Le PQ au pouvoir saura atténuer ses ardeurs... selon la sereine Gâzette - Le déni est une plage de repos où viennent mourir les ardeurs anciennes, les épuisements mentaux et les volontés fissurées. - Vigile
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There's small comfort to be taken from the backtracking that delegates to the Parti Québécois convention did on a motion to have a PQ government revert to obligatory French-only commercial signs.
They did so in a second vote on the issue after the party leadership persuaded them that such a resolution would be strategically counterproductive to the PQ's fortunes in the next election campaign. This was only hours after an initial vote went the other way - a vote in which a majority of the most active people in the party let us know what they really think.
Even with that reversal on signs there were other motions, which passed handily, signalling that an urgent priority of a PQ government would be a spate of language measures intended to curb current English-language rights - even in areas where there is no demonstrable need for such repressive action other than to pander to the anglophobia of Péquiste hardliners. This is particularly the case with the newly enshrined PQ policy of extending Bill 101 restrictions to CEGEPs, a measure disputed even by the provincial French-language watchdog commission as unnecessary and inadvisable.
In a further crackdown, the PQ now proposes to extend French-certification requirements to small businesses with fewer than 50 employees, meaning that language inspectors would be loosed on small restaurants and mom-and-pop depanneurs to ensure they are not contributing to the endangerment of French in the province. The ranks of the language coppers would be further bolstered by the addition of new cadres required to investigate municipalities and hospitals with bilingual status in a drive to determine if such standing might be withdrawn.
The latter is about the only prospective jobcreation measure among the principal resolutions passed at the convention. From these it's clear that the PQ's obsession in power would be such sterile exercises as drafting a Quebec constitution and establishing a Quebec citizenship, neither of which would concretely improve the lives of Quebecers or the functioning of their institutions. Along with that a PQ administration would, if the weekend resolutions are more than a mere sop to the party militants, clamour for the elimination of a federal role in areas of shared jurisdiction such as education, culture, health care and immigration.
Again, given the sorry state of Quebec's public institutions and the province's finances, it's hard to envisage what gain there would be from such an initiative, other than for the separatist cause in the event that a PQ government's jurisdictional provocations incite a constitutional crisis and a backlash from the rest of the country that paves the way for yet another debilitating sovereignty referendum.
It's true that the PQ in power has tended to be somewhat more moderate than the PQ in convention. Leader Pauline Marois was until recently opposed to the CEGEP measure, but caved in to the language hawks to bolster her prospects in the convention confidence vote on her leadership. But moderation in a PQ administration isn't something to count on; for the aging veterans of the sovereignty movement a PQ government after the next election, two years hence at the latest, will be the last chance they'll see in their lifetime of having their dream come true.
The surest way of heading off the folly that the PQ now appears bent on perpetrating in office is for federalists to concentrate their minds and forces to heading it off. The polling trend for some time has shown PQ support running shy of 40 per cent among Quebec voters, and many of those are inclined to vote PQ only out of disenchantment with Jean Charest and his Liberal administration. As well, the latest polls in the federal campaign show Bloc Québécois support lagging behind the vote the party registered in the last election, something that wouldn't be the case if Quebecers on the whole shared the obsessions of the PQ convention delegates.
A PQ government after the next provincial election currently seems possible, even probable. It shouldn't, however, have to be inevitable.