Can't a Fellow Muse?

Sure, in the privacy of the shower, if you're a former aspirant to the prime ministership of a country whose future you're speculating about.  All the more so when you're also an academic and former leader of a once-leading political party.  To offer to an interviewer one's innermost apprehensions about a very sober situation does not reflect a sound reckoning.

Introspection is always useful, but sometimes it should be mute.

Not that Michael Ignatieff was wrong in his contentions.  Increasingly, Quebec has less in common with the rest of Canada and not an awful lot to discuss that is of common interest; its focus is unerringly internal.  All of the provinces are focused on their well-being, both as stand-alones and as part of the confederation of provinces and territories that make up the nation that Canada represents.

Quebec alone has conferred upon itself separate nation status.  Separate, exceptional and above and beyond mere status as a province among others. None, as it happens, are equal to it.  Its heritage, language, culture and values set it apart, and apart is how it means to remain.  It may be indebted to the rest of Canada for its standard of living, but it is loathe to express indebtedness; rather it expresses a good deal of entitlement.

Transfer payments that Quebec receives annually in billions of dollars taken from Canada's wealthier provinces, enabling the province to provide for its people special social programs unavailable elsewhere in Canada are seen internally as nothing less than their due.  They are, in fact, the unreliable glue that keeps Quebec within confederation.  A powerful incentive to remain.

Not powerful enough for the separatists, the 'nationalists' chafing at the bit to mount yet another referendum. 

Mchael Ignatieff was straight up and quite correct when he stated that Canada and Quebec are already "almost" separate countries.  In a never-ending effort to persuade Quebec just how valuable their contribution to the union of provinces and territories is for the preservation of the Canada that we know and love, Quebec has been steadily and gradually endowed with all manner of courtesies in self governance.

As the federal government bestowed upon the province the singular advantage of representing itself internationally, and maintaining a relationship that bears more resemblance to an informal agreement between nations than that of a central government and one of its geographical appendages, the distance accelerated.  Quebec insisted on its autonomy in a wide variety of areas, including immigration.

And the federal government graciously acceded.  Independence does indeed, as Mr. Ignatieff commented so publicly, so recklessly, loom on the horizon; perhaps sooner than later.  And the separatists regard Mr. Ignatieff now far more fondly then they ever did when they might have been instrumental in voting him into office.

They needn't fret a lost opportunity, however.  There always remain other options; Justin Trudeau for one, should he ever become leader of the Liberal Party might aggravate on behalf of a separate Quebec on the pretense that the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper is intent on dismantling all that Canadians hold dear - and of course Thomas Mulcair, should the NDP ever ascend to first place and agree to agree with Quebec separatists.