Quebec: The Separatism Problem

Some Canadians thought of it as their country's doomsday scenario. The election of an English-speaking government in Ottawa would be seen by Quebeckers as a hostile rejection. Whereupon Premier Rene Levesque (pronounced Leh-vek) would immediately call a provincial referendum on a separate status for Quebec. After his Parti Quebecois legions stumped the province insisting that Quebeckers now had no choice but to entrust their future to their own government, the voters would give Levesque his mandate to present Ottawa with an ultimatum.

It did not happen that way for a number of good reasons. One is that last week's election results could not be simplistically interpreted as a rejection of Francophone rights and ambitions. Another is that Levesque's Parti Quebecois government, after 2 1/2 mixed years in office, seems to be losing credibility with the voters. A third is that no more than 20% of Quebeckers favor outright independence for the province.

Levesque had done whatever he could to ensure the defeat of his old enemy Trudeau. To weaken the Liberals' traditional domination of federal elections in Quebec, the Parti Quebecois endorsed the Social Credit Party and its bombastic leader, Fabien Roy. The strategy backfired. In the Liberal sweep of the province, five of the nine Social Credit M.P.s were defeated.

Accurately enough, Tory Leader Joe Clark interpreted the big vote for the Liberals as a rebuff to the separatists. Said he: "Quebeckers, even if they did not vote for us, voted massively for federalism."

Though Levesque tried to put an optimistic cast on the election returns, his party has lately suffered a series of setbacks. In two crucial by-elections for the province's legislature Levesque's candidates were drubbed by Liberals.

In Jean Talon, an upper-middle-class area of Quebec City, Louise Beaudoin, a regional president of the Parti Quebecois, was trounced by an obscure Liberal lawyer, Jean-Claude Rivest. At the same time, Claude Ryan, the new leader of the provincial Liberal Party, won a 2-to-l victory in rural Argenteuil. A former editor of Montreal's influential daily Le Devoir, Ryan, 54, is not only a fresh political face but a debater whose verbal agility is a match for Levesque's. Last week Ryan called on Clark to support a constitutional change that would guarantee French language rights throughout the country as an essential step in strengthening Quebec's ties to the rest of Canada.

Some of the Levesque faithful have begun to complain about his lassitude and inaccessibility. He has put off a much needed Cabinet shuffle, given only one press conference in two months, and after an early flurry of legislative innovation, his government seems to be marking time. Two weeks ago Levesque was further embarrassed when House Leader Robert Burns resigned for reasons of health. Before leaving, Burns criticized some of his Cabinet colleagues for being interested only in power and predicted that the government would lose the referendum. "I don't want to be there when it happens," he grumbled.

The real question now is not whether Levesque will lose the referendum but when. The Premier, who made a campaign promise that the referendum would take place some time during his first term, has repeatedly delayed the vote; it will probably not be taken before next spring.

Moreover, voters are not likely to be asked the straightforward question: Do you want Quebec to become independent? Instead, Levesque and his chief adviser, Claude Morin, have propounded a so-called hyphen strategy, in which the government will seek a "mandate to negotiate sovereignty-association" with Ottawa. Such a phrasing might make it possible for the Parti Quebecois to appeal even to opponents of independence, since they would be asked merely to grant Levesque a vague authority to negotiate for unspecified new provincial powers. But it would fall far short of the Parti Quebecois' avowed goal, "the accession to independence."

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