p. 167.

Martin Guy , “France and Africa” in Aldrich Connell (eds.), op. cit. , p. 119. While taking Canada as a partner in the Francophone movement, France had, on several occasion, displayed a deep suspicion of its motives and actions in Africa. It had shown immeasurable intolerance in case of Canada or any one of the Francophone African State tried to come closer to each other. President Hamani Diori of Niger was openly castigated by France, when he attempted to develop close political and economic relations with Canada. On the other hand, the Canadian International Development Agency has designated Niger as “a country of concentration" and has granted extensive financial and technical aid.

Mortimer , loc. cit. , p. 202.

Ibid. , p. 201.

Schlegel , loc. cit. , p. 169.

The Economist, vol. 298, No. 7432, February 8, 1986, p. 37.

Ibid .

Aldrich Rober Connell John , “Francophonie: Language, Culture or Politics” in Aldrich and Connell, op. cit. , p. 187.

Ibid. , p. 183.

Le Monde, July 12, 1987.

Aldrich Connell , op. cit. , p. 189.

The Canadian Encyclopeadia, II edn., Vol. II, p. 838.

Aldrich Connell , op. cit. , p. 188.

TESSIER Manon , Canadian International Relations Chronicle, October-December 1993, Centre Québécois de relations internationales, Quebec, 1994, p. 13.

Lévesque René , “For an Independent Quebec” in Behiels Michael D. , Quebec since 1945, Selected Readings, Toronto, 1987, p. 273.

The Washigton Post, January 29, 1995.

The Hindu, (Chennai), November 1, 1995. Fifteen years before in 1980, in the first referendum on the Quebec secession, about 60 per cent of the Quebeckers came out firmly against seperation from Canada. Present wafer-thin majority in favour of Federalists, who have vowed to continue the fight for independent Quebec. Jacques Parizeau, the then Premier of Quebec attributed their defeat to money and the ethnic vote and he is said to have declared: “We will have a country and we will have it.”

The Hindu, November 2, 1995.

The Hindu, May 10, 1997. It appears that the French would have made their position clear that France’s recognition to an ‘independent Quebec’ is based on the argument that ‘Paris recognised only governments and not intentions’. This must have prompted Parizeau to act on the Stage I of independent Quebec, thereby clearing the way for the French to accomplish Stage II of international recognition.

Schlegel , loc. cit. , p. 163.

Dobell Peter C. , Canada in World Ajfaird, vol. XVII, 1971-1973 Canadian Institute of International Affairs, Toronto, 1985, p. 219.

Bothwell Robert et al., Canada since 1945, Power, Politics and Provincialism, University of Toronto, Toronto, 1989, (revised edition), p. 426.

Dobell , op. cit. , p. 220.