Word: clearings
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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QUEBEC'S PRIME MINISTER Rene Levesque visited Harvard last week for two distinct reasons. First, as his numerous, references to Quebec's festivities this summer made clear, he came to draw tourist dollars into Quebec's badly sagging economy. Levesque's second motive was more farsighted, somewhat subtler and far more important. He came to Harvard and to America to convince citizens and policymakers in this country that his independentist plans for Quebec are reasonable, moderate, and portend few if any substantive changes in Quebec-U.S. relations...
...means of cultural protection and development, it makes little difference in whose hands responsibility for economic undemocracy lies. Given the importance of existing federal-provincial consultations, plus the already high degree of decentralization of jurisdiction over activities most obviously related to the domain of culture, it is not clear where, if at all, Levesque's 'independence' would lead to any substantive changes in the lifestyles of Quebeckers...
...problem is not that the P.Q. has a pleasant or an unpleasant post-independence direction; rather, the problem is that it has no clear direction. The party's program promises such reforms as a guaranteed annual income and free post-secondary education, but its policies and its budget in particular have been remarkably conservative since the P.Q. took power. Unless the party can provide a clear post-independence direction, it threatens to subject the new country's economy to the economic pressures which invariably accompany political turmoil...
Economically, the province will have to pay for its formal independence. This does not mean that Quebec should not follow the separatist route if it expects substantial changes and benefits in other fields. The promise of real change, however, is lacking. It is by no means clear that formal independence for Quebec will do anything more than transform its highly nationalistic provincial civil service into a national bureaucracy...
Quebec's problem, like all longstanding historical ones, can not be reduced to any simplistic solution. Nationalism is still alive and well in Quebec, although it is not clear that independence of the P.Q. variety will in fact offer any substantive advantages to French Canadians that could not be obtained within the present federal system. Against the potential benefit arising from independence must be pitted the question of economic cost. That question has already received the bulk of Quebec's attention precisely because the substantive benefits of independence are far from clear. Unless these benefits can be clarified...