Press Room

August 23, 1999

WHY A QUESTION INCLUDING THE NOTION OF PARTNERSHIP WOULD NOT BE CLEAR

The Bloc's new intergovernmental affairs critic, Mr. Daniel Turp, has commemorated, in his own way, the first anniversary of the Supreme Court's reference on unilateral secession. He has taken this occasion to reiterate the usual positions of his party and of the current Government of Quebec on the procedure by which Quebec could be changed into an independent country. Mr. Turp asserts that the rule of the simple majority could suffice and that a question that would include the notion of partnership would be clear. I will respond to the substance of his arguments, without indulging, as he has done, in pointless attempts at personal belittlement.

A point-by-point response would force me to repeat the arguments that have been detailed in my previous letters and writings on the clear majority required to trigger negotiations on secession. On this subject, I will simply restate that if the referendum procedures in 1980 and 1995 had been judged clear, the Supreme Court would not have referred on 32 occasions in its opinion last year to the importance of clarity.

I also reiterate that in order to conform to the practices observed elsewhere in the world, the Government of Quebec should not hold a referendum on secession unless there are good reasons to believe that a consensus exists among Quebecers in favour of such an option. This has been the case in all instances of secession, outside the colonial context, where a referendum has taken place. For example, in the case of the three Baltic countries mentioned by Mr. Turp, support varied between 74.9% and 93.2%.

Where Mr. Turp has given me an occasion to add to my previous interventions is in regard to the notion of partnership. He criticizes me as someone who "preaches in favour of a question that contains no reference to partnership."

The idea of "sovereignty with an offer of partnership" is neither clear nor realistic. It should not be included in a question on secession. Let us examine this.

Even secessionist leaders have acknowledged that the notion of partnership is not clear. On June 19, 1997, Mr. Bouchard described it as "bare bones". And neither before nor after that statement has it been possible to flesh out those bare bones. In other words, on October 30, 1995, Messrs. Bouchard and Parizeau proposed to us Quebecers sovereignty with an offer of bare bones. One cannot reconcile secession with democracy if one poses a referendum question that would include such a trick.

The idea of partnership is not realistic. One cannot see how 25% of the population of a country could leave that country and then return as a fifty-fifty partner in its common institutions. As Premier Harris said on October 12, 1995: "Ontario, with more than a third of the population would have less power than Quebec and Ontario would have no direct representation on this partnership council. (...) In all reasonableness, how could anyone believe that this would be acceptable from Ontario's point of view?"

And Mr. Harris qualified the partnership initiative as "entirely unworkable." "From Ontario's point of view either we are one country or we are not. A separate Quebec would be a foreign country. Period. Anything else is wishful thinking."

The secessionist leaders retort that Mr. Harris and the other Canadian leaders outside Quebec are bluffing and would change their opinion after a "Yes" victory in a referendum. But when one reads Mr. Parizeau's book (Pour un Québec souverain, 1997) one concludes that it is instead he who was bluffing. It is clear that he did not believe very much in the success of negotiations on partnership and hoped to rapidly declare independence unilaterally.

The idea of partnership must not be included in a question on secession. In fact, one needs to know if Quebecers support secession, that is to say that they want Quebec to stop being part of Canada and become an independent country. The only way to be sure is to pose a clear question on secession and not a question that mixes in other issues or considerations.

In addition, in a democracy that properly uses referendums, the question should not only be clear but also neutral: it must not give advantage to one side at the expense of the other. It should not pull the electorate in one direction or another.

From this standpoint, the Supreme Court said that negotiations "would address the potential act of secession as well as its possible terms." It would be incorrect for the referendum question to raise only one of the possible terms, especially if many argue over whether this term is realistic or not. One could legitimately fear that this possible term would only be included in the question in order to favour one side over the other.

That is why a question that only mentions negotiating a partnership – even supposing one knows what that means -- is as biased as a question that only mentions negotiating Quebec's borders.

The Supreme Court has stated that it is up to the "political actors" to determine what constitutes clarity. The Government of Canada is obviously one of those political actors. Secession would mean the abdication of its constitutional responsibilities toward Quebecers. It could not undertake the negotiation of such an abdication unless Quebecers clearly indicated that this is what they want, by responding with a clear majority to a clear question on secession, not a question on the nebulous concept of sovereignty with an offer of partnership.

Mr. Turp could render service to everyone if he were to call upon his leaders to adopt a clear procedure instead of encouraging them to pick up a few thousand additional votes through guile and confusion. It is only if Quebecers clearly support secession that it would be possible to tackle the inevitable difficulties that would accompany its negotiation.

A third referendum on secession is the objective of Mr. Bouchard and his government, not of the Government of Canada. Since they state that they still want to hold a referendum, it has been their responsibility for the past year to indicate to the population how they intend to comply with the Supreme Court's opinion, particularly regarding the clarity of the majority and the clarity of the question on secession. In the event that Mr. Bouchard and his government do not clarify these issues while nonetheless persisting with their referendum initiative, the Government of Canada has made it known that it might have to outline the reasonable requirements of clarity without which it would not undertake the negotiation of the secession of Quebec from Canada.

But there exists another solution, one preferred by more than two thirds of Quebecers: that the Bouchard government take note of Quebecers' desire to remain Canadian and state that it is renouncing its referendum initiative. The referendum threat harms us all tremendously and should not exist in the evident absence of a consensus in favour of secession. The independentist forces could still continue, through completely legitimate partisan action, to advocate for secession in the hope of one day rallying a clear majority of Quebecers. But the important thing would be for all of us, Quebecers of all allegiances, freed from the referendum threat, to be able to better work together to improve our quality of life in this wonderful country that we share with other Canadians.

Stéphane Dion