Quebec will ‘eventually’ be independent, Ignatieff says

Former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff says Quebec “eventually” will become an independent country and that a victory for Scottish separatists in an expected 2014 referendum will launch a new effort by Quebec nationalists to fulfil their dream.

Ignatieff, an author and academic who left the Liberal leadership after his party was badly beaten in the 2011 election, made the comments in an interview being broadcast Monday on BBC Scotland (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-17819102).

He also said Quebec and the rest of Canada have little to say to each other and that the two already are “almost” separate countries.

Ignatieff told BBC Scotland that devolution of central powers, whether from London to Edinburgh or from Ottawa to Quebec City, likely will be only temporary.

“It’s a kind of way station. You stop there for a while, but I think the logic eventually is independence — full independence,” Ignatieff said in an interview in his home last month.

Asked by interviewer Glenn Campbell if he was referring to Quebec as well as Scotland, Ignatieff said: “I think eventually that’s where it goes.”

Ignatieff was asked if he believes Quebec separation is inevitable.

“Nothing is inevitable in politics, and it’s my fervent hope that separatists are defeated and that Canada survives and prospers as a united country speaking both French and English,” he replied.

“Yes, of course, a ‘yes’ vote by the Scots would have (an) impact on Canada and Quebec, but again, we’re not there yet, and 2014 is a ways away.”

In the BBC interview he predicted that Scotland will gain significant new powers even if Scottish National Party Leader Alex Salmond, Scotland’s popular prime minister, doesn’t win the referendum on outright independence.

He suggested that Quebec gained “radical” new powers after the federalists’ razor-thin 1995 referendum victory, though most of the powers he listed were under Quebec’s authority before that dramatic vote.

“We had a near-death experience in 1995,” Ignatieff said. “What we learned from that was that the way to keep the show on the road is pretty radical devolution. And effectively Quebec is master in their own house.”