A national voice must be heard in Quebec election
As we embark on yet another round of hand-wringing and hairtearing over Quebec’s place in the federation, prompted by the provincial election now underway, federalist Ottawa is eerily quiet. It should not be. More than at any time since the 1990s, all Canadians have a vested interest in the outcome of the April 7 vote — even though, of course, only Quebecers may cast a ballot.
Eighteen months ago, in the campaign that brought PQ Leader Pauline Marois to power with a minority mandate, all three major parties in the House of Commons adopted a posture of benign neutrality, if not neglect. The thinking then, as now, was to avoid a perception of federal meddling in Quebec’s “internal” affairs. If anything, such meddling could inflame a popular backlash and actually make life more difficult for the federalist side.
This is why, presumably, Opposition Leader Tom Mulcair insisted Wednesday that though he is an ardent, lifelong federalist, and though he thinks a third referendum would be a bad idea, he doesn’t intend to pick sides in this fight. He’s Switzerland. The Conservative government, only slightly less timorously, has let it be known it expects its Quebec supporters will choose a candidate other than the separatist one. Shockingly bold, that.
Justin Trudeau’s Grits, so far, are the only federal party to state a clear preference — not surprisingly, for Philippe Couillard’s provincial Liberals, who are federalist and who could conceivably win, though that seems unlikely today.
Who cares? It’s a fair question. If anything, the PQ’s charter of values for the province, the very reason for its surge to front-runner status, and thus the motivation behind Marois calling this election, makes a future referendum victory more difficult. That’s because, though roughly half the province’s “old-stock” (that means white, of French, Catholic settler heritage) citizens sympathize with independence, they constitute only 60 per cent of the population. Therefore, no independence drive can practically achieve a 50 per cent margin of victory, let alone the “clear majority” required by the Supreme Court under the Clarity Act, unless allophones (neither Franco nor Anglo) are part of the project. The so-called charter of values, because it favours Christians over Muslims, Sikhs and Jews, rather pointedly shows allophones the door of the PQ’s big tent and shoves them out into the cold.
In the early days of this campaign, Marois already is playing down the chances of another referendum. That is nonsense for two reasons. First, it’s clear to everyone in and around the Quebec debate that this is the separatists’ last kick at the can. It’s a baby boomer’s dream; young Quebecers are not engaged with the question of independence.
Given a majority, Marois will come under great pressure to hold a third referendum, while there is still time, and create her own “winning conditions” through acts of provocation that inflame nationalist sentiment. The values charter is to be the centrepiece of these provocations; a law that violates the spirit and the letter of the Canadian Charter of Rights, and that the federal government has no choice but to forcefully oppose.
All of which is why it’s just not good enough for federal politicians or any federalists to sit on their hands and hope for the best. They should make the case for Canada; they should tell Quebecers now, not later, why the values charter is wrong, what the consequences of another referendum will be, and that a vote for the PQ is a vote for trouble, at best, and the breakup of the country, at worst. Canadians have a right to expect that someone, speaking on their behalf, will say so.