Quebec Premier Ends Boycott of Canada Talks
Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa, ending a two-year boycott of political talks, met with leaders of the rest of Canada on Tuesday to try to resolve a decades-old separatist dispute.
Bourassa met Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and the premiers of English Canada’s nine provinces to discuss reforms they agreed to last month that are aimed at keeping Quebec from breaking away.
“What is at stake is the future of Canada,” Bourassa told reporters as he arrived for the lunch meeting at Mulroney’s lakeside summer retreat outside Ottawa.
The premiers planned to sound out Quebec’s response to a package of reforms that provides for the decentralization of federal powers and the recognition of the French-speaking province as a distinct society within Canada.
Quebecers have widely rejected a proposal to replace Canada’s appointed Senate with an elected upper house in which each province will have an equal number of seats. Quebec has about a quarter of the seats in the current Senate.
Western Canada has insisted on the equal Senate in return for granting Quebec special status.
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