What Did Quebec Try to Do on 1980 and Again in 1995

Did the 1995 referendum kill Quebec separatism?

Haunted by memories of that night nearly twenty years ago they came too close to forming their own land, many Quebecers volition never again seek to separate.

What if the 1995 Quebec referendum on sovereignty — which presented a real existential threat to Canada — was in fact the most positive thing for national unity in a half-century?

More positive than Brian Mulroney'due south asymmetrical ceding of powers to gratify Quebecers, and his two attempts at constitutional reconciliation. More positive than Jean Chrétien'southward further decentralization initiatives and the Clarity Act. What if that nightmarish referendum upshot about 20 years ago is a big part of the reason the PQ was thrashed in the election this past Monday?

Early polls in the 1995 referendum campaign showed almost ii-thirds of Quebecers would vote no to sovereignty, merely things tightened considerably as the vote approached. A few weeks out from voting day some polls indicated a lead for the yes forces. Momentum had clearly shifted. Ministers from the rest of Canada, and more particularly those from Ontario, who had no official role in the federal plebiscite strategy (this being deemed a thing for Quebecers), were getting nervous.

In an try at reassurance, a routine meeting of ministerial policy advisers that gathered monthly in the Langevin Block was treated to an intervention from ane of the PM's about senior directorate, who was besides at Chrétien's side during the 1980 referendum. The relatively young staffers were told to remain calm. The no forces, they were told, were well ahead of the yes oversupply at this point in the 1980 plebiscite. And that referendum concluded well enough: 60 per cent of Quebecers voted no. Go back and tell your bosses non to worry, the PMO adviser intoned.

Within three weeks the country came shut to the brink, equally a mere 54,000 votes separated the yep and no sides, or about 1 per cent of the over ninety per cent of eligible voters who cast a ballot in that referendum.

On the eve of the 1995 referendum very few people, fifty-fifty the most seasoned politicos, saw the train coming. Ottawa had fabricated virtually no preparations for a yes result, even though the cabinet and the senior public service were chock total of veterans from the national unity battles of the 70s, 80s and early 90s.

What if this frame of listen among the state's federal leaders too extended to the Quebec electorate back then?

Information technology might well be that on Oct. xxx, 1995, a significant number of Quebecers, those allegedly near strategic of voters, went to the polls non unlike an aroused guy who goes out to the bar and gets hammered. The next morning he wakes up, looks in the mirror bleary eyed, head pounding, vaguely recalling the nighttime'due south regrettable events, and says to himself, "I'm never doing anything like that again."

Equally the hangover recedes he recalls the skill testing question put to him the nighttime before — "Do yous concord that Quebec should go sovereign later having made a formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership inside the scope of the bill respecting the time to come of Quebec and of the agreement signed on June 12, 1995?" He is somewhat comforted in the realization that after a few pints anyone could have got the answer to that question wrong.

Since that fateful day in the autumn of 1995, one affair has been clear—separatism and separatist parties have been in relative reject in Quebec. The PQ's share of the popular vote has dropped pretty consistently over the past 15 years. Later Monday's election it stands at an all-time low of 25 per cent.

The Bloc Québécois — the voice of separatists in the federal Parliament — which ascended to official opposition status just prior to the 1995 plebiscite, more than or less ceased to be as a viable political party a few years ago. And when onetime PQ leaders Bernard Landry and André Boisclair talked vaguely well-nigh referendums in the 2003 and 2007 Quebec election campaigns, the PQ was soundly defeated.

In recent years, a more sober-minded, if not disingenuous, posture has afflicted the PQ leadership. Finally recognizing the challenge of selling sovereignty snake oil, the PQ has been telling Quebecers all they actually want to practice is govern the province and fight for Quebec's interests in Ottawa. Govern outset, another referendum mayhap later … has been the separatist mantra for some time.

That is until now. In Mon'due south election, the PQ gave Quebecers existent transparency for the starting time time in years. Premier Pauline Marois and her star candidate Pierre Karl Péladeau talked frankly near Quebec separating from Canada, and the modalities of that separation. Quebecers responded appropriately.

For that straight talk, even if it lasted a mere 48 hours, the residue of Canada should thank the PQ leadership. For it might well have reminded many Quebecers of that night on the boondocks in the fall of 1995, when too many of them made a bad option, and probably vowed never to do annihilation like that once more.

Eugene Lang is BMO Visiting Swain, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, Glendon Higher, York University. He was a policy adviser to a federal cabinet minister at the fourth dimension of the 1995 Quebec referendum.

What Did Quebec Try to Do on 1980 and Again in 1995

Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/04/13/did_the_1995_referendum_kill_quebec_separatism.html

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