Chopra, Deepak, David Simon, and Leanne Backer.
The Chopra Center Cookbook: A Nutritional Guide to
Renewal. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2002.
Jan Hall
See also Life coaching; Religion and spirituality in
the United States; Weil, Andrew.
Chrétien, Jean
Identification Canadian prime minister, 1993-
2003
Born January 11, 1934; Shawinigan, Quebec,
Canada
Chrétien’s government solved, for at least the short-term, the
fractious question of Quebec’s secession from Canada.
A member of the Liberal Party from Quebec, Jean
Chrétien became the prime minister of Canada on
November 4, 1993, after a long career in politics. He
had always supported Canadian unity, and his elec-
tion temporarily quieted the independence move-
ment in his home province.
The Quebec Question The Canadian confedera-
tion, as created in the British parliament by the Brit-
ish North America Act of 1867, remained for its first
century of existence a fractured nation. The act
combined the portions of Canada settled by the
French in the seventeenth century with the portions
of Canada settled by immigrants from Great Britain
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By
1867, the need for a form of self-government was
blindingly clear, yet in that supremely nationalistic
century, combining two groups with quite different
cultural identities was very difficult. The British
North America Act, which served for the century af-
ter its passage as Canada’s constitution, was a com-
promise, providing for self-government in a single
federal entity of the two groups of peoples who made
up the vast majority of Canada’s inhabitants at that
time.
In the late twentieth century, the compromise
came under heightened attack, chiefly from the in-
habitants of Quebec who “wanted out” from the pre-
dominantly anglophone Canadian confederation.
The Québécois had retained their French culture
and felt themselves being submerged in the mainly
British culture of the rest of Canada. Their leaders
pressed for a constitutional revision that, in vari-
ous forms, would have created an independent,
or “sovereignist,” government outside the federal
government of Canada. The movement was a pop-
ular one that rested heavily on the principle of self-
determination, a major concept in the democratic
philosophy that dominated Western civilization in
the twentieth century.
The Québécois movement pressed for referenda
that would create the independent Quebec they
sought. Referenda occurred in 1980 and in 1995,
and in each case those who opposed an indepen-
dent Quebec won by a very slim majority: In 1995,
the no votes (opposing separatism) were 50.6 per-
cent, the yes votes 49.4 percent. Chrétien, though of
solidly francophone background, was a member of
the Liberal Party and was working entirely on the na-
tional political scene. He became prime minister at a
time when the Quebec question was a central issue.
He crafted a remarkable solution that acknowl-
edged the validity of self-determination but also en-
sured that Canada would not be torn apart on the
slimmest of margins.The Chrétien Solution Chrétien began by referring
the issue of Quebec sovereignty, and the rights of its
voters to determine the status of the province, to the
Canadian Supreme Court. The court provided a
masterly decision: It recognized the right of self-
determination but determined that Quebec could
secede from the Canadian confederation only when
a substantial majority of the voters required it, deftly
refusing to quantify “substantial” though clearly rul-
ing out a mere 1 percent. Chrétien then took the is-
sue to the Canadian parliament when his Liberal
government proposed the Clarity Act, introduced in
1999 and passed in 2000. The act defined the condi-
tions under which secession could occur: Majority
vote in favor of sovereignty for Quebec would have
to be substantial, and only after negotiation with the
government of Canada. That Chrétien was able to
carry the act through the Canadian parliament was
certainly due to his Quebec origins; only such a
Québécois could have made it acceptable in Quebec
and the rest of Canada.
The Chrétien government followed up on this
masterly legislative solution with numerous other
moves to deflect provincial discontent. In particular,
it turned over to the provincial governments a num-
ber of governmental responsibilities that had hith-178 Chrétien, Jean The Nineties in America