ple greater than those encountered by any liberal society that
has to combine, for example, liberty and equality, or prosperity
and justice.
Here are two incompatible views of liberal society. One of
the great sources of our present disharmony is that the two
views have squared off against each other in the last decade.
The resistance to the “distinct society” that called for precedence
to be given to the Charter came in part from a spreading
procedural outlook in English Canada. From this point of
view, attributing the goal of promoting Quebec’s distinct society
to a government is to acknowledge a collective goal,
and this move had to be neutralized by being subordinated
to the existing Charter. From the standpoint of Quebec, this
attempt to impose a procedural model of liberalism not only
would deprive the distinct society clause of some of its force
as a rule of interpretation, but bespoke a rejection of the
model of liberalism on which this society was founded. Each
society misperceived the other throughout the Meech Lake
debate. But here both perceived each other accurately—and
didn’t like what they saw. The rest of Canada saw that the
distinct society clause legitimated collective goals. And Quebec
saw that the move to give the Charter precedence imposed
a form of liberal society that was alien to it, and to
which Quebec could never accommodate itself without surrendering
its identity.35
I have delved deeply into this case because it seems to me
to illustrate the fundamental questions. There is a form of
the politics of equal respect, as enshrined in a liberalism of
rights, that is inhospitable to difference, because (a) it insists
on uniform application of the rules defining these rights,
without exception, and (b) it is suspicious of collective goals.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that this model seeks to abolish
cultural differences. This would be an absurd accusation. But