Editorial: Québec question might just outlive me

Jeff Green | Sep 06, 2012

Editorial by Jeff Green

As I have looked in a cursory way at the results of the Québec election. it occurs to me that my own life has been measured out by the Québec question, and that the future of Québec in or out of Canada will likely not be resolved until I'm long gone.

I was born in 1960, almost 52 years ago, a few months after the beginning of the Lesage era in Québec politics, a period of six years that has been dubbed “The Quiet Revolution”.

When I was a kid there were mailbox bombings in the City of Montreal, acts of violence attributed to the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ) and in 1970, I was briefly warned against going to the local park to play ball in the early evenings because the FLQ crisis, complete with kidnappings, the murder of Labour Minister Pierre Laporte, and the War Measures Act briefly turned the normally peaceful streets of Montreal into a scene out of a cold war movie in Eastern Europe.

In 1976 the Parti Québécois formed a majority government. In 1980 there was a referendum on the unwieldy concept of sovereignty-association with the rest of Canada. The referendum was lost, signalling the beginning of the end of charismatic leader René Lévesque’s career. In 1984, the Canadian constitution was proclaimed without Québec’s consent. In 1990, an attempt to bring Québec into the Canadian constitution, the Meech Lake Accord, failed.

In 1995 there was another referendum in Québec, this one ended up being led by Lucien Bouchard, the leader of a federal party, the Bloc Québécois. Somehow, Bouchard's charismatic leadership almost carried the day, but the vote was lost by less than one percentage point.

Seventeen years later, there is an election in Québec that in its final days turned back to the question of national identity.

It featured a federalist governing party, the Liberals under Jean Charest, who have been in power long enough to be tired and ready for the scrap heap, a situation similar to the reality in 1976, when the Liberals under then Premier Robert Bourassa were soundly defeated by René Lévesque and the PQ.

The PQ is now led by a woman, Pauline Marois, who will be the first female premier of Québec when she is sworn in later this fall.

The PQ's policy on sovereignty is to hold a referendum only if they are going to win it, and in the interim to push for as much benefit as Québec can get from Canada, (which to be fair is what all provinces do), but at the same time try to unnerve the Government of Canada and force them to turn on Québec.

Stephen Harper might prove to be a willing partner in this calculation, as he has rarely shied away from political battles and has a majority government with only a few representatives from Québec.

The alternatives for Québec voters were the aforementioned Federalist Liberals, who looked to be a spent force from the start, and the new CAQ, Coalition Avenir Québec, a party led by a former Pequiste, François Legault, who is what used to be called a “soft nationalist” in Québec. Situated to the right of the PQ on economic matters, the CAQ holds no real commitment to the idea of Canada as a country but their key election promise is not to hold a referendum on sovereignty for at least ten years.

This is not to say that sovereignty was the only, or even the major issue in the election. The tuition crisis has not been resolved; there is a deficit; corruption scandals are coming to a public inquiry this fall; and the bridges and tunnels are crumbling all over Montreal and the rest of the province.

In the end, it was an election where the winners lost, and the losers won, and the sovereignty issue backfired against the Parti Québécois.

The PQ will form the government, but they do not have a majority, and their percentage of the vote actually dropped compared to the previous election, from 35% to 32%. The Liberals lost the government, but kept 50 seats and 31% of the popular vote. The CAQ were a factor, but with only 19 seats, they did not do as well as they had hoped.

However, a left-leaning sovereignist party is in power in Québec, while a hard-line Conservative Party with a prime minister known for his intransigence holds absolute power in Canada, so for the next few years the push and pull of Québec outrage, and a burgeoning anti-Québec sentiment in the rest of Canada, will be a feature of political life inside and outside of Québec.

Fifty-two years after the start of the quiet revolution, it is now clear to me that even if I live to a ripe old age, I will not likely see a resolution of the “Québec question”.

But in the end the Québec question remains a struggle for identity, with all the pitfalls that those kinds of struggles entail. Quebecers have something to lose, a culture and a language. They risk turning inwards and bordering on intolerant, even racist, if they start telling people how to dress and speak, but at best are involved in a worthy project of building a unique society that knows what it is.

As we push forward in Ontario, marginalizing political protest, sitting back as environmental laws are eliminated, teachers' bargaining rights are tossed out in the name of deficit cutting, and watching most of our social values fall by the wayside with every edict from Toronto, I can't help but see a value in the constant indecision of the Québec electorate.