Will Clenched Fist or Kid Glove Hold Quebec?

That cracking sound coming from north of the U.S. border isn’t ice breaking in the spring thaw. It’s the splintering of Canada’s body politic.

Members of Parliament return to work in Ottawa on Tuesday after an extended mid-winter recess and are still without a consensus on the best strategy for battling Quebec’s resurgent separatists.

Is it time to get tough with the secessionists, even at the risk of violence? Should the government draw a line in the snow and dare the separatists to cross it?

Or is the best way to woo Quebec’s French-speaking majority by calling a halt to deficit-shrinking cutbacks in federal social services? Perhaps the answer lies in a radical devolution of power from the federal government to the 10 provinces, including Quebec.

Those ideas, and others, are kicking around in the press, on radio talk shows, in university lecture halls and at office coffee breaks as Prime Minister Jean Chretien, down a bit in the popularity polls but still in firm control of a parliamentary majority, enters the second half of his term.

Meanwhile, tempers are flaring on both sides of the separation divide.

Quebec’s leading secessionist, provincial Premier Lucien Bouchard, solidified his standing as the man the rest of Canada loves to hate in recent weeks by dismissing Canada as “not a real country” and, in a sotto voce comment picked up by broadcast microphones, declaring one of Chretien’s Cabinet ministers “an imbecile, an idiot.”

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Chretien then set the nation agog when, confronted by a demonstrator at a Flag Day celebration Feb. 15, he grabbed the man by the neck and shoved him aside in an incident recorded by television cameras.

The protester, who was not seriously hurt, was a Quebec union activist demonstrating against cuts in unemployment insurance. But he also turned out to be a separatist, and the brief scuffle immediately was thrown into that context.

A Toronto tabloid printed a front-page photo of Chretien gripping the man’s throat under the headline “Now, Bring On Bouchard.” Chretien also faces a stagnant economy, sagging consumer confidence, growing restiveness over government cutbacks and the startling confession in a newspaper interview by the country’s top military man, defense Chief of Staff Gen. Jean Boyle, that Canada’s army is too poorly equipped to fight a real war.

But a promised new policy on national unity is expected to top the government agenda.

That was made imperative by the Oct. 30 referendum in Quebec, in which separation was rejected by a margin of only 1.2 percentage points. The close vote inspired Bouchard to predict another referendum, perhaps next year.

During recent public appearances, Chretien has sent out contradictory indications about what the new policy might include. In late January, for instance, he endorsed the view of Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Stephane Dion that after a future majority vote for independence in Quebec, the province might be partitioned, with part remaining in Canada. After commentators pointed out the bloody results of partitions--from Belfast to Belgrade to Bangladesh--Chretien backed off.

The zigzag reinforced the criticism that Chretien is, in the words of Jean Charest, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party in Parliament, “improvising” on policy crucial to the survival of the country.

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“The government is so internally divided it barely knows what to think, let alone how to act,” wrote columnist Jeffrey Simpson in the nation’s leading newspaper, the Globe and Mail.

Desmond Morton, director of the McGill University Center for the Study of Canada in Montreal, said talk of partition risks feeding the “paranoia” of Quebec nationalists that the rest of Canada is plotting against the province. “But it’s arguable that they put an idea in people’s heads and are letting it sit and ferment a bit,” he added. “That idea is that sovereignty is not going to be the sweet, smooth deal some people [in Quebec] think it is.”

The notion of partition grows out of the “tough love” approach to Quebec now in ascendancy among English-speaking Canadians. Advocates argue that presenting Quebeckers with uncompromising conditions on separation would discourage them from voting for it.

Others say that federalists need to provide Quebeckers with reasons to stay in Canada, not just obstacles to secession. “In terms of winning the hearts and minds of Quebeckers, the positive benefits of Canada are very important,” said Ed Broadbent, a former leader of the leftist New Democratic Party who now heads a human rights organization headquartered in Montreal. “My own view is Quebec will be lost unless there is a strong positive message.”

While the rather tight circle of academics, economists, think-tank operatives, journalists and political junkies who make up Canada’s political class seems unremittingly gloomy about the long-term prospects of the country holding together, optimists remain.

McGill’s Morton is one. “It’s certainly possible to design a deal that would get a majority of Quebeckers to stay in Canada,” he said. “The trick is getting a plan that you can sell to the rest of the country.”

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That is the delicate chemistry that must be worked by Chretien and his new point men on the issue, neophyte Cabinet ministers Dion, 40, a political science professor from the University of Montreal, and Pierre Pettigrew, 44, an international trade consultant and onetime advisor to former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

Neither Dion nor Pettigrew, who were appointed to the Cabinet in a January shake-up, has held elective office. To keep their posts they must win election to Parliament from Quebec districts in by-elections scheduled for March 25.

The results of those elections--all together six seats are at stake in Quebec, Ontario and Newfoundland--may be the next important measure of public support for the prime minister’s program.

Chretien already has pushed through Parliament a resolution recognizing Quebec as a “distinct society” in Canada and giving the province and four other regions veto rights over any constitutional change. Howver, the most recent poll showed 52.4% of Quebec voters favoring secession.