Word: quebecers
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Last week Mitterrand and French Premier Jacques Chirac took up the battle in Quebec City at the Second Annual Francophone Summit. The meeting brought together representatives of 38 countries that use French as a primary or secondary language, including Belgium, Switzerland, Canada and former French colonies in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific. While the concept of a union of French-speaking communities was developed 20 years ago, not until last year did Paris acknowledge its dependence on this fraternity to bolster the mother tongue by convening the first such summit in Paris. This time around, the French...
...Mulroney, the Federal Prime Minister, emerged from a 20-hour negotiating session last week and proclaimed that their country was finally one. Back in 1982, after 115 years of British stewardship, Canada's constitution had been given over to Ottawa's direct control. But the French-speaking province of Quebec refused to sign the charter, charging that then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was using the document to dilute French Canada. In April of this year, Mulroney and the provinces hammered out a delicate agreement recognizing Quebec as a "distinct society" and permitting it a larger degree of autonomy. Yet some...
Canadians, especially those outside French-speaking Quebec, were understandably irate back in 1967 when French President Charles de Gaulle stood on a balcony at Montreal's city hall and encouraged the province's then violent separatist movement with his cry of "Vive le Quebec libre ((Long live free Quebec))." Until President Francois Mitterrand arrived last week, no French chief of state had set foot on Canadian soil since then...
During his five days in Canada, Mitterrand went out of his way to be a good guest. He made it a point to arrive in Ottawa, the English-speaking federal capital, rather than Quebec, as De Gaulle had done. After meeting with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, he gave a speech to a joint session of Parliament, concluding the address with some reverse symbolism. "Vive le Canada," he intoned. Talks on trade and a fishing dispute produced no new agreements. But both Mulroney and Mitterrand had reason to be pleased as the French President boarded his Concorde SST for the flight...
...improprieties have continued. Early last month Junior Transportation Minister Andre Bissonnette became the sixth member of Mulroney's Cabinet to resign under fire, quitting after he was implicated in a land deal that saw the value of a piece of Quebec real estate triple in eleven days. A fortnight ago several Quebec Conservatives were implicated in an influence-peddling case involving government contracts. A seventh Cabinet member, Minister of State Roch LaSalle, resigned last week after it was revealed that he had been the guest of honor at a dinner at which guests paid $5,000 apiece for the privilege...