From: audetf@Software.Mitel.COM (Francois Audet)
Newsgroups: can.general,can.politics
Subject: Political power of provinces
Date: 24 Jul 92 15:04:03 GMT
Organization: Mitel. Kanata (Ontario). Canada.

In article (Christopher Browne) writes:
>Canada is NOT a federation of states called provinces; it is one
>state, containing provinces which are essentially administrative
>districts.  This fact MAY change in the future, depending on the
>outcome of some combination of constitutional changes, and possibly
>the secession of Quebec.  

Quebec, like all other provinces, are political entity. They do have
representants in most countries. There are "Maison du Quebec" (or
whatever they call it) in most major capitals, including London and
Paris. Note that in the case of London, there is not Canadian embassy:
there is 11 "houses", one for each province and one for Canada. They
are set up for political purposes and do have weight. Similarly, there
are foreign consulates in Montreal (and maybee Quebec city). The
provinces, especially Quebec, do have their own international
political importance.

Of course, it doesn't mean that they are totally independant, or that
they have their seat at the UN.

>Until that time, no province is a state.  Not even Quebec, which is,
>even still, a part of the Dominion of Canada, a state that is, by
>federal policy, officially bilingual.

Sorry to disappoint you, but Canada is not a Dominium (i.e., a vassal
state of the British Empire) anymore.

>Please note that what Quebec seems to want (that is, general
>sovereignty) is antithetical to the concept of "federal" government,
>which refers to "a compact between political units that surrender
>their individual sovereignty to a central authority but retain limited
>residual powers of government."

Not really. The independantist (at least the PQ) have always wanted
some sort of union with Canada even if Quebec become officially a
separate country. The people who are closed-minded, wants
protectionism and dislike 'strangers' are not the one that you think.
Bob Rae recently said that the government should trash free trade with
the US and not embark on a similar deal with Mexico. Bourassa said the
opposite. 

>Europe is NOW a sort of "federation" of sovereign states.  Each of
>them has always been sovereign, and as the various treaties go into
>force, various powers will move from the states to the central
>administration.

And that's the way it should work here instead of having an
incompetent pseudo-federal government force impopular arbitrary rules
on the provinces.

>And what languages are officially recognized in the EC will depend on
>what agreements are reached between the central government and the
>individual states.  Compromises will have to be made there between
>many factions that have disagreements.  What's more likely than
>Spanish becoming mandatory is for German to become mandatory.  And
>there's TWO kinds of tourists that many Brits seem to hate, both of
>which come from the other side of the Channel.  (Hint... What's
>Canada's most controversial official language?  Hmmmm...)

Well, if you go to France, Italy, Spain, Greece and ask them what they
think of British, American and German tourists, you might be very
surprised. They are not very impressed with the Attila-the-Hun-Gets-
Drunk-and-Destroy attitude.

PS: You don't even have homogeneity of language in a lot of the
European country.  In Catalogna (capital: Barcelona), the official
language is catalan.  Signs are all in catalan, and so is schooling.
It pissed of quite a bit the spanish...
-- 
                                                       Francois Audet
                                                           '
                                      Telephone: (613) 592-2121 x1754
                          Internet: Francois.Audet@software.Mitel.COM
Xref: sparky can.general:3651 can.politics:5578