Federalists have been in a state of high amusement, not to say hilarity, over what Nicolas Sarkozy, president of France, said Monday about Canadian unity.
Sovereignist sputtering and muttering have been tremendously entertaining. "Crass arrogance," said Gilles Duceppe who with Pauline Marois has dispatched a sternly-worded letter to Sarkozy - charmingly, they had to send it via the Canadian ambassador. At the Elysée Palace this missive will surely get all the attention it deserves.
No wonder they're upset. In the abstruse calculus of separatism, French sympathy has long been a perceived - and perhaps a real - asset. France's celebrated "ni-ni" policy, now abandoned like a stale croissant, meant France would not interfere overtly in the playing out of la question nationale, but was not disinterested, either. In the context, this meant that France was quietly waiting for the glorious day to dawn, and would welcome it cheerfully. The policy left the Canadian foreign ministry quietly infuriated.
Such is the importance of the old country in sovereignist mythology and iconography that this promise of a big friend had become a beacon in separatist thinking: Jacques Parizeau made it clear, in unguarded moments, that he had been counting on France to tolerate a unilateral declaration of independence following even a narrow Yes victory in the 1995 referendum.
Now the Parti Québécois leaders will have to push the rock up that hill all over again, France's current president having proclaimed himself in favour of Canadian unity. Sarkozy sounded contemptuous of separatism, almost, as he lauded "the message of the Francophonie ... the rejection of bigotry, the rejection of division, the rejection of self-confinement, the refusal to define one's identity through fierce opposition to another."
Very nice. But all Canadians should remember that what France thinks about Quebec's future doesn't really matter very much, whether the president in question is Sarkozy or Charles de Gaulle. It does matter, however, what the premier of Quebec thinks, and the nominally-federalist Jean Charest chose this occasion to misrepresent, again, the rules of the game.
"Quebecers will decide their own future," Charest said in reaction to Sarkozy's remarks. We agree with him to the extent that the French have no role in any future discussion of Quebec's constitutional status.
But the Canadians surely do - the federal government and the people of the rest of Canada would certainly have a say, as the Supreme Court and Parliament have asserted. Why won't Charest acknowledge that?