The Bloc’s meta-campaign about referendum rules

Open this photo in gallery:

The first rule of referendum campaigns is that there is going to be campaigning about the rules.

The Bloc Québécois know this. They have history with secession referendums.

That’s why Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet was so keen to take Prime Minister Mark Carney’s comments about the rules for a separation referendum and try to use them to gin up a little outrage.

What Mr. Carney said last week is that a simple one-vote majority in a separation referendum – 50 per cent plus one vote – isn’t enough to break up the country.

On Tuesday, Mr. Blanchet tabled a bill to repeal the Clarity Act, which requires the federal Parliament to determine Quebeckers have a clear will to secede before launching negotiations on the terms of separation.

PQ leader accuses Carney of trying to undermine support for sovereignty ahead of election

The Bloc Leader knows that repeal initiative is never going to get through the House of Commons, but he is hoping it takes on new life in Quebec, where the separatists’ sister party, the Parti Québécois, is vying to take power in elections in October.

It’s hard to overstate the amount of space that debates over the rules took up in the 1995 Quebec referendum and the years that immediately followed, with sovereigntists arguing that the federal government was trying to block the exercise of democracy and steal Quebeckers’ right to decide their own future.

And Mr. Blanchet was certainly trying to kick up some dust on Tuesday. He asserted that Mr. Carney’s comments, and the Clarity Act, are anti-democratic.

And although both align with the Supreme Court of Canada’s 1998 reference opinion, Mr. Blanchet asserted that if and when a one-vote majority of Quebeckers vote to separate, then Canadian laws and the decisions of Canadian judges will no longer apply to what comes next.

That raises something worth remembering about separation referendum campaigns. Once they are under way, they aren’t just about separation per se – about whether the voters want to break up Canada and launch an independent country.

Alberta and Quebec premiers to discuss economic collaboration between provinces this week

There are meta-campaigns that wind into the debate. Referendum campaigns, like election campaigns, can turn off into subplots about a leader’s gaffe or a politician’s condescending tone. Or rules.

And with Canada now facing two potential separation referendum campaigns in the next year or two, the federal government has to be wary that what it says about a separation movement in Alberta could spark a reaction in Quebec, or vice versa.

Already, PQ Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon has levied an allegation that Mr. Carney was interfering in Quebec politics when he announced $10-billion in infrastructure funding alongside Quebec Premier Christine Fréchette.

The PQ Leader accused Mr. Carney of using the “federal machine” to try to stop the PQ from winning the October election – after which it has promised a third separation referendum.

Ms. Fréchette, meanwhile, was boasting that Quebec was getting an outside infrastructure deal, which could conceivably raise complaints in Alberta that the province isn’t getting its due.

Mr. Blanchet’s specific complaint that it is anti-democratic to not accept a one-vote majority in a secession referendum certainly isn’t an accepted legal principle. Some countries explicitly outlaw secession.

Opinion: A government calling a referendum it hopes to lose? Albexit, meet Brexit

You might expect the Bloc Leader to have a little more sympathy for the notion that a one-vote win might not be completely clear, since his party successfully mounted a court challenge of a one-vote defeat in the riding of Terrebonne in last year’s general election, winning a revote.

And Mr. Blanchet’s insistence that such a result means the rulings of Canadian law and Canadian judges will immediately no longer apply amounts to insisting that Quebec can unilaterally declare independence.

It would also raise an unanswered question about what legal authorities still exist – Quebec’s superior court and appeals court judges are appointed by the federal government.

“There’s a continuity of law problem. Quebec judges are Canadian judges,” said constitutional lawyer Howard Anglin, a former senior adviser to then-Alberta-premier Jason Kenney and prime minister Stephen Harper. “It is a fascinating labyrinth.”

“Here it has not been a topic of conversation. Alberta’s separation movement hasn’t got down to the nuts and bolts of separation yet. There’s no unified separatist movement,” he said.

And of course, the hot-button questions that entered into Quebec’s separation-debate lexicon decades ago might not be transferred directly to Alberta’s. But the past shows that in a referendum campaign, meta-debates, and especially disputes over rules, can roil the debate.