Adieu, Monsieur
Former Quebec premier Jacques Parizeau, who died Monday at 84, is rightly remembered as a courtly gentleman, an intellectual politician, and a giant of the province’s public life. Indeed, his career spans the history of modern Quebec: He was the highly regarded finance minister in the government that instituted Bill 101, launched the first sovereignty referendum in 1980, nationalized Hydro Québec outright and established the Fonds de solidarité. Never did a balanced budget darken his door. He was a leading architect of the Quebec Model, and it is difficult to imagine Quebec politics without his presence.
His most acknowledged legacy, however, may be as the last great leader Quebec’s sovereignty movement will ever have. It was Lucien Bouchard who nearly piloted the Yes campaign to victory in 1995, but he was not nearly so committed to the cause. He believed post-referendum negotiations could at least lead to “something better.” Parizeau, for his part, had his eyes firmly on the real prize: in the event of a Yes victory, he would hip-check Bouchard out of the way, undertake negotiations he was sure would fail, and eventually declare independence unilaterally. Quebecers, he famously told foreign diplomats, would be like “lobsters thrown into boiling water.”
It was underhanded. Had it succeeded, it would have torn apart a country whose people have lived and thrived together almost entirely in peace, but whether it succeeded or not, utter chaos would have been the result. When the No side narrowly won, Parizeau threw a grenade be- hind him as he left, blaming “money and the ethnic vote.”
Inexcusable as that remark was, it is worth measuring Parizeau against his modern successors in the Parti Québécois. His remark, cheered lustily by those in attendance, came as a surprise: Parizeau was rightly viewed as being in the relatively inclusive mould of René Lévesque (though rare is the PQ leader without a nativist outburst or two to his name).
The reverberations from his speech were huge. Péquistes stared at themselves in mirrors. In March, when Pierre Karl Péladeau mused that immigrants were costing the PQ “a riding a year” because they’re beholden to Ottawa, it was at most a three-day story. By the end of last year’s horrifying provincial election campaign, during which the PQ suggested firing religiously devout civil servants, almost nothing was shocking. Ironically considering his famous gaffe, Parizeau opposed the so-called “values charter.”
And whatever his flaws, he at least realized that independence would be a messy, difficult business — even before the Clarity Act. Today’s Péquistes behave as if it’s a matter of a 50 per centplus-one vote and a click of the heels.
Canada has lost a worthy and memorable adversary. Quebec, and the sovereignty movement, have lost a dedicated and passionate voice. Whatever was in Jacques Parizeau’s heart, he espoused a positive vision of a sovereign Quebec, not the sour, grievance-based polity that so many modern separatists seem to envision. For very different reasons, we are all poorer for his loss.