Con arguments

"Very blind are those who speak of the creation of a new nationality, strong and harmonious, on the northern bank of St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, and who are unaware of or denounce the major and providential fact that this nationality is already very well formed, that it is great, and growing unceasingly; that it cannot be confined to its current limits; that it has an irresistible force of expansion; that in the future it will be more and more made up of immigrants coming from all the countries of the world, no longer only from Europe, but soon of Asia, of which the overpopulation is five times more numerous and no longer has any other outfall than America; composed, says I, of all races of men, who, with their thousand religious beliefs, large mix of errors and truth, are all pushed by the Providence towards this common rendez-vous that will melt in unity and fraternity all of the human family." -- Louis-Joseph Papineau, 1867

Government of Canada

From United Empire, to United Dominion, to United Canada.

Not only is the federal government denying the very existence of the Québec political nation since 1867, it is also shamelessly using Quebecers' own tax money to finance its coast-t-coast nation-building project and fight Quebec's conflicting national aspirations. According to the adversaries of the independence, the Quebec polity, whose origin goes back to at least 1663, would be destined to remain the colony of another State forever.

• Government of Canada, a nice bilingual façade to everything it does
• Canadian Heritage Department, putting the federal state's flag all over Quebec for free
• The History of Canada's Constitutional Development, according to the Department of Intergovernmental affairs
• The Liberal Party of Canada, controlled a majority of the seats at the federal House of Commons for over 75 years with an average of less than 45% of the votes

Various organizations

These organizations are actively engaged in the nation-building project of the federal state, project which implies a battling against that old Quebec national sentiment that just won't die...

• Canadian Unity Council $$
• The Centre for Research and Information on Canada, under the auspice of the Canadian Unity Council
• The Dominion Institute, unity of the Dominion (at least they are not hiding the real name of this Canada)
• Uni.ca - Canadian Unity, "world's leader in the dissemination of information about Canadian unity", no less...
• Great Canadian Questions, funded by the Dominion Institute
• Operation Dialogue, a dialogue excluding those heretics who want to modify the constitution of Canada... linked to the Dominion Institute again

$$ = Funded by the Government of Canada, therefore in part by Quebecers' own tax money

Québec Bashing

Ignorance is Bliss?

Favorite targets

• PQ Leaders René Lévesque, Jacques Parizeau, Lucien Bouchard, Bernard Landry
• 19th century Conservative Catholic nationalist Lionel Groulx
• Free thinker and social democrat Yves Michaud who dared publicly state that Groulx was not antisemitic
• Quebec's national symbols, its flag, its national holiday
• Quebec's institutions, its representative democracy, its language policy, its immigration policy, its economic policy
• Quebec's worker movement, its pro-independence unions, its spirit of solidarity

Techniques

Political warfare in its modern incarnation...

• Demonization
• argument from repetition (argumentum ad nauseam)
• Appeal to fear (argumentum in terrorem)
• false dilemma
• Straw man
• Appeal to authority (argumentum ad verecundiam)
• Appeal to the majority (Argumentum ad populum)
• Personal attack (argumentum ad personam)
• False analogy
• False attribution
• Faulty generalization
• Fallacy of the single cause
• Red herring
• Etc.

Useful Patriots

• Diane Francis
• Howard Galganov
• Bill Johnson
• Mordecai Richler

Examples

Newspaper articles

• The St-Jean-Baptiste parade by Graeme Decarie, The World Today, 27 avril 1999
• Quebec Liberated Itself Into a Backwater by James P. Pinkerton in Newsday, July 31, 2001
• Get under the desk by Jan Wong, The Globe and Mail, September 16, 2006
• The rise of Quebecistan by Barbara Kay, National Post, Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Websites

• Quebec Exposed
• Mr. Dowling's Electronic Passport
• Wednesday-Night.com - Separatist Notes
• Fighting Quebec Separatism
• Canada is a Real Country!

Late denunciation

• "Some Racist Slips about Quebec in English Canada Between 1995 and 1998" by Maryse Potvin in Canadian Ethnic Studies, volume XXXII, issue 2, 2000, pages 1-26
• Bashing Québec fashionable in anglo media, by Michel David, The Gazette, Friday 21 April 2000
• Oh Canada, Oh Quebec, Oh Richler, by Ray Conlogue, Globe & Mail, June 26, 2002
• The Black Book of English Canada, by Normand Lester, Toronto, McClelland & Stewart, 2002, 296 pages ISBN 077102259X
• Harper complains to Globe about Jan Wong column, Canadian Press, September 20, 2006

Orangeism

Yes, that thing still exists...

• British America Orangeism
• Orangenet.org: Canada
• Canadian Orange Historical Site
• Irish Secret Societies in Mid-Nineteenth Century Rural Quebec
• Orangeism - The Canadian Scene A Brief Historical Sketch
• The Daily Orange: Quebec Secedes from Planet Earth *

• = Putting aside the superiority complex issue and the grammatically incorrect French, we find this one quite funny. ;-)

See also

• Myths and fallacies about Québec