Quebec: a question of definition

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said he will introduce a motion to recognize Quebec as a "nation within a united Canada". This was immediately pounced upon by Gilles Duceppe who demanded that the motion be reformulated in order to recognize a "nation that is currently within Canada".

The unfortunate thing is that we are spending our time debating the wrong thing. That a certain socio-ethnic group of people exists in Canada is not a question. That the people in that group have inherited a certain culture and certain beliefs is not at issue. The real problem is not that nobody "recognizes" Quebec. The real problem is the divide between those who believe that Quebec should have a certain level of sovereignty and those who disagree.

It all comes down to control; and a lot of separatists/sovereignists feel that Quebec should have full and complete control over everything that goes on inside its borders; including immigration/emigration and any other kind of import/export. This is not a question of culture, nor is it a question of inclusion/exclusion: this is a question of power. We can see it when people suggest sending delegates from Quebec to international assemblies; as if we really wanted to debate the north american missile shield with the "ambassador" of the state of New Mexico. Countries exist for a reason. They are a grouping of geographically and socio-economically like-minded people who get together for the same reasons as any other community forms. They provide a tool for dealing with other groups of people and, as such, are very useful.

In the case of Canada, the country also provides a way to re-distribute wealth to attenuate the issues encountered by one or another constituent population going through hard times. When the farmers of western Canada need help, the fishers of eastern Canada provide it (albeit indirectly). With regards to this particular issue, Quebec has historically felt hard done-by because of its own richness and other provinces relative poverty.

Meta-communities also provide the opportunity to set certain guidelines and enforce them at a higher level. We can see some of the effects of this by looking at organizations like the U.N. where a number of participants agree to live by the rules established by all. Difficulties arise however when participants in such a scheme attempt to assert their independence or sovereignty. A perfect example is when the U.S. decided unilaterally to invade Iraq against the recommendations of the U.N. security council. Unfortunately, the sanctions available to the U.N. is very limited. It comes down to "might makes right" and in Quebec's case we can expect more of the same: because of its socio-economic place in the country, Quebec stands to gain a significant amount of "bullying power" by declaring its independence (or at least having it recognized). The simple fact that a political party exists at the federal level to represent and defend the concerns of a single province is proof enough of the fact that Quebeckers are prepared to do what it takes in order to guarantee that their concerns become matters of national importance.

Do I believe that Quebec is distinct? Absolutely! I was born here and will always be a Quebecker in my heart. Do I think that this "distinctness" (as opposed to the distinctness of Ontarians or Nova Scotians) merits the declaration of the independence of the province from the "rule" of the rest of the dominion? No. Absolutely not. So let's stop debating our uniqueness and start debating what's really at stake here: whether or not Quebeckers (and to a certain extent the rest of Canada) are entitled to a greater amount of "self-determination" than other provinces; I mean, at some level, each city could declare itself sovereign and we could start all over again building counties from cities, provinces from counties and (gasp) countries from provinces. If the only goal here is to get more power in parliament I say "let it be." You already have a whole national-level political party to yourself. Isn't that enough bullying for one nation? If not, then let's get the Mohawks and the Haida and the Inuit in there too so that they can represent their people.

pkg_resources.VersionConflict

This exception is raised when you update the version of a setuptools package without deleting the egg-info folder. The test command ends up expecting that the version is whatever is listed from the previous build whereas the value has changed in the meantime. Just run setup.py clean --all from your "root" directory to get rid of the error.

Some long-awaited updates

I took some time this weekend to revamp a lot of the infrastructure around this site. I really would like to start documenting my progress in pipe-making as well as some of the other things I'm currently juggling.

I have set up my own little proprietary engine to pipe the contents of different RSS feeds of mine onto the front page of my site. This should allow me to collect the various things I'm up to into a single spot.