The year is 1667 and New France now known as Quebec is living in peace as a separate nation. New France was living under a system called the seigneurial regime and this was a system that was derived from the homeland in France. The seigneurial system gave pieces of land to censitaires (farmers) who worked on that land growing agriculture and developing a sense of independence for themselves, the censitaires would then pay dues to the landowners who were called seigneurs (see Fig.1- Pg 5). In the early stages of the seigneurial system dues were not expected because a lot of the early settlers were very poor and if dues were expected the farmers would head off into the forest and begin a life of fur trading and this is not what the New France government wanted because their goal was social order and social order only came with a good settlement (1). Life was running quite smoothly in New France until the British conquest of Quebec began in the fall of 1

The financial problems are increasing rapidly in Quebec and it shows. Quebec is not considered one of the wealthy provinces in Canada and when Quebec posts numbers of their national debt from 1989 to 1996 it shows just exactly how they will not be able to survive as a separate nation (3) (see Fig.2-Pg 5). When looking at the numbers you see that Quebec has a national debt of nearly $75 million and that is higher than every other province except Ontario but Ontario is one of the wealthier provinces so it is not uncommon for them to spend more money. The real scare comes when you take a look at the debt per person in Quebec where the population is 6.5 million people(4) and the debt per person has been above $10,000 the last five years. If Quebec really wants to separate, they are going to have to make some drastic changes to their spending habits. The perception of separation is that is going to happen overnight but that is false, it takes time and money, money the Quebec government doesn't have, it also takes a majority vote of 65%-70%(5) and past votes on separation have proven that the majority vote is nowhere in sight. The major cause of a lot of the problems for Quebec has come from the present and past leaders of Quebec who have taken the province on one hell of a roller-coaster ride over the past fifty years.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1541
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)