Canadian Election Results Reveal Weaknesses of Quebec Separatists

QUEBEC CITY — Quebec’s separatists Tuesday were contemplating election results that exposed weaknesses in their movement and yielded a measure of optimism to Canadians--and Americans--who hope to see Canada remain united.

The Bloc Quebecois, the separatist party in the Canadian federal Parliament, won 44 of Quebec’s 75 seats and 39% of the popular vote in the mostly French-speaking province in Monday’s election. But that was down from the 54 seats and 49% that the party received in the last election, in 1993.

The erosion marked the separatists’ first reversal after five years of steady progress in their effort to persuade a majority of voters in Quebec to break away from Canada.

In recent years, they have won control of the provincial government, concocted a more moderate program that envisions a “partnership” between an independent Quebec and Canada, found a charismatic, popular leader in Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard and shocked the nation by barely losing an October 1995 referendum that would have cleared the way for secession.

Then came this week’s hiccup.

“The results show that opinion in Quebec hasn’t quite gelled, and that offers some hope [for federalists],” Robert Bothwell, a political analyst and author who teaches at the University of Toronto, said Tuesday.

The election, however, also revealed problems for backers of Canadian unity--notably the continued unpopularity of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien in his home province of Quebec and the lack of a national consensus on how best to meet the separatist challenge.

All these issues will be crucial to the fate of Canada if, as expected, Bouchard calls another referendum on independence before 2000. Bouchard boldly predicted Tuesday that this was the last Canadian election in which Quebeckers will participate.

The question also is important for the United States because an attempt to break up Canada could trigger a major economic disruption in America’s largest trading partner and cohort in the North American Free Trade Agreement. The closer-than-ever economic relationship of the U.S. and Canada is one reason that the Clinton administration has come out more strongly against separation than did previous U.S. governments.

Separatists in this old walled city that is the provincial capital took some solace Tuesday in the fact that their decline was less precipitous than some had predicted during what was unanimously described as an inept campaign by Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe. Just 10 days before the election, a Quebec civil servant with separatist sympathies privately worried about a coming “disaster.”

The tenor of the Bloc campaign was set during the first week, when Duceppe was photographed in a ridiculous-looking hairnet during a stop at a cheese factory and when one of his campaign buses got lost. As Duceppe stumbled, the Bloc scheduled more campaign appearances on his behalf by Bouchard.

The campaign only underlined the indispensability of Bouchard to the separatists; he is their only spokesman with wide appeal in the province. Bouchard has managed to maintain his popularity despite a tough austerity program imposed shortly after he became premier in early 1996. The cutbacks, which have included reductions in social programs, health care, education and the civil service, are aimed at eliminating Quebec’s budget deficit by 2000 and improving the province’s dismal economic climate. So far, however, these measures have done little to ease Quebec’s 11.6% jobless rate.

Many of the voters who turned away from the Bloc in this election were those Bouchard has successfully attracted in the past: moderate, French-speaking Quebeckers dissatisfied with Quebec’s place in the Canadian federation but hesitant about embracing secession. Their alternative this time was the Progressive Conservative Party, which is seen as friendlier to Quebec nationalism than Chretien’s Liberals and less radical than the separatist Bloc.

In public comments Tuesday, it was apparent that separatists hope to win those voters back by arguing that reconciliation between Quebeckers and the rest of Canada is hopeless.

“All the federal parties in Parliament will try to propose solutions for Quebec that we know are not feasible,” Duceppe told a news conference in Montreal.

Analysts agreed Tuesday that the secessionists may be helped by the continued opposition of western Canadians to any constitutional concessions aimed at protecting Quebec’s French language and culture.

Westerners voted massively for the Reform Party of Preston Manning, a right-leaning hard-liner on Quebec who is the only national party leader who does not speak French and who will be the principal opposition leader in Parliament.

The separatists already are holding up Manning as the hostile face of English-speaking Canada. “He gives them a good negative image: ‘Here’s the guy who hates us,’ ” explained Louis Balthazar, a political analyst here.

But their main opponent will still be Chretien.

The prime minister’s poor performance in this election--his Liberals won a reduced majority in Parliament, and he only narrowly defeated a separatist opponent in his own district--came after he was widely criticized for underestimating the chances of the separatists in the 1995 referendum campaign. Canadian federalists already are asking whether they want him leading the charge against another referendum.

“The Liberals as a party have to see that their long-term survival is different from the prime minister’s personal agenda,” said Bothwell.

“I’d guess, as of today, the challenge is on,” added Balthazar. “In the Liberal Party, though, it would be done in a very civilized way . . . delicate pressure on him not to serve [a full term].”

Chretien biographer Lawrence Martin, however, suggested that Chretien, 63, is not likely to slip quietly off stage. “It took him 30 years to get to where he is now, and he’s not about to relinquish power. He likes being in power,” Martin said in an interview from Ottawa.

“He wants to prove he can unify the country and that he can deliver the knockout blow to the separatists. Whether he can do that or not, of course, remains in question,” Martin said.