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How does one define "nation"? Particularly at the borders? I don't mean physical, territorial borders, but borders of personal identity.
The number of grey-area cases are innumerable. Consider, just for example: a unilingual anglophone with one Quebecois parent; or, a young immigrant of non-European descent who grows up fluent in both the Quebec dialect and English; someone with deep generational roots in Quebec, who settles in BC; a francophile in western Canada who has never been to Quebec but has mastered French...
Who is in and who is out of this Quebec "nation"? What extra rights and obligations does membership entail? Must members of the "nation" see all things in the same way?
i think it was a mistake to start this thread.
I'm not sure what you are refering to, flight from kamakura.
Quebec has to decide its future for itself. But regardless of what the people there decide, balkanizing the rest of Canada would be completely fucked, IMO. Why? because there are too many people pushing for it not in the interest of sovreignty, but in the interest of plunder.
A little bit more of it happened this week with the feds turning over environmental review to the provincial foxes.
Do us all a favour and don't tell people to fuck off.
Dp
Finally, a post in this thread I can heartily agree with!
Ilha, to answer your question about the borders of nation for an individual I am inclined to say there is no clean answer although that does not make it less real.
On the one hand the personal association of nationhood is an identity thing and cannot come from outside. This is not clean anywhere. In no territory does 100% of the people in it identify with the nation of the place. And no nation has 100% of the people who identify with it resident in its territorial boundaries. In this case I am not just talking about BC-- there are people who consider themselves a part of the Québec nation living in France or the UK or Japan. There are also people who consider themselves of the Japanese, British or French nations living in Québec. That the border is not absolute in any case is not a big deal.
A nation is much more than a language, it is a cultural and social and political reality and I would argue it is one that recognizes that it has history as such. While I recognize that millions of Tibetans who have never been to Tibet remain of the Tibetan nation, it is extraordinarily difficult to be of a nation unless you have been immersed in it. Tibetans express themselves in exile in all possible ways so I won't say it cannot be done.
But speaking the language is not what we are talking about. This is where the territorial expression of nationhood becomes important as well. Québec is a place where a specific nation exists where the culture is expressed (and by that I also mean much more than art). This includes political culture, work culture, family social culture, business culture, and social values... A nation is a collectivity-- hard to see how you can be of the collective and not part of it. Québec is the only place this nation is experienced by being present. Arguments can be made about other nations in Canada along similar lines including Acadians and Aboriginal nations.
To a large extent this is about expression. I want to distinguish between culture and nation as there is a difference-- you can have a unique culture and not be a nation. To be a nation you have to have a collective desire to associate yourself as such and to see that this expression be part of the social structure of your community and recognize your history. Usually, I think it is normal once a people define themselves as a nation that they would want to seek self determination. That does not mean necessarily as an independent state but certainly they would expect to control their side of any relationship in a state and seek to negotiate from their side the terms of the relationship with that state with an understanding that their participation in that state is voluntary as a part of their national will. If you imagine what freedom means -- to me it means the right to chose if you participate and how (understanding that the others also participate in the same arrangement under the same terms).
National identity from a personal perspective is also not clean-- you can feel part of more than one or feel excluded from all. You can be torn. This comes from the fact that no person -- and no nation -- is an island-- we relate and we create children of more than one identity and those children refashion their personal identity and national relations.
These are my thoughts of course and others may not see it this way...
I consider much of this fluid ideas and likely I would say slightly different things tomorrow but hopefully there is at least an attempt to answer.
To clarify when I am talking about others on the same terms I do not mean other provinces have the same relationship but I do mean that other national identities have the same terms in that they too can express a national identity if they choose and negotiate the terms of their participation in a multinational state.
OK...but when we really agree with somebody, can we tell them to "fuck on"?
That, and a PQ government would probably put a heavy tariff on Romulan Ale.
I think there are measurable characteristics of capitalist sovereign OECD nations to refer to and which don't apply to Canada anymore since about 1989 to 1994. Such defining characteristics include, but are not limited to: transportation, book publishing, magazines, news media, telecommunications and all with respect to ownership and national content of the product or service produced for public consumption. Canada in general has seen much higher percentages of American-owned content in everything from sources of books sold in Canada to entertainment and foreign ownership of former national railways and airlines. If some large percentage of these goods and services are not Canadian owned and controlled, then what Canadians think on average will tend to reflect political and cultural and social views which are also not Canadian in origin.
Your post Sean got me thinking about culture and its context.
For instance the Acadian people in North America despite not having any sovereign control over their homeland since the 18th century have maintained a culture and most important a sense of belonging to a specific nation. Even as a unilingual English speaker I still consider myself an Acadian. My francophone cousins who were born and raised in Montreal all identify as Acadians. They grew up in Quebec but most are not Quebecois in their hearts or their expressions of culture although their kids are. And a couple of them who identify the most as Acadians were active in the separatist movement during the '70's. I think they went looking for roots and found them in Moncton.
Personally I think the three Maritime Provinces should amalgamate and use Acadia as the province's name. But in any talk about the federation I think that the original terms that give PEI voters more than twice the electoral weight of a city dweller need to change. If we are going to revamp the federation I have some ideas but I don't live in Acadia so it is not for me to present the maritime province's or regions proposals for a revitalized federation.
I do live in BC and I do belong to a distinct coast culture. Our cities are as different from Toronto as Montreal is. Part of that culture comes from the fact that the Coast FN's have a distinct culture and tradition that is reflected in the mainstream BC culture. People from other parts of Canada are often a little surprised the first time they go to any progressive meeting and the intro includes affirming that we are meeting on unceded Coast Salish territory. Greenpeace was born here because of the counter culture that took hold in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Many areas of BC like Nelson and Vancouver Island and all the small islands still have a large part of the people committed to living a lifestyle not dictated by the trend in the MSM. When the constitution gets revamped or revised then it is time to clarify that in disputes between the sovereign FN's of BC and the government and corporations that there is not merely a duty to consult the FN affected but that if there is no agreement then the FN's position rules.
I think that if you are going to go back and redraft the constitution that there are more issue that need attention not just recognizing Quebec in what ever manner that the people of that province decide they want to be recognized in. I have a bias as a non Quebec based political junkie. I don't trust the federal politicians that are elected from Quebec to speak on behalf of Quebec.
I made that mistake with Trudeau and for years could not understand how a province that sent almost all Liberals to the House of Commons with an overwhelming mandate had proposed something that at least half of the people of their province didn't want. Then the whole internal dispute settled down until the next federalist Quebec leader with a large seat majority comes along and tells us he can find the solution. I wasn't fooled that time but a lot of my friends thought that what was being proposed in the Charlottetown Accord was actually what the people of Quebec wanted.
The reason why this debate is current on this board is because again a federalist party controls the vast majority of the seats. I believe that it is very unwise to presume that what the NDP's Quebec caucus comes up with (if they are foolish enough to try tip toeing through the constitutional minefield) will be supported by the majority of the people of Quebec.
Always pushing the envelope, eh? Funny. However ...
CFL