Sukhjeevan Sharma,
INVC,
CANADA,
With Quebec at the midpoint of a fiery election campaign, talk of sovereignty, referenda, passports and borders has taken centre stage. How worried should you be? Here’s a layman’s guide:
Q. If I’m from outside Quebec. Should I care about this election?
A. Quebec elections always matter to the entire country, given that the Parti Quebecois could be returned as the province’s government. If it were to win a majority, talk of a referendum on leaving Canada could quickly heat up, despite PQ leader Pauline Marois’s reassuring comments on the campaign trail that she’d do a lot of consulting before taking such a step. So yes, you should follow some of the issues.
“It’s the burden of being Canadian,” said David Schneiderman, professor of law at the University of Toronto. “Some people in the mid-90s were actively contemplating (a country without Quebec) in the rest of Canada as a good thing. We might have a conversation like that again. You never know.”
Q. I thought sovereignty wasn’t supposed to be the big issue in this election. Why is everyone talking about?
A. In 2012, the PQ, historically a sovereignty party, regained power in Quebec for the first time since losing the 2003 election to Jean Charest’s Liberals. While this immediately sparked new discussion around sovereignty, Marois had hoped much of this campaign would focus not on independence directly, but on her government’s Charter of Values, which, among other things, would prohibit the wearing of identifiable religious attire while working in the public sector. She is on record as saying that her party would present Quebec with a “white paper” to gauge interest on a possible split from Canada.
But her attempt to deal with Quebec’s future indirectly, through the values charter, was abruptly derailed when the PQ unveiled star candidate Pierre Karl Péladeau, who said he wanted to “make Quebec a country.” Hard to avoid the topic after that fist-pumping proclamation from a charismatic candidate.
Q. Does placing the topic at the centre of the election help the PQ or the Liberals?
A. The polls suggest that the PQ hurts itself when it take an aggressive approach to sovereignty. A CROP poll published in Montreal’s La Presse on March 18 said 67 per cent of Quebec residents don’t want a third referendum.
A poll released by Léger-Le Devoir March 16 showed that, were a referendum to be held at the moment of the survey, 59 per cent of people would vote “No” and 41 per cent would vote “Yes.” Support does not seem to be very high for separation at the moment.
“There has always been, over the last 40 years, between 30 and 40 per cent of Quebecers who are in favour of sovereignty,” said Michel Ducharme, associate professor of history at the University of British Columbia. “The numbers have been quite steady in this regard.”
