Last time, they threw out our ballots and bribed election officials. This time, they may not even make a pretense of allowing the people to have our say.
Jacques Parizeau wants the PQ to declare sovereignty without a referendum the next time they get elected:
Rather than wait for a referendum, the Parti Québécois should run Quebec as if it is independent after it wins a provincial election, says former leader Jacques Parizeau, giving tacit support to a growing core of members who want to change the PQ’s modus operandi of the past three decades.
“Many sovereigntists have concluded that the game isn’t playable under the current conditions and that we need to find another way. ….. Quebec entered the Canadian confederation by a vote of lawmakers, despite calls for a referendum. It can leave in the same fashion,” Mr. Parizeau wrote in an essay published in the newspaper La Presse.
Because after all, according to Parizeau, what does the will of the people matter? Especially the dreaded “money and the ethnic vote”?
The Parti Quebecois has not been averse to trampling the will of the people in order to push its unpopular agendas. The forced municipal mergers – just partially undone this year – were perhaps the best recent example. Quebec governments have always had a somewhat paternalistic attitude, figuring that they know what’s best for us even if we strongly disagree.
But this would be beyond the pale. Taking Quebec out of Canada without the clear support of the population simply goes too far. Maybe Parizeau is conceding that he doesn’t think the PQ could win a referendum? Or maybe he just doesn’t care about the will of the citizens.
Even Bernard Landry recognizes this idea as a non-starter:
“The birth of a country cannot take place without the support of a majority of the men and women of Quebec. That’s a matter of dignity,” he said during one of several broadcast appearances.
Analysts said the idea might be well received by the “impatient” wing of the party but is unlikely to find support in the population at large, which has elected PQ governments but said no to secession.
That said, the PQ has a history of using hardliners like Parizeau to float trial balloons that meet with universal opposition and then somehow end up on the party’s agenda.
I’d almost love to see them try to pull a stunt like this. It would surely fail, and lose them about a zillion votes in the process.
Assuming – that is – that our votes still count.
Fotheringham had a good crack the other night (I think he may have been quoting someone else…)
” Quebec will never separate, but they will always be separating.”
Well, I confess I don’t know much about Quebec politics but I’ve been following your blog for a bit and I’m trying to make sense of something.
You didn’t consider that the cities’ demergers needed to win referenda to demerge because they had been merged without referenda. In other words, since the mergers has occured without a referendum, referenda shouldn’t be needed to undo them.
Why shouldn’t the same system apply to the province if what that Parizau guy is saying is true about Quebec not having entered Canada through a referendum?
Quebec did have a choice when Canada was formed. They did not have to join confederation. Infact, some of the current provinces orignially rejected Canada and joined many years later.
There were referendums to join Canada. One was even won by 7 votes or something crazy like that. Back then there were no ‘clear majority’ clauses
Anonymous, from where did you get the idea that I didn’t think municipalities needed to win referenda to demerge? My argument was that those who had won referenda should not be prevented from demerging based on technicalities put in place by arbitrary rules designed to circumvent democracy.
Two wrongs doesn’t make a right. It was wrong to force the merger. It would have been wrong to force an undoing of the merger. The best-case scenario would have been not to force anything in the first place.