BY ROBERT SIMMS
TORONTO-Federalist politicians in Ottawa are pursuing their
reactionary, chauvinist campaign of threats to carve up Quebec
as a weapon to beat into submission the Quebecois struggling
for independence.
Indian Affairs Minister Ron Irwin launched into inflammatory remarks February 9 when he told reporters the independence struggle of Quebec could generate violence against Natives. "We're not advocating force, but [Quebec Premier Lucien] Bouchard has to explain to those people who vote yes in any referendum [on Quebec sovereignty] if they are giving him the right to ... use force on aboriginal peoples."
"There are a lot of crazy people around this country and when you appeal to the dark side of people, as the separatists do, then you are going to get violence," he stated.
A few days later, Irwin went on to claim that aboriginal territory within Quebec's borders does not belong to Quebec.
For several weeks Canada's capitalist rulers have been campaigning for the idea that the Canadian government is entitled to "partition Quebec," with the implied use of armed force, to keep Natives in the north and English-speaking communities in Montreal and other regions of Quebec within Canada in the event of an independent Quebec.
Canada's prime minister Jean Chrétien made it official policy by stating January 29, "If Canada is divisible, then Quebec is divisible." French-speaking Quebecois constitute some 80 percent of the province's population.
The Liberal government in Ottawa has taken over completely the iron-fist program of the right-wing Reform Party, whose leader, Preston Manning, had long advocated the partition of Quebec. On January 29, Manning stated that Ottawa needs to instill "fear" among Quebecois about the consequences of separation, including partition. "You don't want to use fear exclusively, but fear is an emotion that does motivate people," he said.
Threats to use military force
In a February 13 article the Toronto Globe and Mail reported
that the new chief of defense staff of Canada's armed forces,
General Jean Boyle, said that "the Prime Minister talked
privately with him about scenarios in which the military might
be needed in an internal crisis" - including "the dicey issue
of Quebec."
On Quebec, the Globe went on, Boyle would not reveal what contingency plans existed but "he confirmed that they `discussed all of the issues vis-a-vis providing Canadian forces in support of the government's mandate [including] aid to the civil power and contingency powers overseas.' "
One of the aims of the "partition Quebec" campaign is to build a movement among privileged English-speakers and among oppressed Natives inside Quebec against the Quebecois' struggle for independence. Rallies of these forces have been taking place, the latest on February 16, when up to 1,400 English-speakers, most of them middle-class and older, turned out in Montreal in a cheering pro-partition rally.
Nearly all Native officials across Canada support Ottawa's national unity campaign and oppose Quebec independence. Cree and Inuit officials in northern Quebec have taken the most openly pro-Ottawa positions.
On October 26, four days before the referendum on Quebec sovereignty, Cree officials paid for a full-page ad that ran in several newspapers. It read in part, "We ask Canadians to uphold the Canadian Constitution, our treaty and fundamental human rights, and the rule of law. We ask Canadians to support our right to remain... in Canada."
Some Natives distant from Ottawa
Ottawa knows that many working people and youth understand
that Native people face deep oppression in Canada and have
sympathy for their demands. They are cynically using Native
people to win new support for their reactionary campaigns
against the Quebecois, who are also an oppressed nation.
Quebecois and other French-speaking people in Canada face inferior incomes, wages, education, and health facilities as a result of both historic and current discrimination.
Some Native officials have started to distance themselves from Ottawa's violence-baiting against the Quebecois using Native peoples as fodder for their campaign. "We don't want to be used as pawns by the federal government," said Ovide Mercredi, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, the main body representing Native band councils across Canada.
Konrad Sioui, former leader of the Quebec Assembly of First Nations, opposes the partition campaign. "We are neither provincial Indians nor federal Indians," he said. "We should let [the politicians] have the monopoly on demagogy."
In another development in which supporters of Quebec independence were targeted, Prime Minister Chrétien waded into a crowd of people protesting cuts to unemployment insurance during a ceremony to honor the Canadian flag in Hull, Quebec, February 15. With a look of hatred on his face, Chrétien grabbed a protester by the throat and back of the neck, twisted him around and flung him to the ground.
Vice Prime Minister Sheila Copps tried to justify this violent assault against a demonstrator who had made no move toward Chrétien by saying that the protesters at the event were "just a bunch of separatists disguised as unemployed workers." Much of the big-business media outside Quebec backed this excuse.
The Toronto Globe and Mail wrote that the demonstrators "marred a ceremony that was intended to build up Quebecois' attachment to Canadian symbols."
"Now, bring on Bouchard," was the headline in the Toronto Sun, as it ran a full-page photo of Chrétien's chokehold on the demonstrator.
As it turned out, Chrétien's target was William Clennett, an English-speaker born in a Montreal working-class neighborhood who supported the yes vote in last fall's referendum on Quebec's sovereignty. Clennett also recently added his name to a letter signed by some 60 English-speaking residents of Quebec protesting Ottawa's chauvinist campaign for the partition of an independent Quebec.
In a letter to the Ottawa Citizen last October, Clennett wrote, "With a yes vote, the question of national unity will no longer serve as a justification for cutting essential social programs and the fight for social justice will thereby be enhanced."