Marois to visit Scotland, where citizens await independence referendum
Like support for Quebec sovereignty, parting ways with England has backing of only a minority
QUEBEC — After visits to Kinshasa, Paris, Halifax and New York, Premier Pauline Marois travels this month to Davos, Switzerland, London and Edinburgh.
In Davos, the Quebec premier will meet with the international business and government leaders who make up the World Economic Forum.
But her visit to the Scottish capital is closer to the heart of Marois and to the goal of her Parti Québécois: to make Quebec an independent country.
Under the Edinburgh Agreement, signed last October by British Prime Minister David Cameron and Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond, the British government has agreed to delegate to Scotland, temporarily, the power to hold a binding referendum on independence before the end of 2014.
“This is the right decision for Scotland,” Cameron said after the joint signing ceremony.
“But it is also right for the United Kingdom that there is going to be one simple, straightforward question about whether Scotland wants to stay in the United Kingdom or separate itself from the United Kingdom.”
Former PQ premier René Lévesque led the party into Quebec’s first independence referendum in
“There is going to be one simple … question about whether Scotland wants to stay in the U.K. or separate itself from the U.K.”
BRITISH PRIME MINISTER DAVID CAMERON
1980, proposing, in a 117-word question, political separation accompanied by an economic association with the rest of Canada, and the promise of a second referendum to ratify the results.
The Yes side lost with 40.44 per cent of votes cast.
As premier, Jacques Parizeau piloted the second PQ referendum in 1995, with a 38-word question referring to an agreement to offer the rest of Canada a new economic and political partnership.
But despite the wording, indications are that Parizeau saw no “ifs and buts” in the question and would have considered a Yes vote binding.
And he came close, winning just under 50 per cent of the vote.
Salmond’s Scottish National Party has proposed a 10-word referendum question: “Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?”
In the past, Salmond toyed with the idea of a two-question referendum, proposing as well “devo max” — maximum devolution of powers from London to Edinburgh, a cautious step similar to Lévesque’s sovereignty-association approach.
But Salmond, also an economist, is closer to Parizeau than to Lévesque’s soft approach.
Parizeau was undeterred that his option was trailing in the polls when he came to power in 1994.
Salmond says he is not bothered that Scotland’s independence option has minority support, as is the case for Quebec sovereignty now.
The latest Ipsos-MORI poll, one month after the Cameron-Salmond agreement, suggested that support for Scottish independence had slipped by five percentage points since last June to 30 per cent of decided voters, with 56 per cent opposed.
After signing the agreement with Cameron, Salmond said he was confident that presenting “a positive vision for the future,” the SNP can turn the tide and win its referendum next year, reversing the 1707 Act of Union that brought Scotland and England together.
Like Marois, who leads a PQ minority government, Salmond was first elected as head of a minority SNP government in 2007.
The SNP gained a majority in Scotland’s 2011 election and Salmond has used that majority to push his referendum agenda.
An independent Scotland would retain the British pound and the Queen as head of state, while calling on the Royal Navy to remove its nuclear submarine base from Scotland. It would also issue Scottish European Union passports.
Meanwhile, pushed by Euroskeptics in his party, Cameron is considering a referendum to take Britain out of the European Union.
The Scottish referendum question is being considered by Britain’s Electoral Commission, the U.K. equivalent of Elections Canada, which will run Scotland’s independence referendum.
But the Electoral Commission’s verdict on the question is not binding. The Scottish parliament in Holyrood will decide the final question and other details of the referendum.
The Yes side, calling itself Yes Scotland, and the No side, under the banner Better Together, will have free television time and can mail their position documents free of charge to Scotland’s close to four million voters, out of a population of 5.2 million.
In addition, both sides will be limited to £1 million each for additional campaign spending.
Like the PQ, which has proposed lowering the voting age to 16, voters age 16 and 17 would be allowed to vote in Scotland’s independence referendum.
Calls to the office of Marois and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Alexandre Cloutier, who will accompany the premier to Scotland, were not returned before press time yesterday.”