New documents show repeated approaches by party to U.S. diplomat
By Robert Russo
Canadian Press
October 14, 1997
Representatives of René Lévesque's PQ government repeatedly approached a U.S. diplomat about Quebec joining the United States in the event of a nasty divorce from Canada, newly available documents say.
L. Michael Rives, a former U.S. consul-general in Montreal, suggested to the unidentified Parti Québécois representative that the United States wasn't interested in absorbing Quebec and advised the PQ to shelve independence.
Lévesque and a senior cabinet minister also provided regular and detailed briefings to a senior U.S. diplomat on the path of Quebec independence, a former foreign service officer said.
The revelations are contained in an unvarnished and often barbed series of recollections by U.S. diplomats who served in Canada from the 1930s to 1985.
The retired ambassadors, consuls and counsellors were interviewed by fellow U.S. foreign service officers over the past decade as part of a research and training project established by former state department officials.
Transcripts of the taped interviews are housed at Georgetown University and were made available to the Canadian Press.
Rives, who was posted in Montreal during the 1980 referendum campaign, said he told the PQ representative during an off-the-record conversation that he thought Quebec independence was ``absolutely stupid.''
``They kept saying to me, `Well, if worse comes to worst, we can always ask to join the United States.' I asked, `Are you sure we want you? You know, don't we have enough problems. . . ?' ''
Quebec's highly educated workforce and natural resources would likely mean the province could survive on its own but would be enfeebled, Rives said.
``But as I said to the man, `What you'll become in Quebec, you'll become like Senegal. You'll be a small unimportant country. As long as you're part of Canada, you're one of the two most important provinces in Canada and you're part of Canada, which is one of the five big powers in the economic sphere. If you break up Canada, Canada will be nothing and you'll be even less than Canada.' ''
The Parti Québécois continues to make good relations with the United States a cornerstone of its post-independence scenario.
Francis McNamara, consul-general in Quebec city from 1975 to 1979, said he was regularly kept informed of the PQ's plans on independence by Lévesque and Quebec's intergovernmental affairs minister of the day, Claude Morin.
``I was taken into their confidence, especially by Claude Moran (sic), who was their effective foreign minister . . . and by Lévesque himself. They told me what they were up to, what they wanted to do, how they were going to do it, in some detail, more than you would expect.''
For years rumours have circulated that the United States was preparing diplomatic, if not military, plans in the event of Quebec independence.
Officially, Washington favours a united Canada but stresses non-interference in the unity debate.
Unofficially, the transcripts suggest a U.S. disdain of Quebec independence.
No one made this clearer than Paul Robinson, the blustery U.S. ambassador to Canada from 1981 to 1985.
Canada's policy of two official languages made no sense to Americans, he said.
``Bilingualism is absurd as far as the United States is concerned.''
He thought Lévesque's democratic pursuit of separation would have made him a candidate for the noose south of the border.
``To me, it is treason,'' Robinson said of separation. ``I mean, if the governor of Illinois was saying the thing Lévesque said, we would hang him. And then we would try him later, I suppose.''
Robinson said he loathed Lévesque, the beloved father of the Quebec independence movement, because he refused to fight during World War II.
Lévesque's decision to duck a Remembrance Day ceremony in Quebec city in 1981 enraged Robinson. ``Lévesque was, I thought, a despicable man,'' he said.
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