Canadian lessons

Mark Carney, the Canadian current Governor of the Bank of England and former governor of the Bank of Canada, accepted his present position after seriously considering the possibility of presenting his candidacy to lead the federalist Canadian Liberal Party, the party that has done most in Canada to democratically fight secessionist movements in Quebec in a positive way, by constructing a well reasoned, federalist alternative. A few weeks ago, he gave a speech in Scotland where he was clear that the "independence" sought by the Scottish Nationalist Party (a currency union with the UK) was incompatible with true fiscal independence.
"The euro area is now beginning to rectify its institutional shortcomings, but further, very significant steps must be taken to expand the sharing of risks and pooling of fiscal resources. In short, a durable, successful currency union requires some ceding of national sovereignty. It is likely that similar institutional arrangements would be necessary to support a monetary union between an independent Scotland and the rest of the UK."
In early March, another Canadian liberal, the former leader of the party Stéphane Dion, will be in Spain to share his experience as a person who lived through and won a secessionist debate, the one about Quebec. Mr. Dion is a federalist francophone form Quebec, and he is both a politician and an academic, which means that his arguments have a double perspective, and are far away from a populist appeal. In a previous shorter visit to Spain, he already expressed his opinion that secessions in democratic societies have a strong component of democratic manipulation, and although he was a winner in the referendum about independence in Quebec in 1980 and 1995, he warned that independence referenda are divise and socially dangerous.
The Canadian federalists, though, not only were tough in their criticism to secession movements in democratic societies, but offered and worked for alternatives that guarantee a better and more peaceful future for their societies.