Brexit could offer new life for Quebec movement.
Thursday’s vote marks truly pivotal moment
Should the British vote to leave the European Union Thursday, the shock waves would spread in all directions. David Cameron’s prime ministership would be finished. Britain’s economy would be plunged into uncertainty. Scotland would likely revisit its decision to remain a part of the United Kingdom, while on the Continent, Britain’s departure — Brexit, as it is called — would embolden populist parties agitating for Grexit, Spexit and the like.
Less obvious are the implications for Canada. Yet political contagions cross easily over national borders nowadays, and it would be foolish to ignore the potential for events in one part of the world to influence the rest. Put simply, a successful Brexit could offer new life to the moribund Quexit movement — a prospect that ought to give pause to some of its cheerleaders in Canada.
The two situations are very different, of course. The EU has never approached the degree of integration of a true federation, even as loose a one as Canada’s. There are counter- examples, notably in the economic sphere, but generally a treaty between centuries- old s overeign states is easier to unwind than the constitution of a nation-state.
The EU may be a market, but it has never been a people; the differences over which Canadians obsess are as nothing compared to the vast gulf that separates, say, Greece and Germany. As remote as Ottawa may appear to voters in Canada’s farflung regions, there is nothing like the democratic deficit that so alienates Europe’s government from — well, I was going to say its citizens, but they aren’t even that, really.
Britain, for its part, has always had but one foot in the union. It only joined in 1973, and to this day remains outside the single currency and the Schengen agreement, whose participants afford each other’s citizens passportless mobility: both taken for granted in Canada.
But separatists have never been greatly troubled by facts or logic, and in the aftermath of a Brexit all of these distinctions would be lost. Indeed, listening to the debate in the U. K., it is hard not to hear echoes of our own. Both pit a cosmopolitan major city against a more nativist hinterland, with ethnically distinct outer regions adding yet a third voice. Both have featured wild claims from the “leave” side as to how much their respective citizenries contribute to the treasury of the larger entity. In both, attempts have been made to slake the secessionist thirst with offers of devolution and special status, to little apparent benefit.
But there’s one similarity that deserves closer attention. In the U.K. debate, as in Quebec’s, a key item in dispute has been how difficult the process of breaking apart would be, and — closely related — whether and on what terms the ties of cooperation, particularly trade ties, would be re-established. It is a staple of Péquiste rhetoric that, while the squareheads might indulge in some uncharacteristic fits of emotion in the days immediately after a vote to secede, before long the logic of commerce and self-interest would bring them to the table.
Brexit campaigners offer much the same breezy selfassurance. The remaining parties to the EU would have no option, they insist, but to deal with Europe’s secondlargest economy. If Norway or Switzerland or — hey look — Canada can sign free trade treaties with the EU, what reason is there to think the U. K. could not do the same? If all else fails, there’s always World Trade Organization rules.
Well, yes: it’s undoubtedly true Britain would have some sort of trade relations with the EU post-Brexit, just as an independent Quebec would surely trade with the rest of Canada. The question is on what terms. Leave emotion out of it: in cold logic, the rest of Europe has no interest in making it easy or pleasant for any member state to leave it, for fear of the precedent it would set.
Such calculations aside, it would be unlikely to offer the same kind of access to nonmembers it does to members: not without insisting they accept many of the same obligations. Switzerland’s banks, for example, do not enjoy the same privileges as those of EU states, while Norway is obliged to follow EU rules on labour mobility, and even contributes to the EU budget. ( The Canada-EU deal is a much more limited arrangement, especially as it applies to services.)
Certainly Britain would be in no position to dictate terms, accounting as it does for just seven per cent of EU members’ exports. The likelihood, then, is that any agreement would only come after years of negotiations, with no guarantee any gains in sovereignty would be worth the costs. On top of which, it would have to renegotiate entry to all of the other trade agreements to which it is automatically a party as an EU member.
That, at any rate, is the case against. As with a Quebec secession bid, no one can predict what would follow with any confidence. Which is what makes Brexit so potentially dangerous. Suppose this analysis is wrong, and the U.K. were able to negotiate a free trade deal with the EU, in good time and on good terms. Then federalists here would have lost one of their best arguments, and all of the explanations about how the two situations were different would go unheard.
Of course, the stronger likelihood is that the opposite would happen, in which case the U. K.’s awful fate might serve as a useful cautionary tale. But I’d rather not run the experiment, for our sake as much as theirs.