Last week, Lucien Bouchard, the Premier of Quebec and President of the sovereigntist Parti Québecois, announced his resignation, and took the blame on himself for the failure of the sovereignty movement to build on the near-win in the 1995 referendum: Efforts ‘in vain’ - Bouchard says separatist losses his failure.
Does this mark the beginning of the end of the sovereignty movement? Or would a new hard-liner, perhaps Bernard Landry, be able to revitalise it?
The PQ has never done well under hardline separatists. They had their first moment of glory under Rene Levesque, who like Bouchard was more concerned about governance than revolution and who ended up supporting Brian Mulroney. The 1995 referendum was going to be an absolute disaster for the PQ until Bouchard stepped in and campaigned them to near-victory (and maybe a nice little civil war, given Parizeau’s apparent intent to subvert the will of the people.)
Hardline separatism will mean a backlash and an easy win for Jean Charest in the next provincial election. SEparatism won’t DIE, because the federal government and the Canadian people have not yet demonstrated the guts to really oppose its existence. But it’ll be awhile before the separatists can recover from this one.
Both separatism and federalism - that is to say, the whole debate - is dead. It’s been dead since that poll said that 80% of Quebecers don’t give a shit about it.
Could we please move on to something more important? Like poverty? And hospitals? And universities?
