Reddit reviews La Bataille de Londres. Dessous, secrets et coulisses du rapatriement constitutionnel (Essais documents) (French Edition)

Dissapointing. you where this close.

Probably the cognitive dissonance got hold on you and you defaulted to the standard federalist propanganda story of what happened and why.

Its easy to demonstrate that the version of event you said dosn't hold any water.

>Right, the answer to both of those questions is that the current state of affairs is much more preferable than continuing to have our Constitution be the responsibility of the British government.

Of course. but why the hurry? There was no hard deadline, the negociation could had waited untill the next morning... or even the next week, month. The only deadline was those given by the treat of Trudeau to go to westminster by himself without the provinces consent.

>Trudeau got most of the provinces to buy into this but the separatist Quebec government of the day wanted unreasonable concessions

That is false. Very false. On many different level.

First... "Concession"? "unreasonable"? Levesque was integral part of the negociation for the whole process, except the last few hours. He was even at one point the sole supporter of a proposition from Trudeau. Please read a somewhat neutral account of the event at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriation#The_conference

separatist? you dont seem to understand that Levesque was firstly a democrat. It was after the lost of the referendum, Levesque was willing to follow the will of the peoples and participate in canada, even if a great many of his minister disagreed. His attitude continued even after the patriation and was named "le beau risque" when he wanted to make an alliance with Mulroney in 1984.. Many of his minister prefered to leave instead of cooperating with a federal party. The PQ almost imploded and its gouvernemnt felt. Levesque had a high moral integrety, of the sort we dont see often.

Separatism had nothing to do with rené levesque position at the patriation negociation.

> that either the whole project would be scuttled or they could use the issue as a cudgel against federalists

You reverse cause and effect. At this point fo time, the federal as we know it didnt existed, and a lot of different proposal where on the table. Quebec was not the only one with different point of view.

Anyway, if the quebec position was only to give and advantage to separatist.. why didnt the next federalist quebec gouvernemnt signed right away? Why all the successive quebec gouvernemnt, separatist or federalist, didnt signed it? That proposition dosnt make any sense.

>Modern Canada isn't terribly concerned with the culture wars of the past few decades

we can all see that. The problem is that its not really just a culture war, its also a "balance of power" war. And the casuality are canada itself, because you dont want to fix problems for fear it would all crumble.

>and even Quebecers must be aware of the damage the constant sovereignty nonsense has caused their province (there's a reason Toronto's population and economy started to explode at the same time Montreal stagnated).

That statement is mostly false. Its off by at least 60 years. The start of the decline of Montreal occured after the first war, when the main canadian trade client shifted from britain/europe to the USA. Toronto was then better positionned than Montreal. The decline accelerated with the construction of the st-lawrence seaway in 1959. Its been argued that the decline of financial power in quebec (ruled exclusiveley from english peoples) directly lead to the quiet revolution of Jean Lesage.

Anyway, there where damage... But not at the scale some claim to. Those who migrated to the west of the river left an empty space for french-quebecker to finally be able to have social mobility... leading to the quiet revolution.

>The last time we tried to change the Constitution the vote came within a couple percentage points of tearing the nation apart

Yes, and you admitted why.

>Quite frankly it's not worth the risk to tinker with something that really isn't all that broken

... seriously? Who are you trying to convince? It is broken, the country is at a standstill for the last 30 years! When a guy like brad Wall say that building a pipeline is a "nation building exercise", it show how disunited the country really is.

>our country has much more important shit to deal with.

All the important shit require to open the constitution, so....

Lets go back to my original question no 2:

> how Trudeau convinced regions/provinces to sign this in the back of quebec? Those regions/provinces, by your admission, who don't play well together?

I dont know how is your french, but this book show in detail what really happened, by cross referencing the document of the foreign office of london and our conterpart in canada.

There is a lot in this book, and the sources are impossible to dismiss and are rock solid.

Trudeau manipulated/corrupted two supreme court justice (including the cheif justice!), and mixed the executive and judiciary; Lévesque would later remark: "In other words, Trudeau's goals might be unconstitutional, illegitimate, and even 'go against the principles of federalism,' but they were legal!".

London taugh the same as Levesque: the maneuver Trudeau used to get the patriation was like a "coup d'état".

bonus fact: London would had recognised a souverign quebec and taugh it was viable economically, both in 1980 and 1995.

But back at the Kitchen accord. Tatcher warned Trudeau that his plan to come to london with a unilateral proposition would be rejected but the brittish parliment, making his treat empty. Trudeau then played with the resentment and contempt of other provinces toward Levesque because levesque supported briefly a previous Trudeau proposition (you cant make that up...) to make the others provinces accept a compromise quickly. why quickly? because the provinces didnt knew the treat of unilateral patriation was empty, and felt pressured because the proposal Trudeau would had presented would force the provinces to campaign against the public will in a referendum, leading to political suicide.

the provinces accepted to lower their powers to make the deal quickly... deliberatly ignoring the objections of quebec that it would irremediably hinder quebec ability to protect and promote its language and culture. They've thrown Quebec and francophones under the bus for the sake of their political career/political parties. They sacrificed someone else future instead of some more of their own powers.

Quebec protested, but the treshold for "legitimacy" was left from the supreme court as an arbitrary decision... To be made by Trudeau. The same supreme court with the crooked chief justice.

The queen admitted her regret that quebec was excluded...

So there you have it, Your canada was built by deceit, lies, manipulation, and good old backstabbing. The provinces got "united" to prevent trudeau to gain too much, and ditched quebec specific need to achieve it. What a nice family!

Since then, each provinces got back to bickering and playing for themselves. Very uncanadian...

Canada unity is as much as risk from the english provinces than from quebec. Every provinces are independantist, quebec was just more vocal about it.