Friday will mark the 20th anniversary of the second referendum on Quebec sovereignty. The Oct. 30 anniversary is one that most people would rather forget, since the result, with the razor-thin majority for the No camp, was disheartening for both sides.
Yet it's useful to reflect on this episode, which would repeat itself if the Parti Québécois were to eventually regain power. As weak as it is today, sovereignty might re-emerge on the Canadian agenda.
I covered both the 1980 and the 1995 referendums as a political columnist for La Presse. Looking back, I find troubling similarities between the two events.
Each time, the sovereigntists hid the real meaning of their option under confusing, ambiguous prose. In both referendums, the questions were long, tortuous and falsely reassuring, because the Yes camp knew it couldn't win with a direct question on sovereignty.
The idea was to reassure voters at all costs, and to make them believe that after a Yes vote, there would be further negotiations with the rest of Canada and that nothing would change rapidly. The idea of a breakup, an element inherent to secession, was completely covered up.
In 1980, the Yes camp asked for a "mandate to negotiate" sovereignty association, as if the two concepts were organically linked. In 1995, it promised that sovereignty would be coupled with a fictitious "political union" with Canada, which would even allow Quebeckers to keep their Canadian passports.
Each time, the Quebec leaders of the No camp (with the glorious exception of Pierre Elliott Trudeau) were unable to devise a frank and coherent strategy. Instead of extolling a positive view of Canada as it was, they promised voters that a No vote would trigger changes to the Canadian federation.
In 1980, Claude Ryan, the leader of the No camp, campaigned on a blueprint for "reformed federalism" even though nobody outside Quebec had agreed to such a plan. In 1995, the No camp leader, Daniel Johnson, panicked when opinion polls showed that the Yes camp was gaining strength, and he abjectly called for constitutional change, a wacky proposal given that constitutional change was not in the cards outside Quebec.
During these two episodes, only two men showed clarity of mind: then-prime minister Trudeau in 1980, who was uncompromising and exposed the sovereigntists' ambivalent question for the cowardly strategy that it was; and Jacques Parizeau, leader of the Yes camp in 1995, who initially wanted to pose a short, direct question to voters. In 1980, he had fought against his party's evasive tactics, but in 1995 he was forced by his allies, notably Lucien Bouchard, then-leader of the Bloc Québécois, to return to the muddled tactics of the first referendum
At mid-campaign in 1995, Mr. Parizeau had to take a back seat to Mr. Bouchard, who was more popular and was seen as a moderate politician in search of nothing more than a "better deal" for Quebec. But in his mind, Mr. Parizeau knew (or rather hoped) that after a Yes victory, as premier, he would regain the full powers and nix the "political union" he didn't believe in.
In sum, truth and intellectual honesty were the first casualties of both these referendums.
When and if Quebeckers are subjected to yet another divisive referendum, one thing is certain: The question posed to voters will be similar to the crystal-clear question of last year's Scottish referendum, which now serves as a model for Quebec sovereigntists.
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Lysiane Gagnon's latest book, Chroniques référendaires: les leçons des référendums de 1980 et 1995, is about the lessons of the Quebec referendums.