Mulroney Entreats Newfoundland to Ratify Constitutional Pact : Canada: Rejection would encourage Quebec separatists, he says. Provincial legislators vote today.

Prime Minister Brian Mulroney made an unusual appearance Thursday in this fog-shrouded port city to urge provincial legislators to join him in his battle to amend the constitution and blunt French-Canadian separatism.

“I urge you simply to do for Canada what you would do for your family, by healing the divisions (and) binding the wounds,” Mulroney said.

Newfoundland’s legislature has an opportunity to make or break Mulroney’s unifying vision: The House of Assembly is scheduled to vote this morning on whether to ratify a package of constitutional amendments that would give more powers to Quebec. Feelings of separatism are on the rise in Quebec these days, and if Newfoundland’s legislators vote against the amendments, Quebecers are likely to take it as evidence that English Canadians can’t accept or understand them. A slow process of separation might then be set in motion.

The Newfoundland vote is expected to be a squeaker; no clear pattern has emerged, and a number of legislators were saying even one day before the vote that they hadn’t made up their minds what to do.

In hopes of persuading them to ratify the amendments, Mulroney played up the fears of Quebec “nationalism” in his speech, describing Quebec separatist leader Jacques Parizeau as a wolf at the nation’s door. Parizeau doesn’t hold any government office, but he leads the main opposition party in Quebec, the Parti Quebecois. If the current government in Quebec were voted out of office, the Parti Quebecois would be the only alternative.

“The people who seek to replace us (political leaders) love Canada as much as we do,” Mulroney told the Newfoundland politicians, “with one exception, and the exception is Mr. Parizeau in the province of Quebec.”

He reminded Newfoundland’s legislators that the Parti Quebecois has been gaining ground in the opinion polls over the past few weeks and said that if Parizeau were to win some future election, he would definitely call a referendum on whether Quebec should separate.

“He’s not going to be cute,” warned Mulroney. “He’s going to put the question straight out. ‘Do you want to separate? Yea or nay?’ ”

Quebec already had one such referendum 10 years ago, during a previous Parti Quebecois government, and Mulroney reminisced about that agonizing experience. About 60% of the total population voted to stick with Canada, but Mulroney pointed out that if the Francophone vote alone were considered, the vote was a mere 50-50 to stay within Canada.

“This isn’t an experience that I either enjoyed or that I propose to repeat, if it can be avoided,” said the prime minister, who himself is an Anglophone Quebecer. “The Meech Lake Accord is designed to avoid any future referendum.”

“The Meech Lake Accord” is a name Canadians give Mulroney’s package of constitutional amendments, since they were drafted at a secluded conference center on the shores of Meech Lake in Quebec.

Mulroney also went to great lengths to assure Newfoundland’s House of Assembly that the Meech Lake Accord is not a radical document. He claimed that its five central elements have all been discussed for decades and that the powers it would give Quebec have all been offered to the French-speaking province on other occasions.

“It’s hardly revolutionary,” he said. “It’s in the tradition of over 30 years of constitutional discussions.”

Mulroney acknowledged that his own standing in the opinion polls is disastrous and said that a great deal of the opposition to the accord was really misplaced public anger that ought to be directed at himself and his economic policies.

Newfoundland legislators, who have been increasingly anguished over how to vote in the past few days, seemed impressed with Mulroney’s remarks. They gave him a standing ovation when he finished his speech, an unusual response from politicians in a province deeply resentful of powerful Quebec and of federal politicians in general.

Some of the legislators here seem open-minded to any face-saving reason to vote in favor of the Meech Lake Accord. While their constituents have been telling them again and again to vote it down, many of the legislators have seemed genuinely fearful about doing something that might wreck prosperous, peaceful Canada.

Mulroney’s pitch to Newfoundland may be futile, however, if nothing can be done to arrest runaway opposition to the accord in another Canadian province, Manitoba, the only other province that hasn’t ratified the accord.

In Manitoba, the lone Indian member of the provincial legislature, Elijah Harper, has mounted a successful procedural battle to delay all debate of the constitutional amendments.

Canadians have assumed all along that the Meech Lake Accord will die if it isn’t ratified by all 10 provinces by this Saturday. Some lawyers argue, however, that a careful reading of the accord shows that legally, there really is no such deadline. Mulroney is apparently hoping that if Newfoundland does vote to ratify the accord, Quebec will accept a rollback of the deadline for Manitoba.

In Winnipeg, Manitoba’s capital, about 4,000 Indians, some wearing traditional headdress and others pounding ceremonial drums, gathered outside the legislature to celebrate their procedural victory.

The Indians argue that while the accord treats French-speaking Quebec as a distinct society, it makes no allowances for their own distinctness.