Quebec Elects Separatists, Opens Debate on Secession

Quebec voters Monday elected a separatist party to govern the province, launching Canada into what promises to be a debilitating yearlong struggle over national unity.

The Parti Quebecois, led by Jacques Parizeau, won 77 seats in the 125-member National Assembly, as the provincial parliament is called. It ousted the Liberal Party, which has governed for nine years and was led by Premier Daniel Johnson. The Liberals took 47 seats; one seat went to a splinter party.

The popular vote was much closer, however, with near-complete returns showing the Parti Quebecois edging out the Liberals by only 0.4% and failing to win a majority of the votes cast. Each district is decided on a winner-take-all basis.

The election gives Quebec separatists what they view as their last chance in a generation to achieve independence for the predominantly French-speaking province. Parizeau, who now becomes premier, has pledged to call a provincial referendum on sovereignty within 10 months.

“Sovereigntists have come back to power in Quebec City . . . and in 1995 we will ask the question that makes us a country,” Parizeau told an enthusiastic crowd here in the provincial capital.

Polls show that a majority of the province’s 4.85 million voters are opposed to separation, and the failure of the separatists to gain a majority of the popular vote underlines that sentiment. Nonetheless, the sovereigntists believe they can reverse the trend with a vigorous new government here.

No one is sure how the rest of Canada would react if Quebeckers did vote for sovereignty in a referendum. Speculation ranges from predictions the two states would part amicably, as did the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993, to scenarios of violent clashes.

Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, a Quebecker who strongly favors national unity, did not participate in the provincial campaign, apparently preferring to hold his fire until the coming battle over the referendum. In a statement following the Parti Quebecois victory, he emphasized Canada’s strengths as a country and asked Parizeau to work with national leaders in solving its problems.

“Over the last 127 years, we have created a tolerant, generous and united country. This Canada--we can and we will continue to build it together,” Chretien said.

The separatists don’t have to be able to win a referendum to disrupt Canada’s political agenda. Whatever the ultimate outcome, a bitter and encompassing campaign over Quebec’s future could divert the nation’s attention from other issues, such as economic and social program reforms intended to reduce the burgeoning national debt, among the highest in the industrial world as a percentage of gross domestic product.

It also could discourage investment and raise tensions between Quebec’s French-speaking majority and the province’s native peoples, its English-speaking minority and immigrant communities, all of whom generally oppose separation. Parizeau sought to head off such tensions Monday night by saying, “I want as much as I can be to be the premier of all Quebeckers.”

The United States’ stake in the future of Canada is large. Canada and the United States are each other’s largest trading partners, longtime military allies and holders of the longest undefended border in the world. Traditional U.S. policy has been that this is an issue for Canadians to decide, and Vice President Al Gore repeated that line on a recent visit to Ottawa, the Canadian capital.

Monday’s election represents a milestone for Parizeau, a 64-year-old former university economics professor who embraced the independence movement in 1969. A graduate of the London School of Economics, Parizeau served as finance minister in the first Parti Quebecois government, headed by the late Rene Levesque, founder of the separatist movement.

That government lost a 1980 referendum on sovereignty, putting the separatists into a decade-long decline. Their hopes were revived in 1990 and 1991, with the failure of two successive attempts to amend the Canadian constitution to meet Quebec demands for special status to preserve its French language and culture.

Parizeau’s announced game plan is to move quickly and boldly on the sovereignty issue. Shortly after taking office later this month, Parizeau is expected to ask the provincial parliament to declare a “declaration of intent” to leave Canada. He also will appoint a commission to draw up a constitution for the proposed new state.

Parizeau also has indicated he will withdraw Quebec from a number of federal government programs; seek to seize jurisdiction over issues, such as fishing rights, traditionally controlled by the federal government; refuse to participate in an upcoming reform of Canada’s social service programs, and generally contest Chretien’s initiatives. In this, the Parti Quebecois will be assisted by its separatist allies in the federal Parliament, the Bloc Quebecois, led by the charismatic Lucien Bouchard.

Bouchard told reporters Monday that he expects conflicts between the Parizeau and Chretien governments, and, despite the odds, he predicted that the separatists will win the referendum.

But victory in a referendum appears problematic, given current polls, Quebec’s history and the Parti Quebecois’ failure to win a majority Monday. The central issue for French-speaking Quebeckers, who account for 82% of the province’s 6.8 million residents, is whether their desire to preserve their language and culture through independence is worth the economic uncertainties of cutting loose from Canada.

While the Quebec campaign commanded Canadian and international attention because of the separatism issue, within the province the dominant issues were the economy, which only recently has begun to emerge from a long recession, and the voters’ exhaustion with the Liberal government.

Indeed, sentiment for independence dropped steadily in the polls throughout the campaign, even as support for the Parti Quebecois held steady or increased. The latest surveys showed Quebeckers opposed to secession from Canada by about 60% to 40%, which is the same margin by which a 1980 sovereignty referendum was defeated.

Johnson, 49, became premier in January, succeeding Robert Bourassa, who retired because of poor health. He inherited a government that was seen by many voters as not caring about Quebec’s jobless and unwilling to do much to correct chronic, double-digit unemployment.

During the 50-day campaign, and in the months leading up to it, Johnson sought to reverse that by putting forward a new economic program and simultaneously warning that the Parti Quebecois’ focus on sovereignty would distract a Parizeau government from job creation.

In response, Parizeau argued that Quebec independence would be decided in the promised 1995 referendum and that this election was about good government. Parizeau also contended that independence is necessary for Quebec to achieve its economic potential.

Chretien’s absence from the campaign was criticized in some quarters. But federal election officials often stay out of provincial politics, and Chretien is sensitive to complaints in the rest of Canada that the federal government pays too much attention to Quebec.

In any case, Chretien is far more popular outside of Quebec than within the province, and an appearance on behalf of Johnson might have backfired. Chretien was justice minister in 1981-82 and was instrumental in helping Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau enact a new Canadian constitution over the lone opposition of the Quebec government. Many Quebeckers never have forgiven Chretien.