Searching for Clarity

Jacques Parizeau, known to everyone in his home province as “Monsieur,” is the world’s leading authority on the Quebec separatist movement. No one alive today possesses an equivalent experience with the theory and practice of the project to get Quebec out of Canada. With a PhD from the London School of Economics, Parizeau is highly intelligent, wise, worldly and fair-minded. During the 1960s he was an influential advisor to several Quebec governments on such landmark projects as the nationalization of Hydro Quebec and the creation of the Quebec Pension Plan. In 1969 he joined the newly formed Parti Québécois and has been a commanding presence in the formulation and implementation of its policies. From 1976 to 1984 he was a very distinguished minister of finance and, as premier of the province in 1995, he was responsible for the conception and conduct of the second Quebec referendum. Now 80 years old, he continues to meditate and write on the subject of Quebec independence, and talk about it with anyone who will listen to him.

Quebec separation is not an issue that makes headlines today. But any Canadian over the age of 30 has some experience with it and many of us spent a painful quarter century in its grasp. In the eerie silence now pervading, we wonder whether the beast has finally been slain, stuffed and set out on the mantelpiece, or whether it still has a pulse and is just hibernating. So when Parizeau himself produces a book titled La souveraineté du Québec: Hier, aujourd’hui et demain—soon to be published in English by Baraka Books with the title Quebec Sovereignty: The Past, the Present and the Future— what better place could there be to go in search of an answer?

In the first two chapters Parizeau reminds us of the major forces and events that led to the two Quebec referendums in 1980 and 1995. He believes that the critical element in both of them was the question of economic “association” between an independent Quebec and Canada. In the first referendum René Lévesque was convinced that his clientele would vote for independence only if assured of that continuing association. So he promised one. But Canada warned that it would not negotiate. And Quebeckers believed Canada meant what it said—and were frightened—and voted no: 60 percent to 40 percent.

Fifteen years later it was Parizeau’s turn to establish the strategy for a second referendum. During those years the Soviet Union had imploded and globalized information systems and new trade arrangements were appearing all over the world, along with new forms of government that permitted small “nations’ to express their distinct identity and maintain some form of economic association with their neighbours. And Parizeau had discovered that an independent Quebec could continue to use the Canadian dollar as its official currency even without the approval of Canada. In this changed context he felt comfortable asking a referendum question that would have Quebec make one final offer of association with Canada, failing which the province would declare its independence unilaterally. And it seems that Parizeau read the mood correctly—almost. This time 49.4 percent of the population voted yes.

So now, in what may well be his last contribution to the project, Parizeau looks ahead. He sees some hopeful signs: the separatist Bloc Québécois holds two thirds of the Quebec seats in the federal parliament, the Parti Québécois is in good position to take power in the next provincial election. About 50 percent of the Quebec population says it is still in favour of independence and Parizeau is convinced that these supporters no longer care whether it includes an association with Canada. So all that is needed now, he believes, is … clarity. He asks the “sovereigntist movement” to prepare a detailed program for the government of an independent Quebec, to spell out its structures, its guiding principles and the specific, unifying projects that would define it. Parizeau believes that once they have read and understood this document, Quebeckers will vote for independence and “we will have a real country.”

There are a host of criticisms that could be made of all this, but perhaps the most important one is that there is no remotely credible sovereigntist movement in existence in Quebec to create this document and any belief that one may appear could only be the result of an illusory misreading of public opinion.

Over the past quarter century, countless polls have been taken in Quebec, asking whether its population is in favour of sovereignty, separation, independence, special status and so on. Parizeau devotes a chapter to the analysis of these surveys and points out, correctly, that about 50 percent of the Quebec population has a favourable attitude toward some kind of “independence.” But no poll has ever asked this 50 percent of the population some vital questions: How badly do you want it?

Are you prepared to fight and, if necessary, die for it? Will you join a movement, demonstrate, perform acts of civil disobedience, argue with your friends and relatives, organize, contribute financially? If these questions were posed today the numbers who answer yes to any of them would be discouragingly low. Most indépendantistes are expressing a preference, not a conviction; they prefer chicken, but if it’s unavailable they won’t burn down the restaurant—they will order spaghetti. No one is going to take to the streets of Montreal to put an end to overlapping jurisdictions in training policy or for the right to send a Quebec delegation to UNESCO. From the beginning there have been only two aspects of the independence debate that could bring people into the street—language and “les anglais”—and the PQ itself neatly eliminated both of them as issues with its highly successful language legislation, adopted quite legally within the framework of the existing Canadian Constitution. Quebec is now French, and the English who ran the place have moved to Toronto. As Parizeau says, quoting the late Levesque, “Canada is not the gulag.” For many so-called sovereigntists the status quo—playing off Ottawa and Quebec City against each for maximum political gain—is almost as exhilarating, and far less uncertain, than the political adventure of separation. In summary, there is no sovereigntist movement in Quebec—no leaders, and no followers.

Parizeau’s book with its fanciful prescriptions serves as additional evidence that the file may now be closed. The federal government has won—with a great many concessions to Quebec and to individual Quebeckers, with other promises as yet unfulfilled, with its official bilingualism policy, with money (some of it illegally spent), with the Clarity Act, with the rhetoric of Trudeau, Mulroney and Chrétien, and with a credible alternative nationalism—Canadian nationalism. Canada won and it could be argued that Quebec won too. But the separatists lost. Quebeckers were tantalized by the prospect of independence, but they were never persuaded that it was necessary.

In conclusion, please take note that much of Parizeau’s book is not about sovereignty. It is also a compendium of his experience and his views on a long list of public policy issues—federal-provincial relations of course, international trade, public finances and debt, the accounting practices of the Quebec government, productivity, education, innovation, the role of the state in economic development, language laws and environmental policy. Much of what he says is valid and useful commentary on problems common to all provincial governments within our federal system. If read with an open mind, it may just lead you to the belief that Jacques Parizeau is, in his own way, a great Canadian.