A Bit More Detail

Today's Canada Day is going to be a low-profile one for me: I'm drinking a red slushie and eating a small chocolate that came in red chocolate wrapping with my coffee, while I'll be setting fireworks off later tonight. Don't confuse this low-profile Canada Day for a lack of my personal happiness with Canada, mind: although I agree with Hannah Arendt when she said that she doesn't know any groups, only individuals, all in all I consider myself quite lucky and very happy to be a Canadian. Canada, by and large, is a country that works.

Two years ago I blogged about how Canada came about, ironically enough, because the different ethnic groups and provincial jurisdictions now comprising Canada wanted as much self-rule as possible. The Francophone Roman Catholics of Canada East (now Québec) wanted as much self-government as possible in order to avoid their assimilation; the Anglos in Canada West (now Ontario) resented the role that Francophone Catholics played in determining their domestic policies; the smaller colonies on the Atlantic shoreline were looking for some larger framework that could help guarantee their prosperity; and everyone, from sea to sea to sea, was looking for something that could keep them from becoming American in the aftermath of the Civil War and Britain's declining interest in its remaining North American possessions.

Canada was a jury-rigged polity, a best-case compromise, with a national anthem that (as james_nicoll observed today) has completely different English and French lyrics, and an existence that (as Andrew Barton observed) is expected by any number of futurologists to come to an end any moment now. And yet, this unlikely project worked, and 143 years later it's still here, and Canada remains popular with nearly all of its 34 millions. Even a goodly number of Québec's separatists are so attached to Canada that they'd want an independent Québec to be in a fairly tight confederation with rump Canada. The idea of Canada has staying power.

Bertrand Marotte and Rhéal Séguin's article "How did it all go so wrong at the Caisse?", in today's Globe and Mail, takes a look at how Québec's pension fund got so badly off-track this past year--down nearly $C 40 billion, almost a quarter of its previous value--and what this might mean.

The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec will face intensified scrutiny in special government hearings into the investing strategies and risk management practices that led to its stunning $39.8-billion loss.

The Caisse, Canada's biggest public pension fund manager, racked up the worst performance in its 43-year history, posting a return of minus 25 per cent that left the once high-flying fund lagging its rivals.

The median return of large Canadian pension funds for 2008 is minus 18.4 per cent.

The Caisse was badly hit by exposure to asset-backed commercial paper, taking $4-billion in writedowns in 2008 related to its $12.8-billion portfolio, and was also hammered by its extensive currency hedging activities, used to cover its global investments in real estate, infrastructure and private equity.

But the losses confirm the worst fears of many Caisse watchers that the institution's risk management practices may not have been up to scratch, and led to big bets on complex derivatives and untested financial instruments that magnified its losses relative to those at other funds.

Mr. Perreault denied that, saying the sudden and dramatic drop in the value of the Canadian dollar by 20 per cent last year had a major negative impact on the Caisse's foreign exchange risk hedging.

Mr. Perreault said the pension fund took no undue risks and is in stellar company with fellow big-time losers on collapsing global markets like Warren Buffett.

"Warren Buffett lost 30 per cent last year and there are others that lost incredible amounts," Mr. Perreault said at a news conference to discuss the record loss.

The Quebec government also said it would make sweeping changes to the leadership, including appointing new board members and a new chairman to replace Pierre Brunet. A new president and chief executive officer will also be named, Finance Minister Monique Jérôme-Forget said.

The Caisse has been under fire for months now as it struggles with the fallout from its riskier investment strategies as well as turmoil in its senior ranks. Its much anticipated big loss for 2008 and management style were hot issues in last year's provincial election campaign, and its role as a key player in the Quebec economy continues to be the subject of fierce debate.

The Caisse de dépôt et de placement du Québec has played a central role in the Québec economy when it was created in 1965, as an organization responsible for the investment of the couple dozen institutional pension funds of Québec. Since its creation, the Caisse has stood as a major symbol of the post-1960 Quiet revolution of Qubec tha saw--among other things--the growth of a prosperous Francophone business class with access to investment funds, many of which have been provided by the Caisse according to a long-standing policy of favouring investments within Québec, even if they aren't the most economically productive investments. This traditional mandate changed after 39 years.

The Liberals have been criticized by opposition parties for changing the pension fund's mandate in 2004, putting the quest for "optimal" returns ahead of the Caisse's traditional role as an economic development tool. The changes, critics say, led the Caisse to take oversized risks with Quebeckers' savings in order to increase its annual return. Now, many of the 25 pension and insurance funds whose assets are managed by the Caisse could be forced to hike premiums or cut benefits to stay afloat.

Mr. Charest scoffed at accusations that his government bears responsibility for the fiasco, insisting that all pension funds lost money in 2008 and that the Caisse's long-term performance compares favourably with other pensions funds.

I've long been interested in the self-governing Russian Republic of Tatarstan's slow consolidation as a non-sovereign nation-state, but this report from Windows on Eurasia suggests that something rather remarkable is now happening.

The Russian defense ministry and the Republic of Tatarstan have agreed on an experimental program to set up military units consisting only of draftees from Tatarstan, a measure Moscow officials say would help eliminate ethnic crime within the Russian army but a step some analysts suggest could lead to the fragmentation of that military force.

The joint decision to create “national Tatar units” on a trial basis in Orenburg and Samara oblasts was taken after human rights activists and families of draftees visited the Tots Garrison where an ethnic Tatar recently fled from his unit because of the mistreatment he received from soldiers of other ethnic groups (www.rbcdaily.ru/2008/12/22/focus/395812).

While the creation of such units could reduce the amount of “dedovshchina” as such mistreatment is commonly called, it creates “a very bad precedent,” according to retired general Leonid Ivashov of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems, because now other groups will want the same treatment, a trend that would undermine military cohesion and the chain of command.

That view is certain to be shared by many in the Russian political elite, but senior officials in the defense ministry appear likely to support the creation of such national units given the problems they have faced from the Soldiers’ Mothers Committee and even appeals to the European Court of Human Rights.

In tsarist times, units complected on an ethnic basis were a commonplace, with the so-called “Savage Division” consisting of units made up of various Caucasian nationalities only the most famous because of the willingness of its commanders to defend the tsar and the tsarist system when almost no one else would.

But in the Soviet period, such units were permitted only during the complicated days of the Russian Civil War (1918-1922) and then again during World War II (1941-1945), when the regime was prepared to make compromises with the population in the name of saving the communist system.

Since 1991, many non-Russian groups, led by the Tatars, have called for the establishment of ethnically based units, not only to end the mistreatment many of their soldiers currently experience in the army but also to generate a sense of national pride and to prevent the army from becoming a “russianizing” experience.

Moscow has resisted such a step until now, and this “experiment” may prove stillborn, although having allowed the announce to be made and with the defense ministry having indicated that it supports the measure, the Russian government may well face resistance to any retreat on this line even as it is certain to face demands for such units from other ethnic groups.

Perhaps the first of these additional demands will come from Chechnya, where the republic’s president Ramzan Kadyrov has already said that he favors the formation of Chechen units not only within the borders of his own republic but in the Russian army and fleet more generally.

The alarmism strikes me as potentially overwrought. Here in Canada, the Royal 22^e Régiment was founded during the First World War and maintained thereafter as an explicitly Francophone military unit within an Anglophone Canadian Armed Forces, so far doing so without complicating Canadian political and military life in the slightest. Some Québec separatists have talked of making the `Van Doos`the nucleus of an independent Québec’s military, but that talk`s the consequence of a preexisting movement. If I’m correct in thinking that there isn’t a separatist movement of note in Tatarstan, then I would be inclined to bet that Russia has nothing to fear from Tatar military units. Chechnya, now, is a different story.

Canada's ongoing parliamentary dispute has just now paused, or something.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has obtained Governor-General Michaëlle Jean's consent to temporarily shut down Parliament, a move that allows him to avoid a confidence vote next week that he was expected to lose.

It's a blow for the Liberal-NDP coalition, backed by the separatist Bloc Québécois, that was seeking to replace the minority Conservative goverment.

The development buys time for Mr. Harper to assemble an economic package that he hopes will discourage the multiparty alliance from taking him down at that time.

Emerging from Rideau Hall after more than two hours, Mr. Harper said Parliament will return on Jan. 26 and the first order of business will be the 2009 budget.

He grudgingly acknowledged he has to make peace with the opposition parties. "Obviously we have to do some trust-building here on both sides."

The Prime Minister said he will spend December and January hammering out the budget. "My work over the next few weeks will be focused almost exclusively on preparing the federal budget."

He added that he hoped the other parties would work with him. "Canadians expect us to get on with this."

Mr. Harper suggested that not all opposition MPs were happy with the coalition that sought to replace him. "I think there are many people in the opposition that were not entirely comfortable with a different path."

The Prime Minister also took time to admonish the Liberals and New Democrats for considering an alliance with the Bloc. In reference to the separatist party, he said: "My Canada includes Quebec, their Quebec does not include Canada."

Standing in the foyer of the House of Commons after Mr. Harper's announcement, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said: "We must realize the enormity of what has happened here today. For the first time in the history of Canada, the Prime Minister of Canada is running away from the Parliament of Canada."

All three opposition leaders said they still intend to bring down the government. Mr. Dion said only a "monumental change" on Mr. Harper's part would alter that.

NDP Leader Jack Layton said the coalition will not be abandoning its accord over the next seven weeks while the Commons is shuttered.

"I cannot have confidence in a Prime Minister who would throw the locks on the door of this place, knowing that he's about to lose a vote in the House of Commons," Mr. Layton said. "That's denying about as fundamental a right as one has in a democracy."

Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe reacted similarly. "We don't believe him and we don't have confidence in him."

The Prime Minister's bid to buy time, however, may work in his favour, with cracks in the coalition already emerging.

Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis wasted no time in calling Mr. Dion to be replaced before the House returns in January. "Who are we kidding? I think it's over," he said, heading into a closed door caucus meeting.

"To become Prime Minister at all costs? Where do we take the Liberal brand? ... The brand got hit. The brand is good. The CEO of the company screwed up."

The Scarborough MP emerged from caucus saying the party supports remaining in the coalition, but Mr. Dion must be replaced. "The party still wants the coalition to keep together. My constituents want Mr. Dion to go."

He said it's time to move the party's leadership race up - a conventon is slated for May - or find some way of making sure it has "a leader who can lead us" if there is an election in February or March.

One very notable element of the plan for a Liberal-NDP coalition government is the promise of the separatist Bloc Québécois to support the coalition government for the next year. Some--i.e. the Conservatives--denounce this as an unnecessary empowerment of separatists, but Graeme Hamilton in yesterday's National Post very likely came to the correct conclusion in his article "Bloc's involvement no threat to federation".

As Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe rose in the House of Commons Monday to ask his first question, he was met with an unusually loud ovation. Not only his own MPs but the Liberals and New Democrats cheered him. And if the Liberal-NDP plan to replace the Conservative government with their own coalition succeeds, there will be plenty more fawning over the one federal party committed to the breakup of Canada.

To many, the notion of a committed separatist pulling the strings of the Canadian government is anathema. Prime Minister Stephen Harper Monday attacked the opposition parties for handing a veto to "people who want to break up the country" and said he was disappointed to see "the party of Laurier and Trudeau applauding the Bloc."

The coalition would certainly give unprecedented clout to the Bloc; the support of its 49 MPs will be required for the coalition to govern. Already, Mr. Duceppe is boasting that his support was conditional on meeting certain Bloc demands, such as restoring funding to federal culture programs and increasing aid for the forestry and manufacturing sectors. He has signed on only until June, 2010, a year earlier than the NDP and Liberals, because he was unable to extract "concrete measures" recognizing Quebec's status as a nation.

Still, it is far from certain that inviting the Bloc into the decision-making realm will necessarily weaken the federation, particularly given the current situation in Quebec.

Jean-Claude Rivest, an independent Senator and former advisor to Robert Bourassa when he was Quebec premier, said support for sovereignty is at such a low that the Bloc has no desire to stir the pot. Polls suggest Liberal leader Jean Charest is headed for re-election in the provincial vote next Monday, and the Parti Québécois is not even talking about a referendum if it took power.

"There will be within the sovereignty movement, over the next year or two, a great deal of discussion over what to do with their option. So for the Bloc, there is an interest in keeping things calm in Ottawa," Mr. Rivest said.

"The timing is good for all of Canada in the sense that there will not be threats or attempts by the Bloc to take the Canadian government hostage. That's rubbish in my opinion. The Conservatives will raise that point, but it's really not serious."

In fact, the Conservatives were only too happy to have the Bloc MPs on their side when they needed them. After the 2006 election, the Bloc House leader at the time, Michel Gauthier, announced that his party would prop up the minority Conservatives. "We want to help the government function for a while," he told the Globe and Mail. "I have no shame in saying I will be urging my colleagues ... to conduct ourselves in a way that the government stays in place for a good while to do what needs to be done."

Norman Spector, writing in The Globe and Mail, argues that the Liberal Party should unite with the Green Party and the NDP under a competent Stephen Harper- or Jean Chrétien-like leader for the Canadian centre-left to profitably challenge the Conservative Party.

[I]f I were Elizabeth May, I'd be having problems looking at myself in the mirror after contributing to the demise of the greenest Liberal leader in history. And, I'd be giving serious thought to David Suzuki's warning that the Green Party marginalizes the environment as a political issue. I'd also be looking closely at what David Anderson accomplished for the environment as a Liberal cabinet minister.

Jack Layton, too, should be doing some serious soul-searching. To the surprise of no one (including himself, I'd wager), his application for the job of prime minister was turned down. Nor will he be serving as leader of the Official Opposition, despite having run an excellent campaign against a weak leader who arguably turned in the worst performance in Liberal history. Perhaps Mr. Layton – a man whose family has a long tradition of government service – should explain to New Democrats that their electoral success is greatest in provinces that have two-party systems.

In other words, if he can't beat them, he should join them, particularly now that Liberals must be fearing Mr. Harper's minority status will reinforce a centrist approach to governing. Moreover, the Conservatives are expanding their pool of voters among various ethnic groups, their areas of regional strength have a growing population, and a redistribution of seats in the Commons will bring the Conservatives closer to majority territory.

[. . .]

Uniting with the Greens and NDP would give the Liberals a core of principled supporters to match the Conservatives' base. And, though neither of the smaller parties wants to sacrifice its principles, politics is about fighting for your position and then agreeing to compromise. The difference between uniting parties before an election, and forging a coalition after – be it under our electoral system or proportional representation – is mainly about where, when and how compromises are made.

Moreover, let's face reality: Strategic voting will not defeat Mr. Harper. Few voters have the requisite information on local races. And no party leader is eager to recommend another party during a campaign, lest it taint their brand in the eyes of their own voters.

I'm reluctant to put it this way to my leftie friends, but sooner or later they'll have to find their own Stephen Harper. The arguments against uniting the centre-left are no better than they were a decade ago when fragmentation of the centre-right allowed Jean Chrétien to cruise to victory. The key to political success is to give voters one alternative when a government has worn out its welcome.

Lysiane Gagnon disagrees somewhat, at least from the Québécois perspective.

During the election campaign, many wondered how the Liberal Party would have fared if it had been led by Michael Ignatieff. My guess — and everybody else's — is the party would have been a formidable rival to the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois. It is not a coincidence that the vast majority of Quebec delegates at the 2006 leadership convention were supporters of Mr. Ignatieff.

[. . .]

Mr. Ignatieff, on the other hand, has many assets when it comes to winning Quebec voters: flawless, elegant French, and dark, intense good looks that somewhat resemble those of Lucien Bouchard, the beloved icon of the 1990s. Mr. Ignatieff is a public intellectual rather than a straightforward academic, and Quebeckers love public intellectuals — people who are cultured, at ease with ideas and can philosophize on various themes.

More important, Mr. Ignatieff is popular among the nationalists because he was the first to embrace the notion of Quebec as a nation. This was a skewed view — there's certainly a French-Canadian nation, but Quebec as a province is not a nation — but it worked, and now that the idea has been co-opted by Stephen Harper and accepted by large segments of the political class, Mr. Ignatieff can look like a precursor.

By the time the Liberals choose a new leader, Mr. Ignatieff's initial stand in favour of the war in Iraq will have been forgotten and forgiven, especially if Barack Obama is elected president.

The Obama factor might play in the Liberal leadership race. Even though Mr. Ignatieff is 14 years older than Mr. Obama, he's the only Liberal contender (so far) who can generate a bit of excitement: He, too, comes from outside the box, and he's not a typical politician.

I wonder: Could Michael Ignatieff be the sort of person Spector would consider a centre-left Stephen Harper?

The Bloc Québécois, founded in 1990 as a byproduct of the slow-motion implosion of the Progressive Conservatives, is a Québec-only party devoted to Québec's independence that has consistently done quite well outside of Montréal. After a series of gaffes by the Conservative government--not least cuts to federal arts funding by Stephen Harper--the Bloc has gained new momentum, not only insdie Québec but in the rest of Canada, too.

They can't vote for him, most abhor his dream to break up the country and few understand the words that come out of his mouth.

Still, many Canadians living outside Quebec have warmed up to Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe--and, if given the chance, some would even cast a ballot for the sovereigntist party chief.

Political bloggers in the rest of Canada have been piling praise on Mr. Duceppe's debate execution in both official languages. Some believe the veteran leader appears more genuine than his rivals.

Duceppe devotees across the country have even created online groups in his name.

A message on the Facebook fan group called "Gilles Duceppe Rocks My Canadian Socks!"says it's "for those of us who seem to be swept away with his Quebecois charisma, and would vote for him anyways, even though we may not agree with separatism; or those who love him for his politics as well as his charm."

"I would totally vote for him if he ran in my riding," Winnipeg resident Robin Dudgeon, the group's creator, said in an e-mail.

"I feel that it is his sense of humour that really does it for me. All of the other leaders really don't have the same thing."

[. . .]

The 61-year-old grandfather won the Bloc's first seat in 1990 and rose to party leader seven years later.

His sovereigntist party runs a full slate of 75 candidates in Quebec, but it has never vied for a seat outside the province.

With no chance of forming a government, some critics charge that Mr. Duceppe has never faced the same pressure as his counterparts.

He has also never had to present a fully costed platform for the country.

But political blogger Paul MacPhail said Mr. Duceppe's allure draws from his performances during Question Period and in the debates.

"I think he's an excellent debater. He's on his game, he knows what he's talking about whether you disagree or agree with him," Mr. MacPhail said in a phone interview from Charlottetown.

He said Mr. Duceppe would be a contender for his vote if the Bloc ran a candidate in P.E.I.--and, of course, if he dropped the whole sovereignty thing.

"If he was federal, yeah, he'd be somebody that I'd have to consider--if he wasn't, you know, for separation" Mr. MacPhail said.

I was impressed by his performance in the English-language debate of the federal party leaders . . .

Continuing from last night's topic, it struckl me as worthwhile to note that back in 2005, there was a controversy over the possibility that future (now current) Canadian Governor-General Michaëlle Jean harboured separatist sympathies.

Governor General designate Michaelle Jean ended her silence Wednesday on the recent allegations that she and her husband harboured separatist sympathies.

In a written statement from Rideau Hall, Jean affirmed her and Jean-Daniel Lafond's commitment to Canada.

"I want to tell you unequivocally that both he (husband Jean-Daniel Lafond) and I are proud to be Canadians and that we have the greatest respect for the institutions of our country," Jean said in a brief written statement released Wednesday.

"We are fully committed to Canada. I would not have accepted this position otherwise."

Jean also dismissed rumours that she and Lafond supported the Quebec independence cause.

"We are equally proud of the attachment to Quebec that we have always shown beyond any partisan considerations. Let me be clear: we have never belonged to a political party or the separatist movement," she says.

[. . .]

The controversy largely began after Quebec media reported on a documentary made 12 years ago by Jean's husband.

Critics pointed to a scene in the film where several people seated around a table raise their glasses to independence, including Jean and former FLQ member Pierre Vallieres.

A companion book to the film, written by Lafond, quotes Jean as saying that "one doesn't give independence; one takes it." It's unclear what her comments are referring to.

Quebec media also added fuel to the rumours by unearthing quotations made by Lafond from a book he wrote in 1993. In it, he says: "I applaud with both hands" Quebec independence and promises to be at "all St. Jean (Baptiste) parades."

Even before the film came to light, Jean had come under scrutiny after allegations were levelled last week that she and Lafond and were once known in Quebec cultural circles as sovereigntists.

Parti Quebecois leadership hopeful Pauline Marois didn't support or rebuff the allegations Wednesday, but she said people have a right to change their minds.

"You can make another evaluation of the situation and have another point of view and defend another point of view," Marois said in Montreal. "It's not for me to judge this."

I'm with Marois on this one. So far as Jean didn't (say) advocate terrorist violence or try to arrange for foreign military intervention--and most importantly, so long as she was presently committed to Canada, enough to serve the position fully and fairly--why shouldn't she have been considered a candidate for Canada's head of state?

Your thoughts, of course, are welcome.

In line with today's previous posts, imagine a Canada that fell apart rather nastily.

* * *

I probably shouldn't have packed this book on my trip north of the border, for the sheer number of quiet horrors this book described if nothing else. This first-person journalistic account does a good job describing Canada's slide from the Second World War era, from final disaffection from the wider world to the election of successive Social Credit governments, from the decision to distract (most of) a populace outraged by economic failure with hatred of the Laurentians, from further economic failure and the "Quiet War" to the disastrous decision to judge the French decadent on racial and social grounds and invade St. Pierre and Miquelon in 1982. Everything after that, from the creation of an independent Laurentia including not only the old Province of Quebec but the Petitcodiac in the east and the right bank of the Ottawa River--including Vanier--to the west and Labrador to the north, from the quiet immiseration of both Canada and Laurentia, to the unsavoury nationalisms that dominate these countries even now, is expected.

My parents left Atlantic Canada, cut off from the main body of Canada depopulated more quickly than Ontario, early enough for me to be born with American citizenship but a claim to Canadian citizenship. (I've not nearly enough Acadians in my family background to claim Laurentian citizenship, if you were wondering.) My claim to Canadian citizenship has always seemed dubious, after all of the stupid street fights between Canadian- and Laurentian-American youth gangs back in Roxbury, after all the stupid street jokes about "Would you like fries with that, eh?", after all the stories of continued relative decline and occasional hyperinflational spike that I saw on the nightly television news. Less legitimately, I admit that I've tried to hide when friends and colleagues complain about the Canadians and Laurentians taking their jobs and thought that if they only knew ... But they don't since we fade in. The Laurentians don't, but they have their own thriving community to fall back upon, and it was the Laurentian-American community that played a role in prompting the United States government to let France to dictate most of the post-war peace.

The book makes the point to me that the war was so unnecessary. Social Credit did have a lot of support in Quebec, don't forget, and Laurentians might have been isolated by language from English Canadians but they shared a religion and much culture with the Irish-Canadians. (This might show, I'm tempted to argue, in the decrepitude of Cabbagetown and the other Irish neighbourhoods in east Toronto, and in the prevalence of Orangemen. Can the IRA be too far behind? But I digress.) The fact that the two sides had to carry out ethnoterritorial consolidations in Miramichi and Temiskaming and Vanier and Manitoba shows how the two nations had to be forcibly separated. They never will be completely, as Straithairn's blustering over Vanier shows; others will have to intervene, as shown by Ambassador Chesnutt's quiet reminder that it is the United States supports Canada's balance of payments. More's the reason not to live here.

On that note, I'm pleased to note that Sinclair has quite a bit to say about population movements. Laurentia's stable economic growth of late hasn't kept several hundred thousand Laurentians from permanently immigrating to my native New England since 1983. Canada is much the more notable provider of immigrants, with this province of Ontario alone sending a million to the Midwest and New England states. Community member-states are also recruiting immigrants here, for just as Germany has been recruiting Volga Germans, Spain Latin Americans, and Yugoslavia Bulgarians and Albanians, so have Britain and Ireland been actively recruiting immigrants with roots two- (Britain) or three- (Ireland) generation removed in the old country, Iceland going back four generations. He has even managed to touch on the tensions this has created between Canadians of older and newer stock.

"The Maple Leaf, our emblem dear,/The Maple Leaf forever!" others might sing, but not me. I don't mean to knock any of my Toronto friends, yours is a nice city, but it could be and should have been nicer still and that's why I'm glad I don't have any part of it. It's just, well, Spain and Yugoslavia could manage their own transitions well enough, why couldn't you (or more precisely, your parents' generation)?

The Story of French, by Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow, is the sort of book that I wish was better than it is. It aspires to be an informative book combining a histoy of the development of the French language with a survey of its future. The fact that this title received a mention in the International Herald Tribune review of 's recent tome The Story of French shows the non-trivial impact that this book has made among laypeople interested in the dynamics of international language change.

As the authors demonstrate, contrary to the arguments of some the French language remains a vibrant international language and is in fact facing a hoepful future. French, they point out, is the first language of more than seventy million people living in some of the wealthiest countries in the world (France, Canada, Switzerland, Belgium), but it is a second language deeply entrenched in Africa. In place like Gabon, Côte d'Ivoire, and even French/English bilingual Cameroon, French or a French-based creole is superceding local languages. Beyond Francophone Africa, as one of the major Africa vehicular languages it seems to be gaining a foothold outside in South Africa.

The authors also make the very important point that la francophonie was triggered not by France but rather by Francophone societies on the periphery of France, as a result of of a Québec government that wanted to boost its own international profile, a Canadian federal government that wanted to keep track of Québec, and of Francophone African governments which wanted to diversify their international relationships. The institutional francophonie is in the authors' increasingly being joined by a popular francophonie, based on the sharing of popular culture (literature, music, film, Internet) and best practice (education, governance, health care, technology) between different Francophone communities.

The problems with the book? Sometimes, the authors make exaggerated claims. Nick Gillespie's review makes some points.

Languages tend to rise and fall with the economic and cultural powers that speak them and no one is expecting France to be a major player in the centuries to come. While there's no doubt that, at least for now, French "offers a counterbalance to the influence of English," it's unlikely that the language will prosper as the planet's economic energy shifts more toward Asia and Latin America.

Look instead for today's language of global hegemony, good old American English, to counterbalance the influence of Mandarin and Spanish in the not-too-distant future.

In my opinion Gillespie significantly underestimates both the prospects of the French language and the economic possibilities of Francophone Africa and France. Equally, Nadeau and Barlow are a bit too enthusiastic in promoting the prospects of French as a fully-fledged world language capable of taking on alongside Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. It might be better to compare the situation of the French language with that of Portuguese: two large and relatively wealthy countries that includes the vast majority of first-language speakers, smaller countries with significant numbers of first-language speakers, and a considerable number of second-language speakers in recently decolonized territories. Portuguese--at least in Angola--like French, is gaining ground as a first-language in urban areas in Lusophone Africa. For whatever reason, they chose to be boosters instead of neutral observers, speaking to a particlar committed market perhaps instead of trying for something more neutral.

In addition, the authors also come up with some howling mistakes. African democracy is not an oxymoron; Berlin was not founded as a Huguenot refuge; Africans do not speak pidgins; the atrocities of Leopold II in the Congo Free State are not allleged. These and serious errors if not outright slurs errors really distracted me from what was otherwise an interesting enough book.

And in the end? The Story of French is a worthwhile read, but I'd be exceptionally critical in regards to many of its background assumptions and claimed facts. Alas, this book does not provide the definitive English-language statement of the Frenh language. I just wonder when that book will come.