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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPierre Trudeau's son is so disgusted with Harper he's thinking about separatism.
For those of you interested in matters Canadian, this is HUGH!!!111!!!!11! I'm SERIES!!11!!1 Pierre Trudeau was the wildly popular French Canadian PM who stood for a united, bilingual Canada (and not incidentally, dated celebrities, thereby making it cool to be Canadian!).
http://news.yahoo.com/trudeau-son-justin-mulls-possible-separate-quebec-192114559.html
The son of one of the greatest defenders of Canadian unity, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, has stirred up a hornets' nest by speculating about backing Quebec separatism if the country moves too far right
Trudeau's 40-year-old son, Justin, now a Liberal member of Parliament, said in an interview with the French-language service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp (http://link.reuters.com/gud66s) on Sunday that he was enormously saddened by the direction of the country under Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
He said that at some point he might even back independence for his home province, French-speaking Quebec. Referendums in Quebec on independence in 1980 and 1995 both failed, the last one by a mere 1.2 percentage points.
"I always say, if at a certain point I thought that Canada was really the Canada of Stephen Harper - that we were going against abortion, and we were going against gay marriage and we were going backwards in 10,000 different ways - maybe I would think about wanting to make Quebec a country," he said.
I can't believe that last referendum was 17 years ago! I remember tuning around the AM dial that night in New Haven, Conn., looking for a signal from north of the border (the U.S. media, of course, would have been completely blindsided by the news that a new, French-speaking country had emerged on the border of upstate New York and New England!).
southernyankeebelle
(11,304 posts)would move.
orpupilofnature57
(15,472 posts)often than every 15 yrs . My great grandfather never stopped speaking French even though he moved here ( N.Y. ) when he was in his twenties and lived until he was 90 .
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)i.e. immigrants whose mother tongue is neither French nor English. Montreal in particularly is extremely diverse. They saved the day for Canada, to the disgust of the teabagger-style leader of the separatist movement at the time, Jacques parizeau.
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)It asked Quebeckers:
The Provincial Government in Quebec at the time was trying to have their cake and eat it too. They talked of separation, but were really proposing some sort of sovereignty association. From wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_referendum,_1995
After the Non side won, the Federal government passed the Clarity Act, which was legislation mandating that it wouldn't recognize the results of future referenda, unless a clear and concise question was asked.
Sid
Alexander
(15,318 posts)They fell from 47 seats down to 4. Leader Gilles Duceppe even lost his own seat. This is a party that promotes Quebec sovereignty more than anything else.
I don't follow the issue of Quebec on a daily basis, so I don't know if there's a huge groundswell of support for another referendum. But if the 2011 results are any indication, it doesn't look like a lot of people in Quebec want to separate from Canada these days.
Jello Biafra
(439 posts)it still hasn't happened........
provis99
(13,062 posts)given that his birth language was English, and he is 3\4 british and only 1\4 French...
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)Swede
(33,255 posts)Harper is really turning up the heat.