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The compulsory government approved textbook for “Secondary IV” (Grade 10), devotes its last chapter to the choice between sovereignty and federalism. Either alternative is treated as equally valid and the Supreme Court’s elaborations on conditions are not even acknowledged. Instead, the following postulate is offered as fact:

One of the main arguments made by the sovereignists in favour of Québec independence is the right of a people to govern itself, a right recognized by the Charter of the United Nations since 1960. Considering that Quebec forms a nation, sovereignists argue that it is normal that this nation become a sovereign State. (page 229)

It’s true that the UN Charter declares: “All peoples have the right to self-determination,” but this right is qualified by other declarations that it is to be exercised within existing states. Only colonies have a right to break away from a country.

In 1992, after Meech Lake failed, Robert Bourassa proposed to hold a referendum on sovereignty and he consulted five eminent experts on international law, none from Canada. They studied the issue and prepared a report. But their unanimous answer was clear and definitive.

They wrote, in part: “The right of peoples to self-determination is a very general principle which confers, always and everywhere, the right for the community to participate in its future, but which does not go so far as to confer the right of a people to attain independence at the expense of the State to which it is linked, except in colonial situations. … We can conclude, in practice, that it is clearly an unacceptable opinion which holds that all peoples, in the sociological meaning of that word, are authorized by international law to create independent States as a last resort.”