OTTAWA — It falls to Yang Shilong, a correspondent for China's Xinhua News Agency, to ask the most obvious question in the latest federalist debate: "What exactly do they mean by 'nation'?"

Shilong, like many Canadians, is attempting to make sense of the rhetorical gyrations among federal political parties concerning Quebec's nomenclature as a nation.

"We don't have a good translation for this in Chinese," Shilong admits in a friendly reporter-to-reporter conversation.

The fact is, there isn't really a good translation for this in the convoluted language of Canada-Quebec politics either. Do we mean a civic nation? Or a cultural one? How about a historical nation? Or more controversially, a nation-state?

University of Toronto political theorist Ronald Beiner says nailing down a strict definition is not the important part.

"It's best to fudge it. You (Quebecers) have a sense of nationhood, it's imperilling our civic community in this country, so as a matter of prudence let's make some grand statement of our recognition that you have this distinct national entity, and hopefully that will keep the country going for another few years."

The "nation" debate has raged on the world stage since at least the middle of the 19th century, when various colonies started getting restless. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson famously weighed in during his 1918 speech to Congress, advocating for the self-determination of nations, or the idea that peoples or nations have the right to a sovereign state.

In Canada today, only the Bloc Quebecois and their political soulmates in Quebec City are tied to the nation-state idea. Internationally, more and more experts say the concept is irrelevant and unnecessarily divisive in such a homogenous world.

Liberal leadership hopeful Michael Ignatieff, the latest to put the issue on the table through his policy platform, says Quebec is a "civic nation," not an ethnic one. In his 1993 book Blood and Belonging, he describes civic nationalism as: "a community of equal, rights-bearing citizens, united in patriotic attachment to a shared set of political practices and values."

That suggests anglophones and other groups who have emigrated to Quebec would be included in that mix.

But Ignatieff has everyone head-scratching with his leadership policy platform.

"Quebecers, moreover, have come to understand themselves as a nation, with a language, history, culture and territory that marks them out as a separate people," Ignatieff writes.

That sounds more like ethnic nationalism, given those factors of language and culture might not apply to the Bronfmans and Garcias of Quebec.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's definition also appears to creep toward ethnic nationalism.

The unexpected resolution he proposed in the Commons on Wednesday referred - even in English - to the "Quebecois" rather than Quebecers, suggesting a linguistic element to Quebec nationalism that excludes non-francophones.

"They know they have preserved their unique language and culture and promoted their values and interests within Canada," Harper said. "The question is a straightforward one: do the Quebecois form a nation within a united Canada? The answer is yes."

Harper's Quebec lieutenant, Lawrence Cannon, didn't clear matters up when he alternately referred to Quebecers and Quebecois, and said any "taxpayer" who cast a vote in the last Quebec referendum is part of the definition of nation.