From: cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne)
Subject: Re: Political power of provinces
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, University of Ottawa
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 92 22:15:12 GMT

In article <12370@audetf> audetf@Software.Mitel.COM (Francois Audet) writes:
>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.

Are these in fact as important as embassies, or are they just
glorified "tourist bureaus?"  I suspect the latter...

>>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.

No, we aren't particularly a "vassal state" of the British Empire, but
the last I heard, and according to the latest documentation that I
have, we are still known officially as the "Dominion of Canada."

Bill number, please?  WHEN did Parliament pass legislation changing
Canada into some other form of state?  If you're going to say that the
formal name of this country is no longer the Dominion of Canada, then
you'd better back it up.

Incidentally, the definition that I find in my dictionary still does
apply to Canada:

Dominion:  a self-governing nation of the British Commonwealth other
than the United Kingdom that acknowledges the British monarch as chief
of state

And this says NOTHING about being a "vassal" - which is: "a person
under the protection of another who is his feudal lord and to whom he
has vowed homage and fealty."

You may or may not like the Queen - that does not change the fact that
the government of the Dominion of Canada DOES acknowlege her as chief
of state.

>>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. 

Not really?!?!?!  You CAN'T have official sovereignty and still be
part of a federation.  It wouldn't be a federation anymore.

>>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.

O.K.  So, we'll have all of the provinces separate from Canada, and
we'll castrate the central government, and build it back up from
nothing, making sure that each province/state agrees on the new form.
It's too bad that it may be difficult to put the knife into the feds -
some of those provinces may not want to let it die.

What makes you think that the EC method is actually better?  The
central government there will be able to on occasion impose "unpopular
arbitrary rules" - they've already been doing it in the economic end
of things.

>>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.

The Brits that live near the Chunnel site aren't too thrilled with
either the German or the French tourists either...  My parents visited
Surrey last fall, and said that there were a LOT of complaints about
the "frogs" coming over from the continent.  It may just be prejudice,
on the part of the locals there, or the tourists may actually do
annoying things; I don't know.  (Irrelevant aside: In Canada, the
anglophones don't often use the term "frog" to refer to francophones.
The references in this newsgroup, for instance, to the word "frog"
have all come from francophones, except for this paragraph of text
here..  Over in Europe, things seem to be reversed.  The anglophone
British use the term quite a bit...)

-- 
Christopher Browne
cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca
University of Ottawa
Master of System Science Program
Newsgroups: can.general,can.politics