Quebec Panel Calls for 1992 Sovereignty Vote : Canada: But a referendum on independence could be postponed if there is an acceptable formula for unity.

After months of public hearings and closed-door marathon debates, a special commission created to determine the political future of Quebec has come out in favor of a referendum by October, 1992, to choose whether the province should remain in Canada.

The recommendation makes it highly likely that citizens of the French-speaking province will get their much-hoped-for chance to vote on whether to remain in Canada. Recent polls suggest that given such a chance, Quebecers would vote to secede.

The commissioners also recommended that Quebec become a sovereign state within one year of a “yes” vote for independence. Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa signed the commission report, and it was introduced as a bill Wednesday in the provincial legislature.

“The referendum campaign begins today,” said a triumphant Gerald Larose, a pro-sovereignty commission member and trade union leader.

But in keeping with the seesaw character of the Quebec independence effort, there is still a chance that federalist Quebecers--those who want the province to stay in Canada--will be able to derail the sovereignty referendum before it is held.

Federalist commission members said that while Quebec waits for the sovereignty referendum date to arrive, the province will continue to entertain proposals from English-speaking Canada on how the country might be kept together. If English-speaking Canada comes up with reasonable mechanisms for preserving the Canadian confederation, the federalists said, then the referendum on outright independence would be postponed, and Quebecers would vote instead on the milder question of whether to accept the new federalist formula.

Quebec’s governing Liberal Party recently offered a suggestion of what sort of formula the province might consider acceptable: At its biennial policy-making convention, it proposed that the Canadian federal government cede vast governing powers to Quebec, giving the Francophone province authority over everything from taxation to immigration policy.

Although there would hardly be a recognizable Canada left, the Quebec Liberals said this formula would persuade them to remain in Canada. (Under the Liberal scheme, virtually all that would be left for the federal government to do would be to defend the borders, control the money supply and exchange rate and collect tariffs on imports.)

English-speaking Canadians have already expressed strong distaste for the Quebec Liberals’ idea. Many analysts are assuming that Quebecers, for their part, will be just as turned off by whatever political suggestions English-speaking Canadians may come up with in the next 18 months.

“Personally, I’m not optimistic at all that there will be a reasonable offer” from English-speaking Canada, said commission co-chairman Michel Belanger, speaking in a press conference in the stately Red Salon of the provincial legislature in Quebec City. He said he thought it would take “close to a miracle” for Quebec to avoid an outright referendum on sovereignty.

Despite such pessimism, the commission’s report does give Quebec federalists a powerful new lever to use in their attempts to keep the province in Canada: the threat of an almost-certain referendum. Until now, many English-speaking Canadians have refused to take Quebec’s sovereigntist rumblings seriously, noting that Quebec has talked off and on for years about independence and has never gone ahead and achieved it.

Now, Quebec federalists hope, the reality of an impending referendum will scare English-speaking Canada into coming to the negotiating table and dealing in earnest with Quebec’s grievances.

Quebec has already had one referendum on the possibility of sovereignty, in 1980. At that time the voters, fearing their economy would falter if cut free from Canada, decided to stay in the confederation.

During the last referendum, Bourassa--then a Liberal Party stalwart but not premier--worked hard to keep the voters from choosing sovereignty. Even though he has signed the commission report and appears morally bound to hold a referendum, analysts assume that he will still do everything he can to keep Quebec in Canada.