Day urged to crush roots of separatism
Toronto Star-Feb. 15, 2001.
Separatist blackmail has to be denounced wherever it occurs in Canada, the country's unity minister said yesterday.
St?phane Dion pushed the federal war against separation toward a new front yesterday as he urged the Canadian Alliance to snuff out a smouldering separatist movement in Alberta.
``He needs to say more to the supporters of this tiny new separatist group in Alberta than just, `Be patient,' '' Dion said of Alliance Leader Stockwell Day.
``Canadians are entitled to hear Mr. Day make this simple statement: `Nothing in Canada today justifies secession: not in Quebec, not in the West, not anywhere else in Canada.' ''
Dion delivered his strongly worded speech to a group of law students at the University of Toronto.
Alberta separatists pose no real ``threat to Canada,'' Dion said. But political leaders who permit the rhetoric to exist are doing damage and ``need to stop flirting with this strategy,'' he added.
Two members of Day's caucus - Alberta MP Myron Thompson and British Columbia MP Darrel Stinson - attended the inaugural convention of the Alberta Independence Party in Day's home town of Red Deer, Alta., last month.
Day has acknowledged sitting down with members of the party - largely ex-Reformers who opposed the formation of the Alliance - to discuss their concerns.
Dion acknowledged that he's already made the mistake of insisting the Alberta movement poses no serious threat, only to be publicly raked over the coals for being dismissive of Western Canada.
``Should I have said that western Canadians are crypto-separatists?'' he asked. ``Was that the way to prove that I take to heart the interests of this region of my country?''
Separatist rhetoric, no matter how serious, does no one any genuine good and has serious long-term consequences, said Dion, who described separation as a ``moral mistake.''
It dilutes the true public interest by re-directing public and political interest away from more serious, pressing policy issues and alienating those in other parts of the country, he said.
It also trivializes the potential break-up of a nation and weakens Canada's ability to improve itself, makes normal regional disputes seem more serious than they are and aggravates regional jealousies.
``Quebec is not the spoiled child of the federation,'' said Dion. ``Because Quebec separatism has garnered more attention than any other political phenomenon in Canada . . . the belief has developed in the other provinces that the primary - if not the only - concern of the federal government is Quebec.''
Talk of separation has been ``a total loss for Quebec and for all of Canada,'' he added; secession would surely divide the people of Quebec even more than ``separatist blackmail'' already has, he said.
``The surest way to deeply divide Quebecers among themselves is to ask them to renounce Canada.'' |
