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Commentary: DE GAULLE, PARIS, AND THE FUTURE OF CANADA (2) R. D. MATHEWS Charles de Gaulle's reading of Canadian history is vulgar and inflammatory. He wishes to reach the vulgar (uninformed) portions of Quebec and France, to inflame the one to work for separation, the other to acquiesce in France's escalating encroachment upon Canadian affairs. He says in short that French-speaking Canadian£ are not free. He declares that their servitude is total and totally a function of Anglo-Saxon repression . He informs the world that France has been busy, but now will save the French people who are in Canada. The French know almost nothing of Canadian history. That is why the General gives a little false history lesson at the beginning of each major statement on Canada. And he is being successful. A young law student told me recently that the General is quite right in his stand. France had to give up all her colonies , the student said, why shouldn't Canada? In Paris action goes ahead as planned. Everything at the Elysee is clear. Truly significant opposition to de Gaulle's policy hasn't appeared in France and probably won't. It probably can't. For the simple but ironic reason that no man in France today is as free as every man in Canada is. In Canada, it seems, nothing is clear. Les "etats generaux du Canada fran9ais" met for four days in Montreal with the blessing of Daniel Johnson and the financial support of l'Union Nationale; and it declared for separation. Premier Johnson himself, at the premiers' meeting on the future of confederation, impressed everyone with his desire to save confederation. He moved some of the most intransigeant premiers to a new position on the negotiability of the constitution. But he is also reported to have said of de Gaulle's press conference demands that they were simply what the Quebec delegation had asked in the Journal of Canadian Studies conference. Moreover, he is reported to have said, glibly, that he would not engage himself, "clans ce qui lui semble une querelle privee entre M. Pearson et le general de Gaulle."1 Le Devoir claims that de Gaulle did nothing more than record the feelings of French-speaking Canadians and "predit l'avenement d'un Quebec souverain au sein de la Federation Canadienne."2 Even if one is willing to say with Devoir that de Gaulle said something else than what is, in fact, on the record, yet it still seems impossible to see how any confederation is possible which contains individual sovereign units, since an agreed handing away of certain sovereign powers is the distinctive quality of federal and confederal communities. Finally, Canada's external affairs minister, Paul Martin, made the quite incredible statement in Brussels after a chat with M. Couve de Murville (following the General's press conference ) that official relations between Canada and France "n'ont jamais ete meilleures." If Paul Martin misread de Gaulle's statements and the portents attached to them, the French generally seem to have had no doubt about the seriousness of de Gaulle's interference, although the press, overall, continues to show what might be called "The Lady Asquith syndrome." It will report statements, but its own comments, its balance of news serves to flatten out and break up criticism of de Gaulle. When Daniel Johnson declared on Luxembourg radio recently that separatism was not necessary and would not be the best thing for Canada, his statements were hardly noticed in the French papers. Of the press conference, as far as the Canada section is concerned, less attention has been paid than to the Montreal declarations. That is partly because the press conference was a package deal. Commentators had to concern themselves with the French economy, the Middle-East, Quebec, Poland, British problems and the Common Market. The statements by political opponents, though short, were usually quite clear. M. Guy Mollet, for instance, speaking for the Federation of the Left, said, "On se sent partage entre la tristesse et !'indignation. Le sort des Canadiens depend des Canadiens eux-memes."M. Lecanuet, 55 president of the "Centre democrate'', recorded an even stronger reaction...

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