Let’s pause here for a moment. You have to give Quebec leaders credit for one thing not much found outside Quebec – candour. It’s breathtaking, when you think about it – here’s a leader winning an election saying that he knows the people don’t want him to have a referendum but but when "winning conditions" present themselves, he’ll hold one anyway!

We must surely ask ourselves just what Mr Bouchard sees as "winning conditions" and just how he intends to get there. And this is where the line dividing me from most of the comments I have heard is drawn.

I do not think that because the Liberals outpolled the Parti Quebecois that this means a referendum is a long way away. Frankly I don’t think this means anything at all because in Mr Bouchard’s definition of winning conditions he knows that there will be up to 45% against him. Nor do I much concern myself with the dissection of the numbers obtained by Mario Dumont and placing them in one camp or another because referendums tend to have lives of their own where passions run high accompanied by sizable swings in opinion.

Nor do I believe – and this is crucial – that somehow we will get through the next five years without Mr Bouchard calling a referendum because he has not found those elusive "winning conditions". I think we must deal with the situation as if a referendum was certain with the only question being, who will initiate it, Quebec City or Ottawa?

In predicting what the Ottawa Liberals will now do in order to keep those "winning conditions" from materializing, if the past in any way foretells the future, it will be more of the same. The Ottawa policy will be outright bribery, some of it financial, much of it political.

There’s no need to deal with the financial because we all know what that will mean. It is the political bribery that should occupy our minds. And, as always, Ottawa will do is what the greyhound does – it will chase a rabbit it can never catch.

Ottawa will start out with word games around the so-called Calgary Declaration, a document the title of which grossly exaggerates its importance. Ottawa will try to fashion that into some sort of consensual Meech Lake III but it won’t work.

I suspect then that we will actually embark upon Meech Lake III and although it will try to do a great deal more that Charlottetown and Meech it will really be an effort to dust off "distinct society", perhaps with some linguistic help from Roget’s Thesaurus, a veto for Quebec tarted up as one for everyone else too, a permanent % of seats in the House of Commons for Quebec and a pallid version of a new senate guaranteed never to work and unamendable by reason of Quebec’s veto. And, of course, aboriginals will insist on and get a full seat at the table insisting on lots of goodies for them too. This exercise will, if undertaken, fail miserably.

We must face the fundamental problem with Canada, which is not just Quebec… or Alberta … or British Columbia is systemic. We have a system of "top down" government which has taken all power from the people and vested it into the hands of premiers across the land and the Prime Minister. We cannot hope to save a country from destruction from within if the system of governance itself is not worth saving.

If only we could finally muster up the courage to put in place that Constituent Assembly that Gordon Gibson and others have been on about for so long, we’d be in there with a chance. If we could say to all Canadians, let us see how we can find a better – which will still be far from perfect – way to govern ourselves and then asked, by national referendum, for public approval we would be onto something.

If we give terms of reference to such as assembly we must mean what we say and seek real reform where everything from the monarchy on down is open to discussion and change.

This way Canada, not Lucien Bouchard would have the initiative.

The dissatisfaction of many Quebeckers is the same as that of many Canadians across the country. Our system was bad from the start and we must re-invent ourselves with boldness and stop chasing that ever-faster rabbit.

Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be the sort of courage needed in the capitals of this country – it’s especially lacking in Ottawa.