Word: quebecers
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...still larger number of Congressmen say they support any nation's right to self-determination. Their lofty concern apparently does not extend to Quebec, Slovakia, Palestine or other areas where minorities are seeking nationhood, perhaps because U.S. voter rolls do not include large numbers of French- Canadians, Slovaks or Palestinians. Though Lithuanian Americans have been highly vocal, they are small in number and there is no organized Lithuanian lobby in the U.S. But millions of Americans of East European ancestry nurse a long-standing and understandable grudge against Moscow...
...decades, the French-speaking majority in Quebec has sought official recognition as a "distinct society" within the overwhelmingly English- speaking nation. Three years ago, at a meeting with the ten provincial premiers at Meech Lake in the Gatineau hills of Quebec, Mulroney devised a set of amendments that would finally satisfy the demands of the Quebecois and bring them to sign the national constitution "with honor and enthusiasm." But by last week the Meech Lake accord had turned a symbol of renewed division and intolerance between English- and French-speaking Canadians...
Three provinces reject it, in part because they claim it would grant special status to Quebec. Unless something happens to resolve the disagreement by the June 23 deadline for the accord's final approval, Canadians will have to face the possibility of a national rupture. They were jolted by a small sample of it last week when Mulroney's most important ally from Quebec, Environment Minister Lucien Bouchard, resigned from the government over what he sees as English-Canadian intransigence, saying, "This country doesn't work anymore. We have to remake...
Canada tried to do that when it rewrote its constitution in 1982 to add a bill of rights, but the then separatist government of Quebec refused to endorse the new document. The Meech Lake accord, based on proposals put forward by Quebec's Premier Robert Bourassa, was designed to overcome the province's opposition. Since then, however, newly elected governments in Manitoba, New Brunswick and Newfoundland have refused to ratify it. The holdouts argue that the accord grants Quebec special legislative powers over language and culture that other provinces do not have, and could endanger the civil rights...
That proposal brought on the resignations of Bouchard and two Quebec backbenchers from the ruling party, who insist that the accord should be passed untouched and undiluted by legislative interpretations. Bouchard now says he thinks the much discussed but still vague idea of a Quebec that is / politically sovereign but retains economic links with Canada "makes sense." Quebec, he complains, "is dying of ambiguity." Mulroney replaced Bouchard as his political lieutenant in Quebec with Industry Minister Benoit Bouchard (no relation), who said on national television that Quebec is "tired of being misunderstood." He warned, "What we have to understand...