When future historians identify the moment when the Quebec sovereignty movement emerged from its early 21st-century coma, they may point to a May 29 speech that Premier François Legault made calling for more power over immigration.
At a gathering of Coalition Avenir Québec members in Drummondville, Que., Mr. Legault said he would seek a “strong mandate” from voters in October’s provincial election to negotiate a new deal that would see Ottawa surrender authority to choose newcomers who come to Quebec under the federal family reunification program. Quebec already chooses its own economic immigrants, who make up the bulk of newcomers. Mr. Legault insisted that choosing those who arrive annually through the family-reunification channel is also critical to protecting French.
“It’s a question of survival for our nation,” Mr. Legault said. Otherwise, “it may become a question of time before we become a Louisiana.”
Ever since the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, French-Canadians have compared their struggle for cultural survival to that of French colonists abandoned by Napoleon for US$15-million. The subsequent anglicization of Louisiana, where French has been reduced to folklore status, has often been held up as an example of what might happen if Quebeckers let down their guard.
But it is an extreme example. And Mr. Legault’s decision to evoke it left plenty of Quebeckers, including many in his own party, wondering just what the Premier had up his sleeve. Was he setting the scene for another epic battle with Ottawa over his province’s political future?
Mr. Legault, a former Parti Québécois cabinet minister, founded the CAQ in 2011 to extricate Quebec from the endless federalist-sovereigntist tug-of-war that had defined its politics, and depressed its economy, for four decades. In its constitution, the CAQ defines itself as a “modern nationalist party” that seeks to “assure the development and prosperity of the Québécois nation within Canada.”
Still, Mr. Legault never renounced his sovereigntist convictions, much less defined himself as a reborn federalist. And, as Premier, he has prioritized a nationalist agenda over an economic one, with Bill 21 to ban some public employees from wearing religious symbols and, with Bill 96, to increase protection for the French language.
Both laws are destined to end up before the Supreme Court of Canada, where the federal government will be forced to intervene on behalf of religious and linguistic minorities in Quebec. That will create sparks, whichever way the court rules.
Mr. Legault’s move to wrest more power over immigration seems similarly destined to revive the federal-provincial conflict off which the sovereignty movement once fed.
“You can never count on Ottawa to concede powers to Quebec,” former PQ premier Lucien Bouchard a few days after Mr. Legault’s speech. “It has to come from the political pressure [applied by] a grassroots political movement, as was long the case, but is less so now.”
In comments made on the sidelines of a ceremony held to unveil a statue of former PQ premier Jacques Parizeau on the grounds of the National Assembly in Quebec City, Mr. Bouchard said he was “convinced” that sovereignty remains the “solution” for his province, adding: “Everything becomes a problem in the management of the Quebec state because of the extremely difficult, probably impossible, relations with the federal government.”
Mr. Bouchard, who recruited Mr. Legault to run for the PQ in the wake of the 1995 referendum on sovereignty, has rarely opined on politics in recent years. So his comments took on a life of their own. In suggesting that the sovereigntist movement might need a different “vehicle” than the now-moribund PQ, Mr. Bouchard left many wondering whether he was nudging Mr. Legault and the CAQ to don that mantle.
Mr. Legault did his best to deny he has any intention of doing so, insisting he remained “a nationalist within Canada.” But with his recruitment as CAQ candidates of ex-Bloc Québécois MP Caroline St-Hilaire and former PQ minister Bernard Drainville, not everyone was buying it.
At a Tuesday press conference, Mr. Drainville, considered the father of the ill-fated Charter of Quebec Values in 2013, refused to say whether he remains a sovereigntist, explaining that Quebeckers have “no appetite” for that debate. “Quebeckers are telling us: ‘So, work within Canada to strengthen us and improve our daily lives.’ ”
That is surely true. Quebeckers would rather eat gravel than endure another referendum campaign any time soon. And for now, Mr. Legault seems content to govern Quebec as a province, albeit one he dominates to an extent not even Mr. Bouchard could manage at the height of his popularity.
Deliberately or not, however, Mr. Legault seems to be slowly laying the groundwork for another kick at the sovereigntist can. If not by him, then someone else. Mr. Drainville is already being touted as a future CAQ leader.
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