(2006-05-05) Jacobs Quebec Independence

This 2005 interview with Jane Jacobs covers her position on Quebec Secession. She looked specifically at Montreal and Toronto and foresaw the regionalization of Montreal, making it into a sort of feeder for Toronto as regional airports are to a hub. "In sum," she wrote, "Montreal cannot afford to behave like other Canadian (Canada) regional cities without doing great damage to the economic well-being of the Quebecois. It must instead become a creative economic centre in its own right. Yet there is probably no chance of this happening if Quebec remains a province.".. She developed the idea of smaller sovereignties (Sovereignty) in her recent book Dark Age Ahead. In it she explains how early medieval cities helped pull Europe out of the Dark Ages because of subsidiarity, the principle that government works best when it is closest to the people it serves and the needs it addresses, and fiscal accountability, the principle that institutions collecting and disbursing taxes work most responsibly when they are transparent (Transparent Society) to those providing money. Both of these principles have almost disappeared from the modern world... As a supporter of Quebec national sovereignty and a Quebec currency - mainly because cities swing currencies and in this case Toronto swings Canada's currency to the detriment of Montreal and all of Quebec - Jane Jacobs is not terribly impressed by the blurring of national sovereignties and currencies in Europe (EU).