Talk:Constitutional debate in Canada

message: *Language barrier
*Negative self-image
All comments welcomed. Mathieugp 20:03, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Communication problems 

message: It is possible to approach fundamental political arrangements (ie, Constitutions) in at least two ways. That given above is essentially developmental / historical. To wit, we were this way, this changed thus and so, proposals were made about this and that, reactions were this way about those things, etc. 
Another is to look at the purpose of bothering with such arrangements at all. To achieve opportunity equality as between <citizens, groups (definable in various ways), economic interests (also definable in various ways)>, or to enact this or that theoretical structure (eg, Marxism, or fascism, or monarchism, or parliamentarianism, or some religious position, ...), or to continue some existing/formerly existing condition (eg, dominance by or favorable treatment for this or that group or interest), ...
The first approach necessarily includes much encrustation by existing or formerly existing arrangements or attempted arrangements. It has the (Burkean) virtue of forcing attention on custom and precedent that worked, or at least worked well enough to get to the stage of discussing possibilities, however unsatisfactory to whomever. Constrast the case of Genghis Khan's polity in which discussion of how things ought to be were, pretty much, not possible as the would be discusants promptly would have become former would be discusants. 
The second has the virtue of avoiding all that (if it's possible to do so at all -- people seem to work most comfortably not by starting with a blank slate but by starting with some known (or supposedly known) situation), but the disadvantage of making those with some stake in the existing (or some psychic stake in some formerly existing) circumstance apprehensive. It was to avoid such problems that the Framers of the US constitution decided, almost as the first order of business at he Convention in Philadephia in 1787, to make their discussions secret, and that Madison directed that his notes of the Convention (the only even somewhat complete account of it) be kept secret until decades after his death. Actually leaving 'all that exists' behind also invites problems as no brakes on 'invention' will remain: the Girondists and the Jacobins (and Napoleon too -- eg, the famous 'whiff of grapeshot') demonstrated that. 
Burke foresaw it, or something like it, and he's been right far more often than not. 
Revolutions are dicey things, by almost all experience. Consider Thucydides 3.82 (the Revolution at Corcyria section especially; the Crawley translation is the most riveting I've found -- read it aloud slowly and feel your flesh crawl) for an even earlier example. The Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the slaughter in Rwanda of the mid 90s, Idi Amin (although that seems to have been perhaps more personal than not), conditions in Liberia since the 'Revolution', the conversion of Rome from Republic to Empire (and what went on before: eg, Marius and Sulla, and well after), most (all?) changes of dynasty in China (and apparently in ancient Egypt also), Hitler in Germany (recall that he was not elected; some thought they could 'control' him), the establishment of Christian 'orthodoxy' here and there (consider that the Library at Alexandria had been pillaged and plundered for centuries before the Arabs famously burned it; remember Hypatia?), the consequences of Peter the Great's rule in Russia (at least to his opponents), the 'young officer' movement in Japan especially after WWI, the 'young Turks' in the Ottoman Empire before WWI, and so on and on. There are few exceptions. The US Revolution, perhaps, or the Costa Rican rearrangement after WWII, Bernadotte in Sweden, and maybe Cincinnatus in old Roman Republic.
Which of these two (or some other, I suppose) approaches is most sensible by some standard (which?) depends on purposes, what people can be gotten to agree to, and other circumstances. It is unlikely, for instance, that any discussion of fundamental political arrangements in the Levant could make any progress if its deliberations are kept secret. There is simply too much suspicion  about everything there now. After 100 years of rabble rousing, demogoguing (sp?), propaganda, and general obsfucation, most everyone is too suspicious to 'let anything by'. And, of course, any public discussion will be promptly (has repeatedly been anyway) attacked as some sort of sell out by one group or another. Which killed an Israeli Prime Minister??
How to organize the discussion for this article? I don't know. But there are meta considerations. ww
: You wrote so much there that I don't know how I could possibly reply to all of it! ;-) There are lot of things to consider in this debate indeed. Philosophy, history, culture and other big words. However, since this article aims at explain what the constitutional debate of Canada is, and not an abstract debate of any constitution, we can easily narrow our scope: it will have to deal with the sequence of events which lead to the debate, the steps taken by all parties involved in it and the stated reasons for the conflicts by the interested parties. We will have to let people click on the links themselves if they desire more background on other similar conflicts past or present. After reading it, the visitor should get a sense of what has been going on, what happened in the facts, who was involved, who said what. Everything else would be off topic, would involve speculation, would involve claiming to know what others think or what secret intentions they supposedly have. Mathieugp 19:00, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: There are basically three positions in our everlasting debate: those who don't want anything to change (establishement, currently winning, a minority in Quebec, a majority in the Rest of Canada), those who want constitutional reforms (very broad coalition, failed attempts at reform multiple times of the past century, seem to gather support of the majority in Quebec, but not in the ROC), those who want secession (Quebec nationalist coalition, reject reforms, failed to gain majority support in two referendums). There are millions of different reasons for an individual to support either one of the three camps, but nevertheless the three positions originated from somewhere before gaining media attention and gain the approval or the disapproval of Mister and Madam Everyone in Canada. Most people will recognize themselves somewhere inside the three groups. We will have to be very careful in defining the camps. It will have to be very abstract and include only the stated goals of each, otherwize it will soon degenerate into a battle of insults. Mathieugp 19:00, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

text: The most difficult task will be to pinpoint all sources of opinions, ie, who said/wrote what and when. Who propaged the idea and who supported it in reality. Hopefully, as the article evolves, things will become clearer. The idea of course is to allow the truth to emerge from the fog so that people can forge their own opinion on the matter if they care to. Mathieugp 19:00, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, looks like I misunderstood the purpose here. You are committed to the historical/developmental approach and an explanatory mode, not debate on what should be/might be/ideally would be and so on. My mistake. Don't bother to reply to most of it. Unless, you might find some of it interesting in its own right. ww 20:07, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  I do actually. I have a passion for politics. A popular class who cares about the affairs of the State. Such is the only good thing that came out of the British Conquest of our country. :-) Mathieugp 21:22, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

text: I decided there's no contradiction between these statements as long as "English political control" means "political control by England." And disagreement is the soul of democracy, eh? So I added a sentence about the movement for a federal union. Trontonian 23:58, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments on the article structure proposed above 

message: The fact that hundreds of thousands of Franco-Quebecers emigrated to New England, settled there and lived there is very relevant, otherwize people can get the impression that French Canadians could have only existed inside the Canadian federation. In fact, for a long while, there were literally more Francophones of Quebec origin in the United States than in Canada. These people were still calling themselves Canadiens, as they had always done, even a few generations after their arrival. The Franco-Americans were eventually assimilated and it accelerated when they stopped battling to keep their own cultural institutions. They integrated the great American melting-pot and are today regular American citizens. Mathieugp 04:10, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Franco-Quebecer's presence in the United States 

message: I added numbers for Francophones and Anglophones from Statscan:
http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/popula.htm#lan
I add up the single responses with the multiple responses to get the numbers I typed in. I find this better than not counting people born in bilingual families at all. Mathieugp 14:55, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Stats

message: The list of documents is quite long. Should we create a List of documents in the consitutional history of Canada?
-- Mathieugp 20:56, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of documents