Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been taunting Liberal leader Stéphane Dion with the same dare for almost a year: Either bring down the Conservative minority government or prop it up obediently. His favourite line: "Fish or cut bait."
He used those very words again on Wednesday night in his speech at the Conservative caucus meeting in St. Agapit, near Quebec City. The prime minister's list of colloquialisms might be short, but his constant recourse to "fish or cut bait" shows how increasingly frustrated he's becoming at being unable to provoke an election himself, because of his own decision to go for a fixed-date election in October 2009.
Another line he has been hammering for months is about what he calls the "real nationalists." In St. Agapit, he repeated his own definition of this strange creature: "Real nationalists can be proud of their region and love Quebec without wanting to break the Canadian federation. Real nationalists don't want to destroy, they want to build. Real nationalists don't look to paralyze things, they act."
As paternalistic as his theory is, interestingly enough, Harper has actually been getting away with it without anyone in Quebec's political class even offering the slightest reply.
For one thing, his "real nationalists" line flies in the face of Quebec's political reality and history. If there's one thing Quebecers know, it is that nationalism here, as elsewhere, has many incarnations. As for its post-Quiet Revolution version, whether it expresses itself in the form of sovereignity, autonomism or renewed federalism, the political affirmation of Quebec's specificity as a nation comes in a variety of shapes and visions. Each one implies building something different.
To limit this nationalism to Harper's definition is either proof of the prime minister's complete ignorance of Quebec's political history and makeup, or it shows the depth of his arrogance and paternalism.
For someone who has never lived here and who was intellectually trained in Alberta, to tell Quebecers what defines a "real nationalist" would be akin to Jacques Parizeau telling Canadians from outside of Quebec what constitutes "a real Canadian nationalist." I can't imagine that going down very well.
Of course, Harper also contends that his "open federalism" doctrine is now an intrinsic part of that "real nationalism" in Quebec. But in trying to distinguish himself from Dion's more centralist vision, Harper says he now wants to spread his open federalism across the country.
When Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon said recently that Ottawa is open to letting provinces strike their own international deals and letting them exercise more autonomy in their economic foreign relations, Ed Stelmach, Alberta's Tory premier, called this "the most significant policy change in the federal government in at least 25 years." In yesterday's Globe and Mail, columnist Lawrence Martin predicted this would "drive Canadian traditionalists bananas."
But chances are that those new musings coming from the Harper government are like the Parliamentary motion on the Québécois "nation" - just words, or pre-electoral words to be more precise.
As Le Devoir pointed out, although Ottawa never enjoyed it, provinces that wish to do so don't need its "permission" to extend their own jurisdictions into their respective foreign policies. Quebec certainly has been doing it for decades and it even has a name: the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine, named after one of Jean Lesage's most prominent ministers.
Quebec has general delegations all over the world. It takes part in Canadian foreign-trade missions, but it also organizes its own. The next one will be in China. In fact, when Cannon said his government would "allow" Quebec to negotiate a work-force mobility deal with France, Premier Jean Charest's office replied that no such blessing is required. Ottawa hasn't had a word to say about this, nor was it asked for one, since Charest starting working on the idea.
Maybe the prime minister would be wiser to forget about what constitutes "real" Quebec nationalism. A better idea would be to focus instead on informing himself and his ministers as to how "real" foreign relations work at the provincial level.