Let’s not overstate the Quebec vote
CANADA VOTES
Good grief. To hear Canada’s excitable politicians tell it, you would think Santa Claus was planning to replace Rudolph the Red- Nosed Reindeer with the Pale Horseman of the Apocalypse, sowing chaos and destruction on his Quebec run this Christmas.
Canada’s very unity hangs in the balance on Jan. 23, the politicians are telling voters as the election heats up. Liberals may “ disappear” from the landscape. Sovereignists sound like Nazis. So much for season’s greetings. The war of words started a few days ago when Liberal leader Paul Martin unwisely touched a nerve of hysteria with his claim that the Christmas campaign is a “ referendum election.” A win for Gilles Duceppe’s Bloc Québécois will be seen as a repudiation of Canada, Martin warned. By whom? The Bloc became Canada’s Official Opposition in 1993. Quebecers did not reject Canada two years later, in the 1995 referendum. Why the sudden angst by Martin now? And while Duceppe coyly retorted that “ We ( in Quebec) don’t make a decision on sovereignty in a federal election,” Bloc strategists do hope to get 50 per cent or more of the vote. That’s something no sovereignist party has managed. But again, so what? The Bloc leads the Liberals in public opinion 58 per cent to 21 per cent, in the latest EKOS poll for the Star and La Presse. A big Bloc win would prove little. Only the Quebec government, now led by federalist Liberal Jean Charest, can trigger a referendum. That has not deterred Duceppe from musing about making the Liberals “ disappear” from the Quebec landscape. Which drew a ferocious and injudicious riposte from Martin’s Quebec lieutenant, Jean Lapierre, who said Duceppe’s ambition has a whiff of Nazi- like intolerance about it. Duceppe has apologized. So should Lapierre. Such comparison is repulsive.
While the Liberals and the Bloc are vying, long- term, for the sympathies of Quebecers, that battle won’t be settled in this campaign. The importance of Quebec’s vote on Jan. 23 and what it means to the ultimate future of Canada should not be overstated. The Bloc’s surge seems fuelled more by voter disgust with the sponsorshiptainted Liberals, than by any deep yearning for independence. It is a protest vote with which many other Canadians can sympathize. Recent polls have shown that two in three Quebecers believe they benefit from Canada’s international reputation, from the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, from Ottawa’s financing for social programs and from its efforts to curb terrorism. Barely one in three would vote Yes to a straightup vote on independence. The one in two who do favour some kind of “ sovereignty/ partnership” expect to retain all the advantages of citizenship. The sovereignists may promise that, but they cannot deliver it. That is why the Bloc is far from securing what 85 per cent of Quebecers see as a key condition for a break with the rest of Canada: 60 per cent or more support, on a clear question such as: Do you want Quebec to become an independent country?
Most Quebecers feel a narrow win on a fuzzy question won’t suffice. As the leader of the Canada’s most influential national federalist party in Quebec, Martin is right to remind Quebecers that their society has flourished within Confederation. It is good to hear him do so in this campaign. But let’s not drown out Santa’s sleigh bells with apocalyptic talk of national ruin if the Liberals lose big. Politicians’ futures may be riding on this election. Canada’s future is not. And talk of making political foes disappear, and tarring them with Nazism, is coarsely offensive.