Will Canada Fall Apart?

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Overview

There was an element of prescience in last month's meeting in Ottawa between President Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Both North American leaders praised the peaceful nature of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's handling of the political crisis in Lithuania, whose non-communist government had declared the Baltic state's independence from the Soviet Union.

But neither Bush nor Mulroney hinted at the increasing likelihood that Mulroney himself soon will face a similar dilemma. After a decade of relative calm in the historical conflict between Quebec's majority Francophone, or French-speaking, population and the English speakers who dominate the rest of Canada, Quebec separatism has flared once again. And this time, the province may well follow the example of Lithuania and other Soviet breakaway republics. “It's not as though we suddenly seem to have found ourselves thrust into this situation where there may be a separate Quebec,” says Maurice Mandale, senior economist of the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. “But I honestly think we're in a lot worse situation in this respect than we were in 1980 when the last thing of this kind emerged.”