Quebec goes Canadian

Press, 16 January 1986, Page 16

Quebec goes Canadian

From “The Economist,” London

Voting in Quebec’s provincial election last month seemed to convey a blindingly simple message; the end of the movement for separation from Canada. The Parti Quebecois (P.Q.) which had been created to fight for the province’s independence and has ruled it for nine years, was • swept out of office by a huge swing back to the provincial Liberals who won 99 seats to the P.Q.’s 23. The Liberals have always been dedicated to keep Quebec within the Canadian federation. Does this mean the end of the Parti Quebecois?

Canada’s politics, and especially Quebec’s are never quite that simple. Mr Robert Bourassa, the Liberal leader, now regains the premiership that he lost at the 1976 provincial election, but in spite of his party’s triumph, Mr Bourassa lost his own seat.

A by-election will be arranged to provide him with another one, but his defeat confirmed the opinion polls’ indications that his personal popularity does not match that of the P.Q. leader, Mr Pierre-Marc Johnson. Although the P.Q.’s share of the total vote fell to 37 per cent from the 49 per cent it had got in 1981, while the Liberals’ share rose to 57 per cent from 46 per cent, it must be remembered that a sixth of Quebec’s inhabitants are English speakers, and almost to a person against the P.Q., so the P.Q. can still claim to have the support of

nearly half of the French-speaking majority. And which side had the federal Government in Ottawa favoured in this provincial election? Certainly not that of the staunchly federalist Liberals. Prominent members of Canada’s ruling Conservative Party openly supported the P.Q. during the campaign, and the Prime Minister, Mr Brian Mulroney, made some timely gestures calculated to improve its chances. The federal Tories thus rewarded the P.Q. for the discreet help it gave them last year, without which they could not have achieved their remarkable feat of taking Quebec seats in the federal election. Moreover, after Quebec’s drammatic swing to the Tories in last year’s federal voting, it was observing a familiar Canadian ritual by favouring the Liberals in this provincial election. It is not only Quebeckers who cautiously like to keep things balanced; many people in Ontario, for instance, are accustomed to vote Conservative in provincial elections and Liberal in Federal ones. And in the Quebec election decisions to switch between the two main contestants (there were half a dozen other parties, but none of them got a single seat) may have been made easier by the fact that their programmes were barely distinguishable. Mr Johnson’s predecessor, Mr Rene Levesque, had alienated the

separatist diehards in the party that he founded and led for 17 years by having the whole issue of independence relegated to a remote future at last January’s P.Q. congress. The party had also sloughed off its old Leftist skin; it had lost much trade union support three years ago by cutting back public sector pay, and in this campaign it talked almost as loudly as the Liberals about privatisation, encouraging enterprise, striking a free trade deal with the United States, and generally reducing the role of the State. For their part the Liberals assured Quebec that they would leave intact most laws introduced since 1976 to enforce the primacy of the French language in the province. Mr Bourassa has promised early tax cuts. Apart from that, Quebec faces no great changes. If separatism, as a party-politi-cal issue, recedes a bit more than it already has, it must be hoped that extreme separatist factions will not therefore revive their terrorist tactics of the early 19705. What can be taken for granted, however, is that before long the province’s new Government — like all its predecessors since the “quiet revolution” of 1960 — will be seen standing up for Quebec’s particular rights and interests against the federal power in Ottawa. Copyright, “The Economist.”