[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Nation Unity
Kenneth Roberts on Canadian Nationalism: An Outline
In 1979 the Canadian Task Force concluded, interalia, that Canada’s dual nature as a federation of territorial units and as a federation of two founding nations could be helped best with a system of provincial equality combined with asymmetrical federalism that recognized Quebec as a separate society. Trudeau, nevertheless, rejected those suggestions as he favored different institutional demands, including a Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms for which he was willing to consider bigger provincial participation in federal institutions. Bill C-60, a federal attempt at an institutional change that failed to become law, covered a new preamble and statement of goals in the constitution, a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a House of Federation to replace the Senate, and modifications to the Supreme Court. These recommended institutional changes sparked a wave of other institutional demands from the provinces. British Columbia and Alberta, for instance, released in depth reports, as did the Quebec Liberal Party. The Parti Québécois continued to support sovereignty-association in an intensification to the referendum that it eventually held in 1980 (McRoberts 1997).
Trudeau's Vision of Canada
The official line over Trudeau’s political achievements, the clear difference in the popular reaction within and outside Quebec was the measure of Trudeau’s—and contemporary Canada’s—big disappointment: the Canadian inability to make French Quebec more comfortable within Canada, to incorporate even the moderate, pro-Canadian aspects of Quebec nationalism. In a very real way, an old problem has been made worse, unsolved by the golden child of Québec and Canada, the politician of his generation, whom both parties had trusted to solve that problem. Instead, the legacy of Trudeau, the enemy of all nationalisms, is strangely enough a new Canadian nationalism based on the denial of the Québécois heart of Canada.
At the end of the Sixties, Pierre Elliott-Trudeau wasted the valued goodwill existing toward Québec in the rest of the country by not sending the right messages.
