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The 20th Anniversary of the Waffle

The Waffle andQuebec

PATRICIA SMART

A midst the ongoing confusion surrounding the MeechLake Accord and the NDP's contradictory positionon it, it is instructive to look back at the relationship

that existed between the Waffle and the Quebec wing ofthe NDP in 1971, and the potential we saw at that time fora new politics growing out of an alliance between the Que-becois and English-Canadian left. Just before the QuebecNDP election last December, president Michel Agnaieffstated, in an interview with the Canadian Press, that theconvention would be a waste of time for Quebeckers, sincethe present mood of the party is so hostile to Quebec thatthere's no hope of influencing it. Not only were none ofthe seven candidates for the federal leadership anywhereclose to being fluently bilingual or knowledgeable aboutQuebec's history, but one of the front-runners, Dave Barrett,had publicly stated that he thought Quebec no more distincta society than Alberta or British Columbia. The contrastwith 1971, when between them the Waffle and the tiny Que-bec wing of the NDP managed to make Quebec's right toself-determination a major issue in the leadership race andat the convention, is depressing to say the least.

The question of Quebec for the NDP has been an oscil-lation between principle and the crassest of vote-seekingtactics since the party's founding; arid the party with itsWestern base and lack of support in Quebec does of courseface a real dilemma in attempting to determine its positionon Quebec. In the mid-1960s, the party had a progressive

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position on Quebec. very close to the one the Waffle wouldlater include in its manifesto - that is. recognition of Quebecas a nation and of its right to some kind of special statuswithin Canada. But after five years of bombings and militan-cy in Quebec, Trudeau was carried to power in 1968 by anelectorate which wanted a leader who would deal with theQuebec problem once and for all. and an electorate thatfelt reassured by this French-Canadian who scornfully dis-missed Quebec's claims to nationhood. And so it was intoan atmosphere of renewed conservatism over the Quebecquestion in the party that the trouble-making Waffle groupemerged. emphasizing. with greater and greater clarity overthe years of its existence. the right of the Qu6Mcois todetermine their own future.

For those of us who met to draft the Waffle manifestoin late 1968 and on into 1969. the unprecedented nature ofevents in Quebec and the obvious power of the alliancebetween Quebec intellectuals. artists and labour around thenational question was not a problem. but an inspiration anda model. Our own nationalism made us understand instinc-tively what the Qu6Mcois were talking about and gave usrespect for their desire for self-determination. As well, wefelt that the growth of left nationalism in English Canadaoffered the possibility for the first time of a real alliancewith Qu6b6cois socialists. with whom we would be unitedin a common struggle against American cultural and eco-nomic domination. "Two nations. one struggle," we said inthe manifesto. But alas. as Canadians were reminded againlast year in the 'Free Trade' election, the Qu6b6cois havesome difficulty with the idea that the Americans are theenemy and that we are the allies: they invariably seem toget that particular equation turned around. Still. the Waffledid gain a fair amount of credibility in Quebec. and it isconceivable that. if we had been allowed to continue toexist within the NDP. the party would by now have thebase in Quebec it has been seeking so desperately for thelast decade. At the very least. we managed to keep the ideaof Quebec's right to self-determination alive in English Can-ada through the traumatic days of October 1970 and itsaftermath.

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P. Smart/On the Wame

My own memories of the beginning of the Waffle arevery much tied up with Quebec, for at the time I was aPhD student, totally immersed in the novels of Quebec wri-ter Hubert Aquin and the nationalist fervour that had pro-duced them. I was probably typical of many Canadianstudents of Quebec culture in that I found in that culturea passion and sense of identity that seemed lacking in myown; and typical of Canadian students as well in the factthat I really didn't know very much about our own cultureand literature. At the University of Toronto, where I haddone my undergraduate work, there had been only onecourse which touched on Canadian literature. It was called"American and Canadian Literature," and in it we becamethoroughly familiar with the work of Emerson, Thoreau,Poe and Henry James, and then - about two weeks beforethe final exam - were given a quick run-through of thepoetry of E.J. Pratt.

As I recall, my understanding of the parallels betweenour own struggle and that of Quebec began to take shapeduring some long walks with Jim Laxer in Macdonald Parknear the Queen's University campus, on lovely fall after-noons when we probably should have been in class. Wetalked about George Grant, whom I was just starting toread, and the socialist independantiste journal parti pris,which had been produced by Quebec students in the 1960s,and had had an enormous impact on the politicization ofQuebec culture. A few months later, when I read DennisLee's Civil Elegies, I finally saw in our literature that pas-sion and despair about the nation, to which we were tryingto give birth, that I had recognized in the works of Quebecwriters.

It was Jim Laxer who had the greatest influence in shap-ing the Waffle position on Quebec, and in convincing usof the importance of Quebec in our political agenda. Asearly as 1963, he had organized a large demonstration onthe University of Toronto campus to protest against DonaldGordon's blundering statement that there were no French-Canadians qualified to occupy positions in the higher eche-lons of the CNR. That statement led to Gordon being burnedin effigy in Quebec. Both Laxer's MA and PhD work centred

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on the nationalism of Henri Bourassa, which, in spite ofits eccentricities, contains a 'two nations' position not unlikethe one the Waffle would adopt. It was Laxer who arguedduring the early meetings of the group for the importanceof including a fairly lengthy statement on Quebec in themanifesto, and it was he who eventually drafted those fourparagraphs. The main points of those paragraphs were: that"there is no denying the existence of two nations withinCanada, each with its own language, culture and aspiration;"that "English Canada and Quebec can share common in-stitutions to the extent that they share common purposes;"that "an English Canada concerned with its own nationalsurvival would create common aspirations that would helpto tie the two nations together once more;" and finally that"socialists in English Canada must ally themselves withsocialists in Quebec in this common cause."

It is worth noting that the resolution produced by theparty leadership to counter the Waffle manifesto (the in-famous "Marshmallow Resolution") represented a total re-treat on the question of Quebec, although it reproduced, ina less socialist form, the main points of the Waffle positionvis-a-vis American domination. Even its title, "For a Unitedand Independent Canada," indicates that it might have beenour position on Quebec that upset the party brass more thananything else in the manifesto. Unlike our two nations posi-tion, theirs (like that of many people within the NDP today)reduced Quebec to one of the many regions of Canada ex-periencing "disparity of income and opportunity i.. withinConfederation. "

Ironically, one of our main opponents in the debate overthe Waffle position on Quebec was John Harney. In thepages of the September 1969 New Democrat he objectedto our recognition of Quebec as a nation, arguing it wouldbe interpreted by the public as an acceptance of the pos-sibility of a divided Canada. Jean-Paul Harney's constituentsin Quebec in the 1988 election would have been bemusedto learn of this former incarnation of their supposedlyFrench-Canadian leader.

The Waffle's statements on Quebec and attempt to forman alliance with certain elements of the tndependantiste left

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intensified after the convention, mainly through the effortsof Jim Laxer. At the Waffle conference on the "Americaniza-tion of Canada" at the University of Toronto in March 1970,Laxer went beyond the manifesto position to talk about Que-bec independence, stating that, "English Canadian socialistsmust recognize that Quebec is a nation, in the full senseof the word, and that Quebeckers must have the right toself-determination up to and including the right to form anindependent Quebec state," By the end of the year, Laxerwas the Waffle candidate in the federal leadership race, and,in the wake of the October Crisis and the War MeasuresAct, was more convinced than ever of the need to defendthe Quebec independence movement in English Canada, anddevelop a new relationship between English Canada andQuebec. In a December 1970 interview with La Presse, hesuggested that the NDP should seek some accommodationwith the Parti Quebecois in terms of electoral strategy.(Later the Quebec NDP would do that by deciding not torun provincially.) A few weeks later, in January 1971, LeDevoir published the text of the Waffle resolution on Que-bec, prepared for the upcoming convention. In response toits recognition of Quebec's right to self-determination andthe call for an alliance between socialists in the two nations,the newspaper's editorialist, Claude Lemelin, wrote that"the suggestions outlined by Jim Laxer and the Waffle groupcould turn out to be the only way to maintain fraternal linksand an intimate and fruitful cooperation between the twonations in Canada," David Lewis's response was to accusethe Waffle of breaking with the party's federalist stanceand of fraternizing with the Parti Quebecois. It was clearlynot coincidental that Raymond Laliberte, the highly re-spected former leader of the Quebec Teacher's Union, de-cided at that point that the NDP was worth taking seriously.In February of 1971 he was elected president of the party'sQuebec wing, and the group passed a resolution on self-determination almost identical to that of the Waffle.

By the time the convention took place in April, Quebechad become a major issue on the party's agenda and in theleadership campaign. Which is not to say of course thatour Quebec resolution was endorsed by the convention: we

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lost by 428 votes (853 against to 425 for). Almost exactlythe same number of votes separated David Lewis and JimLaxer on the fourth and final ballot of the leadership contest(1046 to 612). The party also heavily rejected what, in con-text, seemed a ridiculous compromise resolution from EdBroadbent, calling both for continued support of federalismand a recognition of Quebec's ultimate right to determineits own future. In retrospect, it's actually not a bad position;but the mood at the time was one of polarization. Whenthe debate on Quebec began on the floor of the convention,delegates were lined up at the 'Yes' or 'No' microphones,depending on their position. Ed, however, stood in the centreof the floor, and when his turn came to speak he demandeda microphone in the middle, saying that his position wasboth 'Yes' and 'No'. John Gray later wrote in SaturdayNight that his performance indicated you could have a PhDand still be an idiot. The resolution the party finally adopted,drafted by Charles Taylor, seemed aimed at salving the con-sciences of party members as far as the War Measures Actwas concerned, without making the slightest concession toQuebec. It affirmed the party's commitment to a strongfederalist position, while deploring the use of force as ameans of maintaining national unity.

The 1971 convention marked the last of the Waffle's pub-lic statements on Quebec. Not only was our own right toexist (and determine our future) within the party soon tocome under attack, but the trauma of the events of October1970 and especially Laporte's murder sank the Quebec leftinto a depression and apathy that was to last for severalyears. Looking back, though, at the rapprochement we didmanage to achieve with some elements of the Quebec leftbefore 1971, and the extent to which we raised the country'sconsciousness on the Quebec question, we can be proud ofour record. Twenty years later, major Canadian politicians,including some in the NDP, are willing to publicly demon-strate, in a way that would have been inconceivable in the1960s, a frightening amount of hostility to Quebec and aninability to appreciate the richness offered the whole countryby the distinct society which it obviously is. It seems alltoo likely now that Meech Lake will fail, making it close

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to impossible for Quebec to remain within the country. Andthe tragedy is that many of these politicians don't knowenough about Quebec to recognize the implications of whatthey're doing.

Our history seems to reveal an almost cyclical need, onewhich seems to arise in almost every generation, to recreatethis country and recommit ourselves to it. Every majorpolitician since John A. Macdonald has known, though, thatbuilding a nation on the northern half of this continent in-volves accommodating Quebec. The present refusal, on thepart of English Canadians, to listen to Quebec seems toindicate an inability to conceptualize the nation this timeround, a lack of imagination, energy and generosity thatmay well do the country in. Maybe this twentieth anniver-sary celebration of the Waffle should be the occasion fora new initiative on the part of the nationalist left in EnglishCanada. We learned in the past that the media, the politiciansand the Canadian people were interested in listening to thethings we knew needed to be said. And in spite of the apathythat seems to be abroad in the country, surrounding thequestion of Quebec, I think they would listen again to arestatement of the importance of Quebec to this countryand the necessity of respecting i!s (ij,stirict aspirations.

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