The oppressed nationalities, who make up more than one-third of the population, have developed historically on Canadian soil over hundreds of years. They have kept their distinct national characteristics, thus distinguishing themselves from the English-Canadian nation which makes up the majority.
But when you listen to the politicians, they present a totally different picture of Canada.
Until the day he died, former Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker held that there was only one single Canadian nation. Trudeau, Liberal Prime Minister for 11 years, has for a long time spoken of the “two founding races,” while others emphasize the “multicultural” aspect of Canada. Then there are those politicians like James Richardson, former Liberal defence minister, who uphold a radical and ultra-chauvinist line of thought ridiculing all that is not English-Canadian.
These are just some of the better known theories on the national question in Canada. Though they may seem different in appearance, they are nevertheless based on the same analysis. They justify the English-Canadian nation’s domination over the other nationalities. They justify the assimilation of these nationalities into the English-Canadian nation, or at least, if these nationalities remain apart, why they should not demand anything more from Canadian society.
The most common and widely propagated theory justifying national oppression was well summed up by John Diefenbaker when he said: “Freedom and equality for all Canadians, however humble their lot in life and whatever their racial origin. One Canada, one Nation.” [1]
This old “prairie lion,” Conservative federal government leader from 1957 to 1963, fought all his life to defend this theory of one Canadian nation into which all would blend, be they English-Canadian, Quebecois, Acadian, Indian or Metis. This position appears to promote equality, basically saying “let us forget our differences, we are all Canadians and we are all equal.”
But let’s look at the facts. How can an Indian believe he has “equal opportunities” when unequal treaties have historically forced him to give up his territorial rights [2]; when the Canadian government has violated the treaties with regard to hunting and fishing rights, natural resources and the protection of Indian peoples#8217; health; when still today the rights to two million square miles of land, half of Canada’s territory, are at stake in negotiations between Native peoples and the Canadian government. The Canadian state couldn’t care less about Native peoples’ rights to their ancestral lands. It thinks it can just buy up these lands cheap and proceed with northern development plans, like the natural gas pipeline which threatens the Yukon Indians. If this is what “equal opportunities” amounts to, Native people are not interested. The Inuit at Baker Lake, who don’t want any mining exploration or development at Keewatin in the Northwest Territories to be undertaken before their land claims have been settled, are making this clear.
Do New Brunswick Acadians have “equal opportunities” when their access to education is limited? The figures show that 81% of New Brunswick Acadians have grade ten education or less. For the province’s population as a whole the figure drops to 68%.[3]
Can Black Canadians pride themselves on being able to exercise rights like those of the white population when racism and discrimination constantly bear down on them?
These few examples give the lie to the “equal opportunities” in our country, whatever one’s ethnic origin.
Why then do so many politicians, sociologists and historians [4] try to cover up this injustice by preaching the existence of one single Canadian nation?
It allows them to deny the existence of a dominant nation and different oppressed nationalities in Canada, and whitewashes the capitalist class of its responsibility for this state of affairs.
The truth of the matter is that the basis for the inequality between the country’s different nationalities lies in a systematic policy of the Canadian ruling class. When it consolidated its power at the time of Confederation in 1867, the bourgeoisie favoured the English-Canadian nation over the other nationalities, making it a nation dominating the others.
On the other hand the capitalists subjugated the French-speaking nationalities, going so far as to deny Quebec its political rights as a nation. They subjected Native peoples to policies of oppression and deprived Black Canadians and Chinese Canadians of their democratic rights. Meanwhile, they gave privileges to the English-Canadian nation, maintaining great-nation chauvinism within its ranks, in other words promoting the idea that English-Canadians are superior to other nationalities.
The ruling class’s systematic policy of developing and maintaining great-nation chauvinism while oppressing the other nationalities had an objective basis. It was necessary in order to establish their market across the country, buy the labour of the oppressed nationalities at bargain prices, and force these workers to work in English.
They thus secured themselves major economic prizes, pillaging the resources of the lands stolen from the Indians and imposing low wages and inferior working conditions on the oppressed nationalities. They also assured themselves political advantages, profiting from the discord and tension this policy of oppression creates among working people to remain in power.
Confederation thus marked the beginning of the inequality between nationalities, an inequality established and fostered by the Canadian ruling class. But to cover up the English-Canadian nation’s domination over other nationalities, those who promote “a single equal Canadian nation” present Confederation as the catalyst which gave rise to this nation.
Diefenbaker wrote:
... as to Confederation, I believe it was an inspired conception that, over the years, produced a strong, free and prosperous nation. I conceive it to be the duty of all Canadians, from whatever racial stock they may spring, to cherish the spirit of Confederation, maintain its provisions and build on the vast possibilities for a full and rewarding life that it presents to men of goodwill. Confederation is Canada.[5]
In this “ideal and perfect” Canada, the demands of oppressed peoples have no place.
Logically, if we are all part of the same nation, all having equal rights, then what are the oppressed nationalities complaining about? Therefore, Quebec has no right to demand its right to self-determination, the Indians and Inuit are not justified in demanding their territorial rights, nor are the Acadians and French Canadians justified in wanting French schools in their communities.
The “one Canada, one nation” theory thus clearly expresses the view point of the dominant nation, denying that other nationalities even exist and as a result justifying their oppression This is the expression of great-nation chauvinism, which praises the superiority of the English-Canadian nation over the other nationalities and sweeps aside their legitimate demands.
Lenin explained the nature of great-Russian chauvinism, Russia being the dominant nation, in these terms:
The policy of oppressing nationalities is one of dividing nations. At the same time it is a policy of systematic corruption of the people’s minds.[6]
The theory of one single Canadian nation is identical to the “melting-pot” theory in the US. This melting-pot concept is widely used by American sociologists to deny the existence of national oppression in the US, especially the national oppression of Blacks and Puerto Ricans. It is used to promote the assimilation of all nationalities to the American majority.
This melting-pot theory has an objective basis. It is true that in the US the rapid development of capitalism led to the emergence of an American nation out of the white settlers and immigrants of different ethnic origins.
In 1917 Lenin explained:
We know that the especially favourable conditions in America for the development of capitalism and the rapidity of this development have produced a situation in which vast national differences are speedily and fundamentally, as nowhere else in the world, smoothed out to form a single “American” nation. [7]
But alongside this phenomenon exists the increasing oppression of vast national groups, such as Black Americans, who were not assimilated to the American nation. This is why Lenin also explained:
In the United States, the Negroes (and also the Mulattos and Indians) account for only 11.1%. They should be classed as an oppressed nation, for the equality... was in many respects increasingly curtailed in the chief Negro areas (the South) in connection with the transition from the progressive, pre-monopoly capitalism of 1860-70 to the reactionary, monopoly capitalism (imperialism) of the new era.” [8]
The situation Lenin describes also applies to Canada. The English Canadian nation was also formed through the assimilation of white European immigrants of various origins. (see p. 103)
But it wasn’t one “single Canadian nation” that was formed, one vast melting-pot of all the inhabitants of Canada – Indian, Metis or French-Canadian. On the contrary, the development of capitalism and imperialism in our country accentuated the oppression of the nationalities, just as it did in the U.S.
Another widely-spread theory limits the natonal question in Canada to a question of “two founding races,” “two founding groups,” the English Canadians and the French Canadians. Though more subtle in appearance, this theory is nevertheless just as dangerous as the theory of one single nation. Pierre Elliot Trudeau, ex-Prime Minister and today leader of the opposition, is one of the staunchest defenders of this theory.
It was on the basis of this theory that Trudeau established his bilingualism policy with the Official Languages Act in 1969.
Bilingualism promotes a so-called equality between English and French in Canada. But in fact it only serves to hide oppression and assimilation. In practice it means that French-speaking Canadians must learn English and become bilingual. [9]
The Federation of French Canadians outside Quebec talks about the application of bilingualism in the federal public service in these terms: “The results are pretty awful. The government’s bilingualism programs (language instruction for civil servants) have served to “effectively bilingualize” only 5% of English-speaking civil servants and 66% of French-speaking civil servants.” [10]
Moreover the official bilingualism policy works on the assumption that all other languages spoken in Canada, like the Indian languages, for example, are inferior to English and French.
It is this same purely colonialist point of view, contemptuous of Native people, which underlies the theory of “two founding races” and “two founding peoples” in Canada.
Because, contrary to what Trudeau may think, neither the English nor the French Canadians are the true founders of this country. They were long preceded by the Indians and Inuit, living on territories they justly consider to be their own.
It was at their expense, through the exploitation of their labour, that colonialists got rich off the fur trade and the plunder of their lands.
What about the Metis, born of the intermarriage between white settlers and Indian women, the Chinese Canadians and Black Canadians, who for generations built this country? Aren’t they just as much the founding peoples of Canada? Don’t they also have specific rights to defend?
On the surface the theory of “two founding races” appears to be less chauvinist than the “one nation” theory, since it recognizes the existence of French Canadians and Quebecois. In reality, however, it serves just as much to justify the stifling of struggles of the French-Canadian minorities and the Quebecois for their rights.
By putting the “two founding groups” on the same footing, this theory claims that both were treated equally and that French Canadians and Quebecois have had an equal chance in determining the destiny of the country. But the fact is this “equality” has never really existed. The proof of this the battles being fought today by the French-Canadian minorities in the mainly English-speaking provinces for the right to an education in their language, the right to a trial in French.
The Quebec people may be one of Trudeau’s “founding groups”, but there is a vast gap between acknowledging that and acknowledging their rights as a nation, a gap that Trudeau will never be willing to close. Like all the politicians of the bourgeoisie, he has always refused to recognize the national rights of the Quebecois, going so far as to send the army into their territory during the 1970 October Crisis in the fear that the entire Quebecois population would rise up.
For Trudeau, national struggles are “rustic” Even before coming to power, when he was ’a lawyer and professor, Trudeau had clear-cut ideas on the national question in Canada, ideas he put into practice as prime minister. His writings and conferences did not hide his hatred for the movements demanding rights for the oppressed nationalities. In early 1964, he wrote:
It is possible that nationalism may still have a role to play in backward societies where the status quo is upheld by irrational and brutal forces...
But in the advanced societies... nationalism will have to be discarded as a rustic and clumsy tool. [11]
In labelling national movements “rustic”, and by implication “reactionary”, Trudeau aims to totally discredit the justness of the oppressed nationalities’ struggles for their rights. [12] It’s not hard to understand why. National oppression is one of the pillars on which the ruling class’s power rests, and each battle for national rights shakes this structure.
The Native peoples’ land claims are obviously “clumsy and reactionary,” as far as the capitalists are concerned. Because as far as capitalism goes, “progress” means being able to develop without any obstacles and being free to take over lands and pillage them.
Back in 1880, the Metis who demanded their territorial rights and their own provincial government, were considered by the capitalists to be an obstacle to their development in the West. Today, Native peoples who demand full recognition of their rights to their ancestral lands are considered by the state to be a barrier to the pillage of northern resources.
But from the point of view of Canada’s oppressed nationalities and working people, the Native peoples’ land claims are entirely justified. These lands have been in their possession for generations, and they still have absolute rights over them. There is, therefore, nothing “clumsy” about the nationalism shown by the Indians and Inuit when they defend their lands.
There is another aspect to this as well. Doubly oppressed by the capitalists, the nationalities fight them with that much more vigour. In claiming their legitimate rights, the nationalities strike at the same enemy the working class fights every day.
In its struggle the working class must pay attention to the great fighting potential of the oppressed nationalities. They represent allies which cannot be overlooked in the struggle to weaken, isolate and finally defeat the exploiters.
This is a question of strategic importance for the revolutionary battle. It may mean the difference between victory and defeat for socialism in Canada. In winning the oppressed nationalities over to its side, the working class welds a firm alliance, based on common anger and militancy against capitalist exploitation. This alliance can make it possible to deliver the decisive blow to the handful of exploiters who rule our country and maintain the various forms of oppression.
It is true, however, that some national leaders try to keep their nationality’s struggle isolated from that of the working class. They try to develop the national movement to achieve their own political goals. This narrow nationalism is a real danger within the national movements, as we have seen in Quebec. The Parti Quebecois rode to power on the just national feelings of the Quebec people and their hatred for the oppression they have suffered. Now, ensconced in power, the PQ asks the people to tighten their belts for the “good of the nation” in order to build up the Quebec capitalists. This kind of nationalism, which betrays the interests of the working class, must be resolutely fought. The working class must tear these national struggles away from their bourgeois leaders and transform them into a force which fights against the capitalists.
Another widely propagated theory presents Canada as a “mosaic” of different ethnic groups, each one different from the others, all enriching Canadian society with their varied cultural contributions. The Canadian identity is thus welded together out of all these groups, whose origin is as much British – like the Irish and the Scots – as it is Ukrainian, Italian, French, etc. Even the Indians and Inuit are seen as ethnic groups.
Starting in 1965 this theory became the underpinning of Liberal government policy, following the work of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. This was the origin of the idea of Canadian “multiculturalism,” or “unity in diversity.”
As a conscious policy of the capitalist class, this theory serves as justification for denying the basic political rights of the oppressed nationalities. In practice it hides the differences between the various oppressed nationalities, who have been historically constituted in Canada for many years, and the Immigrant groups, who either formed or have integrated into one or the other of the already existing nations. [13]
As we shall see when we look at each of Canada’s oppressed nationalities, many factors are involved in the development of a national minority, including historical and social conditions, resistance to forced assimilation, and, for the Indians, Inuit, Black and Chinese Canadians, discrimination and racism. These are all factors that led to some national groups being kept apart from the dominant nation, and which historically have forced them to develop separately.
But most of Canada’s European “ethnic groups” developed quite differently. The great majority rapidly integrated into the English-Canadian nation.
By Confederation in 1867, the great majority of residents of the new Canadian provinces [14], who had previously developed separately, were gradually being assimilated into the English-Canadian nation.
After this, and until after the Second World War, the Canadian bourgeoisie’s selective immigration policy allowed a large number of white Europeans (preferably British) entry into Canada.
Thoses who were not of British origin – Germans, Ukrainians, Poles– were forced to work in English and send their children to English schools. As a result, one or two generations were enough to assimilate these immigrants into the dominant nation.
With its multiculturalism policy, the Canadian state gives the impression that it values Canadians’ varied cultural backgrounds and is developing them. [15]
The reality is that the state uses the just desires of immigrants to have their own cultural institutions and to transmit their culture and language to their children to oppose them to the legitimate rights of the oppressed nationalities. The policy of multiculturalism is used to deny the rights of the oppressed nationalities that have been historically constituted in Canada, to deny them their political rights, like the right to regional autonomy where they are concentrated, and their right to an education in their language.
The state’s method for denying the oppressed nationalities their rights is a simple one: according to the multiculturalism idea, everyone – whether Indian, Polish or Ukrainian – belongs to one or another ethnic group, and why should one group have more rights than another?
When Franco-Ontarians, for instance, demand schools in their own language in order to resist assimilation, supporters of multiculturalism will say it is out of the question, arguing, “Why shouldn’t other ethnic groups equally have the right to public education in their language?” They conclude that Franco-Ontarians should send their children to English schools just like any other Canadians of ethnic origin.
Ethnic communities should get financial help from the state to develop their culture, to set up cultural centers where their children would have access to books in Polish or Ukrainian and take courses to learn their language. All this does not come into conflict with the right, for example, of Franco-Ontarians for public education in French.
So the bourgeoisie doesn’t use multiculturalism to really favour Canadians’ varied cultural origins, nor to defend their rights. It uses it as a weapon to assimilate the oppressed nationalities, a way of denying them their political rights.
Hiding beneath a policy that appears to be humane and in favour of Canada’s national groups is blatant hypocrisy and a systematic policy of trampling on the rights of Canada’s oppressed nationalities.
Alongside these “official” theories – one Canadian nation, two “founding nations,” and multiculturalism defended by the politicians in power to justify their attitude towards the nationalities, other voices can be heard. These ultra-reactionary voices aim to build up chauvinist and racist prejudice against the nationalities and turn Canadian working people against each other.
Bilingual Today, French Tomorrow, a book by retired Canadian army colonel J. V. Andrews links hysterical chauvinism with morbid paranoia. According to Andrews, Trudeau is behind a vast. “conspiracy” to eliminate English Canadians by “frenchifying” the whole country.
“The business of two cultures is equally pure baloney,” he writes. “There is nothing that has come out of Quebec or French Canada that I can think of that is either particularly distinctive or particularly desirable.”[16]
Andrews also implies that French Canadians have flooded into the federal state apparatus, that they have taken over the civil service. He feeds the widespread argument that French Canadians have “stolen” the best civil service jobs and that English Canadians are now confined to low-level positions.
French Canadians, he writes, start working for the Canadian government “at fantastic salaries, with bilingual bonuses and with annuity schemes that are as good as any in the world.”[17]
Statistics demolish this argument as well. The Federation des Francophones hors Quebec (Federation of French Canadians outside Quebec) has revealed, on the basis of Treasury Board figures, that more than 17,000 bilingual positions remain vacant and that in provinces other than Quebec, bilingual positions are majoritarily filled by English Canadians, unilingual English Canadians at that. For example, English-speaking civil servants occupy 74% of bilingual positions in Nova Scotia.
Where is this French-Canadian invasion so loudly decried by Andrews?
In the same vein as Andrews, we find James Richardson, former Liberal Defence Minister and Winnipeg millionaire who walked out of the Trudeau cabinet in 1976, slamming the door behind him. He reproached Trudeau with giving too much importance to Quebec and giving in to its demands.
Richardson was the founder of one of the most chauvinist groups in the country at the beginning of 1979, spreading anti-French feeling through ads in the big daily papers. Its name and its slogan? “Canadians for One Canada,” and one might add, for one language too – English!
Richardson maintains that Quebec should be bilingual and the rest of Canada unilingually English. Needless to say, the country’s French-speaking minorities, the Acadians, Franco-Ontarians or French Canadians in B.C., should just assimilate without a whisper.
Richardson justifies this radical suggestion with the bogie of the “French fact” threatening the very existence of the English language and community.
This is the type of prejudice the bourgeoisie uses to spread its great-nation chauvinism, the idea that the other nationalities are inferior and “worthless” compared to the English-Canadian nation, to divide the Canadian working people. Aren’t their claims that Quebec and French-Canadian culture are “pure baloney” and that the French-Canadian minorities are destined for assimilation the perfect justification for national oppression?
Lately, we have seen a strong resurgence of hate-filled and racist propaganda against non-white immigrants.
A case in point is the recently-released book Immigration, the Destruction of English-Canada by Vancouver Sun columnist Doug Collins. He claims that the “invasion” of coloured immigrants “disturbs” Canada’s reputation and threatens to wipe out the English-Canadian nation. He claims that third-world immigrants who come to Canada are nothing but “pimps, thieves, swindlers and crooks of all types” who “enter the country laughing.” [18]
Peter Worthington, editor-in-chief of another daily, the Toronto Sun, echoed this odious racism when he wrote last August: “The flood of third-world immigrants will destroy traditional white English Canada.”
The recent arrival of the “boat people,” the Vietnamese forced out of their country by the reactionary policies of their government, stirred up another wave of racism, this time from the National Citizens Coalition. This group, whose board of directors includes executives from MacMillan-Bloedel (Canadian Pacific controls 13.4% of its shares) and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, took out a full-page ad in Toronto’s Globe and Mail to spread its racist propaganda.
Brandishing the threat that the arrival of third-world immigrants will wipe out English and white Canada is very useful to the bourgeoisie. Especially in these times of growing economic crisis and unemployment, the capitalists use immigrants as scapegoats, blaming them for the country’s woes in order to sidetrack the people’s anger. This propaganda is a tool they cleverly use to divide the working people.
Throughout Canadian history, the capitalists have used the tool of division and racism many times. During the Second World War, Canadian citizens of Japanese origin were robbed of their belongings and locked up in veritable concentration camps right here in Canada, while a vile campaign was unleashed to turn public opinion against the “Japanese threat.”
The Komogata Maru incident in 1914 is another example of the blatant racism that the Canadian state reserved – and still does –for East Indian immigrants, once again in the name of “preserving our country.”
Whether it is the theory of one Canada, of the two founding groups, of Canadian multiculturalism, or the openly hateful and racist brand of propaganda, all these theories propagated by the ruling class amount to the same thing. They deny the existence of oppressed nationalities in Canada and try to stifle the nationalities’ struggles while denying immigrants their democratic rights.
All these theories have one goal: to justify the oppression of over one-third of the population in the eyes of Canadians and thus build barriers, based on ignorance and prejudice, between the workers of the different nationalities in order to protect the power of the capitalist class.
Exposing the chauvinist ideas which are spread by the politicians, newspapers and other publications, and are therefore taken up by the people, is an essential task. This task will be all the more important in the coming year with the Quebec referendum approaching. Anti-Quebecois, chauvinist propaganda is already being spread by groups like the Pro-Canada Foundation [19] and is sure to intensify in the coming months.
What is at stake in this struggle against great-nation chauvinism is the unity of the multinational Canadian working class. This unity, so essential to the working class, can only be built on the basis of English Canadian workers’ recognition of the rights of oppressed nationalities and support for their just demands. Because, as Karl Marx, the founder of scientific socialism, stated: “A nation that oppresses another cannot itself be free.”
[1] These are the last words in One Canada, Memoirs of the Right Honorable John G. Diefenbaker, Macmillan Publishers, 1977.
[2] The treaties the government has imposed on the Indians are very explicit on their elimination of territorial rights. Most contain the following clause: “By this document, the said Indians cede, give up, hand over and forever concede their rights, titles, and privileges, whatever they may be, over these territories to the government of the Dominion of Canada, her Majesty the Queen and her successors...” (our translation)
For more on the Indian treaties and their violation by the Canadian government, we recommend the book, Native Rights in Canada, Peter A. Cumming and Neil H. Nickenberg, Editors, General Publishing.
On Quebec’s Native people, see Destins d’Amerique: les autochtones et nous, Editions de l’Hexagone, 1975. (In French only).
[3] These figures, along with others equally revealing, can be found in a publication of the Federation des Francophones hors Quebec, Les Heritiers de Lord Durham,” Vol. 1.
[4] In particular the well-known Canadian historian, Donald Creighton, who presents this point of view in his many books and publications.
[5] John G. Diefenbaker, op. cit., Volume 3, p. 217.
[6] Lenin, National Equality, Collected Works, Vol. 20, p. 237.
[7] Lenin, Statistics and Sociology, Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 276.
[8] op. cit., p. 275.
[9] Statistics prove that the policy of bilingualism is a similar farce. According to the 1971 census, of the 14% of the Canadian population which is bilingual, over half (57%) live in Quebec. Moreover, 87% of bilingual Canadians live in Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick, where 96 % of the country’s French Canadians are concentrated. Only 3.1 % of people of non-French-speaking origin speak both languages.
[10] Les Heritiers de Lord Durham, Vol. 1, p. 110
[11] “Federalism, Nationalism and Reason,” in The Future of Canadian Federalism. University of Toronto, University of Montreal Presses, 1965.
[12] Trudeau is not alone in attacking the movement of the oppressed nationalities. Among self-avowed “leftist” groups, the “In Struggle” group doesn’t hide its chauvinist position. In one of its pamphlets IS stated: “In our epoch, the national movement in our country has nothing revolutionary about it.” (Uphold the Revolutionary Unity of the Workers of all Nations and National Minorities in Canada, March 1978).
In another text they write: “The Quebec nationalist movement, far from being an anti-imperialist movement, is a reactionary and pro-imperialist movement. (The CCL(ML), the voice of social chauvinism in Canada, Feb. 1979, our translation and emphasis). Here In Struggle is talking about the Quebec national movement and it reasons as follows: starting from the fact that the national movement in Quebec is presently being led by the nationalist bourgeoisie, which seeks to use it to further its own aims, IS concludes that the movement is in itself reactionary and should therefore be rejected.
With such revolutionary-sounding phrases IS tries to discourage the proletariat from taking the national movement away from the bourgeoisie’s control and turning it into a revolutionary force. IS thus isolates the proletariat and tries to block it from building a powerful revolutionary united front around itself. Lastly, it abandons and betrays the struggle against national oppression in both the short and long term.
[13] This cannot be applied to all immigrant groups. Immigrants who have recently arrived in Canada, for example, are going through a transition period. After a while, it will be possible to determine their development, ie. whether they will assimilate to another nationality, or themselves constitute a nationality (in the Marxist definition).
[14] They were of Irish, Scottish, or German origin. Others were former American loyalists.
[15] In fact this is nothing but hypocrisy. In practice the Canadian state applies an ultra-reactionary policy towards third-world immigrants, including its immigration law, C-24, which removes all immigrants’ political rights and constantly threatens them with deportation.
[16] BMG Publishers, p. 108.
[17] op. cit., p. 80.
[18] BMG Publishers, p. 42.
[19] The Pro-Canada Foundation is financed by about 100 monopolies, including crown corporations like Air Canada, the Canadian Development Corporation, as well as Dominion Bridge, Power Corporation, Bell Canada, Alcan and Abitibi Price. The Foundation organized a $60,000 campaign in Quebec with ads on TV, radio and billboards to spread its propaganda in favour of the federalist status-quo and create panic among English Canadians.