Working people should reject the reactionary campaign by Canada's capitalist rulers and their government in Ottawa to partition Quebec if it becomes independent. This campaign is a direct attack against the right of the Quebecois to self- determination. It is aimed at intimidating Quebecois from fighting for their rights and dividing working people by whipping up anti-Quebecois chauvinism. The rulers hope to use this as a tool to weaken the growing resistance by working people across Canada to stepped-up government attacks against social services, jobs, working and living conditions, and democratic rights.
"If Canada is divisible, then Quebec is divisible," said Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien January 29. His remarks came after similar statements by other government officials. On January 21, speakers at a reactionary rally of more than 1,000 people in Montreal called for the partition of Quebec. This followed a month-long campaign by rightist Reform Party leader Preston Manning for military intervention against Quebec if Quebecois push through independence.
Canada's exploiters are trying to recoup the blow they suffered in the Oct. 30, 1995, referendum in Quebec when, despite threats and blackmail, 49.4 percent of those eligible voted yes to a sovereign Quebec and hundreds of thousands of Quebecois took to the street, rallied, and demonstrated against the continued denial of their national rights by Ottawa.
Quebecois constitute an oppressed nation in Canada. They face systematic discrimination, prejudice, and chauvinism on the basis of their language, French. Capitalist rulers use this oppression to reap superprofits by paying lower wages and social services to Quebecois and others whose first language is French - which puts downward pressure on all wages - and to divide working people along national lines.
The oppression of Quebecois is a pillar of the Canadian capitalist state. Canada's landlords, bankers, and businessmen have resisted tooth and nail every single attempt by Quebecois to redress the injustices they face. In doing so they have convinced a growing number of Quebecois that breaking Quebec loose from the Canadian prisonhouse is the only way to put an end to their oppression.
Ottawa denies the fact that Quebecois are oppressed. It tries to turn the tables by painting English-speaking residents of Quebec as victims of discrimination. Contrary to Ottawa's claims, those whose first language is English are not oppressed in Quebec. While 80 percent of the population is French-speaking, speaking English in Quebec is a source of relative privileges. English-language education and health services are superior.
In Canada as a whole, anglophones earn more than francophones. This privileged status is used to try to get English-speaking people in Quebec, including workers, to identify their interests with the federal Canadian capitalist state against Quebecois.
The campaign by Canada's rulers to call for partitioning an independent Quebec is an appeal to these layers in Quebec - to whip up anti-Quebecois chauvinism and hysteria. The ruling rich will try to use these people, if necessary, as a battering ram against a Quebec independence movement.
The support given to Ottawa's campaign by some Native spokespeople has nothing to do with defending Native rights. To the contrary, Native misleaders who parrot rightist calls for the partition of Quebec align themselves against the struggles led by other oppressed people with the very capitalist politicians and exploiters directly responsible for the oppression of Natives in Canada.
The only way all working people in Canada can free themselves of oppression and exploitation is to tear down the Canadian capitalist state and replace it with a government of the workers and farmers. The just struggle by Quebecois for independence strengthens the hand of all working-class fighters - English-speaking, Native, immigrant, French-speaking - in this fight.