Will the Quebec elections called on Sunday once again disregard the collective issues of the Quebec people? In the last election, we were treated to a deluge of 366 promises from the four main parties, which had strictly limited themselves to provincial jurisdictions, this straitjacket that Canada has imposed on Quebec in the Canadian Constitution.
We had forgotten one detail: most of the important actions of the Quebec government can no longer be done without an intervention from Ottawa, even within the framework of provincial jurisdictions.
We can no longer ignore the political dependence of Quebec, as if the intrusions of the Canadian government or courts were naturally legitimate or, worse, as if the laws of our National Assembly democratically adopted on French and secularism could be invalidated, in defiance of Quebec democracy and its elected representatives.
Moreover, Quebec is dependent on oil Canada in the face of accelerating climatic upheavals which require the intervention of a “full exercise” State, capable of also responding to the challenges of the economy and the distribution of wealth.
Faced with these threats to the future of our nation, we ask the parties to focus the electoral campaign on the powers of Quebec and on the realization of collective projects for the future that these powers would allow. Without a balance of power before the Canadian government, the fine provincialist nationalist speeches of the Legault government ring hollow.
Successive refusals
Nothing better illustrates their vacuity than the successive refusals suffered by Quebec, not only in the maintenance of its laws passed democratically with the massive support of the population, but also in its legitimate demands for the financing of health and social services, or in the powers that he claims in vain in immigration.
In this last area, Quebec is faced with an untenable situation. Canada, by setting immigration thresholds at over 450,000 per year, is pursuing a subversive immigration policy. Quebec is far from being able to welcome the 100,000 immigrants a year it needs to maintain its relative weight in the Canadian population.
If Quebec maintained its current objective of 50,000 per year, Quebec’s weight could fall below 10% of the Canadian population by the end of the century.
Moreover, at the rate of 100,000 immigrants per year, Quebec would not be able to maintain the proportion of francophones in Quebec. With immigration of less than 50,000 per year, Quebec integrates in French not 90% of the new Quebecers it would need to maintain its Francophone population, but around 53%. The choice offered by Canada to Quebec is simple: increased minoritization in Canada or anglicization of Quebec! At another time, Lord Durham recommended the acceleration of British immigration to Canada so that “the French of Canada give up their vain hopes of nationality”.
Supports from left to right
Regardless of the files, the CAQ government continues to claim that it can get something from Ottawa. We denounce this mystification.
Even with 100 CAQ deputies, the government will always be told “no” by Canada, no to secularism, no to French, no to the fight against climate change, no to health funding, no to economic powers. of Quebec, not to Quebec’s ability to make its own laws, according to its own values. Simply no!
We must fight the denigrators of Quebec who are taking up ad nauseam the mantra that the fight for the emancipation of Quebecers is a thing of the past. We must show them the opposite by voting for the candidates of the separatist parties in the next elections.
The fight for independence must resume, out of simple respect for the 35% or more of sovereignists, forced to pay taxes in Canada. The parties that believe in the future of Quebec must propose projects in touch with reality, collective projects that will achieve consensus among the population, but for which we are deprived of the powers, budgets and international skills that we no longer need cede to Canada.
To achieve independence, support must be gathered from left to right, regardless of party allegiance, social class or ethno-cultural origin. Such a gathering will require collaboration between a maximum of separatist deputies and civil society movements.
Since 1945, dozens of nations have become independent in order to be able to freely dispose of themselves. Irish, Scots, Catalans, First Nations and many other peoples continue to fight for this right. Quebec, for its part, has everything it needs to succeed in its independence project. He has a duty to persist and achieve it.