The most positive thing I can say about Quebec nationalism is this: these people are working hard to avoid the fate of the charmless cities of the American "rust belt". The ideology of the Coalition Avenir Québec is, in effect, "We do not want to end up like Ohio, Indiana or Pennsylvania." They are working very, very hard to offer a quality of life closely comparable to third-rate cities in Western Europe instead of third-rate cities in the Northeastern United States of America. In this, they fail —but nevertheless have avoided the abject hopelessness of their competition on the other side of that oddly shaped border.
With that fig leaf having been firmly placed in front of our Adonis, let me draw attention to the current phase of propaganda suggesting that anti-Americanism might be the solution to Quebec's anti-Canadian problem:
"Trump’s trade war is pushing Quebec back into Canada’s arms."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qBU2P0yomI
^ There are ten thousand articles, video and radio segments along these lines right now, all offering unimaginative variations on this same, sad melody.
Bob Rae was one of my professors: decades ago, I wrote an essay-length answer to an exam question on precisely this topic, i.e., the inversely reciprocal relationship between Quebec's optimism about their own independence and their pessimism about the United States of America. The optimism about one is inversely proportionate to pessimism about the other, if you see what I mean, as the people of Quebec are aware that independence from Canada would put them into direct negations with the Americans.
The story goes that the sub-professors (who actually graded the papers) wanted to give me a failing grade because my answer to the question had failed to robotically re-articulate what the assigned readings had said, and was instead offering some kind of slightly original and insightful answer —although the exam did not provide any instructions or requirements along these lines (i.e., I was not asked to summarize what some other book or article had said). And Bob Rae had to fight some kind of bureaucratic battle to give the exam a decent grade, because my nihilistic perspective was so shocking to these people with PhDs who just wanted to punish me for my failure to play the part of a gormless conformist, like every other idiot in that classroom.
The thesis of my exam question —that seems so obvious that only an idiot could find it offensive— was that Quebec independence movements (plural) would wax and wane in correspondence with optimism about the United State of America, as the decades went by. In retrospect, at that time, it was already true, historically, and provided the raw material for a fairly safe bet about the future: the Clinton administration was a period of relative optimism about American imperialism —but the Bush years brought increasing pessimism as they wore on. To describe the Donald Trump epoch as one of pessimism would be insulting to all good pessimists, so I will restrain myself.
Here's the difficulty: politics is not about fear. Democracy requires courage.
Win or lose, he who dares, does.
As soon as Quebec has something to be proud of, they'll want independence. They are —genuinely— struggling to build a society they can be proud of, in the shadow of French civilization on one side, and the depressing spectacle of the American rust belt states on the other. Subordination requires shame: Quebec will remain subordinate as long as they're ashamed of who and what they are. The Scottish have nothing to be proud of, so they're neither willing to starve nor fight for independence.
When the people of Quebec genuinely believe they're superior to the people of Ontario, and at least equal to the people of France, they'll be gone, with or without a fight: fear, for a decade or two, can suppress this kind of self-esteem, but not for long.
Nobody is impressed by America: afraid, yes, but not impressed. I knew Lao rice farmers who went to America and came back again, astonished that every bus station was full of drug addicts and beggars. The Americans are feared but looked down upon, even in Vientiane, most certainly in Montreal.
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