As we can see from several indicators, support for the independence of Quebec is resurgent.
We see this with the first place occupied in the polls by the PQ as well as the Bloc.
We also see it with the return of the national question in conversations.
From 1960 to 2000, talking about politics in Quebec meant talking about independence or the constitution. The national question then decomposed. She was tired. It no longer interested anyone but convinced separatists, who talked among themselves.
Identify
Or we mentioned it through the question of identity: reasonable accommodations, French language, demography, ECR. But if these subjects existed, we did not connect them to Canada, hardly to Canadian multiculturalism.
It is no longer like this.
We talk today, every day, about the migratory drowning that Canada is imposing on Quebec.
We are talking about the regression of French in Montreal.
We even talk about the Islamization of Quebec.
Above all, we make the link between this and Quebec’s membership in Canada.
Quebecers are increasingly making the link between their future as a people and Canadian federalism, which condemns them to becoming a minority in Quebec itself within just a few decades.
And it is precisely this awareness that will be at the heart of the next referendum.
The first, that of 1980, was animated by the romantic quest for the country to be born.
The second was a response to the Canadian refusal to ensure the recognition of Quebec as a distinct society. Quebecers had tried everything to find a place in Canada, without succeeding. They were therefore invited to give themselves a country.
The third referendum will have a much more dramatic scope. It will raise the question of the very survival of the Quebec people. Independence today rhymes with survival.
And that’s why he will succeed. Because it will touch the fundamental identity cord of Quebecers, which has worked on their collective unconscious for more than 250 years: their legitimate fear of disappearing as a people.
Since the Quiet Revolution, they have wanted to believe that this anxiety was behind them. But they feel it reborn, because they see clearly that the combination of federal multiculturalism and immigrationism will end up crushing them, dissolving them, finishing them off.
The sovereignists will have to say things: it is now or never. Either Quebecers have the courage to clearly exist as a people, or they will collapse.
I come back to the polls: they will come alive when a major event forces Quebecers to take a position.
It could be the Supreme Court’s judgment on Bill 21 or a surge in the face of the migration crisis.
Courage
It could simply be the PQ taking power and the announcement of the referendum, which will force Quebecers to stretch themselves.
They need a political deadline to move and escape the quiet comfort of indecision.
It was true in 1995 with Jacques Parizeau.
This will be true in 2027.
And we will prevail. Finally.