CKNW Editorial
for December 17, 1999

What Premier Lucien Bouchard of Quebec needs now is a good, old fashioned humiliation. This is, of course, standard fare for Quebec separatists and is critical to any future referendum.

The Liberal Party, in a volte face of incredible proportions, has reversed its constitutional position of so many decades one cannot remember the beginnings and is no longer prepared to bribe Quebec. Or has it? This is the interesting thing to consider and I hope younger members of the audience will especially think about this because I think the strategy will take about 5-10 years to play itself out. The main problem with Canadians when it comes to constitutional matters is that they can’t see past the next day’s headlines. We neither profit from the past nor are we very good at predicting the future based, at least in part, upon that past.

The Federal government now has the Quebec government at check … but not at checkmate no matter how much the Conrad Black empire would have you believe. Separatism is on the run, so it would seem, but only damned fools would think it has gone away. Indeed, Lucien Bouchard has not gone away nor is he likely to.

Our problem is that we have been basing our optimism on polls taken when Quebecers, including separatists, have their minds on other things.

In order for Quebec separatists to jump start their next attack they must have a good old humiliation to start from … like the so-called humiliation of 1982 when the constitution was patriated from London without the consent of the Quebec government … or like the failure of Meech Lake and it’s step sister Charlottetown (Separatists are very quick to forget that, at their urging, Quebec voted "no" in the 1992 referendum.) The question is, how will this humiliation be contrived at by the Parti and Bloc Quebecois?

It isn’t going to happen because of the "Clarity" legislation if only because this does little more than reflect in statute form what already was the law rendered by the Supreme Court of Canada. Mr Bouchard is blustering as if this was a humiliation and insult to Quebec but most Quebecers aren’t buying it just for the reason I gave.

What, then, will happen? For sure Mr Bouchard and his BQ comrades aren’t going to say, "very well, then, you’ve got us. We’ll go away quietly."

What surely will be the Bouchard strategy is to make a new set of constitutional demands with them set, as Robert Bourassa did before him, as minimum demands. These will include all of Meech and more including a recognition of "Distinct Society", a veto for Quebec, an automatic 25% of the House of Commons forever and such other goodies as they can think of.

And here is the dangerous part – Bouchard will have Jean Charest and the Quebec Liberals onside because there is nowhere else for them to go.

When this happens, the barnyard droppings will hit the fan. You will then see the Liberals returning to their appeasement position of old or, more likely, that of Brian Mulroney and Joe Clark. They will do this not because it is right but because they will feel they have no other option. Now the federal government has already recognized Quebec as a "Distinct Society" but that’s nowhere good enough for Quebec because for it to operate so as to confer powers it must be part of the constitution.

If the Liberal government refuses to give Quebec what it wants, mostly because it will be beyond its power to do so, there will be the humiliation so necessary to Bouchard’s tactics.

Why will this take time?

Because of timing. There must be a proper base laid for all this. We must have all the limp-wristed professors onside bleating about the virtues of asymmetrical federalism. We need all the Toronto Higher Purpose persons, in Denny Boyd’s delightful phrase, to start coming out selling in the same way as the local version of them sold Nisga’a. It will take time to get the Reform Party all revved up to attack any appeasement with full fervor with, hopefully, the odd fleur-de-lis burning as garnish to the great insult. We also need another federal election to pass for this to become an issue and Mr Bouchard can get some good voice clips from all across Canada.

No, the Clarity Act, though good legislation, has not settled anything. Neither did the 1995 referendum. Neither did the latest polls out of Quebec.

Bouchard and Co. are in this for the long haul. They know that if they rush things they will lose again.

That’s why, as I said in my book Canada: Is Anyone Listening?, what we need in Quebec and very soon is the "mother of all referenda". It must be at a timing Canada chooses, not when the separatists want it.

One should look at these issues in terms of 15-20 years at a time – not as Canadians seem to do … at least the politicians and media seem to do … in terms of 15-20 days.

This one is far from over, folks, and our salvation can only come by the federal government always keeping the initiative and I predict that before the next millennium occurs, that is to say January 1, 2001, the Federal Liberals will have lost that initiative. Then the "fun" will really begin.