If Quebec premier-elect Pauline Marois wants more powers for her province, she can get to the back of the line with the rest of the provinces and negotiate with Ottawa just like everyone else.
Barring that, she can hold a referendum on separating from Canada and see how well that works out for her.
Marois and her Parti Quebecois party managed to cobble together a razor-thin minority government in Quebec Tuesday. With 54 seats — well short of the 63 required to form a majority in the 125-seat National Assembly — the separatists were closer to losing to a Liberal minority than they were to winning a majority.
Not to mention the fact the two leading parties were separated by less than a percentage point in the popular vote, with the upstart Coalition Avenir Quebec very close behind.
Marois won a minority government. But the only real mandate she has is to work with the Liberals, the CAQ or both to maintain the confidence of the National Assembly. Without them, she wouldn’t be able to get the floor swept in the cabinet room. Which means she has no mandate at all from Quebecers to even consider drafting a referendum bill.
But that won’t stop Marois from using the threat of secession to try to hold the rest of Canada hostage again.
We’re going to hear a lot of whining and bitching from the PQ about how Canada is doing wrong by Quebec and how La Belle Province needs more powers over programs like employment insurance, immigration, culture, etc. They will try to fabricate conditions for secession through the tired old line that they’ve tried to work within the federation but that it just doesn’t work.
And just like past PQ governments, she will try to use that as leverage to squeeze more dough out of the rest of Canada.
The trouble for Marois is, she doesn’t have a separatist leg to stand on — even less so than any of her PQ predecessors.
Even if she could manage to navigate a referendum bill through the National Assembly with the help of a few rogue opposition members, it would never succeed under Canada’s clarified laws for separation.
Unlike the failed referendums of 1980 and 1995, Quebec would no longer be allowed to pose a question on secession with the kind of weasel-words used in the last two votes.
The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that under the Constitution, no province can unilaterally secede from Canada and that any effort to do so would require a clear question in a referendum with a clear majority.
That was later codified in the federal Clarity Act passed by the former Liberal government in 2000.
In response to the Supreme Court ruling, the act sets out the terms of secession by any province.
Which means asking Quebecers if they would like to negotiate a “sovereignty association” or some nebulous form of “economic partnership” with Canada would be disqualified as a referendum question.
But if that’s the path Marois wants to take Quebecers down, go ahead. The rest of Canada is beyond fed up with the childish demands of Quebec politicians like Pauline Marois and is now indifferent to their manufactured victimhood. And if some of them want to start their own country, hand in their Canadian passports, create their own military and change the nickname of Montreal’s most celebrated sports franchise, go ahead.
Frankly, most of us don’t give a damn anymore.
THE CLARITY ACT
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 1998 that no province has the unilateral right to secede from Canada. However, if the people in any province expressed a clear will through a referendum to separate, the rest of Canada would be obligated to negotiate the terms of secession.
In response to the top court’s ruling, the federal government passed the Clarity Act in 2000 setting out the rules for any province to separate.
Under the act, any province wanting to separate from Canada would have to pass a bill through their legislature to authorize a referendum.
The House of Commons would have to approve the wording of the question in advance to ensure it was a clear one that asked specifically whether residents wanted to separate from Canada and create their own independent country. If Ottawa rejects the wording, the federal government would not negotiate the terms of secession.
If a vote was held and approved, the House of Commons would have to decide whether it was a clear majority vote. It would consider not only the percentage of people in favour of secession but also voter turnout and any other relevant factor.
If the vote in favour of secession was approved, there would have to be a constitutional amendment negotiated between Ottawa and all provinces to allow the province in question to separate.