Introduction
Understanding federalism and federation was for Michael Burgess his ‘magnificent obsession' (Burgess 2015), and students and scholars of federalism will continue to benefit greatly from his enlightening contribution to this field of study.
In this chapter we intend, from a critical point of view, to better account for the evolution of the Quebec-Canada relationship through the analytical prism of the ‘federal spirit' (Burgess 2012). We aim at furthering Michael Burgess's reasoning on the necessary conditions for the federal spirit to thrive and prosper, in particular in the context of multinational federations. In so doing, we focus on the Quebec-Canada dynamics which characterized much of the 1970s, the first part of the 1980s and the second half of the 1990s, periods during which a major tug of war took place between centralizing and decentralizing forces—or, to formulate it differently, between two competing societal projects. We also consider the cavalier manner in which the Quebec government's recent Policy on Quebec’s Affirmation and Canadian Relations (June 2017) has been received (and ipso facto rejected) by the central government.In the context of contemporary Canadian politics, both Quebec and Ottawa were determined to win without conceding much to each other, thus contributing to heightened tensions and further polarizing public opinion. The middleground position found some advocates (for example, Lenihan, Robertson and Tasse 1994; Burelle 2005), but they gained little traction as the main rival camps attempted to settle their score once and for all. Stakes got higher, and so did the consequences of a defeat for either side. As we shall see, this is symptomatic of a significant lack of a federal spirit.
Our main objective is to critically appraise how autonomy and selfdetermination have been promoted and contained with respect to Quebec- Canada dynamics, reflecting on how this specific case may inform our theoretical and practical understanding of the federal spirit. In doing so, it is our hope to cast additional light on Michael Burgess's contribution to the study of federalism and federation. We begin by referring to some of Burgess's work, in order to define what is meant by the notion of federal spirit. This brief conceptual clarification leads us to outline an analytical framework for the assessment of Quebec-Canada political relations. Second, we discuss the evolution of Quebec-Canada dynamics from the 1970s to the present. Third, we assess the degree to which political actors imbued their actions with the federal spirit, enabling us to formulate some recommendations for the necessary conditions to put in place so that the federal spirit can thrive in the context of multinational federal democracies.
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