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“Quebec is a nation … with one language, one culture … ” It’s an idea of Quebec with which the Parti Québécois might be comfortable. But now it’s the idea held by the Couillard government, which would like to see it enshrined in the Canadian Constitution, where it could restrict minority rights in the province.

It was described in a speech last week by the Liberal minister for Canadian intergovernmental affairs, Jean-Marc Fournier.

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Speaking at the opening of a conference on the 1864 Quebec Conference, which led to Confederation, Fournier raised the subject of Quebec’s place in the Constitution.

“The Constitution should not be a taboo subject,” he said. “Among the issues to be deliberated in the future, that of the place of Quebec within Canada is fundamental.”

He reviewed the history of what he described as the swings of the pendulum in Canada’s “openness to (Quebec’s) differences,” emphasizing “gestures to acknowledge the specificity of Quebec” since the present Constitution was imposed on the province in 1982.