Next Step : The Issue of Quebec Separatism Is No Longer an ‘if ‘ for Canada : Many observers say the French-speaking province is certain to gain political sovereignty. The only remaining question is its future ties with the country it wants to leave.

Early last year, The New Republic complained that George Bush’s Washington is so dull that “it’s positively Canadian around here.”

To which Jeffrey Simpson, national affairs columnist of Canada’s Globe and Mail, replies, “Americans will have to revise their traditional stereotype of Canada as a country where nothing of interest or consequence ever happens.”

Simpson is just one of many political analysts today who believe Canada is embarking on a political restructuring that could change the face of North America. The will for political sovereignty in Quebec has intensified so much that the question is no longer whether the French-speaking province will take its leave of Canada but how complete the separation will be.

“Sovereignty (for Quebec) is not inevitable, but I would say it’s likely,” says Jean-Francois Lisee, the Quebec-based author of a book on the province’s place in U.S. policy-making toward Canada. “The process has been launched on a track that doesn’t lead anywhere else.”

Simpson posits two likely outcomes: Canada could remain a single confederation but with looser links between provinces, or Quebec could become a sovereign nation, linked economically to Canada by a superstructure resembling the European Economic Community.

No one can say yet just how Quebec will achieve its goals. Some independentistes are pressing for talks with English-speaking Canada to begin early this year. But others say it makes more sense for Quebec to hold a referendum on independence this spring, win a popular mandate, unilaterally declare independence, then start negotiating with Canada.

With such upheavals on the horizon, it’s time to consider what Canada’s troubles mean for America, with its cooperative, tranquil, if highly complex relationship, encompassing everything from joint drug-interdiction schemes to a multibillion-dollar bilateral trade pact.

If the most extreme scenarios prove out, and Quebec pulls away from this tightly woven, two-nation fabric, what would it feel like south of the border?

Although such a prospect deeply distressed Americans in the 1970s, conversations with economists, political analysts and officials now suggest a changed U.S. attitude. It has gone “from one of animosity to one of interest and curiosity,” says Pierre Fortain, a Universite de Montreal economist.

That change stems partly from political reconfigurations in Europe and their failure to cause major turmoil. Americans no longer automatically equate Quebec’s nationalist impulses with chaos and destruction.

Another factor in America’s laid-back assessment of the Quebec question has been the pro-business, conservative attitude of the independentistes . Quebecers have taken pains to get the word out that they seek sovereignty as a means of protecting their language and culture, not as a construct of some revolutionary principles.

Lucien Bouchard, a former federal Cabinet minister who stepped down last spring to work for Quebec’s sovereignty, says that if Quebec were to achieve that goal tomorrow, Americans wouldn’t even notice: “Apart from logistical things, I don’t see any difference. There would be two (northern) neighbors for America, instead of one. But they would be friendly neighbors.”

Encouraging words--but they don’t convince Canadian analysts outside Quebec. “I don’t think people are thinking about just how . . . difficult it is to break up a country,” says David Cameron, a political science professor at the University of Toronto. A loosening of Canadian bonds will never provoke a crisis for America but would cause headaches, he says, adding, “It could be a God-awful mess.”

ECONOMICS

In the late 1970s, Quebec’s economic thinking may have frightened Americans more than any other aspect of the province’s independence push. The separatist Parti Quebecois then was in power, led by Rene Levesque, who had been responsible for nationalizing Quebec’s electric utilities and who unnerved the province’s U.S. bankers by repeatedly quoting the Declaration of Independence. He was no Fidel Castro, but Americans took to saying his Quebec would be “the Cuba of the North.”

Quebec sovereigntists learned a lesson. Today, business leaders have pushed their way to the fore of the sovereignty parade, and they talk not about nationalizations or other state interventions but about growth and prosperity. They are fond of ticking off names of prosperous European economies the size of Quebec’s and concluding that Quebec would be just like them.

This doesn’t mean Quebec will come into its own without economic disruption, however. Difficult decisions would have to be made about currencies. Quebec wants to keep using the Canadian dollar and have a say over Canadian monetary policy, but there is little reason to assume a jilted English-speaking Canada would go along. Federal assets also would have to be redistributed if Quebec broke free. Who would end up owning the roads in Quebec, the airports, army trucks, post offices?

And “who’s going to pay off Canada’s national debt?” asks Peter Morici, professor of economics and Canadian studies at the University of Maine. Of every tax dollar collected here, 35 cents goes to make interest payments on the existing national debt.

Quebec nationalists say their hoped-for state, eager to prove its reliability, would assume its “fair share” of Canada’s debt, which they consider to be about 25% of the total.

But Morici asks whether Quebec will make good on its promise in the bitterness and confusion that could come if it made a unilateral declaration of independence and English-speaking Canada refused to accept it.

The Canadian economy is a tenth the size of America’s, and things would have to be disastrous here before there were ripples as far away as Southern California. But Morici notes that New England and the Midwest do feel economic downturns in Canada and worries that a Quebec departure could start one.

“There would be a genuine fiscal problem if Quebec went,” he says. “It isn’t clear to me that the rest of Canada would be a stable economic unit.”

TRADE

If Quebec were independent, it already would be one of the top 10 trading partners of America, from which it buys about $10 billion in goods annually. And “if you were sitting in Florida or California, selling to the Canadian market, you would prefer to have one set of rules,” says author Lisee. “You would be troubled if Quebec broke off. You would want to preserve a single market.”

Quebec nationalists press the point that their trading partners have nothing to worry about. After all, they say, when Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s government signed a free-trade accord with the United States two years ago, it was Quebecers--virtually alone in Canada--who rushed to support him. While English-speaking Canadians worried that free trade would lead to U.S. domination, Quebecers saw a bilateral trade pact guaranteeing export markets, securing them a prosperous future whether they stayed in Canada or not.

Quebecers say they wouldn’t think of doing anything to impede the free flow of goods between the United States and their homeland.

But again, not everyone accepts this. David Leyton-Brown, a political science professor at York University, notes that while Quebec’s overarching interest is protecting its Francophone culture--not its economy--there are times when cultural protection could lead to economic intervention.

He cites the movie business. Under the free-trade accord, American distributors are free to bring films from other countries into Canada, just as if it were another U.S. region. But Quebec has thrown up obstacles to open cinematic commerce via its cultural-preservation policies: It forbids English-language films to be shown in the province until a dubbed French version is in theaters.

If Quebec became a country, Leyton-Brown predicts the film policy would be just one example of how its cultural imperatives could run contrary to free-trade principles.

And if the rest of Canada saw a sovereign Quebec winning new trade concessions from America, it would soon be clamoring for renegotiations, too.

“If there is a Quebec sovereign state, the Americans should be unhappy because the rest of Canada would be likely to become a less reliable economic partner,” Fortain warns.

SECURITY

Ten years ago, when U.S. foreign policy centered on the Soviet threat, Canadian unity seemed critical to America. A glance at the globe shows why: Canada lies squarely on the polar route between America and the Soviet Union. Soviet missiles trained on the United States must pass over Canada, which, for early warning, America needed to be strong and cooperative.

Since the 1950s, Canada and America have pooled air-defense responsibilities under the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Quebec sovereigntists say that if they build a new nation, they want to participate in NORAD, as well as NATO.

Would this work? As NORAD allies, America and Canada have pledged never to go on alert or act in a crisis without consulting each other. This requirement has caused trouble, most notably during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when Canada dawdled for days after Washington went on standby alert. Presumably, it would be even harder to reach a three-way agreement in a crisis.

But for the moment, the issue is moot. The Cold War is thawing, America’s traditional concerns about the Soviets seem antique to some and troubles in the Third World command strategic thinkers’ attention.

On non-superpower defense matters, however, the United States would soon notice losses if Canada came apart. During Vietnam, for example, when Canada’s good offices were put at the United Nations’ disposal as a neutral observer, its External Affairs Ministry routinely passed memos to the U.S. State Department. European economists are said to snicker at Canada’s parroting of U.S. positions at Group of Seven economic summits.

A fractured Canada wouldn’t be substantial enough to keep its seat in important multilateral forums, even if it still had the will to participate.

“Canada’s capacity to act internationally would be affected while we were involved in this,” says Cameron. “If you’re in a state of confusion at home, your ability to act with dispatch internationally is affected.”

NATIONAL UNITY

For all its traditions of stability, tolerance and compromise, Canada is a divided country. Inhabitants of the sparsely populated prairie provinces are put out by what they regard as under-representation in Ottawa; oil-rich Albertans resent having to sell their province’s oil on the cheap to Ontarian industries; well-heeled Ontarians are tired of sending taxes to fund welfare in the chronically impoverished Atlantic provinces.

If Quebec left, might other provinces--or whole regions--pick up the beat and declare that they, too, would be better off on their own?

Canadians say Americans ought to consider the possibility that if Quebec were to separate, America could have not one or two but three, four, even five northern neighbors, each with its own trade, defense and social policies--and its own national whims.

BUYING AND SELLING WITH QUEBEC THE OVERALL TRADE BALANCE FOR 1989 (In millions, U.S. dollars) $10,475 - Imports from the U.S. $14,411 - Exports to the U.S. TOP IMPORTS FROM THE U.S. (In millions, U.S. dollars) Passenger cars, chassis: $1,796 Electronic tubes, semiconductors: $793 Trucks, truck tractors, chassis: $415 Inorganic chemical products: $331 Aircraft engines and parts: $326 Electronic computers: $268 Trade and special transactions: $239 Aircraft with engines: $179 TOP EXPORTS TO THE U.S. (In millions, U.S. dollars) Newsprint: $2,069 Aluminum, including alloys: $1,566 Passenger cars and chassis: $1,517 Telecommunications, related equipment: $1,136 Aircraft engines and parts: $480 Lumber and softwood: $383 Copper and alloys: $318 Wood pulp and similar pulp: $313 Metal fabricated and basic products: $258 SOME AMERICAN STATES DOING BUSINESS WITH QUEBEC (In millions, U.S. dollars, 1989 figures) CALIFORNIA Buys goods from Quebec: $270.9 Sells goods to Quebec: $583.6 ILLINOIS Buys goods from Quebec: $631.9 Sells goods to Quebec: $709.0 MASSACHUSETTS Buys goods from Quebec: $702.8 Sells goods to Quebec: $463.3 MICHIGAN Buys goods from Quebec: $1,860.5 Sells goods to Quebec: $807.9 NEW JERSEY Buys goods from Quebec: $655.2 Sells goods to Quebec: $519.0 NEW YORK Buys goods from Quebec: $2,520.8 Sells goods to Quebec: $874.4 PENNSYLVANIA Buys goods from Quebec: $859.9 Sells goods to Quebec: $388.9 TEXAS Buys goods from Quebec: $448.2 Sells goods to Quebec: $629.5 VERMONT Buys goods from Quebec: $1,098.1 Sells goods to Quebec: $820.6 SOURCES: Investment Canada, Bureau de la Statistique du Quebec