Of Meech and multiculturalism

Re: “Confessions of a federalist Quebec nationalist” (Lise Ravary, Aug. 14)

Lise Ravary portrays the rejection of the Meech Lake Accord this way: “Quebec’s unique character, a product of its people, its history and its geography, was not seen by the rest of Canada as an asset but as a pain in the ass.”

That characterization must not be left unchallenged. The objection to Meech Lake was not that it recognized Quebec’s special character. That was recognized in 1867 by the creation of the province of Quebec with jurisdiction over such domains as education, the recognition of French as an official language, the recognition of the civil law tradition, and so on. The problem with Meech is that Quebec premier Robert Bourassa considered — and openly stated — it to be only the first stage of constitutional transformation.

Ravary also unfairly accuses prime minister Pierre Trudeau of having broken his word about constitutional renewal. In fact, Trudeau promised major constitutional change before the 1980 referendum, and he delivered it with the Constitution Act of 1982, which patriated the Constitution and created school rights for French parents across Canada.

As for the policy of multiculturalism, it was announced by Trudeau in 1971 precisely as a means to win support in Western Canada for Trudeau’s central objective of national and official recognition of the French language across Canada. Multiculturalism did not weaken the promotion of French, on the contrary. And it did not accord French, as language and conveyor of culture, the same status as Swahili or Spanish. The Trudeau government not only recognized a new status for French through the Official Languages Act, but created programs and invested huge sums of money to promote French outside of Quebec. William Johnson, Gatineau