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bilingualism was disproportionately concen- Canadian state in less than voluntary fashion.
trated among the urban and more educated This pattern changed with the constitutional
sectors of the Francophone majority, along- debates/crises of the late 1980s and early
side widespread unilingualism in the 1990s. The Meech Lake Accord, 17 designed
Anglophone community, even within to recognize in a modest way Québec’s dis-
Québec. It is also clear that within Québec, tinctiveness, failed because it was not ratified
the historical French-English dualism has by all provincial legislatures. Specifically,
affected the other two axes of differentiation: the Manitoba Legislature’s failure to ratify
both Québec’s Aboriginal peoples and its the Meech Lake Accord in 1990 occurred
immigrant ethnic communities display char- because an Aboriginal member of the
acteristics not shared by their counterparts legislature, Elijah Harper, argued he could
elsewhere in Canada. In particular, they dis- not support an agreement designed to satisfy
play higher rates of ancestral language reten- Québec while First Nations grievances
tion than their counterparts in other remained outstanding. This was widely
provinces. As a consequence, young people viewed in Québec as an anti-Québec and
from immigrant families in Québec are often anti-French gesture, of the sort that has long
fluently trilingual, speaking both official lan- characterized the history of Western Canada.
guages as well as their ancestral language. In parallel fashion, in the climate of polarized
These patterns can be traced to the presence, public opinion, opposition to the Accord
within Québec, of two competing dominant in English-speaking Canada was often
societies or mainstreams, and the evolving accompanied by statements of support for
balance of power between them. We can add Aboriginal rights and grievances. As a result,
that, since the 1960s, just as Québec’s in the 1990s, opinion polls showed Québecers
Anglophone community has been called often taking a harder line on Aboriginal
upon to redefine itself, so Québec’s issues than did respondents from the rest of
Aboriginal and immigrant ethnic communi- Canada (Laczko, 1997).
ties have been called upon to redefine them- Within this national context of complex
selves as Québec minorities distinct from lines of ethno-linguistic cleavage, Couton
their counterparts in the rest of Canada now examines Canadian immigration policy,
(Laczko, 1995). with a particular emphasis on Québec’s
The interaction between these various increasing autonomy and the ways in which
lines of cleavage is often complex, and can its immigration selection and settlement poli-
be briefly illustrated with an example from cies support its project of an equal French
recent history, dealing with the progress ‘out nation within Canada, if not an autonomous
of irrelevance’of Canada’s First Nations. The nation.
politically significant redefinition of their
communities as First Nations in recent
decades is a result of Aboriginal leaders
taking a cue from Québec nationalism. This CANADA’S IMMIGRATION POLICY
process has of course taken place across the DUALISM (PHILIPPE COUTON)
country. Also, in public opinion polls, for
several decades, from the 1960s to the 1980s, Under the constitutionally joint provincial
Québecers and Francophones displayed more and federal jurisdiction, immigration has
sympathetic attitudes towards Aboriginal contributed to Canada’s diversity in a unique
grievances than did the population of manner. While historically provinces have
English-speaking Canada, perhaps reflecting been at best junior partners in immigration
some sort of awareness of the shared histori- matters, they, and Québec in particular, have
cal fact that Francophone Québecers and been playing a greatly expanded role since
Aboriginals were both incorporated into the the 1960s. The rise of Québec nationalism