PERSPECTIVE ON CANADA : Last Gasp of Amicable Federalism : If the Quebec issue is not solved, there is little hope for stemming violent ethnic conflicts in the less-developed world.

As the prime minister who pressed successfully for the enactment of the Canadian Constitution Act of 1982--which eschewed “distinct society” status for Quebec (subsequently granted by the Meech Lake Accord of 1987 and which now threatens to Balkanize Canada) in favor of a federalist solution--I think there is universal value in the Canadian experience for all states grappling with the reemergence of ethnic-based nationalism.

If 6 million Canadians of French origin cannot manage to share their national sovereignty with 20 million Canadians of British and other origins, there is very little hope for far less privileged regions of the world.

Throughout history, when a state has taken an exclusive and intolerant idea such as religion or ethnicity as its cornerstone, this idea has more often than not been the mainspring of violence and war. In days gone by, religion had to be displaced as the basis of the state before frightful religious wars came to an end. And there will be little hope of putting an end to wars between nations until, in some similar fashion, the “nation” in ethnic terms ceases to be the basis of a state.

A state that defines its function essentially in terms of ethnic or religious attributes inevitably becomes chauvinistic and intolerant. Nationalists, whether of the left or right, are politically reactionary because they are led to define the common good as a function of an ethnic group or religious ideal rather than in terms of “all the people” regardless of individual characteristics. This is why a nationalistic government is by nature intolerant, discriminatory and, when all is said and done, totalitarian.

As Lord Acton wrote in as early as 1862, the nation as an ideal unit founded on race “overrules the rights and wishes of its inhabitants, absorbing their divergent interests in a fictitious unity; sacrifices their inclinations and duties to the higher claim of nationality, and crushes all natural rights and all established liberties for the purpose of vindicating itself. Whenever a single definite object is made the supreme end of the State, the State becomes for the time being inevitably absolute.”

Thus, a truly democratic government--whether provincial or federal--cannot be “nationalist” because it must pursue the good of all its citizens regardless of sex, color, race, religious belief or ethnic origin. Democratic government stands for good citizenship, never nationalism.

This is not to say that the state must disregard cultural or linguistic values. Among the many values that a political society must protect and develop, these have high priority. It is therefore entirely desirable that a state ensure, through its constitution and legislation, the protection of such values. It is inevitable that its policies will serve the interests of ethnic groups and especially of the majority group in proportion to its numbers. But this will happen as a natural consequence of the equality of all its citizens, not as a special privilege--such as “a distinct society”--of the largest group in a given territory.

I entered federal politics in Canada precisely for the purpose of putting these principles into practice. I believed strongly then, as I do now, that federalism by definition is a superior form of government, because it is more pluralist than monolithic and therefore respects diversity among people and groups. In general, freedom has a firmer foundation under federalism than in any kind of unitary nation-state.

This is especially true in Canada, where the die is firmly cast. There are two main ethnic and linguistic groups. Each is too strong and too deeply rooted in the past, too firmly bound to a mother culture, to be able to engulf the other.

I have always believed that if these two groups could collaborate at the hub of a truly pluralistic state, Canada could become the envied seat of a form of federalism that could become a brilliant prototype for the molding of tomorrow’s polyethnic civilization, a better model even than the American melting pot. Rather than forging a new alloy, the Canadian model would preserve the characteristics of each group in a mosaic of cultural coexistence.

The Constitution Act of 1982 declared equal economic opportunity under which “the government of Canada and the provincial governments undertake to promote equal opportunities for the well-being of all Canadians.” Furthermore, the act embraced the principle of equality of French and English in all domains of federal jurisdiction, and guaranteed both Francophones and Anglophones the right to education in their own language anywhere in Canada.

The essential principles so relevant to the current upheaval are embraced by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In the grand tradition of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen and the 1791 Bill of Rights of the United States, the Canadian Charter implicitly established the primacy of the individual over the state and all government institutions, and in so doing, recognized that all sovereignty resides in the people.

In this respect, the Canadian Charter was a new beginning for the Canadian nation. It sought to strengthen the country’s unity by basing the sovereignty of the Canadian people on a set of values common to all, and on the notion of equality among all Canadians.

The spirit and substance of the Canadian Charter is clear: to protect the individual against not only the tyranny of the state, but also any other tyranny to which the individual may be subjected by virtue of his belonging to a minority group.

Having reviewed these principles, it should be manifestly clear how the notion of Quebec as a “distinct society” (wherein individual rights are subordinated to collective rights) threatens to undermine the very foundation of a liberal state.

Canada’s model federalist solution to Quebec nationalism once heralded a hope for a mankind facing the rapid integration of a polyethnic and interdependent world. Now I fear the Balkanization of Canada may presage a return to premodern conflicts once thought to have passed into history.

If the 19th Century is what awaits us at the opening of the 21st, it behooves us to listen once again to Lord Acton, one of the great thinkers of the 19th Century, who described with extraordinarily prophetic insight the errors of nationalism that were to soak the 20th Century with so much blood and acrimony:

“A great democracy must either sacrifice self-government to unity or preserve it by federalism. . . . The coexistence of several nations under the same State is a test, as well as the best security of its freedom. It is also one of the chief instruments of civilization.

“The combination of different nations in one State is as necessary a condition of civilized life as the combination of men in society. Where political and national boundaries coincide, society ceases to advance, and nations relapse into a condition corresponding to that of men who renounce intercourse with their fellow men.

A state which is incompetent to satisfy different races condemns itself; a State which labors to neutralize, to absorb, or to expel them is destitute of the chief basis of self-government. The theory of nationality, then, is a retrograde step in history.”