Canada on the Brink-Again

...Whatever Brian Mulroney's gifts as a politician, though, he was unable to sell his schemes to enough people...

...now it is his protege, Prime Minister Jean Chretien...

...Its path, however, is not free of pitfalls...

...Second, Johnson and Parizeau have been sparring about whose party would do more to create jobs, a key concern in a province hobbled by chronically high unemployment...

...If he has a plan for dealing with a PQ government, he has not said so...

...But that is a risky course, for should the PQ triumph anyway, the independence cause will have been greatly strengthened...

...In the past, there was good reason for the perception that the French language and culture in North America were at risk...

...As in the 1970s, the Federal responsibility for combating the separatist threat rests on the shoulders of a Francophone Quebecer...

...As a result, the Liberals have traditionally stressed such matters, while the PQ has played up the language and culture theme...

...One doubts it...

...This would appear to clearly define the election, except the PQ has also been arguing aggressively that it can govern better than the Liberals...

...Hundreds of thousands of irked Anglophones moved away, as did a number of enterprises, causing the economy to lag...

...Assuming the PQ secures a majority in the National Assembly, it is committed to holding a referendum on sovereignty by next summer...

...Quebecers worry that independence will entail unacceptable costs, including a devalued currency, higher interest rates, less growth, higher taxes, higher unemployment, etc...

...In addition, he has traveled across the country trying to persuade people that Canada would be a happier place if Quebec left...

...In all of his public pronouncements he expresses confidence that Quebec will not secede, that his beloved Canada will remain intact...

...In these circumstances, only if Johnson turns the election into a one-issue contest about independence, and frightens a sufficient number of voters to the Liberal side, does he have a remote chance of winning...

...Their Parti Quebecois (PQ), last in office from 1976 to 1985, is determined this time to realize its raison d'etre, the independence of Quebec...

...In the interim the party expects to begin taking steps to dissolve the ties that have held Canada together since 1867...

...Moreover, it is attracting those who think they are sophisticated enough to both put the PQ into office and brake the independence train...

...The independence movement reflects a longstanding dissatisfaction among French-speaking Quebecers—who constitute over 80 per cent of the population—with their treatment by other Canadians, plus a conviction that the province could do better on its own...

...In a system where no party has won more than two consecutive elections for over 30 years, the issue is a powerful one...

...Meanwhile, if the PQ prevails in the upcoming balloting, Bouchard will surely find it difficult to play second fiddle to Parizeau, and the independence movement may find it hard to accommodate two such large egos...

...Next Harold M. Waller, a frequent contributor to The New Leader, is currently Acting Dean of Arts at McGill University came the stunning showing of the relatively new Bloc Quebecois Party (BQ) in last year's Federal election...

...But it lost a referendum in 1980 that asked for a mandate to negotiate "sovereignty-association," a sugar-coated version of independence...

...For instance, several terms have been used to describe the PQ's ultimate goal, and this has sown confusion in the electorate...

...Jacques Parizeau, the PQ's leader since the end of 1987, is a former finance minister with an economics background, but he has not managed to make a convincing case for the economic virtues of independence versus federalism—and that is probably the party's chief weakness...

...Parizeau maintains that the PQ did well on the job front during its previous reign, but that only after sovereignty is achieved will Quebec have all the tools" necessary to emerge from its present prolonged economic slump...

...In mid-July, for example, an opinion poll showed that although 51 per cent of the respondents intended to vote for the PQ, compared with 41 per cent for the Liberals, only 47 per cent supported Quebec's secession...

...Secessionist forces in French-speaking Quebec Province are poised to gain power in the September 12 provincial election...

...Today, many observers contend, there is no longer meaningful discrimination because of significant national policy changes in recent decades...

...Whether the country will hold together against the likely challenge is at the moment an open question...

...Should the PQ win, the Federal government will have to pursue a strategy designed to keep Ottawa-Quebec relations calm during the period leading up to the referendum, in order to preclude voters getting agitated over some contrived confrontation that might lead them to support the sovereignty option...

...Lesser but still substantial percentages believed that Quebecers would continue to pay taxes to Ottawa (26 per cent) and elect MPs to the Federal Parliament (27 per cent...

...The provincial Liberal Party, tired after nine years of governing, is trailing badly in the polls and given little chance of winning...

...If the trend holds up, on September 12 the PQ will enjoy a landslide majority in the National Assembly, where it will initiate the drive toward independence...

...The elite accommodation represented by the Meech Lake Accord foundered in 1990 when Newfoundland refused to hold a ratification vote, and the 1992 Charlottetown Agreement was rejected in a nationwide referendum...

...This idea continues to be promoted despite the fact that nine years of PQ rule brought radical changes to both public and private life in the province, notably in the use of French in the workplace, education and business communication...

...The currently fashionable term among the secessionists is "sovereignty," which ought to have a clear meaning...

...Canada's Federal system seems destined to experience its most fateful test in the coming year...

...After former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau's constitutional initiatives in 1982, which Quebec nationalists interpreted as a "humiliation," his successor attempted to mollify them by further decentralizing an already decentralized Federal system...

...The strong victory his fledgling party scored in Quebec in the '93 Federal election has established him as a contender for the mantle of the separatist cause's leadership...

...The PQ has won two of the six elections it has contested...

...Separatist enthusiasts believe that events since then may have turned the tide in their favor...

...He has been almost serene as he contemplates the deteriorating political situation in his home province...

...They were brought into sharp focus when the late Rene Levesque founded the PQ in 1968...

...But when the issue is cultural, as this one surely is, economic considerations are often pushed aside...

...Nevertheless, the passions that can be aroused by the language issue and feelings of subordinate status remain considerable indeed...

...Finally, another wrinkle in the unfolding drama is the role of BQ leader Lucien Bouchard, a former Mulroney Cabinet minister...

...Greater homogeneity, he suggests, would mean less wrangling and more effective government—a seductive proposition that has yet to be demonstrated...

...It is not even clear that he would be prepared to begin negotiating the terms of a divorce...

...The polls, after finding the two parties neck and neck early in the year, have been reporting a steady shift to the PQ...

...Could the Federal government successfully stonewall demands for negotiation...

...Yet 42 per cent of the respondents to a recent survey said a sovereign Quebec would remain part of Canada, and 41 per cent thought they would continue to use Canadian passports...

...Instead, he has concentrated his efforts in Parliament on advancing the independence position...

...Then it was Trudeau...

...The party quickly became one of Quebec's two major political forces by appealing to a wide variety of Francophones, especially intellectuals, the youth, civil servants and others in the public sector, unions, and residents of certain rural areas...

...The sovereignty thrusters gained new vitality during the late 1980s and early '90s by pushing the old contention that English Canada was simply unable to adapt to Quebec's aspirations...

...But it is not at all clear the separatists can win a referendum that poses an honest, direct question regarding independence—let alone how negotiations between Quebec and the rest of Canada might go...

...The Liberals appeal to federalist Francophones, Anglophones, immigrant groups whose mother tongue is neither French nor English, older people, and residents of western Quebec near the national capital of Ottawa...

...The irony is that if the separatist project fails again it will be due to economic factors...

...The Liberals are led by Quebec's Prime Minister Daniel Johnson, who succeeded the ailing Robert Bourassa earlier this year...

...Of course, none of those features of the present Federal system would obtain in the independent Quebec envisioned by the PQ...

...Now head of the second largest contingent in the House of Commons, Bouchard has abjured a national persona...

...Given the negative impact the prospect of secession had on the economy back then, he may find himself eating his words when the time for the promised referendum rolls around next summer...

...Under Johnson, they are more unequivocally committed to federalism than they were under Bourassa, for whom the epithet "too clever by half" seems to have been coined...