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“Quite obviously, under such a view, the idea that a real country can exist even when there is no fusion between one single nation and the state is impossible to sustain,” he said.

But don’t forget, Leeson said, that Quebec chose not to sign the agreement to bring the constitution home. “You can’t have it both ways,” he said.

Further, the Supreme Court ruled that Quebec’s signature was not required. And most Quebecers themselves were not all that fussed over the patriation issue. “We know from polls taken at the time. We know it from the 1985 election when the PQ lost,” Leeson said.

Leeson ventured to say that Canada is probably more united today as a country than at any time since the Second World War.

“There are no huge questions of whether a particular part of the country is so dissatisfied that it would seek a political solution that would divide the country,” he said.

The wave of discontent in the West that saw the rise of the Reform Party back in the late 1980s and 1990s has subsided, for instance. And the fact there are three federalist parties vying in the next federal election — and the Bloc Québécois is off the radar — is “very healthy for the unity of Canada,” Leeson said.

Péladeau’s imaginary Canada is a “tough argument to make right now.”

Don’t forget also, Stevenson said, that when Lucien Bouchard was premier of Quebec, he once similarly called Canada “not a real country” — a remark for which he later apologized.

National Post, with files from The Canadian Press