DON’T LOOK TO PQ INSTITUTE FOR UNBIASED VIEW ON SOVEREIGNTY
Does Quebec really need more research on Quebec sovereignty?
This was the question I asked myself last February, when Pierre Karl Péladeau — the billionaire media magnate and former chief executive of Quebecor Inc. — made a promise during his 2015 Parti-Québécois leadership campaign to launch a research institute focused on this very topic.
Last week, he announced that the long-awaited Quebec Institute of Applied Research on Independence will be up and running soon. Further details are slated to emerge before the end of the month.
The goal of the institute, as Péladeau adviser and Université de Montréal law professor Daniel Turp outlined last week in Le Devoir, will be to bring forth what they call the concrete advantages of Quebec independence and the concrete disadvantages of remaining within the Canadian federation.
Part of this is a lessonslearned exercise from the Scottish National Party, which, in the run-up to the 2014 referendum on independence in Scotland, tabled a weighty 670-page blueprint outlining its approach to sovereignty. The document covered questions related to citizenship, pensions, the economy, justice, security, passports and so forth. While Scotland did not end up voting for independence, the clear approach taken by the SNP was duly noted.
Now, imagine for a moment a PQ-commissioned study that engaged with new ideas and new people. Imagine a study that really considered how Quebec is (or is not) positioned to tackle the longterm challenges that will define it going forward – not only issues related to currency, the division of federal assets and debt, and military issues (as Péladeau has said the institute will study) but also how an independent Quebec would revitalize our democratic institutions, engage with indigenous leaders on the issue of nation-to-nation negotiations on sovereignty and the issue of territorial integrity, how it would enhance human capital and immigration.
I’d be interested in seeing something like that. Wouldn’t you?
That’s not going to happen, of course.
Let’s also keep in mind that a staggering amount of academic and government research on the issue of Quebec independence already exists. Remember back in 2012, when then-Parti Québecois leader Pauline Marois put together her committee on sovereignty? At the time, that committee was tasked with updating an existing (and staggering) 148 studies on this very subject. I would think that the biggest challenge would be figuring out what to do with all the research already out there.
Instead, what we are likely to see is yet another study on how to engineer winning conditions designed to lay the groundwork for a referendum at some point. Despite a promise that the institute will be independent from the Parti-Québécois (deeply questionable given that the institute is Péladeau’s initiative and that he will be dipping into his own pockets to help fund it), the reality is that the institute is being created as a vehicle to convince Quebecers of the merits and viability of independence. What Péladeau and his team are proposing is not research per se, but political spin.
This is a shame. I’m a big believer in evidence-based research, particularly for large-scale policy and government initiatives. Quebec’s place within the Canadian federation has been one of the defining themes in Canadian politics for more than 50 years. I could argue that a rigorous, non-partisan and evidencebased study on the merits and drawbacks of Quebec sovereignty at the dawn of the 21st century could be a good thing.
It’s also a missed opportunity. Evidence-based research has the potential to play a useful, even decisive, role in informing Quebec citizens about what sovereignty and federalism might look like in the 21st century – both the good and the bad. Biased research, on the other hand, can lead to partisan and ideologically based decision-making. This, as we know, isn’t particularly good for anyone.