It's almost springtime and elections are in the air. With a Quebec provincial campaign already under ay and the possibility of a federal election later this year on the horizon, the rhetoric is starting to heat up. This being Quebec, the separatist parties will play a significant role. Sadly, this role will not be positive. On the contrary, both the Bloc Québécois and Parti Québécois contribute to a lowering of the level of discourse and politics at both the federal and provincial levels suffer.
Although the PQ and the Bloc now have full election platforms and take positions on issues ranging from child care to military spending, their core purpose is to remove the province of Quebec from the Canadian federation. Unfortunately for the separatists, the vast majority of Quebeckers don't share this goal. How then to explain their continued electoral success?
The first-past-the-post electoral system takes some of the blame, but far more importantly, the PQ and Bloc have often relied on devious, underhanded tactics to maintain their support. The most blatant of these is their artful dodges around the concept of separation. Both parties outwardly stand for an independent Quebec but refuse to admit that when it comes time to ask referendum questions. In both 1980 and 1995, the questions put to Quebeckers were long, convoluted and misleading.
They talked of "a new agreement with Canada" in 1980 and "a new economic and political partnership [with Canada]" in 1995. One might wonder why they would bother with such nonsense, given that surely everyone must know what the separatists are trying to achieve. However, that is not the case. While polls by firms like CROP and Léger Marketing consistently show that the hard core in favour of complete independence is somewhere between 30 and 40 per cent of the population, people get confused by ideas like "sovereignty-association" and support for deceiving concepts like those jumps closer to 50 per cent. The separatists have never made any pretensions that they would see a referendum win as a mandate to negotiate the removal of Quebec from Canada, despite the fact that this is obviously not what many would have voted for.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Jen
posted 3/15/07 @ 12:19 AM EST
This opinion is nothing more than uninformed demagogy. The actual name of the Quebec law that governs referendums is called the "Loi sur les consultations populaires". (Continued…)
Post a Comment