On October 8, 1971, the Prime Minister of Canada proclaimed that, although there are two official languages, there is no “Canadian culture”. Pierre Trudeau thus affirms that he is implementing the recommendations appearing in Volume IV of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (Laurendeau-Dunton). Multiculturalism is the most realistic way to define Canada since “no ethnic group takes precedence” argues Trudeau. This policy statement guarantees the individual’s freedom of choice, he says. With multiculturalism, “we are free to be ourselves”. In a document tabled in the House of Commons, it is specified that “cultural pluralism is the very essence of Canadian identity. Each ethnic group has the right to maintain and develop its own culture and values in the Canadian context. “
Guy Rocher is outraged to see the use made by Pierre Trudeau of the fourth report of the Laurendeau-Dunton commission, entitled: The cultural contribution of other ethnic groups. Multiculturalism, in Guy Rocher’s mind, “is a political invention by Trudeau to avoid talking about two nations.” And in December of the same year, as a first response to the concept of multiculturalism, Rocher signed a text devoted to the future of Francophones in Canada. He specifies that “the idea of the two nations and their association in a renewed confederation” is the only formula capable of guaranteeing the conditions of cultural self-determination of the two nations.
While Prime Minister Trudeau wants a new definition of Canada by carrying out “a certain sociological analysis of Canadian society”, Guy Rocher decides to take an interest in it. In the spring of 1972, the academic presented all of his thinking to the Canadian Society for Sociology and Anthropology. His presentation bears the following title: The Ambiguities of a Bilingual and Multicultural Canada.
In no way trying to spare the Prime Minister of Canada, Guy Rocher maintains that “the position taken by the government [fédéral] flies in the face of the mandate that was assigned to the Commission and the conclusions it reached ”. The ministerial decree creating the Laurendeau-Dunton commission “clearly stated the representation he made of the Canadian reality, a bilingual and bicultural country, made up of two founding peoples and enriched by the contribution of a large number of other groups. ethnic. [Et] throughout his report […] this is the same definition adopted by the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission. However, multiculturalism is an “important innovation” which has far-reaching consequences. This concept “breaks with the image of a unitary country as well as that of a bicultural country”. […] The sociologist qualifies this conception as ambiguous, erroneous and dangerous. In front of an audience of sociologists, Rocher gives an explanation to each of these qualifiers.
Pierre Trudeau’s multiculturalism is ambiguous in that he distinguishes between language and culture. While the Canadian majority is already not bilingual, multiculturalism will deal a fatal blow to this objective of official bilingualism, warns Rocher: “Multiculturalism weakens bilingualism, which no longer has a basis in two particular cultures. He becomes helpless. “We already know in Montreal the kind of bilingualism that multicultural policy will lead to,” he explains. Among new Canadians, the bilingualism commonly practiced is English-Greek, English-Italian, English-German bilingualism, but English-French bilingualism is hardly to be found. ” […]
Rocher adds that the new concept put forward by Pierre Trudeau is also wrong because in his opinion, without a central cultural core, the nation, is an abstraction: “I wonder what kind of nation can really exist on a also fluid and also uninviting. ” […] Finally, Guy Rocher considers that the multiculturalism defended by Pierre Trudeau is “dangerous” for French Canadians since it trivializes their presence and influence in Canada. “For the Quebec francophone, multiculturalism appears as another name for the English-speaking Canadian community. “This conception of Canada is a huge step backwards for Francophones since” this multiculturalism hides the domination of a certain Anglo-Saxon culture in the Canadian way. What is dominant, what bridges the various communities of this Canada, is a certain English-speaking Canadian culture. A few years later, persisting in his analysis, he even predicts that “English will become the first official language and Anglophone culture the one that will dominate throughout Canada.”
The anti-Trudeau
[…] After the “proclamation” of October 1970, comes the “declaration” of October 1971. In both cases, the author is Trudeau. In the eyes of sociologist Jacques Beauchemin, Guy Rocher’s attitude and public actions make him “anti-Trudeau”. If Trudeau “fell on the French-Canadian community, all occupied with the task of making an inventory of its shortcomings and its delays, rehashing the errors of the past and slaying those responsible for a paralyzing traditionalism that would have been the ‘Church and a petty bourgeoisie of notables’, Rocher, for his part, remains confident in his analysis and constant in his approach, not giving in to disenchantment. “The only way to talk about the future of Quebec is to postulate not pessimism or optimism, but hope,” he wrote. His nuanced mind allows him to introduce “into the dialectic of Quebec nationalism, […] an attentive, delicate, sensitive relativism, writes the editorialist Laurent Laplante. He does not canonize federalism, he prefers it. […] He does not see sovereignty as the answer to all evils; it makes it the only solution that can be considered in the aftermath of a failure to federalism. “
In 1971, the director of To have to, Claude Ryan, also compares Rocher to Trudeau. He recalls that if the Prime Minister of Canada ranks Quebec independence among the heretical solutions, Guy Rocher, the federalist, does not allow himself to be imprisoned in such an interpretation. “Quebec sovereignty is, in short, an eminently respectable way of expressing the old dream of freedom that lies dormant in the heart of every nation. It may not be the only solution, nor the best, ”writes Claude Ryan, but for Guy Rocher, this path remains open. “I have the impression that this is how the majority of Quebecers think, even if, for the moment, their instinctive preference and their historical memory still lead them to refuse separatism and to dream of a more political solution. large, which would nevertheless uphold their just national aspirations, ”adds Claude Ryan.
At the start of the 1970s, Rocher did not call himself a separatist, but he repeated more and more often that he had nevertheless become a “disillusioned federalist”.