Ps/Bs inaugurate forum series with focus on Quebec situation (03/17/96)

Ps/Bs inaugurate forum series with focus on Quebec situation

by Andrij Wynnyckyj
Toronto Press Bureau

TORONTO - The Canadian Professional and Business Federation kicked off its series of open forums under the heading "Canada in Crisis: Disaster or Opportunity?" with a lecture on the present situation in Quebec by Yarema G. Kelebay, professor at McGill University's Faculty of Education in Montreal. The first forum was held on February 24, at the Sunset Inn in Mississauga, Ontario.

According to UCPBF President Raya Shadursky, host of the evening, the series is the brainchild of Michael Wawryshyn, the UCPBF's Ukrainian Canadian Congress liaison.

"It's time that the Ukrainian community made Canada a priority issue and Ukraine a secondary issue," Mr. Wawryshyn told The Weekly. "If we are going to preserve and develop our community here, we badly need to do this."

"It's a very critical situation in the history of this country. Many of our members and people in our community have expressed frustration that they want to confront the political and economic crisis facing this country, but have had no avenue to do this," he added.

Mr. Wawryshyn said the UCPBF hopes to provide a forum for discussion and contact, and to attract the participation of Canada's other ethnic communities in the project.

Mr. Wawryshyn said that by involving a broad spectrum of Canadians, "maybe we can come to some kind of a consensus. Only if people start looking at these questions en masse, and listening to what everyone has to say, will we be able to find solutions to problems that seem out of reach."

According to the UCPBF's handouts, the Italian Canadian community is a possible co-sponsor of the upcoming March 29 debate on multiculturalism between Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies co-founder Manoly Lupul and Liberal government backbencher John Nunziata.

The UCPBF also intends to invite Matthew Barrett, the Bank of Montreal's chairman, to speak about financial implications of Quebec's separation (possible sponsorship with the Irish Canadian community); Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow and/or former Ontario Premier Bob Rae on Canada's political prospects and future; and a panel to discuss larger economic and political issues affecting small and medium-sized businesses (a potential joint event with the German Canadian community).

Kelebay on Quebec

Prof. Kelebay's talk was co-sponsored by the federation's Toronto chapter and Media Watch Ukraine, and was titled "The 1995 Quebec Referendum and the World According to the Parti Québécois." Mr. Wawryshyn introduced the McGill scholar as "one of the foremost experts on Ukrainians in Quebec and author of countless articles on a wide range of themes."

Prof. Kelebay's topic most obviously and dramatically illustrates the sense of disarray and malaise in Canada - a country recently rated as one of the better places in the world to live by the United Nations.

Prof. Kelebay began by tracing the intellectual roots of separatist thinking in the potential breakaway province, a reading based on an article he published in the University of New Brunswick's Conflict Quarterly in 1981. He said the conflict in Quebec is "between two ideological tendencies and postures, not between two peoples: it is a collision of ... a liberal-democratic federal vision of the future; and the world according to the Parti Québécois" (PQ).

Prof. Kelebay contended that a mix of British Fabian socialism and anti-colonialism, French "gauchisme" and secularizing anti-Catholicism, Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci's imperatives to "capture the culture to capture the state," added to local historical mythology about the conquest of French Canada by the English in 1760 determined much of what drove Quebec's political culture today.

Prof. Kelebay suggested that the idea of sovereignty-association (under which a separated Quebec would maintain substantial economic and political ties with Canada), introduced into national politics by the late former Quebec Premier Réné Levesque, was a classically Marxist dialectical reconciliation of two opposites.

Prof. Kelebay conceded that this perspective could be seen as dated, but claimed it still had relevance in the present-day, "because world views are not readily or easily discarded."

However, beyond asserting this is so, Prof. Kelebay did little to demonstrate how the currents of thought that shaped Quebec's Quiet Revolution of the 1960s and early 1970s were manifest in the Quebec of the 1990s.

In fact, in deriding newly anointed PQ leader Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard's opportunism, pointing out that he had belonged to five parties over the course of his political career, Prof. Kelebay appeared to demonstrate how easily inconvenient world views can be jettisoned in pursuit of a political goal.

Prof. Kelebay said he was unsure of the PQ's "present philosophical address" and simply professed to be "at a loss" about what they are doing or thinking.

Prof. Kelebay also did not mention the growth of a right-leaning faction of the separatist movement headed by Mario Dumont, leader of the Parti de l'Action Démocratique, with whom a coalition was formed just prior to the referendum campaign.

This omission led Prof. Kelebay to make the single most important error of his presentation. "Separatism is being carried by an old guard of aging ideologues," he claimed. In fact, Mr. Dumont, 25, is one of the youngest party leaders in Canadian history, and no exception to the rule within his movement.

On the other hand, Prof. Kelebay accurately pointed to the ascendancy of racial-ethnic nationalism in Quebec's separatist movement, as shown by former Premier Jacques Parizeau's railing at "money and ethnics" for having deprived the "yes" to separation side of victory in the October 30 referendum.

Post-referendum atmosphere

The Montreal-based academic painted a vivid portrait of the poisoned and apprehensive post-referendum atmosphere in Quebec.

He mentioned the xenophobic "anti-immigrant" sentiment that led to Mr. Parizeau's outburst and the incident in which Bernard Landry (now the head of a super ministry involving finance, revenue, industry, trade, science and technology), "raged against immigrants who stole his triumph," in the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel following the plebescite.

Prof. Kelebay mentioned the anonymous letter mailed to media outlets, and published in early January by the separatist-leaning Le Devoir, from a group calling itself "The Anglophone Assault Group" that threatened Mr. Bouchard's life.

Prof. Kelebay said "all Anglo spokesmen condemned the letter, doubted the existence of the AAG, distanced themselves from its message, and speculated that it was probably a hoax or a French-inspired provocation."

Prof. Kelebay also gave a thumbnail sketch of the debate now raging among federalists over a proposed partition of the province in the event that separatists won a referendum.

Prof. Kelebay was not at a loss about what Quebec's English hard right had to say about the present climate. In fact, his description of the federalist side were informed by their perspective.

He said the federalist side can be divided into three groups: "1) The collaborators and sympathizers of the PQ...; 2) the appeasers/Liberal Party/Alliance Quebec ... and 3) the federalist partitionists: the Equality Party and community committees."

Prof. Kelebay further said there are two sorts of partitionists: "a) those who want to use partition as a club to prevent the break-up of Canada, and b) true believers who have given up on Quebec, want to bring to closure, and think partition is a neat idea."

Prof. Kelebay concentrated on the writings of Montreal Gazette columnist William Johnson in proposing a tougher line in dealing with Quebec separatists, forcing them to adopt a less ambiguous position. Prof. Kelebay was confident that the majority of the province's populace would then not support the PQ project.

In conclusion, Prof. Kelebay revisited the themes of his talk, and enjoined Ukrainian Canadians to join the intellectual battle. He reminded the audience that, in the words of McGill University Chancellor Greta Chambers, "The existence of a nation is a daily plebiscite."

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