At the start, the concept of distinct society, taken up by Robert Bourassa and Brian Mulroney in the context of the Meech Lake accord, seemed like a euphemism to avoid the word nation, an intolerable term in English Canada if it was associated with Quebec since it implies, in some of its meanings, a territory over which a form of sovereignty is exercised and can even become a synonym for country in the language of Shakespeare.
Quebec defining itself as a pluralist state united around the same language, the concept also had the advantage of removing the narrowly ethnic meaning that the term nation can take. Too soft for the sovereignists, the concept suited Quebec federalists who, in other times, had different customs, were reformists.
We did not have to make great demonstrations to maintain that Quebec formed a distinct society, obviously by its language and its culture, but also by its history, Catholicism which has long dominated there and this famous Civil Code. Master of ambiguity, however, Robert Bourassa refused to describe precisely what meaning should be given to this concept of distinct society, other than that it was undeniable, nor what effects its formal recognition would have.
However, the recent condemnation by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) of the use of the title of the famous Marxist-Leninist pamphlet by Pierre Vallières on Radio-Canada radio in Montreal illustrates how Quebec is a distinct society and the extent to which the federal authorities ignore it. The reaction of the Toronto senior management of the CBC, which, under the leadership of the president and CEO, Catherine Tait, refuses to date to appeal this decision, is not without recalling the existence of the two solitudes . But where one of the two solitudes, representing the majority power, rages against the other both through ignorance and ideology.
As Pierre Trudel wrote in our pages, the word negro was not used to discriminate or to insult during the targeted segment of the show hosted by Annie Desrochers with columnist Simon Jodoin. Moreover, the word, taken up by French-speaking writers like Aimé Césaire, who developed the notion of negritude, or even Dany Laferrière, does not have the same pejorative charge as in English. Moreover, the CRTC has not shown that Radio-Canada had violated the rules it must follow, in short, that there was fault. On the other hand, the CRTC violated freedom of expression, a constitutional right, and undermined the journalistic independence of the public broadcaster.
This is the third time that the mere fact of pronouncing the title of Pierre Vallières’ book has created a stir. Two years ago, star CBC host Wendy Mesley was suspended for using the word scorned at two work meetings, she was forced to issue an apology and has since announced her retirement. At the University of Ottawa, the Lieutenant-Duval affair, in addition to leading to the suspension of the professor who suffered a reprimand, created a schism between Anglophone and Francophone professors.
As his office reported to To have toCatherine Tait, at the time of the Lieutenant-Duval affair, believed that “the conversation on racism is not[était] not as advanced in Quebec”. Another way of asserting one’s moral superiority by calling Quebecers retarded. Could this “conversation on racism” be different for Quebecers, given their history, their French culture and their own colonized status? One cannot prevent the English-Canadian elite from wallowing in an all-American Puritanism, where words and books are banned and where hypocrisy serves Anglo-Saxon good conscience to the detriment of freedom of expression. But we don’t have to subscribe to it.
With regard to these debates and others — one only has to think of laïcité, another word that is difficult to render in English — Quebec is indeed a distinct society, “today and forever”, as said Robert Bourassa in 1990 the day after the failure of the Meech Lake accord. This distinct society will be hotly contested: the laws on secularism and on the French language are the subject of appeals to the courts. It remains to be seen whether Ottawa and its judges will allow this historical and cultural difference to assert itself or whether multiculturalist standardization will continue to the detriment of a national minority that we seek to repress or that we simply ignore.