{"id":24521,"date":"2014-03-05T09:05:03","date_gmt":"2014-03-05T14:05:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=24521"},"modified":"2014-03-05T09:40:11","modified_gmt":"2014-03-05T14:40:11","slug":"interesting-times-in-quebec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/03\/05\/interesting-times-in-quebec\/","title":{"rendered":"Interesting times in Quebec"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Wells<\/a> points out some interesting facts about the political situation in Quebec and sums it up as “and then a referendum ate them all”:<\/p>\n

2. In 2007 the PQ ran on a relatively mild version of its traditional calling card, nationalism, and a now-vanished party, the ADQ, ran on what might politely be termed populist nativism. Together they held Jean Charest\u2019s Liberals to a minority, but if a single party could combine nationalism and nativism, it might box the Liberals in more completely than two could. That\u2019s the calculation Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Lis\u00e9e made, and first as Marois\u2019s counsellor and then as a rookie MNA and senior cabinet minister, he has encouraged the PQ\u2019s transformation into a party with much of the appeal those two parties had in 2007. The rest of Quebec politics, and especially, the Liberals, have had 8 years to prepare for the play the Marois-Lis\u00e9e PQ is making, without much success. All elections are unpredictable and Quebec has been surprising in many ways lately, but I\u2019d bet a loonie (though not a penny more) that the PQ wins a majority.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

4. Will she hold a secession referendum? If I were Lis\u00e9e, I would tell her this: PQ premiers who didn\u2019t hold referendums are not remembered fondly today. Pierre Marc Johnson, Bouchard, Landry. The two who did are heroes of the movement, even though they lost: Ren\u00e9 L\u00e9vesque and Parizeau. To which group would Marois rather belong?<\/p>\n

5. In a referendum, political Canada would be represented by a No committee leader, Couillard, who would have just lost an election; a federal prime minister, Stephen Harper, whose party is far less popular in Quebec than Jean Chr\u00e9tien\u2019s Liberals ever were; and by a reasonably impressive B team (Thomas Mulcair and Justin Trudeau) whose members cannot conceivably work effectively with one another.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Update<\/strong>: David Akin<\/a> says “That\u2019s some franco\/non-franco split on the referendum question:”<\/p>\n

\"Quebec<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Wells points out some interesting facts about the political situation in Quebec and sums it up as “and then a referendum ate them all”: 2. In 2007 the PQ ran on a relatively mild version of its traditional calling card, nationalism, and a now-vanished party, the ADQ, ran on what might politely be termed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,53],"tags":[188,908,842,113,114],"class_list":["post-24521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-politics","tag-electionwatch","tag-liberalparty","tag-partiquebecois","tag-quebec","tag-separatism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6nv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24521"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24529,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24521\/revisions\/24529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}