It's not going to take place in a courtroom, but the de facto political trial of Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois on charges of not promoting sovereignty strongly enough will open this weekend with the founding meeting Sunday of the Nouveau mouvement pour le Québec splinter group.
Created and backed by a disgruntled group of péquistes who have resigned from the party, the NMQ's goal is clearly to use the threat of the creation of a new sovereignist party to persuade Marois to resign and have her replaced by someone more militant. Then the NMQ could fold and the PQ defectors return.
But as Marois stands accused of having no clear focus on sovereignty, it's useful to step back and point out something that often gets lost in our day-to-day political debate: that for all the talk about sovereignty in Quebec, sovereignty in and of itself has never really been presented to Quebecers as a political option - at least not at the ballot box, when it has really counted. In the 1980 referendum, the muddled referendum question presented sovereignty-association; in the 1995 vote, sovereignty was similarly linked to ongoing political "partnership" with Canada.
In neither case was sovereignty, pure and simple, as the United Nations recognizes it, presented as an option. Of course, we know the reason for the deliberate confusion. Support for "sovereignty" has long been stalled at about 30 per cent in Quebec, nowhere near high enough for a referendum victory. After the 1995 referendum, the federal government asked the Supreme Court of Canada for legal guidance on future referendums, and the court came back saying Quebec would need a clear majority to a clear question for Canada to have a political responsibility to sit down and negotiate constitutional change.
As it prepares this weekend to paint Marois as a timid sovereignist, the NMQ has an opportunity to do all Quebecers and all Canadians a favour by leading by example: standing up and declaring a resolve to treat sovereignty like sovereignty, and not something else, and to promote it with honour and enthusiasm.
Former premier Jacques Parizeau, like him or not, deserves a measure of credit for wanting to do that after he took over the PQ leadership in 1988 from Pierre Marc Johnson.
There were parallels to the situation now; then, Johnson was accused of not promoting sovereignty enough, and PQ caucus hawk and Parizeau chum Gérald Godin led the revolt against Johnson that paved the way for Parizeau and his fellow hardliners to take control of the party. Today, it's Parizeau's wife, Lisette Lapointe, or more specifically one of her riding-association executives, Jocelyn Desjardins, who is the driving force behind the creation of the NMQ.
Parizeau had wanted to go into the 1995 referendum with a clear question on sovereignty, but then-Bloc Québécois leader Lucien Bouchard forced his hand, and a question was written tying sovereignty to political partnership with Canada.
Sovereignty, or independence, or nationhood, is a legitimate political option for Quebec. Were the many advantages of being a part of Canada and being a Canadian not so evident to so many Quebecers, Quebec might have already separated. But three decades after the first referendum, in 1980, Canada is still standing strong.
New chapters in our history are going to be written in the coming years. It will help if the self-proclaimed "true" sovereignists are prepared to be honest about what they really want.
As it prepares this weekend to paint Marois as being too timid, the NMQ should publicly declare its resolve to promote real sovereignty, unhyphenated sovereignty, at the ballot box.