Quebec and Asia: Lessons of Japan-Quebec Relations in the Post-Referendum Period

Abstract

Introduction The current Government of Quebec declares that, except for the Francophone dimension and the dimension of solidarity, the interests of Quebec in bilateral relations with Asia and the Pacific are of an essentially economic and commercial nature. (1) Although it is not possible to establish the general features of bilateral relations between Quebec and Asian countries, Quebec has maintained the perception that Asia has an extremely promising economic potential whose mass consumption offers a substantial contribution to the world economy. The major concerns of Quebec with Asia include the participation of China in the World Trade Organization, the recovery of the South Korean economy, the expansion of economic trade and investment, and cultural and educational cooperation at multifaceted levels with Japan in full restructuring. The Government of Quebec regards Japan and China as its two principal partners in Asia. Historically, the first contacts of the Quebecois with these countries date back to the second half of the nineteenth century. According to the record of the Ministere des Relations Internationales of Quebec, along with the massive immigration of Chinese employed in the transcontinental railways, the first immigrants from China settled in Montreal in 1877. Escaping starvation wages in the west of Canada, Chinese workers principally of Canton origin settled down to form Chinatowns in Quebec. The arrival of two Franciscan Missionaries of Marie in China in 1902 was the beginning of the presence of the Quebecois in the Chinese Imperial Continent. The Chinese Communist revolution in 1949 provoked a massive retreat of the Quebecois missionaries from China to Canada, and to Japan and other countries in Asia. In October 1898, Marie-Helene Paradis, Sister of the Franciscan Missionaries of Marie who arrived at Nagasaki and settled in Kumamoto, marked the first presence of Quebecois in Japan. (2) She was the precursor of the many Quebecois missionaries who contributed to the propagation of Christianity as well as the reform and development of socioeconomic and educational institutions in the modern era in Japan facing the need for opening up the country. Since then, the Quebecois missionaries maintained a presence in Japan even during the Second World War and increased to four hundred until the 1970s when there was virtually no laity from Quebec. It was not until 1992 that the number of nonmissionaries equaled that of the missionaries and that economic considerations became prevailing in the bilateral relations between Japan and Quebec. The Quebecois missionaries established fifty-seven missionary schools at the first and secondary levels and kindergartens throughout the country, many of which served to provide useful members for the leading strata of modern Japanese society. (3) The missionaries also provided Japan with a model of development of local public and private social institutions in the fields of health and medical care, as well as humanitarian assistance for the most deprived and weak of the society, such as lepers and orphans. Their contributions to Japanese society left a spiritual vestige among Japanese people that would serve to identify the i mage of Quebec and Canada as distinct from other western nations such as the U.S.A and European countries. Since 1960, Quebec's foreign policy has been the affirmation of its national identity in international relations. Throughout the period until the Referendum 1995, Quebec alternated two approaches to cooperate with Japan, depending on the tendency of the political party in power: one with the opening of Quebec's economy coupled with sovereignist assertion, and the other with rapprochement confined to economic and technological relations. The governments of Rend Levesque and Jacques Parizeau represented the former, while the government of Robert Bourassa the latter. …