Ex-Premier Reveals Saskatchewan, in 1995, Mulled Secession on Its Own as Quebec Independence Vote Neared

Roy Romanow, the former New Democratic Party (N.D.P.) premier of Saskatchewan, confirmed this week that in 1995, as Quebec prepared to hold a referendum on independence from Canada, a secret cabinet “‘constitutional contingencies’ committee” met to plot possible moves in case the result was a “yes.”  One of those possibilities was for Saskatchewan to proceed with its own secession.  The committee’s existence had just been revealed in excerpts, in the Canadian news magazine Maclean’s, of a forthcoming book by the journalist Chantal Hébert titled The Morning After: The Quebec Referendum and the Day that Almost Was.

The committee included Romanow (pictured at the top of this article), two or three cabinet members, and his minister for intergovernmental affairs, Ed Tchorzewski.  “It would have been absolutely foolish to talk about it at the time,” Romanow told the Saskatoon Star–Phoenix this week, when asked about the need for secrecy at the time, adding, “You had to have the committee meeting in secret; otherwise, you’d have headlines [like], ‘Romanow considering pulling out.’  The key word is ‘contingency’—contingent on a successful vote for Quebec separation.  What were our options?”

In addition to secession, the secret committee mulled possibilities such as annexation by the United States—something also openly contemplated at the time in the Maritime Provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, which would have been cut off by a Quebec secession from the rest of Canada.  But Romanow says now that neither that nor independence were considered by the committee viable.  As he put it this week, “ The separation idea simply was not on. It would not make sense economically and socially,” he said.  “It would offend everything with respect to my personal history.  I didn’t go through patriation and the Night of the Long Knives and the Charlottetown accord for that—these are things I believe in passionately, so [secession] was simply not on.”

The flag of Saskatchewan

More likely, if the referendum had succeeded, would have been a strengthening of ties with British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, and the northern territories, Romanow said, mainly because the remaining parts of Canada would have to find new geopolitical orientations.  As the Star–Phoenix summarized this thinking, “If Quebec separated, Atlantic Canada would be ‘an island,’ Ontario would likely strengthen its ‘north–south’ economic partnerships, and the western provinces would be on their own.”  In the event, the secessionist cause lost by a handful of votes.

For the most part, Saskatchewan has been very nearly the least separatist among Canada’s Anglophone provinces.  Alberta is the most independent-minded, although their main separatist party, the Western Block Party (W.B.P.), hung up its hat (pictured above) earlier this year (as discussed at the time in this blog).

The 1995 referendum was a nail-biter for all Canadians.

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  The book, which contains dozens of maps and over 500 flags, is now in the layout phase and should be on shelves, and available on Amazon, by early fall 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even though you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook.]

Related articles from this blog:

“Tense Standoff Eases as Gitxsan Nation Suspends Evictions from British Columbia Land; All Hinges on Aug. 25th Talks” (Aug. 2014)
“Deadline in British Columbia for ‘Eviction’ from Gitxsan Aboriginal Lands Arrives; Chiefs Plan ‘Direct Action’” (Aug. 2014)
“Gitxsan Chiefs in British Columbia Serve Eviction Notice on Fishermen, Railroads, Logging Industry across Vast Territory” (Aug. 2014)

“‘Western Canada’ Separatists Throw in the Towel” (Feb. 2014)

“Quebec Free-Love Saucer Cult Joins Muslim Headscarf Debate, Suggests Censoring Religious Texts” (Oct. 2013)

“Separatists Challenge Canadian Tolerance with Proposed Islamic-Headscarf Ban” (Sept. 2013)

“Vancouver Islanders Hope to Be Canada’s 11th Province—and Its Greenest” (Aug. 2013)

“Which Part of Wet’suwet’en Territory Don’t They Understand?” (Nov. 2012)

“Quebec Cracks Down on Crimes against the State—Like Playing Hopscotch in English” (Nov. 2011)

“Western Canada” Separatists Throw in the Towel

It ended quietly.  On January 28th, Canada’s electoral commission officially delisted the Western Block Party (W.B.P.) as a registered political party after it failed to raise the 250 necessary signatures.  Originally founded in the 1980s as the Western Concept Party, the Western Block advocated the secession of Canada’s four southwesternmost provinces—British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba—as a separate nation, generally envisioned under the name West Canada or Western Canada.  A Republic of Western Canada, with under 10 million people, would be the 12th-largest country in the world and an oil-exporting giant.

Doug Christie, wearing his trademark 37.85411784-liter hat

The W.B.P.’s founder, who died in March 2013, signaling the decline of the movement, was Doug Christie, a Winnipeg-born attorney in Victoria, B.C., who became notorious for defending neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, and others in free-speech cases.  In the United States, this would be considered a moral stance, but in Canada, where most citizens are content to have their government decide which kinds of political speech are acceptable, the public presumes that only those with actual far-right sympathies would take on such a case.  Christie, though he swore up and down he was not a neo-Nazi, was indeed an ultra-conservative, and he tapped into many of the resentments rural western Canadians tend to have for government, urbanites, East Coasters, indigenous people, and, of course, French Canadians.  In fact, Western Canadian separatism has tended to rise and fall with separatism in Quebec.  But now, even though Québécois nationalism is on a bit of an upswing, with the Parti Québécois (P.Q.) in power in that province, it has taken on an intolerant, Islamophobic tinge (as discussed in this blog).  Maybe it is harder to rouse Francophobia on the prairies when Canadian sovereigntists tack hard to the right.  Or maybe it turned out to be only Christie that was holding the W.B.P. together, and that Western Canada never really made sense as an idea for a separate nation.  It’s also true that the rise of western-based Tea Party–style movements like the Reform Party in the 1990s stole a lot of votes from western separatists.

One proposal for a partitioned Canada.
Something tells me Newfies won’t like this plan.

Another separatist party, the Western Canada Independence Party (W.C.I.P.) (a.k.a. Western Canada Party, or W.C.P.), fizzled out in the late 1980s, though it still has some branch operations at the provincial level.  Its vision was a new nation consisting of the four western provinces listed above, plus the territories of Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut.  This would leave nothing in Canada but Quebec, Ontario, and the Maritimes.  The W.C.I.P. plan made even less sense than the W.B.P.’s.  If Christie and the W.B.P. had erred in thinking that the liberals of Vancouver and Victoria, B.C., would share the conservative views of Albertans and Saskatchewanites, it was a bigger error to think that the indigenous voters who dominate Canada’s north would be a good fit too.

The current flag of Alberta

There have been other separatist movements in western Canada.  The Separation Party of Alberta (S.P.A.) changed its name last year to the Alberta First Party and no longer makes independence a major part of its platform.  Alberta, with its oil riches and large religious conservative population (including communities of Mormons descended from those fleeing persecution in the U.S. in the 19th century), has earned it the name “the Texas of Canada.”  Its natural resources guarantee that it would be economically viable on its own, though landlocked.

The flags of Vancouver (the city), Canada, and B.C.

And in the 1950s and ’60s, British Columbia’s far-right-wing premier, W. A. C. “Wacky” Bennett, wanted to make B.C. its own nation—and take Yukon with him when he pulled out of the union.  Today, B.C. is politically divided between its liberal coastal rainforests and cities and its conservative interior deserts and tundra.

The sun finally set
on W. A. C. “Wacky” Bennett

What is left of active separatism in western Canada is actually mostly left-wing, not right-wing.  Last year (as reported at the time in this blog) saw the emergence of the Vancouver Island Province Initiative (V.I.P.I.), which aims to make the large island that contains B.C.’s capital, Victoria, into Canada’s 11th province.  Another group, the Sovereign State of Vancouver Island Party (S.S.V.I.P.), wants to take the island, which has long been ground-zero of the environmentalist and indigenous battle against clearcut logging, into its own republic.  In some ways it is an outgrowth of the quixotic, ecology-based movement to create an independent Cascadia from (in one common version) B.C. plus the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington.  But these movements are even more fringe than the W.B.P. once was.

This was the flag of Vancouver Island,
when it was a separate British colony in pre-Canada days.

For now, at least, whatever happens in Quebec, Canada’s western flank is likely to stay in one piece.  A regional feeling of nationhood never really did gel.  There was never even an agreed-upon flag.  Look at the “Republic of Western Canada” swag pictured at the top of this article.  The only flag shown is a Union Jack.  It’s as if all the movement could come up with as a distinguishing cultural feature was: “French not spoken here.”

Related articles:
“Quebec Cracks Down on Crimes against the State—Like Playing Hopscotch in English” (November 2011)
“Which Part of Wet’suwet’en Territory Don’t They Understand?” (November 2012)
“Vancouver Islanders Hope to Be Canada’s 11th Province—and Its Greenest” (August 2013)
“Separatists Challenge Canadian Tolerance with Proposed Islamic-Headscarf Ban” (September 2013)

“Quebec Free-Love Saucer Cult Joins Muslim Headscarf Debate, Suggests Censoring Religious Texts” (October 2013)

[You can read more about West Canada, Vancouver Island, and many other separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]