Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet speaks at the party's caucus in Laval, Que., on Jan. 22.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
You can expect snickering and eye-rolling any time some English-speaking politico from the Rest of Canada starts going on about “Quebec separatists.” Ha, ha, what a rube. The politically correct term in the province is not séparatistes but souverainistes, or sovereigntists.
That may look like a distinction without a difference, but it isn’t.
And it helps to explain why polls show support plunging for the sovereigntist Bloc Québécois, and sharply rising for the Liberals and their barely bilingual leader, Mark Carney. Si la tendance se maintient – if the trend holds – the Liberals will pick up a significant number of seats in Quebec, while the BQ are on the verge of falling below 12 seats and losing official party status.
The CTV-Globe and Mail/Nanos Research tracking survey of 1,264 Canadians, conducted March 28 to 30, has the Liberals with 48.6-per-cent support in Quebec – 26 points ahead of the BQ. (The random poll’s margin of error is 2.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.) In the 2021 election, the Liberals finished 1.5 percentage points ahead.
The poll also finds that Mr. Carney is the “preferred prime minister” for 54.8 per cent of Quebeckers, versus 20.3 per cent for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and 9.9 per cent for BQ Leader Yves-François Blanchet.
That’s even though Mr. Carney’s level of French is such that you can’t watch a political panel on Radio-Canada without somebody remarking on his linguistic struggles, wondering how much he knows about Quebec, or asking whether he fully understands every question lobbed at him in the other official language.
The Liberal Leader has appropriated the Quebec nationalist slogan, “Maîtres chez nous,” but every Quebecker can see that he’s not exactly from “chez nous.”
And it doesn’t seem to matter. At all. Why not? Two words: Donald. Trump.
When it comes to the threats against Canada from the U.S. President, Quebeckers are just as concerned as other Canadians. Maybe even more concerned.
A Léger poll released last week found that 50 per cent of Quebeckers – a higher proportion than in the rest of Canada – said that “the most important question in this federal election is who the best Prime Minister and Government will be to deal with President Trump and aggressive U.S. trade actions.”
The same poll also found that 42 per cent of Quebeckers – a higher level than in the rest of the country – said that the No. 1 issue is “Tariffs/Trump/U.S. aggression.”
Another Léger survey released last week also found that Quebeckers are the Canadians mostly likely to say that they had reduced purchases of American products bought in store, American products bought online, purchases from Amazon and purchases at American chain restaurants.
Léger also found that only 10 per cent of Quebeckers say they want to join the U.S., the same blanket rejection as seen across Canada. (The closest thing to an outlier is Alberta, where 15 per cent answered in the affirmative – and 82 per cent were opposed.)
If this were a normal election, the Liberals might be having trouble in Quebec, outside of ridings on the Island of Montreal with a high proportion of anglophones and immigrants. But this is not a normal election. Again: Donald. Trump.
Which brings me back to Quebec’s sovereignty-not-separatism movement, why the BQ is so far down in the polls and why the Liberals, despite being led by a very anglo anglo, are so far up.
In the 1980 referendum, Quebeckers were asked to vote for “sovereignty-association,” a term designed to reassure voters that they could remain in Canada while leaving it. In the 1995 referendum, the slogan of the Yes side was “Oui, et ça devient possible” – Yes, and it becomes possible.
But what was “it”? In some ads, the first letter of the word “Oui” was an image of the globe. In others, a daisy, associated with the 1960s hippie movement.
And then there were the ads where the O was a giant shining loonie. Vote Yes to keep the Canadian dollar.
There are four weeks of electioneering still to come, so don’t count the BQ out just yet. But the pitch for separatism – sorry, sovereignty – has always been a lot like the pitch for Brexit. It’s predicated on the idea that independence can be achieved without losing other things that people value. And Quebeckers, even BQ voters, value Canada.
Most Quebeckers, including those who dream of a separate (or separate-ish) country, recognize that Quebec isn’t viable, whether as a province or a country, unless Canada remains politically and economically viable.
Anyone who has considered the history also recognizes that the French language survived and thrived in Quebec because Canada survived. The more than one million French Canadians who emigrated to New England in the 19th and early 20th centuries quickly disappeared into the U.S. melting pot. It’s a similar story in Louisiana.
Without Canada, Quebec is in jeopardy, and everyone knows it. Sovereignty, separation, independence, sovereignty-association, leave-but-keep-the-dollar – whatever you want to call it, it isn’t happening without Canada.
And as for the preferred choice of most Quebeckers – a strong Quebec within a successful Canada – that, too, is threatened by Mr. Trump.
You don’t vote BQ when faced with the possibility of losing all that. You vote BQ when Canada is safe. Yes, Canada is a paradoxical country.