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Awaiting a third referendum
Adam Daifallah
National Post
Friday, October 28, 2005
QUEBEC CITY - Ten years ago Sunday, Canada nearly died. The
image of that little needle at the bottom of the TV screen
on the night of Oct. 30, 1995, teetering back and forth across
the 50% mark, is seared in my memory. That fateful vote left
a lot of unfinished business. A decade later, it remains unfinished.
Since the 1995 referendum, a number of things have changed
both inside and outside Quebec.
In English Canada, the most important is a change of attitude.
As a result of the emotional trauma of the Meech-Charlottetown-referendum
triad, Canadians' passion for keeping the country united has
cooled. A new stoicism has replaced the feeling that Quebec
must be kept in confederation at all costs.
In Quebec, where a federalist government (with strong nationalist
tendencies) is in power, the elite is finally starting to
question the so-called modele quebecois -- the statist dogma
that has dominated Quebec politics since the 1960s. Even Lucien
Bouchard, in releasing his pro-reform manifesto last week,
downplayed separatism and argued that the structural problems
of Quebec's economy are more important.
But in many other respects, nothing has changed.
Aside from defensive measures like the Clarity Act and the
disastrous sponsorship program, the federal Liberals have
done nothing of substance to give Quebecers new faith in Canada.
The Quebec electorate still sends a majority of separatist
MPs to Ottawa. They continue to view federal politics as a
separatist-versus-federalist fight, meaning the only options
are the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois. The Bloc's continued
presence in Ottawa -- likely to get even stronger after the
next election -- is guaranteeing Liberal one-party rule.
How much longer can this go on? It won't stop until the unity
question is addressed, and no one is talking about doing that,
except a few journalists and academics. No serious debate
about the future of the country has taken place since the
night of the last referendum. We've been frozen in time. .
It's a debate that must occur, because whether we like it
or not, it is set to return to the front pages (and if recent
rumblings from the West are any guide, not just in Quebec).
In two weeks, the Parti Quebecois will elect a new leader.
The winner will almost certainly be Andre Boisclair, an urbane
leftist with a Harvard degree. Despite admitting he used cocaine
while serving as a cabinet minister, his campaign has energized
young francophones, and the PQ's membership rolls have swelled.
Boisclair is perceived as someone who can breathe new life
into the greying separatist movement. He is presenting himself
as a new kind of separatist by de-emphasizing the party's
ethnic and cultural nationalism -- the aspect of the separatist
cause that turned off voters. Instead, he is talking about
a civic nationalism based on social democratic values. If
Jean Charest's government is defeated and a referendum is
held soon after, this may be the separatists' best -- and
given Quebec's demographic trends, last -- hope for winning
conditions.
So it is up to the federalists to offer something better.
The frustrating thing is that there is near-unanimity on what
needs to be done: Ottawa must respect areas of provincial
jurisdiction, fix the fiscal imbalance and look at a devolution
of powers. Quebec politicians and journalists have been pleading
for these reforms for decades. It seems so simple, yet the
feds continue to ignore the problem. For the separatists,
it's the gift that keeps on giving.
Assuming the Charest government does lose the next election
-- and that is by no means certain -- we can expect another
referendum by the end of this decade. If that day comes and
Quebecers are forced to choose between status quo federalism
and independence, they may choose the latter.
Adam Daifallah is a law student at Laval University and co-author
of the upcoming book, Rescuing Canada's Right. www.rescuingcanadasright.com.
© National Post 2005
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