The Price of Unity

MR. POTTS:

Mesdames, messieurs, c'est avec plaisir que j'ai le grand privilege de souhaiter la bienvenue, de votre part, a un grand Canadien, Monsieur Claude Ryan, Directeur, Le Devoir.

The Empire Club has been criticized in the past for being biased. Not to the extent that it originally demonstrated a bias in favour of the interests of Canada and a United Empire, no apology was forthcoming, since the advancement of such interests was stated as the object of the Club when it was first founded in 1903.

Likewise, we make no apology today to the extent that we demonstrate a bias in favour of the interests of Canada and the British Commonwealth, since the purpose and object of the Club, as defined in our present constitution, is the promotion of those very interests.

I am not aware of our having been criticized in the past for a bias in favour of our French-speaking compatriots from Quebec. However, based on our recent performance we are coming perilously close to being charged with just such a bias. Our opening meeting of the season was addressed by the Rt. Hon. Pierre Elliott Trudeau and later we had as our guest Real Caouette. I'm sure we would have been above criticism if we had stopped there. It would have been considered by most as a courteous gesture on our part, by some as mere tokenism. But we didn't stop there--with a reckless display of bravado we welcomed a politician from Quebec, the Hon. Robert Bourassa, and then at the very next meeting we welcomed an economist from Quebec, Andre Raynauld, Chairman of the Economic Council of Canada. A casual observer of the scene would have been entitled to expect at this juncture at least, that we would exhibit some degree of caution and restraint. But such was not to be the case-we failed to do the obvious and didn't even interject one WASP into the sequence of our speeches.

Here we are today, for our third successive meeting, welcoming another speaker from Quebec, this time, a distinguished journalist.

If we are to be criticized for a bias in favour of French Canadians, then perhaps I would be permitted to make the observation that we are not the only organization or group in this country, governmental or otherwise, to have been so criticized of late. Be that as it may, speaking only for The Empire Club, let me assure you, M. Ryan, that we make no apology whatsoever for and indeed do not even admit any such bias, which is only a figment of my imagination in any event, and are delighted to welcome you back.

The late Nye Bevan once said, Quote " . . . in a democracy idolatry is the first sin. Not even the supreme emergency of war justifies the abandonment of critical judgement."

Our guest today certainly could never be faulted for idolatry or for the abandonment of critical judgement. As was stated in the printed notice of this meeting--throughout the years he has maintained an independent stance and thus all political parties and their leaders have felt the sting of his reasoned criticism.

He has kindly agreed to speak to us today on the subject "The Price of Unity". The unity of this country has been and continues to be a constant concern to all Canadians. It has been the topic of addresses to the Club over the years. Permit me to refer you to brief extracts from some of them.

In 1904 Mr. Benjamin Sulte, Vice-President of the Royal Society of Canada, had this to say in an address entitled "Canadian Sentiment Before and After Confederation".

"You remember when the first talk about Confederation came, that it sounded like a bugle call to rally parties who were not at all prepared to rally. It was some fifteen years before we could say, in 1867, that Confederation was formed. I remember those days . . . I remember how often we thought it was not made at all . . . it was agreed that the people did not like it . . . It might last five years, ten years, three months, we did not know. The least little thing might break it asunder."

And in 1919 M. Gouin, in an address to the Club entitled "A United Canada", stated:

"Gentlemen, what prevents us from living not only as good neighbours, but also as friends and partners? Many people think that a Canadian of French origin must sacrifice his race and his faith in order to serve our Dominion; in other words, we could not serve those two masters at the same time-our province and our confederation-and our racial instincts, as I would call them, would be incompatible with our larger patriotism, with the loyalty which we owe to our federal state. I believe this error to be a source of many evils, to be the very spring of our disunions . . . We must all work for a United Canada. But how can we realize such a union? We can realize such a union by a better understanding between you and us, by toleration, and by mutual respect."

And then in 1939 Monsieur Jean-Charles Harvy, a distinguished journalist and former Editor-in-Chief of Le Soleil, in an address to the Club entitled "Can We Achieve Canadian Unity?" said:

"It would take too long to review here the balance sheet of mistakes made in our Confederation on the English as well as on the French side. On the side of the English-speaking Canadians there are altogether too many who have tried to make French-speaking Canadians feel that their language and traditions survived only on sufferance, too many who have sought to deny to the descendants of the first Europeans settled in Canada their right to maintain their own personality in all parts of the Dominion, too many who have deliberately kept them in subordinate positions in the public service and in certain important industries."

And later in the same speech and I remind you that this was in 1939, he said:

"In the last two or three years talk has been heard of a separatist movement in Quebec, aimed at the establishment of a French state along the St. Lawrence River. The group is now to all intents and purposes impotent, but we must not lull ourselves into thinking that the idea behind it is entirely dead. Another economic crisis, for example, would probably revive it."

I know that M. Ryan's address to us today will paint for us a contemporary view of this historical and stubborn problem.

Claude Ryan is a Montrealer by birth and education, having studied social work at the School of Social Science in l'Universite de Montreal. He made a brief pilgrimage to Rome and a departure from the world of secular affairs to study Church History at the Gregorian University. His entry into the public scene in the Province of Quebec began with his appointment as National Secretary of L'Action Catholique Canadienne, a position he occupied through the stormy, post-war Duplessis era. He also played an important part in the secularization of education in Quebec as President de l'Institut Canadien d'Education des Adultes and also as Chairman of a Study Group on Adult Education commissioned by the Department of Youth in the Government of Quebec.

Trading social action for journalistic persuasion, he joined Le Devoir as an editorial writer in June 1962, and was appointed publisher two years later.

He has received:

. the National Newspaper Award for editorial writing;
. the National Press Club Award;
. the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews, Human Relations Award;
. membership in the Canadian News Hall of Fame;
. the Jewish Labour Committee of Canada, Human Rights Award;
. and the Quill Award for Special Contribution to Canadian Journalism.

Monsieur Ryan, many of us here today were privileged to hear your address to the Club almost exactly three years ago. We are delighted to welcome you back.

Mesdames, messieurs, c'est vraiment un honneur de vous presenter Monsieur Claude Ryan, Directeur de Le Devoir qui nous parlera au sujet "La Prix de L'Unite".

M. CLAUDE RYAN:

M. le President, distingues invites, mesdames, messieurs. Je voudrais tout d'abord vous remercier de votre hospitalite qui me permet de vous adresser encore une fois la parole apres le breve periode de trois ans au cours de laquelle je me suis vu parfois accuse d'avoir fait des choses qui auraient ete de nature autrefois a scandaliser les members du Empire Club.

I have said these things in French because I was not too keen about being understood by all of you. Now let's come back to orthodox things.

I could have prepared a rather light speech had I known that you were going to have all those prominent speakers from Quebec. I would have tried to add a lighter note to the grave talks which they probably submitted to your attention. Being a journalist I do not necessarily trust what our official spokesmen say on behalf of the Province and you will appreciate that I may try to supplement some of the views that were presented to you knowing that the Toronto press will always be there to resist some of the heresies that they may happen to read in Le Devoir.

I have a text in front of me, Mr. Chairman, if I may appear hesitant at times it's in my own handwriting which is extremely horrible and I have difficulties with it. I never have any problems with my wife, she never even tries to understand it.

Upon a recent visit to Montreal by the President of an important Canadian Bank, the question was raised at the meeting attended by French-Canadian leaders of the business world--"What are the prospects for the Quebec economy in the months ahead." One would have expected the conversation to turn to such topics as unemployment, the threat of creeping socialism, high taxes, the cost of welfare programs, investment, etc., but it immediately took another direction. "Provided," said the newly appointed French-Canadian President of a very large company whose activities are as well ramified in this province as they are in Quebec, "Provided," he said, "that the Gendron Commission on language rights comes up with a sensible report, we can look to the future with optimism. This reminded me of a similar observation which I heard several years ago. Just before retiring from the Presidency of the C.N.R., the late Donald Gordon took a farewell tour of his organization's posts all across the country. The leading impression which he brought back to a group of friends which had gathered in Montreal to pay tribute to him was that he saw absolutely no limits to the future of this country provided, and I quote, "We remained united." Donald Gordon had been impressed with the tremendous potential which he had observed in all regions of the country. His only fear was that because of our divisions, we might not be able to meet the challenge successfully.

I would have had only one slight difference with Donald Gordon on this score. He said "Provided we remained united." I would rather have felt inclined to say--provided we become united. He sought unity as a reality which had been at least partly achieved and he could base his assessment on several great accomplishments both economic and political for which we were jointly responsible in the past. But there is another side to the problem as you well know. Looking at this matter from a French-Canadian point of view, I would have been inclined to say that this other side was at least equally important. A country in one of whose leading provinces a party with a clear separatist platform succeeded in getting 24 per cent of the popular vote in the last provincial election cannot claim that it has achieved complete and lasting unity. A country in which after a century of coexistence no party came out of the last federal election with a clear mandate to govern on behalf of the whole nation. A country in which one party enjoys a strong majority in the French-speaking areas whilst the English-speaking areas give their support to two other parties cannot claim to have achieved solid unity.

Upon reflection it appears that the voters may have been more sentimental in Quebec last time than in the rest of the country. English-speaking voters may have been carried away by sentiment or at least by a rather blind act of faith in 1968 when they overwhelmingly supported a man whose record and policies they knew rather little about. I would suggest that last time they mainly voted not against the man, not against Quebec, not against the fact that Mr. Trudeau and some of his colleagues embodied this French power about which they impudently boasted in some parts of the country but rather against his general policies as applied to the whole of Canada.

This being said, we cannot forget the fact that on October 30th the results of the election revealed two very distinct patterns of voting in Quebec and in the rest of the country. Some may have doubted at the time whether the Commission on Bilingualism was realistic when it spoke of the existence of two societies as being the leading fact in Canadian political life today. Who can seriously doubt it again after what we saw following the last election. We had begun under the late Lester Pearson to accept this reality and to work out arrangements which could make it possible for the two societies to coexist in a spirit of mutual acceptance and common dedication to commonly accepted goals. I honestly believe, Mr. Chairman, that we will have to go back, if not necessarily to the policies of Mr. Pearson, at least to the spirit in which he tried to tackle this explosive question of national unity.

Mr. Pearson's great discovery was that Quebec with its distinct cultural personality, its distinctive social, cultural and economic institutions, its distinct political habits and aspirations forms a distinctive society which must be recognized and accepted as such. He accepted that, in its capacity as the main political instrument at the disposal of this society, the Government of the Province of Quebec must by nature have aspirations and preoccupations that do not necessarily apply to the same extent and in the same forms in all other provinces. Mr. Pearson's great achievement lay in his efforts to work out solutions which would keep Quebec in Confederation and allow it at the same time to pursue its own course at no extra expense to the other provinces or the rest of the country. No extra expense to the country as such in fields where there was substantial justification for doing so.

The leading social institutions in Quebec, the political parties, the media, the labour organizations, co-operatives and credit unions, the educational system, organized religion, the arts, etc. are greatly different in several respects from what they are in the rest of Canada. This necessarily calls for a certain degree of cohesiveness and coordination at the governmental level which can best be assured by all accounts say in that particular situation by the government which is the closest to our way of life and which has a greater continuity in the expression of such distinctive characters. When Mr. Claude Castonguay, for instance, insists that Quebec must have the liberty and the means required to develop its own integrated system of social policies and services, he is not advocating separatism, he is not either trying to build an empire for himself. He is only providing a reasoned answer to problems that are deeply felt by all those who have seriously studied matters of social policy in Quebec. This man, by the way, is as completely apolitical as a minister can be in our system of government. He has often been depicted to the rest of Canada as a crypto-separatist or at least as an incorrigible Quebec isolationist. This is a completely false description of this man whom I happen to know very well, I know few political figures in Quebec who are as objective, as dispassionate, as competent, as rationally attached to Canada as Mr. Castonguay. Should he fail to reach agreement with the Federal Government and the other provinces on the matters which fall under his authority, I would not gamble much on the future of Canada as a united country. The federation would probably continue for a good while because of some strictly pragmatic and materialistic calculations on the part of both sides. But the spirit of friendship and cordiality of which dynamic federations are made, the sense of deep commonality of long term interests that is the basis of a dynamic federal system would be gravely compromised.

Mr. Trudeau's gamble was that we can more or less ignore, or at least minimize, the collective dimension of our unity problem in favour of stressing the individual rights approach because he was afraid that the continued growth of the range of action of the Quebec Government might have a disrupting impact upon the federation. He suggested, and he won his gamble at the time, that we should rather concentrate upon pursuing equality for all individual Canadians in the field of language right whilst dismissing many of the claims that had been put forward by the Quebec Government in its capacity as collective spokesman for the Quebec people. Well, we are now somewhat familiar with the results of this gamble. There may have been a toning down in style and verbosity in the attitudes of the Quebec Government. If you look at the substance rather than at the form you will find that very, very little has changed in the last five years. Mr. Castonguay is now a member of a liberal government led by Mr. Bourassa. If he were to be replaced tomorrow by his national union counterpart, Mr. Jean Paul Cloutier, who is a very competent man also, the position would be about exactly the same. Such continuity, I suggest, must have meaning. To me it means that the Quebec Government in the last fifteen years has offered the most durable and the most faithful presentation of the aspirations of the people of Quebec in several fields.

An international expert of great reputation was among the persons consulted by the Gendron Commission in the drafting of its report which should become public in the next few weeks. According to a conversation which I had with a member of the Commission recently, this expert, who now teaches at Harvard, expressed a view, this will be one of the major contributions of the Gendron Commission. 1 think they will come up with expert opinions from leading world authorities on constitutional law. This will be a great surprise because the Laurdeneau-Duncan Commission came up with very little in this respect. You know most of the specialized studies which they conducted with great cost to taxpayers were not good enough so that someday they should be published, then are buried somewhere in the Ottawa archives for future generations to see. They are supposed to talk about some of us in those reports. We could not care less, of course, as press people.

This expert reportedly said to the Commission, and this might be included in the report which they are going to publish, that there is no reason why a federal system should not by its very nature be able to provide enough flexibility to accommodate the relationships between its constituent parts and the central authority in such different forms which may be justified by the careful examination of reality as it is.

There are limits, of course, to this possibility of adaptation of a federal system but in principle we should free ourselves from the rather rigid framework of British constitutional thinking which has dominated our attitudes, perhaps too strongly, in the past and we should now begin to look for more subtle ways of coping with some problems the equivalent of which has never been met before in the mother country.

This is the first ingredient of the price we must pay in order to achieve deep and lasting unity. You would remind me that Quebec in turn would have to accept its share of the burden and responsibilities of national undertakings. I agree 100 per cent with this but I would add that to the extent that Quebec would feel really free in Confederation to the same extent she can be counted upon to accept in the spirit of greater dedication its share of national responsibilities. It's a tragedy at the moment that a good proportion of Quebecers are not interested in assuming responsibilities at the national level because we have not yet found the reasons which would inspire them to move in that direction and the rest of Canada is often misled by some alleged spokesmen who appear on the national scene while having very little influence on the Quebec scene but they are rapidly promoted to big responsibilities on the national scene without ever having been tested in their own province and then were surprised that the results were not exactly what had been hoped for.

We have also seen in the last few months that the language policies of the Trudeau government have not been too successful. In English Canada they aroused a feeling of uneasiness and even exacerbation in those circles to whom they more immediately applied. In Quebec they were greeted with marked scepticism and indifference not only by the separatists but also by many moderates who never believed that they could provide the key to a lasting solution of our problems. In any event they have been extremely costly and not too effective in practice. This was clearly demonstrated, I believe, by the series of studies conducted under the auspices of the Treasury Board and whose findings and conclusions were published a few months ago by The Toronto Star (I apologize to Mr. Cooper) and Le Devoir.

I would certainly not eliminate the language problem as unimportant. It has, on the contrary, great importance. But I suggest, Mr. Chairman, that if we have two distinct societies, our language policies must be aimed at resolving in an acceptable manner the linguistic problems of each society and not merely at resolving the problems of individual citizens living in the midst of either society. This I will elaborate upon a little. Some people have complained that we were being driven by force, and at great cost, into a bilingual pattern of social organization which had little relevance to the Canadian reality. Such was not, I believe, the intent of the Trudeau policy. At any event, the future of Canada does not seem to lie in this direction. What I foresee is that if you accept that area which stretches from the eastern part of Ontario to the region of Moncton, embracing of course all of the Province of Quebec, if you accept this area all the other regions of Canada are destined by all accounts to be English. I may be impressed upon arriving at Toronto Airport by all the bilingual signs that you now see around the place but then not being a politician in search of results about which I could boast with my own people, I am realistic enough to know that as soon as I pick up a taxi and begin dealing with people in Toronto I must speak English or else catch the first plane back to Montreal. This I accept as part of the Canadian reality and it applies not only to Toronto. There are some distinguished circles in Toronto and I may go to the Department of French Studies at York University or Toronto University or talk with some distinguished political scientists but this is not the Toronto reality. These are islands of thinking, islands of thought and research which are extremely interesting but the global reality is not like that and this applies to most of Ontario, to the western provinces as a whole and to most of the Atlantic provinces.

Good sense and equity suggest that in these areas some recognition be given to the French language in the schools and in some areas of public service. As a rule though, such recognition cannot be absolute or global. It must be on a limited basis as a perusal of laws adopted in this respect in the last few years by several provincial legislatures will undoubtedly demonstrate; starting with the laws which were adopted in the Province of Ontario. You always have the little connotation, wherever feasible, which we forgot to insert in some of our laws in Quebec for many generations. But the other provinces were always realistic enough to think of those three insignificant words which often meant a great deal in practice. So such recognition must remain by force, by necessity rather limited. French Canadians living outside this area which I mentioned earlier where 95 per cent of them live in Canada at the moment, there is only 5 per cent in all the other parts of Canada. French Canadians living outside that area must accommodate themselves to the fact that they form a minority. They must, in consequence, adapt in their daily lives to the habits, preferences and requirements of the majority. If a man wants to succeed in any profession, for instance, he wants to be successful in political life, he will have to adapt to the habits and practices of the majority regardless of any declaration of rights which we may decide to insert in our sacred Constitution. If they do not accept this, well, they would live as inferior beings in that part of the country where they opted to live. If they do not accept it their children will as is clearly illustrated by the results of the last Federal census which shows a declining proportion of Francophones in those areas of Canada about which we are talking. Complete equality between the two languages in Ontario or Saskatchewan may be a generous dream. It remains, nonetheless, a dream.

We must in turn accept an important corollary to this. Just as English is destined to be the predominant language in other provinces, French must also become to all practical purposes the predominant language in Quebec. This has long been a fact of life in the operations of the Quebec Government and its civil service and the operations of municipalities, school boards, credit unions, co-operatives and thousands of small businesses but it has not yet been achieved. In many large financial, commercial and industrial concerns, especially at the middle and top management levels, leaders in this sector have long been predominantly English speaking. They have behaved too often as if English must be the only instrument of communication both internally and externally. This situation has had a great impact upon the development of the community. To mention just one example-the massive orientation of immigrants towards the English-speaking minority rather than towards the French-speaking majority must in a large measure be attributed to this fact as well, naturally, as to other factors but this one seems to have been predominant according to the studies which are at present available.

This situation is, of course, potentially explosive not only from the ethnic and cultural point of view but also from a purely social, economic and political point of view. It will not suffice to proclaim that French must become a working language in these areas. We must find ways of ensuring that these concerns become truer reflections of the cultural distinctiveness of the community in which they are based taking into account naturally some practical problems which may arise from the fact that many of them had to cater to a much broader community than the mere Quebec community.

Some have foreseen this change and have decided to leave Quebec rather than face the challenge. Recent statistics show that there has been a drop of about 15 per cent in the enrolment of children in public-supported Protestant schools in the Montreal area. If one remembers on the other hand that the same schools do accommodate at the moment thousands of children of Greek origin whose parents came to Quebec in the last fifteen years, the conclusion is obvious. Thousands of Montrealers of Anglo-Saxon background have left Quebec in the last few years to go to other parts of Canada. When one like myself comes to Toronto, one encounters several former Montrealers who were moved here by the authority of their company or decided to move for one reason or the other. This is now confirmed by official statistics. Others think that they can maintain the same stance as in the past and can cling to the interests which they have established in the province without changing their fundamental attitudes. These are destined to live in prolonged and tragic discomfort. The only positive attitude lies in the direction of accepting some of the changes that must be effected in order to achieve greater stability and general satisfaction in the Province of Quebec.

In deciding the future of this country, Mr. Chairman, the attitudes espoused by the English-speaking minority of the Province of Quebec, especially of the Montreal area, are going to be decisive. If they could only raise themselves to the quality of understanding that one meets more and more frequently in other parts of Canada great advances might become possible in relatively little time.

Now I'm coming to my conclusion which is going to be very brief. Addressing this Club a few months before the last general election in Quebec in 1970, 1 was wrong in predicting that the outcome of the election would probably be closer than it actually was. But I was right, I believe, in forecasting that the outcome of that election might not prove as decisive for the future of Canada as was being suggested in some quarters. I then saw a period of at least ten years in which we would dispose of all the time required to deal in depth with our unity problem. Recent indications in Quebec seem to show that this broader prognostication was not unrealistic. With the present division of opposition forces in Quebec, with the recent emergence of a new leader in the Creditiste Party, with the apparent stagnation in the past few months of the Parti Quebecois, there are strong reasons to suggest that Quebec would again give itself next time a Canada oriented government. But this will change nothing to the fundamental realities which we have discussed today. Understanding (I have three very noble words here which I cannot read). I return, on the part of all of us, to the great Pearson virtues of understanding, tolerance, of approach in depth to difficult problems which would certainly enable us to produce qualities which can foster a more real, a more substantial, as opposed to an artificial and image-based kind of unity, and I think this is the cement upon which Canada can move forward to great advances in the future.

Thank you very much.

M. Ryan was thanked on behalf of The Empire Club by Mr. James H. Joyce, a Past President of the Club.

MR. JOYCE:

Today we have had the privilege of hearing an outstanding Canadian from la belle province outline for us his views on the price of unity. Mr. Claude Ryan has given us a very interesting, informative and, I think, provocative address. You will appreciate what Mr. Potts said in his introduction and from listening to Mr. Ryan just how qualified he is to evaluate the price of unity. In his address he covered a number of things among which to me the most interesting was the necessity of national projects which would have to be accepted by the Province of Quebec, by the Quebec people I should say, and also his comments on the language problem and the need for French being a predominant language at least in the Quebec area if I may include that whole area as Quebec.

Mr. Ryan, thank you very much for your very interesting and informative address. Thank you.