Advertisement

Upcoming Scottish independence vote gets some cautionary advice from Canada

As Scotland gears up for a historic vote on independence, loosening or severing three centuries of formal union with England, it's getting some cautionary advice from Canada.

Scottish leaders will meet in Edinburgh next week to discuss a schedule and ground rules for the referendum, which could take place in the fall of 2014, the BBC reports.

And now a few words from Michael Ignatieff, the mid-Atlantic intellectual and former leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

Take a long look at Canada's experience in Quebec's 1995 referendum on sovereignty, he says in a commentary in Britain's Financial Times.

Quebecers voted by less than a margin of one per cent to remain within Canada, taking the country to within a hair's breadth of breaking up.

"Canada has had to think hard about the rules that govern debates about our country's existence," said Ignatieff, who was a prominent commentator in Britain before returning to Canada to enter politics. "Scots could save themselves a fair amount of grief if they were to learn from our experience."

The 1995 referendum, the second in 15 years on Quebec sovereignty, divided French- and English-speaking communities, as well as splitting families and forcing individuals to examine the things that made up their personal identities.

"We learnt the strongest argument for leaving countries as they are turns out to be that most people don't want to choose between different parts of their identity," Ignatieff writes.

This must be true of Scots as well, he says. Like Quebec, Scotland has a national identity, its own legal and political tradition, culture and enduring pride in its achievements.

"It does not need a state of its own to affirm these facts," writes Ignatieff, now a university professor. "The issue is whether Scots feel they can only assert their Scottishness by parting with the Unionist part of their soul."

Scots' have deep ties of kinship, work and friendship to their English, Welsh and Irish neighbours, he says. After 1995's close call, Canadians joked that what Quebecers really wanted was "an independent Quebec inside a united Canada.

"I suspect a majority of Scots want something similar: independence plus the pound, a "social union" in place of a political union; sovereignty, in other words, without its economic or psychological costs."

Independence supporters want a ballot question that gives Scots full self-government and fiscal powers within a United Kingdom whose parliament would retain jurisdiction only over foreign affairs, Ignatieff says.

But he argues this package needn't be put to a referendum at all. It could be negotiated between now and 2014, "avoiding the existential moment of truth altogether."

Like their Quebec counterparts, Scottish nationalists worry Scots will vote No, so a question focused on the maximum devolution package advances sovereignty while hedging the electoral bet.

But, says Ignatieff, British political parties learned from the Canadian 1995 experience, where many Quebecers believed they were voting for sovereignty within Canada. The federal response was the Clarity Act of 2000, which mandates a clear majority vote Yes or No on independence and requires Ottawa to negotiate separation if the answer is Yes.

"So the lesson from Canada is try not to have a referendum, since they divide and fragment, but if you must, make it an up and down vote on sovereignty and independence and then, if it goes against union, negotiate the divorce."