How the British conquest kept feudal elements in place to this day

Feudal money tribute which is being paid even to this day and what is more the right of banalité (ownership of mills, presses etc. by the seigneurs only) and corvée has been the legacy of the French Canadian habitant; a legacy of backwardness and fetters to the development of the whole of French Canada. The following figures give one an idea of the retardation of capitalist development in Quebec agriculture. The proportional role of agriculture and industry in Quebec and Ontario is almost equal. Agriculture in Quebec accounts for 15.5% of the total value of production and gives employment to 22.2% or 254,280. In Ontario it accounts for 18.67% of total value or production and gives employment to 264,480 or 17.7% of population. With an occupied farm population only 2.5% less than Ontario, Quebec agriculture receives less than one half as large a cash income, employs one half as much permanent wage labor and utilizes machinery of a value one half as great as Ontario. Feudalism with its banalité, cens and rentes and corvée (labor for the seigneurs) raised enormous barriers to the natural development of capitalism in French Canada by its hindrance to free wage labor commodity circulation etc.

A concentration of monopolies thrives amid a weak French Canadian petit-bourgeoisie and a super-exploited working class

Monopoly, an inevitable development of capitalism has been preeminent in maintaining nationalistic sentiment within French Canada. “Down with the trusts” is the rallying call of all French Canadian political parties for the trusts in Quebec are foreign trusts being predominately non-French. The frustrated petit-bourgeoisie sees their enemy in the trusts. Feudalism retarded the growth of French Canadian capitalism and gave English Canadian capitalism, with all its connections, an open road. In 1937 it was estimated that the proportional division of industrial capital in Quebec was 44% English-Canadian, 34% U.S., 19.8% French Canadian. Out of 861 directorates in the 83 largest banking and industrial firms in Quebec, 93 or 10.8% are held by French Canadian businessmen. There is a small but nonetheless powerful handful of French Canadian millionaires fully integrated in the top circles of the Canadian bourgeoisie. Technical and managerial staffs in industry are predominantly English Canadian and English-speaking.

Various Tables of Disparity between Canada & Quebec

In 1941 the death rate from TB per 100,000 population was 26 in Ontario, 80.6 in Quebec. In Westmount, Quebec, a well-do-do English residential district, it was 30.7; in Rimouski, Quebec it was 542.2.

The British after their successful military conquest made the church and the loyal seigneurs their base of control over the still rebellious habitant. These were the organs that counteracted any collaboration with the American colonial struggle for independence—the organs that diverted the struggle of 1837 from the land problems into parliamentary reforms. The church whose tremendous land holdings were respected by the British became the largest accumulation of primary capital in Quebec. Today she has large investments in railways, newspapers, factories etc.—it has been estimated that her holdings total over 600 millions.

The almost total absence of a French Canadian middle-class, of French Canadian technicians etc. which English Canadian and American capital could use as a base in their exploitation has caused the question of tongue to assume great importance. Anglo-American trusts, their company towns and their English-speaking manager and foreman communities, are, to the French Canadians, foreign encampments on Quebec soil. While 30% of the population of Canada is French only 14% of the functionaries at Ottawa are bilingual. The BNA Act supposedly provides for the equality of the 2 languages and guarantees minority rights by the federal government. New Brunswick, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Ontario have prohibited the French the right to educate their children in their language in the schools. Bilingualism in the English schools in Quebec is a farce. The inferior economic position of the French Canadian worker inevitably gives his tongue an inferior status.

The artificial unity of Canada and the right of Quebec to self-determination

"Victorious socialism must achieve complete democracy and consequently not only bring about complete equality of nations but also give effect to the right of oppressed nations to self-determination—i.e., the right to free political secession. Socialist parties which fail to prove by all their activities now—as well as during the revolution and after its victory that they will free the enslaved nations and establish relations with them on the basis of a free union—and a free union is a lying phrase without right to secession—such parties would be committing treachery to socialism"—Lenin.

A strong nationalist sentiment bent under reactionary and clerical hegemony

Duplessis, Sept. 20, 1943:
”Some people say we shouldn`t talk about autonomy. They are under the impression that we want to build a wall around Quebec and separate it from the other provinces. All we want is control of the rights given us in the Confederation Constitution of 1867.”

Aug. 3, 1944—Laurendeau:
”The Bloc does not want to destroy confederation or set up a totalitarian or clerical state. We are living in a unique moment to get rid of financial imperialism and capitalist dictatorship in order to give back to the province and the whole of Canada a true democracy.”

How does the nationalist movement find support among the French Canadian masses? By a skillful mixture of demagogy, lies and progressive demands, it feeds on their justified discontent. It receives most of its support from its violent anti-trust, anti-monopoly campaigns. The French Canadian bourgeoisie and their agents oppose the exploitation of the French Canadian workers by the trusts—the foreign trusts—in order that they may be the sole exploiter. And what in a positive sense do the nationalists offer to block this inevitable development of capitalism—legal restrictions. Buy at Home Movement in trustified Quebec, return to an agrarian self-sustaining economy, etc. French Canadian revolutionists must expose the futility and the reactionary aspect of the nationalist anti-trustism. Turn the French Canadians anti-trustism to anti-capitalism! The traditional anti-militarist, anti-imperialist sentiment of the French Canadian worker is utilized by the nationalists who have no foreign investments at stake and who wax fat on the production of the workers in the war industries. This sentiment must be developed to organize a struggle against imperialist war along revolutionary lines (document cut off, no carbon paper—ed.)

No progressive ends served by the secession of Quebec at this time

However the sentiment that the nationalist movement exploits is essentially progressive—that is the desire for language and cultural equality, the opposition to racial discrimination, the demand for wage equality etc. We support democratic rights, the democratic demands of the French Canadian peoples. We are resolutely opposed to Anglo-American and French capitalism’s use of French Canada as a cheap labor market—we are opposed to discrimination in the shops.

The problems of the French Canadian workers will not be solved in the framework of the bourgeois state. The fate of the French Canadian workers and farmers is irrevocably bound up with the fate of the rest of Canada’s workers and farmers. Socialism is the order of the day. A socialist Canada and a Socialist United States of America is the future. (end)