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51 U.N.B.L.J. 289 (2002)
Consequences of Quebec Independence on Atlantic Provinces

handle is hein.journals/unblj51 and id is 293 raw text is: CONSEQUENCES OF QUEBEC INDEPENDENCE ON ATLANTIC PROVINCES David Milne* Canadians outside Quebec are not easily inclined to think about how the prospect of Quebec's independence might affect them. Indeed, their collective aversion to so profound a rupture to their political life has made the question almost an unthinkable one. Certainly, the relative paucity of scholarly attention given to the matter is remarkable given the repeated and serious threat that the movement for Quebec's independence has posed for several decades now. For the most part, the question has been regarded virtually as taboo, as though reflecting on the unthinkable might render the threat more tangible or even confer legitimacy upon it. Apart from a few lonely scholars who briefly reflected on the idea of a Canada without Quebec in conferences and publications, particularly during the dark days following the collapse of the Meech Lake Accord, there has been scarcely any enthusiasm for directing our intellectual resources to it.' This neglect has extended as well to any serious consideration of how Canadians should respond to a potentially affirmative vote in a referendum campaign run and controlled out of Quebec City. As a result, Canadians were totally unprepared for the referendum they nearly lost in 1995. If anything, the absence of serious analysis of the impact of Quebec's independence from a regional perspective is even more striking.2 Certainly, for Atlantic Canadians, this was a nightmare scenario better resisted and driven from mind than actively faced. Of course, everyone understood that Quebec's independence would physically sever or separate Atlantic Canada from the rest of Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, University of Prince Edward Island. See K. McRoberts, ed., Beyond Quebec: Taking Stock of Canada (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1995); P. Resnick. English Canada: The Nation that Dares not Speak Its Name, in K. McRoberts, op.cit. 81-92 and Thinking English Canada (Toronto: Stoddart, 1994), and D.J. Bercuson and B. Cooper, Deconfederation: Canada without Quebec (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1991). For a thoughtful review of the difficulties English-Canadian scholars have had with the concept, see A.C. Cairns, Political Scientists and the Constitutional Crisis: The View from Outside Quebec, in A.C. Cairns, Disruptions: Constitutional Struggles fron the Charter to Meech Lake, (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1991 ), at 181-98. 2 For a rare glimpse at the subject from an Atlantic Canadian perspective, see R. Finbow, Atlantic Canada: Forgotten Periphery in an Endangered Confederation, in K. McRoberts, op.cit., at 61-80.

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