Canada did not almost break up over language, it was a constitutional issue. Most of what you've mentioned through this thread about Canada is just plain wrong and you need to stop citing Canada as some failure of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism has been great for Canada.
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/24/world/language-again-threatening-to-split-canadian-federation.html
For the second time in 10 years, Canada is caught in the throes of an emotional and divisive debate over its future as a united country. Once again, the issue is language. For the moment, the tone - in either French or English - is pessimistic.
The immediate issue being debated across the land on these brisk early spring days is the Meech Lake Accord, named for this secluded frozen lake where the agreement was forged in a guest house three springs ago.
The accord was intended once and for all to establish a protected place within the Canadian confederation for the French-speaking province of Quebec, where a quarter of Canada's 26 million residents live.
Initially the accord was accepted by all 10 provincial Premiers and by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. But as the ratification deadline nears, three provinces are withholding or withdrawing their support. Amid passionate bilingual debate and much domestic shuttle diplomacy, English-speaking Canada and an economically confident Quebec are openly considering a future without each other, although nothing drastic would happen immediately after the June 23 deadline.
The debate has put the Progressive Conservative Government on the defensive, created unease and a mounting sense of crisis and underlined anew the centrifugal forces always lurking beneath the surface of this disparate land, where even the national anthem has two distinctly different lyrics, one in English, the other in French.
Ten years ago, when Quebec voters soundly defeated a referendum proposing negotiations for a vaguely defined separation from Canada, the idea of Canada's largest province going its own way - and physically separating the remaining Canadian provinces -horrified most Canadians.
Today, the idea of Quebec's drifting into its own world is widely discussed and often treated with a regretful shrug. Some newspaper articles even seem to take separation as a given, analyzing the economic prospects of a stand-alone Quebec.
''Better a divorce, I think, than a marriage in name only,'' said Mordecai Richler, the Canadian novelist. ''Canada is supposed to be a country, not a convenience store.''
The Meech Lake constitutional agreement established a legally bewildering array of carefully cobbled compromises that declared Quebec ''a distinct society'' and gave provinces new powers while seemingly weakening the federal Government.
The accord did get Quebec to sign the Constitution. But faced with two provinces' recalcitrance and continuing pressure from his own political opposition, the Parti Quebecois, Quebec's Premier, Robert Bourassa, cannot appear to give any more.
In Closed Sessions
And politicians in English-speaking Canada hear growing grumbles about special recognition and protection for Quebec with no mention of special treatment for their local groups, like Indians, Eskimos and women. They point out that the accord was forged in closed sessions and presented with the caveat that nothing could be changed.
To take effect, the accord requires ratification by Parliament and all 10 provincial legislatures within three years of the first ratification, Quebec's on June 23, 1987.
Parliament and seven provinces followed Quebec. To pressure the holdouts, Manitoba and New Brunswick, Mr. Mulroney and his Cabinet have raised the possibility of Quebec abandoning Canada, destroying its multicultural self-image and leaving English Canada presumably to drift dangerously near the American orbit. Some of its opponents invoke the same specter, suggesting that the Meech Lake Accord would weaken the Canadian federation to the point where it could end up being absorbed by the United States.
Fear of the United States swallowing a land 10 percent larger than itself has historically been a potent political weapon in Canada, which was created by Britain in 1867, when the newly victorious Union Army was the world's largest and the Americans had just leapfrogged Western Canada to buy Alaska from Russia.
Recently Meech Lake supporters heard Newfoundland's Premier, Clyde Wells, vow to rescind his province's ratification. Mulroney Cabinet members say negotiations are under way to secure the approval of Manitoba and New Brunswick in hopes that Newfoundland will opt not to stand alone. [In a brief nationwide television address on Thursday night, Mr. Mulroney announced that he would introduce in Parliament a parallel accord on the concerns of other groups of Canadians, like women and natives. The strategic hope is to diffuse the Meech Lake opposition with a separate accord that would not need to be passed by every legislature in the next three months.] Guarantees for Quebec Among other things, the accord requires the federal Government to name future Supreme Court judges from provincial lists of nominees. It also guarantees Quebec three of the nine seats, plus a significant role in immigration there.
Polls indicate that few Canadians understand the Meech provisions. But the long discussion itself became a huge handicap. It gave every conceivable opponent ample time to organize.
It has also provided time for economic self-confidence to grow within Quebec's young business community where eager entrepreneurs once wondered about their survival in a political separation from Canada and now have experienced 15 months of general success under the new Free Trade Agreement with the United States.
At the same time Premier Bourassa, looking toward his next election against the Parti Quebecois, initiator of separatist proposals in the mid-1970's, defied a Supreme Court ruling and prohibited any outdoor signs in English. This may have debatable practical effect in a province where a sign is considered French when it reads: ''Le Bar Nashville La Musique Country.''
But in distant, less populous parts of Canada, the largest minorities by far speak Chinese, Cree or Ukrainian. Though they have no special linguistic protection, they have quietly accepted Quebec's special status.
''In English Canada, the sign bill reeked of bad faith,'' said Peter C. Newman, a prominent author. Since the fight began, more than 100 communities have declared themselves ''English only,'' a defiant snub that has little practical impact but strikes an emotional chord in Quebec.
Appropriately enough, Meech Lake is named for Asa Meech, an American minister who built a house on it. Long before his name became synonymous in two languages with discord, he was buried here beneath a snow-covered tombstone that says with historic foresight, ''I ask not to stay where storm after storm rises o'er the way.''
