Conservative Leader Stephen Harper speaks to reporters during a press conference in Quebec City on Dec. 22

Quebec's status returns as a national issue

Updated Mon. Jan. 2 2006 4:25 PM ET

Bill Doskoch, CTV.ca News

Prime Minister Paul Martin and Conservative Leader Stephen Harper furiously sniped at each other over Quebec in the December election campaign.

"I think they can't wait to see a PQ government so they can stand up for federalism and fight the separatists," Harper said on Dec. 20 while visiting a Toronto boxing club.

"But frankly, the only thing that can justify the kind of corrupt party that they've been is to have a separatist threat to fight."

Liberals were predictably outraged by that statement. But at the same time, they've been trying to frame the Quebec campaign as a referendum on sovereignty.

Harper called it a phony war, but Martin said that showed Harper didn't understand Quebec -- and that Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe and Parti Quebecois Leader Andre Boisclair saw this election as a first step to a new push for sovereignty.

"They said, `We are signing a pact', and the first phase of this pact, in terms of the ultimate referendum and then the separation -- according to them -- is in fact the federal election," Martin said.

All this back-and-forth masks the fact that whoever forms the next government may have a growing national unity headache to deal with.

If current polls are accurate, the Bloc Quebecois is likely to improve on the 54 of 75 seats the party won in the province in 2004.

Duceppe is pushing for a popular vote total of more than 50 per cent in the Jan 24 election. Sovereigntists believe 50 per cent plus one should be enough to win a future referendum.

In addition, the provincial Liberal government of Premier Jean Charest is currently unpopular and must go to the polls no later than 2008.

If the Parti Quebecois replaces that government, the telegenic, youthful new -- but untested -- PQ leader Boisclair has promised to hold a sovereignty referendum within the first mandate.

Since the 1993 election, the Liberals have been the default federalist option in Quebec. However, the sponsorship scandal has taken a severe toll on Liberal popularity there and left the Quebec wing of the party divided and dispirited.

Both the Conservatives and NDP remain in the single digits for voter support and lacking the organizational strength to make major gains there.

The constitutional issue is back in play

"It's what was predicted, right?" Antonia Maioni, a McGill University political science professor, told CTV.ca about how unity events are unfolding.

Since Quebec's constitutional status has never been resolved, "if it's coming back in this particular election, we shouldn't be that surprised," she said.

Stephen Harper made his Quebec pitch on Dec. 19 against that background.

He made the following promises:

• To end the "fiscal imbalance" between Ottawa and Quebec,
• To allow Quebec to play a role in international institutions like UNESCO when its cultural responsibilities are at issue, and
• To practice "open federalism" that recognizes provincial autonomy plus "the special cultural and institutional responsibilities of the Quebec government."

Harper even hinted at re-opening constitutional talks -- a taboo topic since the collapse of the Meech Lake Accord in 1990 and the defeat of the Charlottetown Accord in 1992.

Asked what he thought about Harper's proposals, Martin said Dec. 19: "... As soon as circumstances permit, I believe that we should approach the … idea of Quebec signing the Constitution.

"But I don't think that we want to engage in a lot of constitutional discussion when in fact the priorities of Canadians and Quebecers are elsewhere."

Yet in the Dec. 16 debate, Duceppe used the absence of Quebec's signature on the Constitution as ammunition for his cause.

"And I think that when we had that referendum in Charlottetown back in '91-92 after the Meech failure, I think we have to realize nowadays that Canada is building itself the way Canadians want Canada to work. Quebec doesn't feel at ease at all in that scenario," he said.

While Martin jumped on Duceppe on the unity question in the English-language leaders' debate, he didn't make a similar passionate outburst in the French-language one.

Getting out the core voters

There's a reason Martin has tried to paint the election in Quebec as a referendum on national unity, Maioni said.

"One of the things Paul Martin has to do is he has get the federalist vote out in Quebec. National unity plays well to Ontarians, but it also plays well to the real diehard federalists in Quebec," she said.

For most of the campaign, Martin's strategy hasn't seemed to be working. The Liberals have been running up to 13 points behind their Quebec popular vote total of 33 per cent in the 2004 federal election, although a Dec. 22 poll gave them 29 per cent support in the province.

While Martin has promised to fight the separatists, he hasn't come up with proposals of his own to heal the unity rift between Quebec and the rest of Canada.

Andre Pratte -- chief editorialist of La Presse, Quebec's largest daily francophone newspaper, and a strong federalist –- thinks people should keep some perspective on the sovereignty threat, telling CTV.ca "it should not be underestimated or overestimated."

For one thing, both the Bloc and sovereignty were thought to be in trouble even two or three years ago, he said.

When the Meech Lake Accord collapsed in 1990, support for sovereignty was up around 65 per cent in Quebec. Currently it's around 50 per cent -- despite the sponsorship scandal and unpopular federalist leaders.

Pratte said there is a very simple way to dampen support for sovereignty. He asked people to remember the great rally held in Montreal just before the 1995 referendum vote, "to tell (Quebecers), 'we love you, and we want you to stay in Canada.'

"We have to take that feeling and put it into the Constitution and put it into the deals we make between Quebec and the rest of Canada."

The topic is unpopular, he admitted, "but eventually, we have to make a choice whether we want to do this or whether we want Quebec to break away from Canada.

"To me, re-writing a paragraph of the Constitution that says Quebec is different -- not better, not just worse, just different –- from the other provinces, I think is a very low price to pay for Canada to remain as a united country."

As a Quebec federalist, Pratte said he was happy to see Harper addressing some of the issues that are driving support for sovereignty.

However, "If Mr. Harper's campaign goes well in the rest of Canada, you might have a minority Tory government without Quebec representation, and that is a worrisome prospect for federalism in Quebec," he said.

 

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