Thank you, Bernard Drainville, for your candour. The threat of separation from Canada is, the Parti Quebecois MNA has been saying, an "insurance policy," which gives Quebec the "balance of power" in its relations with the rest of the country.
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The Gazette October 27, 2010 4:09 AM In the past few weeks Drainville, MNA for the south-shore riding of Marie Victorin, has told anyone who will listen that the prospect of independence is the "best insurance policy" the province has ever had. A provincial party that stops brandishing the prospect of sovereignty, Drainville says, is throwing away "our balance of power with Ottawa."
His specific target here is former PQ MNA Francois Legault, who has been talking in general terms about moving toward a third political party in Quebec, one that would put the question of independence on the back burner and concentrate on needed economic reforms. Although it is so far little more than a glint in Legault's eye, this proto-party has the PQ running scared. No wonder: A party that doesn't even exist already attracted 39 per cent of voters in a poll last month.
But what Drainville is saying should be of great interest to all Quebecers. This "insurance policy" is far too costly, in lost jobs and investments. It has also led to a brain drain, the paralysis of our political culture, and our persistent suffocating morass of instability.
And do we detect, behind this "balance of power" notion, the deeply cynical idea that federalism is a zero-sum game, where Quebec must use threats to get all it can? Successive prominent PQ and BQ politicians have done well for themselves, if not for the rest of us, by the practice of knife-to-the-throat federalism.
That's why Canadians outside the province use another word where Drainville uses "insurance": extortion. The PQ might believe that it uses the threat of independence judiciously, as circumstances warrant, but in the rest of the country, this game has lost its charm. The PQ's "insurance policy" goes a long way to ensuring that ill will remains a permanent feature of Quebec-Canada relations -which validates the zero-sum model, but at the expense of all that could be gained by reciprocal co-operative federalism.
The irony of it all is that Quebec does not need any insurance policy to thrive within Canada. Quebec enjoys historical constitutional guarantees that have allowed it to develop and protect its distinct linguistic and cultural identity. That knife at the throat? Just put it away.