Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘sovereignty’

After Stephane Dion’s “surprise” win, the media and the opposition have been scrambling to make up for lost time by putting him immediately under a microscope.

They’re questioning his loyalty to Canada given his dual French citizenship, his commitment to centrist politics given his left-leaning tendencies, his ability to win support in Quebec given his long history of defending federalism and attacking sovereignty. (If you noticed that the first and third points seem a bit contradictory, you’re not alone).

We’re in that brief wide-open period in politics, when critics try on all sorts of different avenues of attack on a new leader, in attempt to find the ones that will stick the most. But this phase won’t last long. It can’t. The message is too diluted. Sooner or later, they’ll need to come up with a catchphrase, a means of attacking Dion that is equivalent to the Harper-is-Bush attacks heading in the other direction.

I give it about a week.

A new poll shows a big drop in support for sovereignty in the wake of the federal election:

The CROP poll for the La Presse newspaper showed only 34 percent of Quebecers would vote “yes” in a referendum on whether to split from the rest of Canada, down steeply from 43 percent before last week’s federal election. The number who would vote “no” rose to 58 percent from 49 percent.

The newspaper linked the drop in support for separatism to the election result. The Conservatives beat the Liberals, who had been badly hurt by a corruption scandal in Quebec which damaged the image of federalism in the province.

The Conservatives promised to be more sensitive to Quebec’s demands for more freedom inside Canada. They won 10 of the provinces’ 75 seats, up from none before the election.

That’s all very well and good right now. But the Tories haven’t even taken office yet. Just wait until they have a chance to break those promises. By the time the next provincial election rolls around, I suspect sovereignty support will be up again.

I think Charest should call a referendum immediately, with a question phrased such that a “no” vote would put the matter to rest for another, say, 50 years. Such a strategy would catch the separatists off guard and take advantage of the timing quite nicely. Not to mention being a big waste of time and money. But hey, that’ll happen anyway, right? So why not head it off at the pass?

Update 02/02: CROP now says the polling numbers were wrong; it should’ve said that 37% of people would vote “yes” and 55% would vote no. CROP apologized and blamed “data compilation error” for the incorrect figures. This still indicates a drop in support for sovereignty, albeit a smaller one.

In a bizarre twist, ADQ leader Mario Dumont spoke out Thursday saying he intends to vote Conservative and urging Quebecers not to vote for the Bloc:

Dumont said the Bloc limits the province’s influence on the national scene and acts more like a millstone around Quebecers’ necks.

He said he would vote Conservative, but only recommended that voters not vote for the Bloc.

This is a truly odd move for a politician whose party has practically defined fence-strattling on the sovereignty issue, but is nonetheless pretty clearly separatist. The ADQ spiked in popularity a few years back, but came down pretty quickly when people in Quebec realized the party’s platform was a lot further to the right than most of them agreed with.

So ideologically I can understand why Dumont might vote Tory. Politically, I’m not quite sure what he’s doing. Viewed in context of the next election, is Dumont perhaps repositioning himself as a federalist? Doubtful. Though he usually answers questions about sovereignty with the convenient answer that he wants to “get past” the issue, Dumont has never been anything but nationalist.

More likely, he’s betting that the provincial Liberals have lost so much support, that if the ADQ wants to win seats in the next provincial election, their real opponents will be the Parti Quebecois. He sees Bloc momentum as leading to PQ momentum, and he wants to position himself as an alternative voice.

At any rate, most people in Quebec are unlikely to listen. Whatever happens in the rest of Canada, Gilles Duceppe has never been more popular in Quebec right now, and the Bloc is positioned to win perhaps 60 seats, maybe even more. Despite recent polls showing the Tories taking a slight lead overall in Quebec over the Liberals, this is unlikely to translate into any Tory seats, as their numbers will put them second in a number of Bloc ridings but the Liberals still have concentrated support in many Montreal ridings (including my own).

So Dumont’s comments will probably have little effect in the short-term. But they’re worth keeping an eye on for how they might affect the political landscape ahead of the next Quebec election.

Last night’s “top story” on the news was all about how the campaign has taken a “negative turn” with the new Liberal attack ads on the Tories.

Now, there’s very little dispute that the Liberal campaign has been terribly run. These ads are a bit of a running joke, especially to those of us in the business. And they’re fun to parody and are probably hurting the Liberals more than helping them.

But since when is the negative tone of this campaign “news”? The Tory ads have all attacked the Liberals from day one. They were better ads, granted, but they still spoke exclusively of how bad the Liberals were and had nothing to say about the Tories or their platforms. This has been an attack campaign since the beginning; the only difference is that now the Liberals have climbed into the ring. And if these are their “knockout punches”, Paul Martin’s team is in big trouble.

In the meantime, the Tories have their own troubles, with the news that one of their candidates has been charged with smuggling. The Tories claim they didn’t know, which is probably true. But if they’re going to run a campaign attacking Paul Martin’s claim that he didn’t know about the sponsorship money, at the very least they ought to react to this with more than a “it’s not our fault, we didn’t know”.

And as the two parties throw mud at one another, here in Quebec, Gilles Duceppe is using the opportunity to build support for sovereignty. Regardless of the result of the federal election, the news for Quebec looks bleak.

Jean Charest is invoking the r-word threat to try to bolster his fledging numbers, even though a provincial election is at least a year away and more likely to be two years off:

The possibility of another referendum on independence will help persuade Quebecers to re-elect the provincial Liberals, says Premier Jean Charest.

“In proposing to deeply divide Quebec society, to plunge us back into a referendum fight that will profoundly divide us and create conflicts, it’s an invitation that Quebecers will refuse,” Charest told The Canadian Press in a year-end interview.

Charest is also already using the cocaine card against Boisclair… something usually reserved for a campaign dogfight. The thing is, Charest’s government is about as unpopular as it is possible to be, and these are Charest’s only cards. With the Bloc set to virtually sweep Quebec on the federal scene and support for soveriengty on the rise, is Charest conceding the game before it even begins?

For those unfamiliar with Quebec politics, you may be wondering what all the fuss is about with those s-words, “sovereigntist” and “separatist”. Or why the use of one or the other can get people all up in arms.

Here’s Pauline’s take on the issue:

Sovereignty, after all, is a noble cause in our age especially in a democratic setting. Who would have the heart to deny a people their sovereignty?

Separation, on the other hand, can be messy.

Just ask any pair of conjoined twins.

So, it’s a case of spin, whitewashing, Disney-ficiation, the end justifies the means, etc. etc. Whatever.

To that I’ll just add that most separatists would prefer that we use neither word; both are in dreaded English.

Our likely next Premier of Quebec is 39-year-old Andre Boisclair, who beat out rivals including Pauline Marois for the leadership of the Parti Quebecois, despite the media attention given to his past cocaine use:

Boisclair faces high expectations. Charest has been stuck at staggering levels of unpopularity since shortly after coming to power in 2003. The PQ expects to beat the Liberals and snap Quebec’s 35-year tradition of electing governments to two terms.

Considered a relatively soft sovereigntist and a right-winger in a party of progressives, Boisclair must unite a party whose hawkish elements have taken down Bernard Landry, Bouchard and even Rene Levesque for showing hesitation on independence.

This isn’t good news for federalists. Boisclair, despite his battle to get elected, is just the kind of young, charismatic leader that can recruite “soft nationalists” and increase support for sovereignty. It will remain to be seen what changes he brings to the PQ platform, but one thing’s for sure: he has an excellent chance of steamrolling to victory in the next provincial election.

“It’s ten years later and still I haven’t a clue” – Collective Soul.

It’s ten years after the last referendum.

The PQ, energized by several years in opposition, is electing new leadership and is gearing up for a post-election victory referendum. We could be less than two years away from the next battle to save Canada.

Where the hell are all the federalists?

The sovereignty movement is ready. Student groups, unions, youth groups, political groups, artists and musicians and businesspeople and rabble-rousers and just about everyone else on the separatist side are organizing. They’re fundraising. They’re unifying. They’re strategizing. They’re recruiting volunteers and getting ready for the fight.

And on the federalist side? Well, we have Michaelle Jean, our new Governer-General, who seems 99% separatist anyway. Besides, nobody cares about her, unless they’re trying to use her to discredit the Canadian government.

The point is, there’s nobody left to fight. There are less Jean Charest fans in Quebec than there are Korn fans in a nursing home. The Federal government is weakened, devoid of any true leadership, and handcuffed thanks to the Sponsorship Scandal.

Grassroots organizations such as Alliance Quebec are so destroyed as to be nonexistent. Only a dozen people showed up to a federalist “rally” downtown last week to commemorate the massive 1995 unity rally that many say saved Canada at the eleventh hour.

I did a Google search looking for websites, citizens’ groups, hell, even a weekly Federalist poker game. Nothing. Nada. Zip. The few links I did find were woefully out of date and mostly defunct. Even the Quebec Liberal Party can’t be bothered to spend two words on federalism on its website (though they were sure to remind us to turn our clocks back this weekend).

And outside of Quebec? The situation is even bleaker. An alarmingly high percentage of Canadians have a “good riddance” sentiment toward Quebec. If they held another unity rally, would anyone come?

It seems incredible to think that only a couple of years ago, we thought Quebec had moved past sovereignty, that it was no longer a “big deal”, and that the threat of another referendum was as laughable as the threat of a hurricane coming to wipe out half of New Orleans. Well, we all know how that turned out.

See, the thing is, I’m not content to sit back and watch my country face the brink of destruction yet again. I value it too much. I happen to think that being Canadian is a pretty wonderful thing… and that keeping this country together is worth fighting for. And if I’m right, there are an awful lot of people out there who feel the same way.

We need initiatives. We need to get organized. We need ideas. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t exactly trust Charest, or whoever his successor will be, to take care of it all for us. I’m thinking it’s time for us ordinary Canadian federalists to get up and do something.

So, at risk of sounding like Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off… “Anyone? Anyone?”

If you’re a federalist and you’re proud of it, clap your hands. Better yet, post a comment here if you want to get involved. Post your ideas. And watch this site for news in the coming days.

It’s the SWIK No Campaign, to be launched right here, real soon. Keep it locked to this station.

Damian Penny thinks that the evidence of Jean’s separatist leanings is fairly convincing and that Martin should have chosen someone “less polarizing”:

Being a former Quebec separatist shouldn’t, all by itself, disqualify you from being Governor-General. But when Jean won’t say how she voted in the 1995 sovereignty referendum, and when her “loyalty” statement contains little more than weasel words about never belonging to “a political party or the separatist movement”, well, what are we supposed to conclude?

For a completely opposite (and more optimistic) view, here’s Josh Freed in last week’s Gazette on how Michaelle Jean can be considered the first “cool” federalist in Quebec – and perhaps could even start a trend:

As long as I’ve followed politics in this province, the fun, cool, party people have always been on the separatist side, while the federalists have been square. Sovereignty attracts all the singers, artists, poets, writers, dancers and everyone else who dresses in black. Federalism attracts business types who look grey.

In Quebec’s 30-year-old Cool War for the hearts and minds of young francophones, the federalists have been massacred. To even suggest in public that you back Canada can get you tarred as a nerd.

So when Jean recently announced she was “proud to be Canadian” and “fully committed to Canada,” she became the first cool federalist I can recall to come out for Canada since, well, Pierre Trudeau. That’s probably why she’s such a threat to hard-line sovereignists. They seem to spend every waking hour issuing documents to show Jean is really a separatist, as if they’ve ever really cared who represents the queen they can’t stand.

I guess they sense that Jean may make it fashionable to be a federalist in Quebec and threaten to close the cool gap.

[ . . . ]

As governor-general, Jean is a great new role model: she’s a highly articulate woman and a Haitian immigrant who became a TV star. She’s in a mixed-race marriage with an adopted child – and she speaks five languages.

She couldn’t be more 21st century unless she was gay, too. And yes, she’s also a great dancer.

Maybe she once drank a toast to independence at a party. Sure, her husband was probably in favour of sovereignty. But to paraphrase Mark Twain, you can’t throw a stone in Quebec without hitting a separatist. Most francophones have flirted with independence at some stage in their lives and many still double-date even if it irks their English-speaking partner.

All that federalists should want is to make it easy for more Quebecers to release their inner Canadian child – and Jean seems willing to be the poster girl.

Who knows? She’s so appealing Jean might even tempt a couple of other trendy Quebecers to come out for Canada, and help make it as fashionable to be a Quebec federalist as it is to be a Quebec separatist.

That would be cool.

Yeah, I’m not so sure… but hey, could happen.

Michaelle Jean, the new appointee for Governer General of Canada, has been generating a ton of controversy since she was named. The attacks stem mostly around speculation that she and her husband have sovereigntist leanings, or that she may have conflicting loyalties because she also holds French citizenship. She’s issued a denial of the separatist accusations, and the latter doesn’t seem to make much of a difference, but her naming has still generated tons of criticism.

It seems a little bizarre that in the entire country, there was not a single candidate who could be found for the job who didn’t come equipped with such heavy baggage. But to me, all those things miss the point.

The thing is, amidst all the speculation and all the attacks, I’ve yet to see why Michaelle Jean even deserves the position in the first place.

Sure, one could argue that the job of Governer General isn’t exactly rife with prerequisites. It’s a largely ceremonial post, one that many Canadians argue should be abolished altogether. But scoff at it or not, it does have its share of demands.

Like her predecessor, Adrienne Clarkson, Jean is a minority woman. She’s also a Quebec francophone. But nobody has told me about a single real qualification that she holds for the job, other than the colour of her skin and the language of her speech. Oh, and the fact that she’s photogenic and has TV experience. But how does that qualify someone to represent our country?

For a purely political appointment, Martin could’ve done better. Much better.