The Liberal Revolution in Canada: The Quiet Revolt and the French-English Dynamic

The voting numbers in the June 1960 Canadian provincial elections do not bear out the sea change that was made in the legislature and in Quebec City. The Liberals won 51 percent of the vote for the premiership, while the Union Nationale garnered 47 percent, mostly based on large rural turnouts and the fears of a Taschereau style reprisal against all things French Canadian. The Liberals also took 34 seats from the Union Nationale and Independent parties, to put up significant numbers in the legislature and a mandate for Premier Jean Lesage. The Union Nationale did not suffer numerical defeats, but they had lost control a year prior to the elections and the call for modernization and new government were symbolic of a new era in Quebec.

The goals of the new Liberal administration were threefold: a new economic direction, adapting social structures to dynamic cultural values, and the acceptance of the global market as fact. The new economic direction put forth by Jean Lesage and his allies in the legislature was a mixture of capitalist goals and public ownership. The epitome of this plan was the aggressive action taken by Quebec’s government to nationalize the hydroelectric industry under the newly created Hydro Quebec. This provincial authority would manage the extremely profitable hydroelectric resources of the St. Lawrence and its tributaries, bringing eleven separate industrial leaders under one umbrella organization. What sounded like a socialist governmental shift was in actuality merely an increase in governmental oversight and insurance for the industry. This change would allow the province to have a greater hand in regulating prices and ensuring quality, but would allow profit and trade to remain roughly the same as before the 1960s.

This one particular industry was certainly not an aberration in the “revolutionary” period of Quebec. In 1962, the Liberal legislature, with Lesage’s approval, created the Quebec Economic Advisory Council. This council would review the economic environment of the province, assess the efficiency of industries like hydroelectric and lumber, and then implement government planning processes to make the economy more effective. The term used by many authors for this plan was “indicative planning”, which implies a more deliberate, moderate process of implementing provincial oversight into previously unfettered businesses.

This organization was years behind in its inception with respect to the English Canadian provinces, which in various forms has placed controls over economic variables since the worldwide depression of the 1930s. Along with the council’s recommendations, the provincial government went ahead with plans to extend the income tax to the lower levels of wages and created a 6 percent sales tax. This plan was criticized by many rural workers and the lower class as excessive and damaging to French Canadian traditional livelihood. Lesage and the Liberals wanted to make Quebec’ economy congruent with the rest of Canada and to bring the vast resources of the province to a more modern industrial community.

The Tremblay Commission of 1956 was brought together to assess the overall situation of French Canadian identity and social structures in the 20th century. The report by this commission stated that there existed a serious disconnect between those structures in effect to 1956, including classical colleges, patronage, and economic isolation, and the values of the French Canadian population in the province. The solution prescribed by the commission was to dull the importance of Catholic education by rationalizing the school system and introducing variant education. This type of education, which had been the English style of education in Canada since the Conquest, was meant to be fairer to individuals within the system, as opposed to one universal program of curriculum. This would all be accomplished with Bill 60 in 1964, which created the first ever Ministry of Education for the province. The mission of this ministry was to secularize the educational system by using new elements of government review and oversight to rationalize curricula and school functions. Education was the key first step by Liberals to enact their welfare state, providing the information for a new generation to grow into their new role as modern Canadians.

The final pillar of the Liberal revolution in Quebec was the acceptance of the world market and immigration as reality. This acceptance would lead to policies relating to increased immigration, interconnected federal and provincial planning, and attempts to come to terms with bilingual and bicultural issues. The Liberal sentiment toward immigration was that it was acceptable in an economic sense, but there was a fear of cultural fragmentation in Quebec. With many different cultures flooding into Montreal and Quebec City, the powers in government exacted immigration policies rivaling those of their companions in Ottawa. In the early 1960s, an immigrant entering Quebec was to learn the history and language of their new land in order to be accepted in French Canadian culture in the province. Despite the rationalization of education policies, classes were taught in many cases in French and French Canadian history was expected as common knowledge among students. These policies would manifest later with the 1976 language bill (Bill 101), but what can be said is that the Liberal stance on immigration was in hauntingly symmetrical with English Canadian perceptions of how immigrants should enter a nation.

Having spoken about the Quebec Economic Advisory Council prior to this, it is important to know that while both Ontario and Quebec now had advisory councils, they were not entirely on the same page. The Ontario council was better established and was more effective in its recommendations early on, while the Quebec council sometimes struggled with an unrelenting tradition of laissez faire in French Canada. These two councils and their respective nations would come together, however, with the findings of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism in December 1967.

The Royal Commission was established shortly after the election of Lester Pearson as Canadian prime minister in 1963. As part of his pledge for a “New Deal” for French Canada, Pearson appointed ten French Canadians to his cabinet, allowed for greater autonomy for Quebec’s government in dealing with finances, and pledged to reconsider the Canadian flag to be more representative of the two “races”. Pearson stated that, “Quebec must be Quebec in Canada,” implying that Quebec should maintain its separate identity as part of the Canadian federated system.

The B&B commission, as it was referred to, made several recommendations to the federal government and respective provincial governments. First, the report stated that the federal government needed to recognize French and English as official languages of Canada and provide services in both languages. Another recommendation was to have each province recognize languages of minorities that exceeded 10 percent of the population, homage to the French minority in western provinces as well as to expanded immigration. The commission, most notably, asked that each of the other provinces outside of Quebec adopt French as an equal language and provide services equal to the needs of the French populations in those provinces. The report was important in helping bridge the gap between provincial and federal government and was significant in showing the turn that Quebec was making in its relations with the rest of Canada, as Union Nationale premier Daniel Johnson and others deemed the report favorable in 1967.

All of these changes made by the Liberal government of Jean Lesage were not met with complete satisfaction. Only a decade earlier, the rural tradition of French Canada and the conservative nationalism of the Union Nationale had brought Quebec back to its roots. The Quiet Revolution was not just quiet because of its bloodlessness but also due to its paradoxical attempt to subtly bring drastic change. With the snap of a finger, Jean Lesage and the Quebec Liberals could not bring together all of the factions that had sunk past administrations. Three groups epitomized the differing levels of opposition to the Quiet Revolution: the Rassemblement pour L’Independence Nationale (RIN), the Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ), and the renewed Union Nationale of 1966.

The RIN was established in 1961, under the leadership of Marcel Chaput, a former scientist for the Canadian federal government. Chaput wrote a treatise on the RIN perspective called Why I Am a Separatist in 1961, on the heels of the Liberal Party’s successes. Chaput stated in this work that the Canadian arrangement of federation, especially considering the French and English tensions in Canadian culture, was not satisfactory to the dignity of the French Canadian population. Chaput traced back the origins of the French Canadian culture on the continent and the Conquest of the British Empire in 1763. Largely, however, Chaput discusses the indignities of living as a French Canadian in an Anglophonic country, forced to speak a foreign language and provides an outline of his solution to what he perceived as major problems.

Chaput advocated for a sensible approach to separatism and outlined the six dimensions of Canadian separatism. Historically, Chaput stated that the British North America Act never represented free choice but the swallowing of one nation by another. The political boundaries of Quebec were not as nebulous as the British Canadians had assumed, but rather a historically defined area of deep-rooted culture. The economics of separatism dictated that since Quebec workers were misrepresented in the Canadian work force and few Quebecois were at the top levels of government, they must organize to push for separatism. Chaput goes at length about French cultural dimensions, but the most important point that he made was that the French Canadian community needed to establish a connection with French communities throughout the world. Chaput urged for not only the independence of Quebec from the bogus confederation but for the networking of French communities throughout the world.

Chaput left the ultimatum to his followers and to readers: Quebec could remain a minority in a large country or they could become the majority of a small country. The Canadian federal constitution does not allow for the separation of provinces from the federation without unanimous consent, but Chaput stated that, “âÂ?¦since when does the text of a constitution attest all the rights of men and nations?” This point is integral to the agitation that Chaput wanted to promote. The Quebecois, the French Canadian community, would not stand for second-class status. They needed change to maintain the dignity of their traditions and to guarantee the survival of French Canadian history.

The RIN represented the beginning of post-Quiet Revolution separatism but did not go far enough for a small group of Quebecois. The FLQ was established in 1963, led by radical French Canadians like Pierre Vallieres who wanted to not only separate from the rest of Canada but exact vengeance for the squalor many industrial workers went through. The FLQ was an offshoot of the RIN, with some of its members and middle level leaders leaving because the push against the Quiet Revolution was not proceeding fast enough. Violent attacks by the frontline members of FLQ began in 1963, with random attacks on individual British targets in Quebec along with attacks on individual officials. In October of 1970, two separate incidents occurred which drove a deep chasm between the FLQ and those who were more moderate about Quebec’s independence. FLQ members kidnapped British attachÃ?© James Cross and murdered labor minister Pierre Lapotte as responses to what were perceived as threats to French Canadian identity and cozying of French leaders to the British Canadian government.

French and English Canadian officials condemned these attacks vehemently, showing the unity of the two sides against any hurtles to Canadian unity. Pierre Trudeau, in 1961, stated that the violence and the rhetoric of separatism were irrational because the British North America Act of 1867 solved many of the problems of racial division. He felt that the separatists “âÂ?¦despair of ever being able to convince the public of the rightness of their ideasâÂ?¦” and were trying to incite violence to gain power over the majority. Leslie Roberts, a writer for the Montreal Star, wrote in May 1964 that secession talk and violence by the FLQ would lead to a flight of capital from the province. Douglas Fischer, a British Canadian parliamentarian, stated that he thought the French Canadians needed Ontario and the other provinces more than the other way around. Fischer’s reasoning was that while Quebec had many resources, the rest of Canada had much more and did not have a tradition of “literary censorship” or backwards educational values. The violence had brought out not the strength of separatism but the strength of Canadian unity in its greatest form to point.

The Liberal Party’s success at the provincial level faded not too distant from its early successes in legislation. In 1966, Daniel Johnson led a slate of successful Union Nationale candidates to electoral victory over Jean Lesage and his Liberal counterparts in the Quebec provincial elections. While the Union Nationale hung in as the opposition party to the Liberals through the early 1960s, the reincarnation of Duplessis’ party was a painful sight to behold for diehard party members. Johnson was an ambivalent sort of leader, guiding his party through liberal and conservative policies with the changing tide of public opinion. The Union Nationale party only provided reassurance to rural citizens of Quebec, who had problems with the massive bureaucracy and overwhelming taxation of Quebec citizens. These rural voters, along with a growing number of various frustrated special interests, turned the tides in favor of the Union Nationale. However, the party was only an opposition party in name; the Quiet Revolution was not overturned in the period of new Union Nationale government and the bureaucratic machinery was maintained for the success of the Parti Quebecois in 1976.

Despite the several branches of opposition to the Quiet Revolution, the new sense of unity with Ontario’s ideals showed the success of the Liberal agenda in making Quebec a more Canadian province. This distinction was frustrating to some in the French population of Quebec, as well as small numbers outside of the province, but the majority approved of Quebec’s maintenance of their position in the Canadian federation. As well, those outside of the province in places like Manitoba and Saskatchewan decried the complaints of the French Canadians, asking why nine provinces should accommodate one and why they should proceed so fast with something so drastic. Several results of the Quiet Revolution have led to the calm nature of Canadian politics in 2004 and the decrease in secession talk.

First, the threat of secession and the rise of violence following the Quiet Revolution drove French Canadians away from many of the groups who seemed to promote the values of Quebecois. Those who fled from these secessionist groups were worried that to the rest of Canada and the rest of the world, French Canadian values would be associated with violence and impudence. Because of this exodus, the move for independence in most forms became much more acute in size and fragmented into broader interpretations of what would encompass independence. These interpretations included Rene Levesque’s idea of sovereignty association, the idea of a new popular confederation, and federal legislation to give Quebec more control over economics. Despite the call of Charles de Gaulle in 1967 of “Vive le Quebec libre”, this statement became less important to French Canadians concerned with becoming global citizens.

The second result of the Quiet Revolution was the acceptance of interconnected provincial and federal planning and the adoption by Quebec of traditionally Anglophonic policies. Secular tendencies in education, government, and economy had been characteristics of the British Canadian provinces since the Conquest. The Quiet Revolution swept away the last vestiges of French Catholic authority in government and established a rationalized education and economic authority. Individual rights had been the clarion call for British Canadian leaders, while collective rights were far more important to the French population and were important their legal code. As the British North American Act came about, the influence of British common law on Quebec became integral to the pressures between English and French for the next century. In the end, like many other policies and values, the French Canadians yielded to British Canadians by adopting similar legal codes and striving for federal unity.

Finally, the issue of bilingualism and biculturalism were addressed with the Quiet Revolution. The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism established the tone for a new policy of acceptance among English and French Canadian citizens by imploring provinces to officially accept both languages. The commission’s findings were evidently reflective of the general population, who were more willing to accept both languages than to engage in cultural conflict. Bumps in the road were inevitable and the language bill in 1976 (Bill 101) showed that the fault lines were still in existence between both sets of leaders. This particular bill guaranteed the primacy of the French language in Quebec by making French the official language of government in the province. The Canadian Supreme Court, however, struck this down in a series of decisions in the early 1980s, guaranteeing the mandate of bilingualism of the 1960s. The increase of immigration into Quebec and into Canada as a whole has made dealing with cultural and language issues paramount to the success of any provincial and federal government.

Throughout its history, Quebec has attempted in various forms to hold onto its French Canadian identity. With the British Conquest of the early 1760s, Quebec faced the challenge of a foreign threat making the French a conquered people. Resistance came in its biggest form in 1837 with the series of riots against British economic domination. The dramatic failure of this revolt led to the refining of French Canadian demands by 1867. With the act of confederation, the new issues between French and English were not issues of which of the two cultures would be successful in class warfare but over how to deal with a bicultural environment within one nation. The Quiet Revolution went away from the traditional French Canadian characteristics of rural Catholicism to deal with issues of the modern world. New challenges of the world market, immigration, and how best to govern within the confines of federal/provincial relations became the concern of leaders in Quebec, Ontario, and throughout Canada.

The Quiet Revolution was the final success of Quebec’s assimilation into the British Canadian schema, with French Canadian leaders yielding to the overwhelming tide of capitalism and secularization. With the failure of a 1980 referendum of sovereignty association, along with the failure of a similar referendum in 1995, Quebec has stated in no uncertain terms that they do not want to leave the rest of Canada. The Quiet Revolution brought about this acceptance of Quebec’s role in Canada and embraced the new multicultural environment of one united nation. The calm sea of modern Canadian unity has come from a short history of conflict and conciliation fought on battlefields such as the conference table and the newspaper editorial.