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In Print Profile BY GILBERT A. BOUCHARD Reed Scowen Time to Say Goodbye: The Case for Getting Québec Out of Canada McClelland & Stewart You have to enjoy the irony. Anglophone Quebecer and separatist Reed Scowen, author of Time to Say Goodbye: The Case for Getting Quebec Out of Canada being interviewed by a federalist and third-generation Franco-Albertan. Sure seems a stereotype-busting interview. Well, not really. While the 68-year-old Scowen’s status as an Anglophone separatist (in his spin it’s called "divestiture" – Canada turfing Québec) makes him seem a novelty, a bit of political freak show, his questionable political motivations, central Canadian arrogance and logical contortions are far from harmless and don’t fall from the Québec nationalist tree. A separatist by any other name, regardless of semantic niceties, still reeks and in this case was preceded by a detestable and slender polemic (a work that he describes as a "political pamphlet"), light in documented facts, questionable in logic, rife with laughable paper tigers and filled with non-sequiturs. For example, borrowing Lucien Bouchard’s line that Canada isn’t a "real" country, Scowen negates the existence of Canadian history, donchya know: "Canadian history has nothing to do with our politics," he says with a straight face. "It’s the history of different regions, different ethnicities – a collection of personal memories." While Québec is a valid nation (with a historical tradition that includes the existence of his "pur Laine" Anglophone community), Scowen’s Canada is a collection of recent immigrants who need to knit themselves together with an ahistorical civil/political alliance built on the "noble ideal of constitution and law." Nice bit of rhetoric, but an assertion that Scowen can’t and won’t validate. When pressed he gets indignant and changes the subject, infuriating behavior for a man of his stature. Scowen’s resume includes 25 years of public service, including years as a Liberal member of the National Assembly. In effect, he argues the six generations his family has invested in Québec is "historical" while the five generations my family has spent in Western Canada (dating back to 1890) are not. Call it Scowen’s bizzaro world where two centuries and half the time my family spent in Québec is "history" while the last century spent in the west isn’t?! Yikes! Obviously no fan of Anthony Robbins, Scowen starts with a negative proposition and asserts that Canada as it currently exists is a deeply troubled place. Building on that initial premise, Scowen modestly tells me he’s putting forth "some element of an answer" – the most radical solution to the federation’s problems imaginable: dissolving Confederation outright. It’s a weird proposition to put forward because Scowen admits support for separation in Québec is at low levels and even diehard Québec nationalists would "be crazy to alter the federalist status quo." A situation that seems to me to be a call for a re-examination of Confederation, not a call to scrap the puppy. As for the low level of support for Québec separation, Scowen sees this as an opportunity to launch his campaign for divestiture – a great time to introduce his book as there’s currently no crisis "that the book can be seen as inflaming." Also, Scowen doesn’t believe the national moment in Québec is spent. "I don’t think it’s over by a long shot," he says, noting that a decade of federalist provincial governments haven’t been able to effect any real change. "The Québec people won’t go for it," he concludes. "Only 10-per-cent of them accept Canada as it is. It’s an unhealthy situation for the rest of the country." All the more reason, I guess, for us to cut off our federalist nose to spite our nationalist face.

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