Quebec Seperatism

Firstly, thank you very much for accepting. I'm incredibly new and shy, so I'm flattered to have such a nice response. So your main points are that nations are best as groups of similar people, and anything beyond can lead to colonialism or structural weakness. Therefore, it's best for English Canada and Quebec to separate so that they can both be stronger nations, however, they should divide based upon language demographics. The idea that Canada is 'colonizing' Quebec doesn't hold up because there were two referendums. The Canadian government allowed Quebec to choose whether or not it should separate and the results were always a little under 50%. A colonial government would not even allow such a vote in the first place and there is no evidence that the Canadian government wouldn't have respected a separatist outcome. French Canada has been protected by the Canadian constitution. Students can demand to be taught in French or English anywhere in the country, for instance. These are not the traits of a colonial power. And not all people in Quebec want separatism, anyway. In the most recent referendum, 49.42% of the population wanted to separate (but there was controversy that some of the anti-separatist votes were discarded), the number in a recent poll is about 41%. And in the recent election, the Bloc Quebecois lost it's federal party status when it lost 43 of it's seats in the House of Commons. So if Quebec did separate according to provincial boundaries, it wouldn't even properly achieve stability because it would be so radically divided. You did offer the solution of making the borders according to demographics, but this couldn't work because many of the cities are split up. Quebec City, the capital, it mostly anti-separatist with large chunks of yes votes. How do you properly divide up a city? "Except for areas of First Nations peoples, the "No" vote was concentrated in urban ridings." So if Quebec did separate just according to demographics, either it's two major cities would be split up or one would be lost (if we go by majority, which isn't really fair as I will get to later) and Quebec would lose it's main urban areas. That doesn't seem like a healthy prospect for a nation, either. If it went strictly by demographics cities would be torn up, so you might suggest just having a vote for the whole city. But if we follow the 1995 referendum map, that would mean Quebec City would be lost but Montreal would stay. But even this creates problems. You can't just change the Canadian voting system which relies on ridings to fit a certain situation. But even if we forgot about the technical problems of dividing Quebec up, why should we forgo the rights of English speakers in Quebec? Wouldn't doing away with their rights be the same sort of colonialism they accuse Canada of proliferating? And I agree about the Queen and the monarchy. But most Canadians do not support the monarchy anyway. 59% said they didn't care about the Queen's visit. "An Angus Reid poll just after the Queen's visit found that 36% of Canadians want Canada to remain a monarchy, 30% prefer having an elected head of state". And around 40% want to have a referendum. If the Canadian government was willing to reform and do away with the monarchy in order to establish Canada as separate from the English conquerors of Montreal, this should appease some anti-royalists. So it seems that making a new, multicultural Canada without a monarchy is a better solution than just slicing Quebec up. Multicultural societies can work, as Argentina, the USA and Australia prove. You also mention 'common interests'? What exactly are some of the interests of Quebec that are so threatened by 'Canadian interests'? Since obviously the constitution proves that there is no active discrimination against French Canadians, and anyone who does can be punished by law. They're given language rights, education rights and rights to form separatist parties which strictly advocate for them and them alone. The other provinces do not have federal parties entirely dedicated to the interests of their own province. http://en.wikipedia.org... http://en.wikipedia.org... http://www.ledevoir.com...