Quebec’s Pro-Independence Premier Resigns

Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard resigned Thursday, saying that he has failed to lead his French-speaking province to independence from Canada and that it is time for someone else to lead the separatist cause.

“I regret one thing--not having done better and more,” he said in an emotional speech in the province’s legislature in Quebec City. “I recognize that my efforts to revive the debate were in vain.”

The charismatic Bouchard led Quebec’s movement to split from Canada in a 1995 referendum that the separatists lost by just 1 percentage point. He became premier of the province in 1996, but despite his popularity, support for sovereignty has steadily waned. His resignation--a surprise to many--dealt a staggering blow to Quebec’s 40-year-long quest for independence.

“It’s the end of a generation’s dream,” said pollster and political analyst Jean-Marc Leger. “The only advantage they had was Lucien Bouchard. Without him, it will be very tough.”

Bouchard, 62, said he will stay on as premier until he can be replaced. But he is leaving his party, the provincial Parti Quebecois, immediately and leaving politics permanently.

In his fifth year as premier, Bouchard seemed increasingly frustrated by growing pressure from party hard-liners to push for another referendum, and by the public’s waning interest in his party’s raison d’etre--separating from Canada.

Polls by Leger and others show a steady decline in support for independence since the failed referendum, from nearly 50% in 1995 to about 40% now. The top priorities for Quebecers, Bouchard said, have become more personal than nationalistic: health care, education and family. Only 1% listed sovereignty as their first priority in the most recent poll in October.

Bouchard, too, showed that he had other priorities as a leader. He worked obsessively to eliminate the province’s multimillion-dollar deficit, if only, he said, to prove that Quebec could handle itself as an independent country.

But leaders of the Parti Quebecois wanted him to focus on establishing Quebec as a sovereign French-speaking state and openly questioned his commitment to the separatist cause, rooted in efforts to preserve the language and culture of the French-speaking province amid its English-language surroundings. He nearly stepped down as party chief at a party convention in 1995 after battling such criticism.

“For some people, like Bouchard, sovereignty could be a solution. Others saw it as a religion, and they did not forgive him,” said Louis Balthazar, a political science professor at Laval University in Quebec City. “They thought he was too soft.”

The separatists were dealt a serious symbolic blow in November federal elections, when the opposition Liberal Party received more votes than the federal Bloc Quebecois for the first time since the 1970s. Voters were beginning to tire of the paradox of electing leaders to go to the national government to argue that they should be no part of it--and bringing little federal money back.

The loss of seats was a setback for Bouchard, and his mounting disagreements with the conservative elements in his party were setting the stage for a showdown. The Parti Quebecois wanted legislation protecting the French language toughened--until October, for example, the province required signs to have French lettering twice as large as the English. Bouchard disagreed and was set for a confrontation in a party meeting next month.

But the drop that made the water spill over, as they say in Quebec, may have been a bitter dispute with nationalist Yves Michaud, who thinks that Bouchard is too moderate on language and sovereignty. After Michaud made comments that offended Quebec’s Jewish community in December, Bouchard ordered him to retract them. Michaud refused.

“[Michaud’s] declaration has hurt Quebec’s reputation internationally,” Bouchard said in his resignation speech. “It certainly won’t help sovereigntists’ ability to convince those who have been targeted.”

But the clincher for Bouchard was his family. Bouchard is married to Audrey Best, a lawyer who grew up in Orange County. Bouchard’s office denied reports that she had been offered a job in an Orange County law firm and that they would live in California. They have two young sons, Alexander and Simon, who used to spit when they heard the word “referendum” after the campaign in 1995.

Bouchard’s family saw him through his struggle with a rare flesh-eating disease that claimed his left leg and nearly cost him his life in 1994, then endured his immediate return to politics. When he began to speak of his family at the end of his address, Bouchard’s voice broke.

“Audrey has given me more than I will ever be able to give back to her,” he said. “I need to give them the best of my energy and my time.”

Bouchard has no clear successor, and the Parti Quebecois will be consumed with determining the future of the movement and the person who will lead it. Among those mentioned are three provincial officials: Deputy Premier Bernard Landry, Health Minister Pauline Marois and Education Minister Francois Legault.

“It may be too early to say the movement is over,” said Kenneth McRoberts, the dean of Glendon College, a bilingual faculty of Toronto’s York University. “That’s what they said when Rene Levesque, the founder of the Parti Quebecois, resigned. But it’s clear the party is in crisis.”