Pau. St PIERRE @ ° Paulitics & Perspectives A DARK and sad day, heavy with tears unshed, sorrows untold and sins unforgiven — a day to talk about the failure of the Meech Lake Accord. Come, let us sit upon 2 stone and speak about the death of kings. At the time this is written it isn’t clear whether the accord will pass. What can be said is, pass or not, it has already failed to preserve the kind of Canada most of us thought we had. Too many old hatreds have been stirred up between French and English. Too many hurtful things said by both sides. It wasn’t Meech as much as it was Gallup polls and English-only resolutions from city and village councils. Ou. of the saddest things about the debate is that the ignorant are the shrillest and get the most attention.”’ The question we are left with is not whether Quebec will separate. The question is what form will separation take? Sovereignty association, the Levesque formula, is now the best that the rest of Canada can hope for. Historians will debate Brian Mulroney’s actions. Should he have taken separatists into his cab- inet? Should he have insisted on all or nothing and then been obliged to plead for almost anything? With the benefit of hindsight, all sorts of irresponsible commen- tators wiil find fault with our prime minister. We ordinary people would be better advised to credit him with a decent patriotic impulse; surely there has been enough mean, crossgrained backbiting in this na- tional debate already. One of the saddest things about the debate is that the ignorant are the shrillest and get the most atten- tion. There has been no increase in English Canada’s knowledge of Quebec or in Quebec's under- standing of the great alterations in the rest of the country and the great latent good will that existed in quiet people of the other nine provinces. Were there more opportunities for understanding and fewer for mindless spite, both French and English might have been improved by a few collisions with realities. After all, in the long run it is the realities that prevail. We may come to them early or late, but come to them we shall. There are many examples of such realities. Canadians of British descent have beer a minority in this coun- try for decades. By 1999, British and French descendants combined will form less than half the Cana- dian population, assuming, that is, that there is some form of Canada in that year. The reality of Quebec’s share of redistribution payments was, alas, very politically unpopular among soine of the mischievous English- speaking politicians, particularly some in the West. It is an article of faith, in- eradicable in the short run, that Quebec gets most federal funds. Like all good lies, it is effective because it is true. Quebec gets more than any other province. But the anti-French ef- fect depends upon listeners never asking how many people live in Quebec. Few ask. If they did they would learn that on a per capita basis Quebec ranks last among the seven provinces receiving net benefits in equaliza- tion payments. (Prince Edward Island benefits by $4,461 a head, Saskatchewan by $2,039, Quebec by $301.) English-speaking Canadians are deluding themselves if they think that Quebecers don’t notice such clever political trickery. People are also deluded if they think that $300 a head or $3,000 a head is going to be a prime factor in keeping French-Canadians within the present federation. Quebec traditionally votes its heart instead of its head. Nor would Quebec be an incon- siderable little country in this world. Anybody who has recently seen the prosperity, the vigor, the flaming self-confidence of Quebec business and industry should recognize that it could form a state far more prosperous than most small states of the United Nations. For how long is another matter. Quebec’s raging paranoia, which has extended even to evading rul- ings by Supreme Court of Canada _about street signs, arises from the problem they have not been able tc solve. Quebec has the lowest birth rate of any political entity in the Western World. Unless this failure to maintain population can be combatted by absurdly high Quebec government baby bonuses or some other devices, there can be seen a day when the French language dies in North America for lack of people to speak it. But these and a hundred other factual considerations are now temporarily displaced from the public debate and the people of good will on both sides are in bewildered silence. Later, we shall all return to realities. We shail have to. When we do, in calmer mind, we can perhaps set about creating a Balkanized Canada with Quebec and other provinces or regions associated as autonomous states. Sad that we should have come to that. The rest of the world will watch us with more than a touch of deri- sion. Canadians, they will say, were the only people on earth who had so few real troubles that they had to invent some. e ACCOUNTANT/PART-TIME Successful Applicant must have computer skills and strong background in all aspects of accounting. Call for an appointment Sewell’s Marina Horseshoe Bay 921-7461 national Liberal A WEST Vancouver man is seek- ing the job of vice-president of the Liberal Party of Canada at the party’s national convention in Calgary later this month. Long-time North Shore resident Bill McEwen is seeking one of two vice-presidential positions on the national executive. Both positions wiil be decided by delegates on June 23, the same day a new leader is chosen to replace John Turner. “My first priority will be to eliminate what remains of the par- ty’s debt, which hias already drop- ped from a high of $6 million to roughly $4 million,” McEwen WESTPRESS. 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