The ‘Quebec question,’ a familiar refrain to all Canadians, often elicits hostile reactions in the rest of Canada. It is seen as the catalyst of a seemingly endless political quagmire that is either taken seriously as a threat to the integrity of the country, or dismissed altogether as a cynical power grab by opportunistic interests – a consequence rather than a cause of a de-centralized polity. In such a light, Quebec is taken as anathema to our intuitions about liberal principles, at once undermining justice and stability by wilfully fragmenting the ties that bind Canadians together and undermining deeply held...

Seymour Martin Lipset, inPolitical Man, observed that political legitimacy ‘involves the capacity of the system to engender and maintain the belief that existing political institutions are the most appropriate ones for the society.’¹ Regardless of the formal legality of political institutions, no political system can be deemed legitimate, at a fundamental level, if it does not represent the will of its members.² This implies, of course, that such members consider themselves a ‘people,’ a body through which consent over a given political structure is granted or withdrawn. Democratic institutions and liberal protections cannot be assumed to be legitimate simply...

The British victory in the Seven Years’ War resulted in a British colony that inherited 65,000 non-English speaking subjects and housed two distinct nationalities. In what is a remarkable story of coexistence and identity survival, much of Canada’s political history can be traced back to this socio-historical factor. Multinationality in Canada is not driven by opportunistic and self-serving political elites in an endless stream of disagreement over the (re)definition of constituent groups and the means as opposed to the ends of governance. Rather, multinationalism is the defining variable that conditions the manner in which distinct collectivities identify with this country,...

This chapter addresses the impact of polyethnicity on political communities by focusing specifically on the symbolic aspect of citizenship – the markers of a country’s self-identification through which citizens are said to exhibit a sense of social cohesion and allegiance for effective democratic participation in a given polity.¹ What are the symbolic ‘anchors’ that frame and define sentiments of belonging in a democratic polity? How do we evaluate such criteria in light of the challenge of polyethnicity? Such questions will be explored through a comparative conceptual assessment of the Canadian policy of multiculturalism and Quebec’s model of interculturalism. Both of...

In recent years, political and social thought has witnessed a significant revival in citizenship analysis, particularly in relation to the political sociology of liberal democratic societies. Several world events, both domestic and global, have contributed to an expansion of the landscape of citizenship theory by altering the basic conditions of national citizenship (in both its ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ variants). These phenomena include: the challenge of accommodating national minorities within multinational democracies; the growing prevalence of identity politics, with non-territorial groups increasingly making particular and collective citizenship claims; the universalization of a ‘rights’ discourse that supersedes authoritative claims to sovereignty of...

This attitude of mutual indifference that Ignatieff identifies, from our perspective, is symptomatic of the deficient state of Canadian federalism and citizenship. Recent developments have done nothing to address the flaws that have led to the current impasse. Indeed, the constitutional debate in Canada is confined to scholars and pundits, while politicians avoid using the term ‘constitution’ altogether, except in regards to the prospect of Quebec secession, where the term ‘constitutional democracy’ is often employed. For Quebeckers, Canada is increasingly becoming an instrumental association. For the rest of Canada, Quebec is but a spoiled child, the land where concessions must...