{"id":24709,"date":"2014-03-17T10:27:14","date_gmt":"2014-03-17T15:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=24709"},"modified":"2014-03-17T10:27:14","modified_gmt":"2014-03-17T15:27:14","slug":"on-the-election-trail-the-pq-would-rather-not-talk-secession-right-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/03\/17\/on-the-election-trail-the-pq-would-rather-not-talk-secession-right-now\/","title":{"rendered":"On the election trail, the PQ would rather not talk secession right now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <em>Maclean&#8217;s<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/politics\/ottawa\/no-wonder-the-pq-doesnt-want-to-talk-about-sovereignty\/\" target=\"_blank\">Paul Wells<\/a> explains why Pauline Marois would prefer that the separatist part of the <em>Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois<\/em> platform just be background information:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The salvation of Quebec\u2019s sovereignty movement has always been the reluctance of many voters and, indeed, of most political journalists to read and remember. Did you know that Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Lis\u00e9e, the Marois government\u2019s minister for relations with anglophones, expects as many as 300,000 Quebecers to flee the province after a Yes vote in a referendum? Probably not. I\u2019ve never seen anyone quote Lis\u00e9e about the likelihood of a major post-referendum exodus. Yet he wrote it up in a book he published 14 years ago, and on the off chance anyone forgot to buy the book, he posted an excerpt on his blog, where <a href=\"http:\/\/jflisee.org\/anglo-quebecois-integrer-et-relayer-leurs-inquietudes\/\" target=\"_blank\">it remains to this day<\/a>. Lis\u00e9e cites estimates between 150,000 and 300,000 departures after a Yes vote, before adding that even though it would mostly only be anglophones, it\u2019d still hurt:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>There is no doubt this exodus would be all kinds of trouble for Quebec. The anglophone community contributes to Montreal\u2019s and Quebec\u2019s economic success, to its progress toward a knowledge economy \u2026 and powerfully contributes to connecting us with anglophone America, our main client and partner. The departure of 100,000 or 200,000 of them would stop Montreal\u2019s economic recovery in its tracks and aggravate Quebec\u2019s demographic decline \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Funny how he forgot to mention any of that during the 1995 secession referendum.<\/p>\n<p>Lis\u00e9e goes on to suggest means that might \u201creduce\u201d this exsanguination from the Quebec economy, and I\u2019ll leave it to readers to consider whether any of them constitutes more than wishful thinking. I\u2019ll note only that he sees in promises of protection for Quebec\u2019s anglophone minority \u201can important negotiating tool at the Quebec-Canada table\u201d during post-referendum secession negotiations. I\u2019m afraid this escapes me. \u201cIn return for allowing us to treat our anglophone minority well, you must \u2026 allow us to treat our anglophone minority well \u2026 or it will \u2026 uh \u2026 leave and become part of your workforce.\u201d <em>Then<\/em> they\u2019ll really have Ottawa over a barrel.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I belabour all of this precisely to point out why Pauline Marois looks a little spooked these days whenever somebody asks her about her party\u2019s <em>raison d\u2019\u00eatre<\/em> on the campaign trail. Negotiating, not with some vague angelic notion of reasonable Ontarians, but with Danielle Smith and Terry Glavin over the terms of deconfederation, in an attempt to stem a stampede of highly educated Quebecers that would, in Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Lis\u00e9e\u2019s picturesque description, \u201cstop Montreal\u2019s economic recovery in its tracks,\u201d is not super-high on most Quebecers\u2019 to-do list for Q4 2014. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ledevoir.com\/documents\/pdf\/sondage_devoir_elections_mars.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">How many Quebecers want to hear less campaign talk about sovereignty? Seven in 10, says today\u2019s L\u00e9ger poll<\/a> [PDF]. One of my favourite rules of thumb holds that a party led by a veteran campaigner should have an advantage over a party with a rookie leader, but that\u2019s predicated on the notion that experienced leaders are reassuring. A promise of nonstop secession headache eliminates Marois\u2019s incumbent advantage. She could, of course, promise not to hold a referendum if elected. But that would tear her party apart. I almost feel sorry for her. Just kidding.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Maclean&#8217;s, Paul Wells explains why Pauline Marois would prefer that the separatist part of the Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois platform just be background information: The salvation of Quebec\u2019s sovereignty movement has always been the reluctance of many voters and, indeed, of most political journalists to read and remember. Did you know that Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Lis\u00e9e, the Marois [&hellip;]<\/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":[188,842,113,114],"class_list":["post-24709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-politics","tag-electionwatch","tag-partiquebecois","tag-quebec","tag-separatism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6qx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24709","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=24709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24710,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24709\/revisions\/24710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}