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CONFLICT AND DIVERSITY: CANADA / QUÉBEC 439

Canada shares with Belgium and two decades, and this trend is likely to
Switzerland its pattern of parallel linguistic continue (cf. Kymlicka, 2003). The historian
institutions and its consociational 16 way of William McNeill (1986) has noted that coun-
organizing linguistic pluralism and regional tries such as Canada have a head start in
differences. Canada also shares with the facing the challenges of polyethnicity as the
United States (along with Australia and New world’s developed states become more
Zealand) its history as a new world settler diverse and multicultural. He argues that
society, where Aboriginals became a minority polyethnicity is on the rise everywhere and
early on and wave after wave of immigrants that from a long-view historical perspective,
followed. In Canada, special legislation, this trend signals a slow but steady return to
notably the Indian Act of 1876, defined a the ‘normal’ state of human affairs.
distinct legal status for Aboriginals. I have Given the complex pattern of Aboriginal
argued that it is this combination of types of First Nations, linguistic dualism, and immi-
pluralism that makes Canada distinctive grant multiculturalism in Canada as a whole,
(Laczko, 1994). In recent decades, Belgium but also within Québec, a useful question that
and Switzerland have added immigration to can be asked is how the three axes interact
their historical linguistic and regional cleav- and influence each other. It is important to
ages, but they have no counterpart to look at Québec separately, because Québec’s
Canada’s Aboriginals. Similarly, the United internal pluralism is the key to Canada’s
States has no close parallel to the linguistic exceptional position as a state with a higher-
dualism that characterizes Canadian history, than-expected level of pluralism given its
despite the growth of its Spanish-speaking high level of development. Although French
minority. speakers are a minority of approximately
In my recent and ongoing analysis of the 25% of the population in Canada, they con-
most recent data sets from the 1990s, based stitute over 80% of the population of Québec.
on the lists compiled by Kurian (1997, 2001), Québec is thus a mini-Canada with its
it seems that, on the whole, Canada’s overall French–English proportions reversed. The
relative position as a country with an above- main difference, of course, is that Québec’s
average level of pluralism has been main- English-speaking minority historically exer-
tained from the 1960s to the 1990s. If we list cised a level of power and influence out of all
countries by their level of diversity from high proportion to its numbers, while in the other
to low over four time points spanning four Canadian provinces the French-language
decades, (i) Canada’s level of ethno-linguistic minorities historically had to fight for their
diversity is among the highest in the world at very survival. As Québec’s Francophone
each time period, and (ii) Canada’s main majority has become a ‘sociological’ major-
neighbours at the upper end of these lists are ity (and not just a numerical majority) since
almost all countries with much lower levels the 1960s, its English-speaking minority has
of development. The existence of the cluster been pressured to adjust to its new role as a
of highly-developed, yet highly-plural coun- Québec minority rather than as a fraction of
tries reflects the fact that some highly devel- Canada’s English-speaking majority that
oped societies such as Canada, Belgium, and happens to live in Québec. This new status is
Switzerland have followed a separate histor- reflected in French-English bilingualism
ical path that set them somewhat apart from rates within Québec. Although the proportion
the till-recently paramount model of one of the population that is bilingual is increas-
dominant language per core state. At the ing in Québec among all categories of the
same time, many developed countries have population, for the past two decades
become more heterogeneous and accepting Anglophones have displayed higher bilin-
of both territorial linguistic minorities as well gualism rates than Francophones, a reversal of
as minority immigrant diversity over the past the century-old traditional pattern whereby