Canadian WI: Joe Clark does the math...Quebec?

Okay...had an Idea...

Say that our oh so smart former PM, Joe Clark, does the math in 1979 and runs his government as a minority government instead of being a dick and trying to push through his budget. More concessions are made to keep the SoCreds on board and the budget passes. Furthermore Clark manages to form a reasonably stable coalition with the Social Credit party to keep the Progressive Conservatives in power.

The year is 1979, coming up would be the 1980 referendum on Quebec Sovereignty...

--Now would the referendum occur in TTL with Clark at the helm? I can't seem to find a reason for it not to... Let's assume that it does.

--Now there's no question that the Pro-Canada side is going to do much worse without Trudeau's re-election in 1985. In fact let's assume that due to no Trudeau and fewer Sovereigntist mistakes, the "Oui" side wins the referendum by a fair percentage (59%).

Now...the question is...where do we go from here? Does Quebec continue to push for all out sovereignty or does it push for what it has now (sort of). Does Clark recognize the outcome of the referendum to keep the So-Creds onboard? Does he send in Federal troops to secure Government property in Quebec? Does the whole situation boil out of control? Do the Maritimes jump ship and join the US?

Any thoughts would be welcome!
 
You're forcing me to imagine Joe Clark with a brain. It's a scary thought.

The first thing that comes to mind is economics—the budget (home mortgage deduction campaign promise aside) was excellent. It went a long way to putting Canada back on track after Trudeau's…*let's say disdain for the actual country of Canada he happened to live and his ignoring of economics really screwed things up.

So, already, the Conservatives will own the economic issue and might be able to shoot for a balanced budget fairly soon (if I recall correctly, 1979 was just closer to being balanced than the usual nutso Trudeau ones). Since much of Trudeau's $300 billion debt came in the early '80s[1] Canada is going to be in a way stronger fiscal position… at least if Clark lets Crosbie do his job.


Second thing that comes to mind is the direction of the Progressive Conservative Party. With Mulroney probably butterflied away the Red Tories (not today's version of left-wing CPC members) more or less stay in charge over the American style business conservatives and neoliberals. I mean, not Joe Clark who is doomed, but whoever replaces him when he finally screws up with have a solid Red Tory legacy to point to—perhaps with a balanced budget, to appease the smaller government conservative faction.


Additionally, with Joe Clark lasting longer Trudeau is gone for good (yay!). John Turner is in earlier, I imagine, but Jean Chrétien might eke out a victory. So does Turner follow his OTL course of shifting to the left, or does he leapfrog the Conservatives and go for the business conservative vote?


What happens to the NDP? They're just before their period of strength and ITTL the Tories are not going to break big into Quebec but might into the big cities…*perhaps David Crosbie as the post-Clark leader?

Does the NDP achieve their Quebec breakthrough?


The Liberals probably win, possibly with a minority themselves due to stronger NDP, in 1983-4 (I can't imagine Joe Clark winning re-election, even if he does have a good term) but what does that buy them?



As for the vote in Quebec, without Trudeau's Constitutional Adventures (and the myth of the backstab) it never comes to a head. At best, the UK simply signs over control of the BNA Act to Canada (which becomes, as it was, the Constitution) and there is no 1980 Constitution above and beyond that.



[1] In the interests of fairness, Mulroney added $200 billion to the debt. However without the existing $300 billion and the required interest payments on it his budgets would have been balanced in the late '80s.
 
The seeds for the Sovereignty Movement were laid long before Joe Clark showed up, so I agree there'd be no reason for the Neverendum Referendum to not start in 1980. Also, the Péquistes were weded to the soveriegnty issue, so the defeat in '80 would never discourage them from bringing up another vote at some point, no matter the federal political situation.

To Electric Monk, the NDP probably wouldn't ever have had much chance of electoral success in Québec for the simple reason that, besides sovereignty and francophone issues, they basically share a similar platform to the PQ. If anything, if the NDP made a big push for the federal votes of Québec, you might see an earlier formation of the BQ. I say this as a former Montréalais who voted PQ for the Assemblé Nationale, but Grit for my MP. The only way for the NDP to make serious inroads into Québec would be for them to be favourable to sovereignty, which would have killed them nationally.
 
How would a Quebec yes vote on sovereignity partition Quebec? Would Montreal vote to remain part of Canada, or the Gaspe Peninsula, or the Cree dominated north decide to go it alone?
 
To Electric Monk, the NDP probably wouldn't ever have had much chance of electoral success in Québec for the simple reason that, besides sovereignty and francophone issues, they basically share a similar platform to the PQ. If anything, if the NDP made a big push for the federal votes of Québec, you might see an earlier formation of the BQ. I say this as a former Montréalais who voted PQ for the Assemblé Nationale, but Grit for my MP. The only way for the NDP to make serious inroads into Québec would be for them to be favourable to sovereignty, which would have killed them nationally.

Well without Trudeau and the Constitution the Liberals probably maintain their usual Quebec position, with the Conservatives weak and the NDP locked out.

However, I imagine we could come up with a situation where the NDP are a better federalist choice than the Liberals (with the Conservatives, as per pre-BQ, getting the ADQ "stay in Canada but with more power" vote).

Particularly if the Liberals swing right (as might have been expected, under Turner) or if the NDP expansion of '84 and '88 continues.


Incidentally I live in Montreal eight months of the year for school—the Plateau right now, NDG & St. Henri before—where were you?

How would a Quebec yes vote on sovereignity partition Quebec? Would Montreal vote to remain part of Canada, or the Gaspe Peninsula, or the Cree dominated north decide to go it alone?

As I recall the Cree voted like 98% against Quebec becoming sovereign, I can't imagine them being happy if Quebec winds up becoming its own nation.

Likewise, there are very large chunks of Montreal that would be (rightfully) nervous at what an independent Quebec might decide to do against those darn English speaking people.


Also, considering that Canada gave Quebec the northern chunk of territory I'm reasonably sure that (supported by the people living there) a Prime Minister with a backbone (so, somebody other than Clark) would, hopefully, just annex that back.
 
Do the Maritimes jump ship and join the US?

Man, why is it everybody thinks the Maritimes would jump at the chance to be Yankees? We'd more sooner form our own than join them. In fact in the late 70's there were closer ties to the home land. There you go, Nfl, NS, PEI, NB join the UK, after Quebec leaves.
 
Man, why is it everybody thinks the Maritimes would jump at the chance to be Yankees? We'd more sooner form our own than join them. In fact in the late 70's there were closer ties to the home land. There you go, Nfl, NS, PEI, NB join the UK, after Quebec leaves.

Well, economically New England and the Atlantic provinces are interconnected quite deeply—a key reason the Maritimes, historically, were poor was the ending of free trade between the US & Canada in 1867.

So on that level it does make sense. But yeah, just because Quebec leaves I don't think you guys are jumping ship—and certainly not to the US.
 
Well without Trudeau and the Constitution the Liberals probably maintain their usual Quebec position, with the Conservatives weak and the NDP locked out.

However, I imagine we could come up with a situation where the NDP are a better federalist choice than the Liberals (with the Conservatives, as per pre-BQ, getting the ADQ "stay in Canada but with more power" vote).

Particularly if the Liberals swing right (as might have been expected, under Turner) or if the NDP expansion of '84 and '88 continues.


Incidentally I live in Montreal eight months of the year for school—the Plateau right now, NDG & St. Henri before—where were you?

Well, when we first moved there, we lived in Lachine, then out to the Rive-Sud in Brossard. Yuck, I know, but I wasn't making the decisions then! :eek: I was a total freak in Brossard, probably the only person on Avénue San Francisco who was pro-sovereignty, eventhough I was an immigrant myself. My roots are in Louisiana, so I understood better than many Péquistes themselves what they were arguing, and the consequences of a francophone society being subsumed by Anglophones.

That being said, my federal vote was always for the Grits (though I voted PQ for my MAN, as long as we're still a part of Canada, I'd rather have voted for a party that represents the whole country than waste my vote on the Bloquistes). The NDP had no hope in Québec because they could never have broken in on the provincial level. With the PQ victory in '76, there was no longer any space on the left for them to occupy. In other provinces, many people have become used to voting for the NDP in municipal or provincial posts, so the leap to voting NDP for MP isn't so radical, so to speak. In Québec, voting for the NDP would be like voting Green in Manitoba, an unsure bet where you're basically guaranteed to lose. Even in the Westmount ridings in Montréal or in Hull, I doubt the NDP candidates get more than 5% of the vote <going to Elections Canada to see if I've been proven wrong>.
 
In other provinces, many people have become used to voting for the NDP in municipal or provincial posts, so the leap to voting NDP for MP isn't so radical, so to speak. In Québec, voting for the NDP would be like voting Green in Manitoba, an unsure bet where you're basically guaranteed to lose. Even in the Westmount ridings in Montréal or in Hull, I doubt the NDP candidates get more than 5% of the vote <going to Elections Canada to see if I've been proven wrong>.

Oops, hadn't been following the news back in MTL, but apparently the NDP won a by-election seat in Outremont last year... Makes sense, there. And that the NDP won a seat in Chambly in '88. When you live in New Orleans, outside news becomes less and less important, with the recovery and all, and you lose touch. That's one of the reasons I've only now begun posting on this site, eventhough I've been reading it for almost a year.

Still, in almost 50 years, the NDP had managed to gain 2 MPs in Québec, and has yet to reelect a member. Kinda proves my point, even if I was wrong, I suppose...
 
Oops, hadn't been following the news back in MTL, but apparently the NDP won a by-election seat in Outremont last year... Makes sense, there. And that the NDP won a seat in Chambly in '88. When you live in New Orleans, outside news becomes less and less important, with the recovery and all, and you lose touch. That's one of the reasons I've only now begun posting on this site, eventhough I've been reading it for almost a year.

Still, in almost 50 years, the NDP had managed to gain 2 MPs in Québec, and has yet to reelect a member. Kinda proves my point, even if I was wrong, I suppose...

Heh, you corrected yourself before I got to it. Actually the NDP won a by-election in 1990 for the Chambly seat, it wasn't part of their 43 seat 1988 victory when they came in second in that riding.


The NDP, in 1988, came very close to what would have been a large breakthrough: the second place party in the House of Commons with perhaps 50-70 seats, regulating the Liberals to a sad third place finish.

There's far too many butterflies to know, but it's not unreasonable to have the Liberals pushed right on economic issues under Turner leaving the entire left-wing spectrum economically open to the NDP.

They're not going to win government, but replacing Liberals as the main alternative to the Conservatives? Possibly. We could even see the Conservatives sticking with centrist stuff, while the Liberals become the neoliberal right-wing economic party.

Under those conditions it seems unlikely that statist Quebec would keep voting for the Liberals, leaving the federalist options as the NDP or (sort-of) the Progressive Conservatives—and Montreal Island isn't voting PC.
 
Well, economically New England and the Atlantic provinces are interconnected quite deeply—a key reason the Maritimes, historically, were poor was the ending of free trade between the US & Canada in 1867.

So on that level it does make sense. But yeah, just because Quebec leaves I don't think you guys are jumping ship—and certainly not to the US.

The big reason our economies were dieing in the latter 1800's, was our industry was moved to ontario. There were foundries and other factories springing up along the northern coast of the Bat of Fundy, that were bought, and picked up and moved to southern ontario.

I digress, you'd see a much more unified Maritimes with a stronger conviction to be Canadian, or British.
 
The big reason our economies were dieing in the latter 1800's, was our industry was moved to ontario. There were foundries and other factories springing up along the northern coast of the Bat of Fundy, that were bought, and picked up and moved to southern ontario.

I digress, you'd see a much more unified Maritimes with a stronger conviction to be Canadian, or British.


If Quebec succeeded then how would the Maritimes jump?

I suppose it would rely mainly on how things shook out between the federal government and the Quebec government, but I would imagine that if Quebec walks away from Canada, then the Maritimes might start re-imagining their place in the world.

Would they be able to/ want to join the UK or the US, or would they just stay part of Canada?

And while we're on the subject, isn't it possible that the Canadian plains provinces would jump ship to the United States?
 
The big reason our economies were dieing in the latter 1800's, was our industry was moved to ontario. There were foundries and other factories springing up along the northern coast of the Bat of Fundy, that were bought, and picked up and moved to southern ontario.

Like I said, with the ending of free trade in 1867 the Maritimes were screwed. The industry moved to Ontario to take advantage of the under construction Western rail routes, as a result of the loss of US-Canada free trade.

Industry doesn't move on its own for no reason, after all, and in this case there was no reason to stay in the Maritimes as New England and the Mid-Atlantic of the US was now closed.
 
With the expansion of industrialisation in the 19th century, a move to the interior was inevitable. Just as industry left the Maritimes for Ontario and Québec, so did industry relocate from New England to the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest. Factories move to either sources of labour or sources of materials, and these growing areas provided both in the late 19th century.
 
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