A Radical Shift

Lucien Bouchard’s speech of this past February 16th, in which he announced that he no longer expects to see a sovereign Quebec in his lifetime, shook the Quebec political world. The leading sovereigntist of his generation, the near victor of the 1995 referendum, the last leader of the Parti Québécois to win an election, had effectively declared that the dream of Quebec independence was over. Bouchard was immediately attacked by PQ leader Pauline Marois and former premier Bernard Landry as a “mother-in-law” who had “lost his marbles”; but Bouchard’s position is neither eccentric nor idiosyncratic and in fact merely describes a situation in which Marois, Landry, Gilles Duceppe and other leading sovereigntists are complicit.

Indeed, within the last 14 months, two major political events had already signalled a radical shift in the direction of Quebec nationalism—especially among sovereigntists. First, there was the three-way compact of December 2008, which gave birth to...