Quebec and Canadian Democracy

Abstract

It is one of the truisms of Canadian politics that stable federal power cannot be achieved without support from the province of Quebec. Until 1896 the dominant political party, the Conservatives, was the one which held Quebec. Since that period, Liberal ascendancy has been based on solid strength in French Canada. The problem of creating sufficient inter-cultural agreement to make possible the formulation of federal policy has been the most important single factor in determining the character of national party competition. This difficulty has set a premium on those skills of negotiation and conciliation which have in fact distinguished most successful Canadian statesmen, and has, more than anything else, inhibited the formation of national parties with consistent principles and policies.Political parties, as a condition of national success, have had to unite French and English elements; but thus far they have done so only on the most tenuous basis. For many purposes, a minimal consensus was sufficient, but it seems to have been inadequate to achieve the full measure of power and influence which the Fathers of Confederation envisaged for central government. Although judicial decisions, and economic and geographic forces, may have accentuated the trend to a decentralization far greater than that contemplated in 1867, the basic reason for this development has been the impossibility of creating national parties which would unite both French and English Canadians behind alternative programmes. In the words of a French-Canadian historian: “Les principaux auteurs de la Confédération n'avaient pas caché leur intention d'organiser un gouvernement central très puissant.” It must be concluded that they either seriously overestimated the range of shared assumptions between the two cultures, or badly underestimated the degree of unity on fundamentals which was necessary to run the centralized state they had tried to create. The only type of national political party which Canada has been able to construct successfully has not proved capable of fulfilling their intentions.