What do the Swiss know that we don't ? As Canada's federalist system experiences strain, Switzerland is often cited as a model, especially because it is one of the wealthiest countries in the world despite linguistic and cultural divisions. But can the Swiss example be transplanted to Canadian soil?

The analogies between Switzerland and Canada are striking for someone who has lived in Montreal most of his life and now finds himself in Geneva. With 6.8 million people, Switzerland has roughly one-quarter the population of Canada. A French-speaking minority (known as Romands) of just under one-quarter of the country's population confronts a dominant majority (German- speaking, in the Swiss case) within a federal system. Instead of bringing the country to the brink of dissolution, Switzerland's linguistic communities -- including a small Italian community (four percent of the population) and a very small but recognized fourth one (one percent Romansch) -- cooperate in apparent harmony. However, upon closer observation, the Swiss formula for successful coexistence is not easily transferable. The circumstances that have created inter-community cooperation in Switzerland are unique. Moreover, Swiss harmony is under increasing strain with some groups wanting to join the European Union, for instance, and others questioning the Swiss neutrality which has prevented internal divisions and obviated the need for rapid government decisions in dealing with world conflicts and wars.

Historically, the Swiss are neither particularly pacific nor particularly accommodating. The main export of this country during the 16th and 17th centuries was mercenaries, and even today Switzerland has the largest reserve army in Europe. Before the Swiss became the world's foremost innkeepers they enjoyed a reputation as brigands and one travelled through alpine passes at one's own peril. As Upper and Lower Canada were undergoing the rebellions of 1837, Switzerland was being torn apart in civil strife that pitted conservative Catholic cantons against liberal Protestant ones. (Roman Catholics slightly outnumber Protestants.)

Switzerland's saving grace has been that it has had a long time to work out its problems. Officially, the Helvetic Confederation, Switzerland's formal name, is just over 700 years old, and it took over 500 years to settle on its present borders. More significantly, Switzerland's contradictions appeared on the agenda one by one rather than simultaneously. The initial opposition between rural and urban cantons was defused before the opposition between Protestant and Catholic cantons split the country at the time of the Reformation. This religious division was largely absorbed by the time the present linguistic cleavage came to the fore.

The sources of previous tensions survive and Switzerland accommodates many combinations of differences. Language does not coincide with religion any more than does the urban/rural division. Some French- or German-speaking cantons are urban and Protestant, whereas others are neither. In federal politics too, crisscrossing cleavages mean that political parties are not linguistically or regionally defined. One can hardly imagine a "bloc romand" along the lines of the Bloc Quebecois, although the single Italian speaking canton, Ticino, does have a "Lega ticinesa," a right wing political party.

The eminent Swiss historian, Herbert Luthy, has argued that while every country in Europe undertook an ambitious program of centralization to make itself more powerful, the secret of Switzerland's survival is that it never became a modern state: the cantons would not tolerate it. To this day, medieval communal traditions linger. Swiss citizens have a "commune of origin," rather than the place of birth, stamped in their passport, and a foreigner seeking Swiss naturalization must first be accepted by a commune. The result of such unbroken continuity is paradoxical: Switzerland is both the oldest democracy in Europe and the last to grant women the vote (in 1971).

The linchpin of the Swiss political system is the 20 cantons and six half-cantons (has anyone thought of half- provinces in Canada?). The Swiss take their cantons very seriously indeed. When people refer to "the Republic," they mean Geneva, not Switzerland. The latter is referred to as "Bern," the capital, in much the same disdainful way that Canadians talk of "Ottawa." And it is the cantons that have clout. The constitution defines Switzerland as an "alliance" of its member units. It guarantees the sovereignty of cantons, leaving the federal government only those powers that the cantons entrust to it. Until recently, direct federal taxation was referred to as the "defence tax," suggesting that running the army is Bern's only proper function. Very recently, the canton of Jura refused to extradite a political offender to Bern authorities for a crime committed in the capital. Those Canadian federalists who refer to Canada as "the most decentralized country" in the world have not seen Switzerland.

The overwhelming importance of the cantons encompasses the sphere of linguistic rights and it is here that one encounters the greatest difference from Canada. Yes, Switzerland has three official languages and a fourth national one, but it is the cantons that set the linguistic rules and almost all cantons have opted for unilingualism. In Geneva, one has a better chance of making oneself understood in English than in German. There are no minority-language schools since education is a cantonal matter. When some Swiss Romands in Zurich tried to set up a private French-language school, the courts prohibited it. Even federal authorities who correspond with citizens in all official languages out of Bern defer to the linguistic character of each canton. Local Swiss post offices are not "pleased to serve you in the language of your choice," and the train conductor on the federal railway changes his call from "billets" to "Fahrkarten" whenever he crosses one of the linguistic borders. In the few bilingual cantons, and the trilingual one of Graub¸nden, linguistic borders are just as tightly defined, but by commune rather than canton. In short, Switzerland is run on a strictly territorial principle: you and your children are expected to speak the language of the area in which you happen to live. If that is not agreeable, your only option is to move.

Is territorial unilingualism the price of linguistic peace? Many Swiss seem to think so. Recent efforts to give Swiss federal authorities greater constitutional powers in the language sphere have met resolute opposition. Most tellingly, Switzerland's youngest canton, Jura, was created in 1978 to separate two linguistic groups. Both the Jura problem and the manner of its resolution will sound familiar to Quebecers. After decades of tension between the canton of Bern's germanophone majority and a francophone minority in its Jura districts, the issue was decided by referendum. In this case, however, there was not one referendum but half a dozen spread over a decade: first, the Bernese voted on whether there should be a referendum; then the Jurasians voted to create a new canton; then the Jurasians voted again (several times) to establish the borders of this canton; then the Swiss voted to confirm the entry of a new canton into the Confederation. And we complain about referendum fatigue in Quebec?

The Jura example demonstrates that the Swiss can be flexible, even about something as sacred as cantonal borders. Notwithstanding such flexibility and immense reserves of stability, the gulf between Swiss francophones and germanophones is growing. It manifests itself in such lifestyle issues as highway speed limits (francophones drive faster) and health bills (francophones' medical costs are higher). Most strikingly, Switzerland is split down linguistic lines over the issue of European Union: francophones are eager to join, but germanophones argue that Switzerland wouldn't count for much among the big states, and they have a fear of Brussels' centralizing appetite, of forced standardization, and of foreigners taking Swiss jobs. Furthermore, as Chateaubriand lamented, Switzerland was built on the miseries of others; the contemporary equivalent is numbered bank accounts, and now European money is flooding in as EU nationals fear the effects of monetary union on bank confidentiality. This has put francophone proponents of the EU at disadvantage.

Even more fundamentally, the Swiss find it increasingly difficult to communicate with each other. In the past, Swiss germanophones would speak French with their Romand compatriots, out of deference to the minority and because of the prestige of the French language. This is no longer the case. Moreover, to differentiate from the German spoken by their neighbours, since the 1930s Swiss germanophones have increasingly forsaken standard German in favour of Swiss-German dialects, about as impermeable to outsiders as joual is to non-Quebecois. The result is that when Swiss francophones and germanophones do business, they often end up speaking English.

If Canada were to follow the Swiss model it would have to look at the implications of regional unilingualism and slow centralized decision-making which would be inappropriate for a country which relies on export income for one-third of its gross domestic product. Canada would be unable to rely on the advantages gained through Swiss neutrality, the income from international organizations and savings accounts.

There may be comfort in knowing that others have problems, even those who seem to have solved them. On reflection, perhaps there is even comfort in knowing that Canada cannot borrow solutions from elsewhere. After all, this leaves us with the realization that we are the only ones who can work out our own problems.

Andre Liebich, BA'68, is a professor of international history and politics at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, where he holds the Chair in Eastern European Studies. He did his graduate work in political science at Harvard, then taught at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal from 1973 to 1989, and was also a visiting professor at McGill. His current research focuses on minority issues under post- communism. His book, From the Other Shore: Russian Social Democracy after 1921 (Harvard University Press, forthcoming), won the Fraenkel Prize in contemporary history from the Wiener Library, London.