Many researchers have studied the endogenous factors that would explain the Quiet Revolution and the transformation of French Canada. In this article, I look to the past in order to study federal policies related to culture and their relationship to the debates surrounding the question of nationalism in French Canada and in Québec. In 1949, the federal government took a cultural turn when it established the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences. This report drew intense reactions from French-Canadian intellectual circles. Faced with the protomulticultural vision of Commissioners Vincent Massey and Georges-Henri Lévesque, André Laurendeau would polish his vision of a bicultural Canada. The debate was most notably on the definitions of culture and nation, as well as the place of the State in managing both. It is important to understand these debates, typical of the welfare state, so as to better understand the nationalist context in which the Quiet Revolution was articulated. These debates also allow for grasping the contemporary aspect of federal investment within minority Francophone communities.