Sister Sage's Musings

I first caught hint of this in, oddly enough, the Edmonton Journal, a paper from a highly conservative province that has not only never made any secret about wanting Quebec out of Canada, but a lot of the most conservative Albertans would love to separate from Canada themselves as they seem to think Alberta and Alberta alone supports the rest of Canada.

Quebec Sovereignty coming back: wishful thinking on their (Edmonton Journal) part? Or is it being revived slowly for real?

Up until now, the movement had been all but dead for the last few years with the exception of a few rantings from Pauline Marois. However, I never believed too many people: sovereignists (separatist) & federalists alike took her seriously nor would they consider her as Premier, or worse yet, President (I”m thinking pretty good guess a sovereign Quebec would adapt a republican style of government given general Quebecois disdain for the royal family). In my opinion, she only served one purpose and that was to raise the Parti Quebecois from the dead following the disasterous performance of Andre Boisclair.

Oddly enough, if we want to talk about reviving Quebec sovereignty, I think more Quebecers look to Gilles Duceppe than to Marois.

Gilles Duceppe’s last Federal election campaign had nothing to with sovereignty; wasn’t on his campaign platform.  He basically campaigned on that he was the best choice to keep Stevie and his neo-con ways out of Quebec as much as possible. Jean Charest, our federalist premier and a former federal Tory himself campaigned for the Bloc Quebecois. A lot of my English speaking friends and co-workers even voted for the Bloc Quebecois knowing full well that they were a sovereignist party but having a distaste for the Liberals’ bad choices for leaders since Paul Martin and for Stevie, a sovereignist party seemed more palpable.

The twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Meech Lake Accord happens this coming June and  guess where  Gilles Duceppe has been  recently?  Pitching sovereignty at University of Ottawa. Sounds like an odd place to promote sovereignty to me. Hell, even Concordia or McGill would have made more sense as venues for that. Be that as it may, Duceppe spoke of Meech and launched into a speech before the students.

” it is clear that in Canada there is no political will to respond to Quebec’s aspirations.”

Of course, it didn’t take all that long for Marois to jump on Duceppe’s bandwagon.  She says that a sovereign Quebec would be more green than if it remains with Canada.

“Quebec is a leader (on environmental issues) … and Canada, for its part, is dragging us down.”

I wouldn’t argue that it isn’t Quebec’s intent to be green and to set targets.  However, can this be done only in a sovereign Quebec? That is just one question.

“Since 1990, Quebec has made considerable efforts to attack greenhouse gas emissions, and suddenly they (in Ottawa) change the reference year for calculating those reductions. Who do you think will pay for this? Quebec’s citizens, companies and workers,” Marois said.

“If we were independent tomorrow, we could speak with our own voice. We would not have been feuding in Copenhagen. We could have signed the Kyoto agreement ourselves.

“This is the demonstration that federalism does not suit the Quebec reality. Whether we have governments that are in one case federalist and the other sovereignist, we always come to the same conclusion: This federalism is impossible to reform, and the real solution for Quebec is sovereignty.”

She made these remarks the day after Charest accused Prentice of spreading falsehoods about Quebec’s new restrictions on vehicle emissions. Basically, Jim Prentice ridiculed Charest.

The environment is but one issue Marois is using to promote sovereignty. Quebec is still not in the Canadian Constitution to this day and not likely to become a part of it anytime soon.

The Bloc and P.Q. both plan to springboard activities toward the commemoration of the death anniversary of Meech Lake leading toward a renewed push for sovereignty, but not before one more set of negotitiations for more powers over such things as culture, language,  and environment and if those demands are not met, Alexandre Cloutier, PQ critic of intergovernmental affairs seems to think that it will make it easier to get support for outright independence, It gives me the idea of an ultimatum to be served up to Ottawa: give us the autonomy we’re asking  or we’re gone. I think we can all guess how that will turn out.

Right now, CROP and Leger Marketing polls indicate a tie between Charest and Marois with Charest’s numbers going down, largely in part because he is refusing to hold a public inquiry into allegations of corruption and price-rigging in the rewarding of public construction contracts. His numbers can continue to go down, however, given he won a majority in the last provincial election in 2008, Charest is not expected to call an election anytime soon, might not even happen for a few years yet, unless, of course, he is forced to resign, but in absence of anyone suitable to take over the Quebec Liberal party, that is not likely to happen for the time being.

However, if Quebec sovereignty is the ultimate goal and that is the will of Quebecers, it’s a good idea to start talking about it now. Perhaps even answer serious questions. I have the feeling that the ‘yes’ side (PQ, Bloc and other sovereignists) can’t even agree on how to achieve this.For starters, in spite of the fact the A.D.Q. is all but dead, sovereignists, including those in the Parti-Quebecois themselves are clearly divided right/left: the left being mainly out of Montreal and the right being pretty much everywhere else, including Quebec City. How else did Harpercons win as many seats as they did in the province of Quebec? I would hazzard a guess that those voters are not necessarily federalist but they do support that right wing agenda. These folks are socially conservative for the most part.

Michel Bolduc, the blogger of Chronicles of a Pure Laine seems to believe that sovereignty can be achieved peacefully.  As someone who has travelled extensively across Quebec and having lived in both rural towns and in Montreal, I would have to disagree. But not due to English/French war or the division of east/west Montreal or anything like that. The problem would be a Montreal v the rest of Quebec (particularly rural Quebec). I remembered living in Lac Megantic with my ex-husband for a few years: his family as well as a lot of the inhabitants didn’t like me.  Not because I was English speaking; my French was just fine for them, in fact, they never thought I was Anglophone until I told them much much later on: they thought I was either Acadian from New Brunswick or from the Gaspesie. They hated the fact that I was the big city girl from Montreal with my ‘airs of superiority’. While most of the inhabitants of Megantic and outskirts didn’t have a post-secondary education, they had a basic distrust of my educational background.

I have also spent time in many other rural towns in Quebec from Gaspesie to Outaouais; from Lac St-Jean to Abitibi.  I had varying degrees of the same reaction when they found out I was from Montreal.

Please note that I am not speaking of everybody who lives in rural Quebec; I’m speaking of my observations in general after having spent time with them.

Montreal is generally more progressive. When pundits speak of Quebecers being more supportive of keeping the gun registry than the rest of Canada (for the most part), more supportive of  strong social programs, more environmentally conscious; they tend to think of only Montrealers and forget about rural Quebecers.

Rural Quebecers (from my observations) tend to be more influenced by the local Catholic Church in their town; thus would against things like same-sex marriage and legalized abortions. They are avid hunters, thus, unfortunately, they support scrapping the long gun registry.  A lot of them are on farms or in a house on land that belonged to their families for generations.  In spite of  chronic unemployment issues in certain regions, most are absolutely against the welfare state. One can hear them bitching about how they’re breaking their backs working so hard in the woods, farms or factories only to pay taxes to support lazy welfare recipients. While Montreal mayor, Gerald Tremblay wanted to put a ban on fireplaces and woodstoves given the air generated into the atmosphere is considered pollution, many rural Quebecers use their fireplaces and wood stoves and I would dare anyone to try to take them away.

They also tend to be a lot less tolerant of immigrants than in Montreal.  Remember l’Herouxville? That small town which began that whole inquiry into reasonable accommodations by making rules about not stoning women and such.  I always thought that was funny given that I don’t think there are too many immigrants and certainly no Muslims in l’Herouxville and surrounding areas, but , I digress.

Furthermore, who would be suitable to not only lead the P.Q. in the next election but essentially, be president of a newly sovereign Quebec? I certainly wouldn’t trust Marois.  Let’s remember that she wasn’t a great finance minister and that she did buy off Doctor’s contracts for them to retire and she closed down quite a few hospitals. I know, right-leaning Federal Liberals cut transfer payments to the provinces leading to cuts in services, including health care in all of Canada, but  Marois could have cut other things elsewhere. It only proved her shortsightedness. Recently, she made a blunder for which she had to correct shortly after. She had said that she would have made those same cuts again today. If she were leading a sovereign Quebec, I have my doubts about it remaining as progressive as many would like to think.

Economically, Quebec is a have not province and has been for a long time. It has a steep deficit like that of the other provinces. I wonder how that would be financed? How would they (gov’t of a sovereign Quebec) correct a chronic unemployment problem in some of the regions like Gaspesie or Lac St-Jean? Granted, I believe they would start by collecting the taxes we would always  pay to the federal government, but is that enough?

Then what would a sovereign Quebec mean? A partnership with Canada of some kind, say like what Puerto-Rico is the U.S.? Or the outright country of Quebec?   Would they sign on to NAFTA (I would hope not; a sure way of a sovereign Quebec not escaping from having an American health care system or more of the same issues as with Softwood lumber among other issues)?

So many questions. Michel Bolduc attempts to explain Quebec separation, answering some common questions. Some of his answers to some questions make sense but there are others that concern me such as Health care, NAFTA, employment opportunities and economy.  However, I would venture a guess that a sovereign Quebec would more palpable than a Harpercon majority, but not by much.

For me, the priority is to make sure Stevie never ever gets his precious majority and hopefully, he and his nasty little evengelical Harpercon flunkies also go away; after all, another federal election is going to happen long before a provincial election in Quebec and for right now, we have a federalist premier leading a federalist party for better or for worse and thus, a joint P.Q. and B.Q. effort at playing constitutional hardball with Ottawa, thus leading to yet another referendum on sovereignty is a long way off. After Stevie and his nasty friends are gone (a girl can hope), I would like to see some of these questions about what a sovereign Quebec would be like answered and what kind of compromises can be made between Montreal and the rest of Quebec.

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