MONTREAL

A major underpinning of the sovereignist narrative has always been that Quebec's provincial status is at the root of structural defects upon which secession would act as a magic wand.

In this spirit in the 1995 referendum the Yes camp plastered the province with soothing nursery-style pictograms bearing the slogan: Un Oui et tout devient possible.

That rhetoric was successful in claiming the weapon of hope for the Yes side but it did not address successfully the countervailing notion that Canada also played a positive part in making Quebec what it was. In the end, that latter notion prevailed.

Sovereignist champions are hardly the only Canadians who subscribe to the thesis that Quebec and the rest of Canada are mutually harmful to each other.

Ironically, at a time when Quebec's own grievance culture is receding, the thesis that the province has been holding back the rest of the federation has never so permeated the national conversation.

In a thought-provoking book that is bound to land on Prime Minister Stephen Harper's bedside table (if it has not already done so), economist Brian Lee Crowley takes that proposition to a higher level.

Titled, Fearful Symmetry, the book argues the 40-year battle to keep Quebec in Canada has turned the latter into a country of takers rather than makers. He says it has bred a culture of dependency across the land.

The expansion of the Canadian social union sits at the top of Crowley's list of Quebec-induced perversions. He sees it as a corrosive by-product of the simultaneous advent of the baby-boomer generation and the bidding war between Ottawa and Quebec for the hearts and souls of nationalist Quebecers.

He argues that, with Quebec's influence on national affairs waning, it is time to turn back the clock.

Crowley would disband the social union; he would abolish most social transfers to the provinces and leave them to finance their social safety nets according to their means, out of an expanded taxation field.

With its redistributive functions reduced to a minimum, the federal government would be free to focus on the management of the economic union.

Crowley rightly argues that his devolutionist approach to social policy would appeal to Quebec's strong autonomist streak. Indeed his model is as close as an English-speaking intellectual can come to giving shape to the pipe dream of an independent Quebec within a united Canada.

But where his thesis is at its weakest is in the assumption that a majority of Canadians outside Quebec share his sense that Quebec's influence has impoverished rather than enriched the Canadian fabric.

Notwithstanding Crowley's assertion that Canada sacrificed its historical symbols on the altar of Quebec appeasement, few Canadians are nostalgic about losing the Red Ensign to the Maple Leaf flag and most see official bilingualism as a vibrant national trait.

The collective attachment to a strong pan-Canadian social union and to the attending concept of an activist federal government runs deep in most parts of Canada outside Quebec. When it comes to medicare, that attachment often borders on a cult.

In the last election a majority of voters supported parties that promoted the maintenance and the expansion of the Canadian social union in all regions except the Prairies.

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But it is also a fact that – unless Quebecers re-engage in a progressive Canadian coalition – the balance will tilt toward the deconstruction of social Canada that Crowley so passionately promotes. That could come no later than the next election, with the potential advent of a Conservative majority rooted outside Quebec.





Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.