It is not so long ago, in 1995, when the 8 million inhabitants of Quebec were on the point of freeing themselves from Canada. The supporters of independence had only failed by 50,000 votes. A generation later, this issue has therefore disappeared from political debates. The question of identity, of Quebec’s specificity within Canada is always present but it focuses only on two concrete subjects, as we saw during the campaign. The first is the defense of the French language, the official language of the Province. The practice of French is slowly eroding: in 20 years, the number of Quebecers who speak French at home has gone from 81% to 77%. Last May, the party in power passed a new law, text 96, which intends to reinforce the obligation to speak French. This leads to the second subject of debate: immigration. Due to its aging demographics, the French-speaking province lacks hands. At least 250,000 jobs are unfilled. Quebec therefore needs immigrants, and the candidates are for the most part English-speaking. During the big televised debate last week, between the main candidates, the discussions were lively, on the one hand on the annual quota of authorized immigrants (40,000, 50,000, 70,000, 80,000). And especially on the need to “Frenchify” these English-speaking immigrants. So immigration and the French language, those are the subjects. But independence is no longer a question.
This evolution can also be explained by the decline of the political movement that embodied this aspiration, the Parti Québécois, the PQ, as everyone in Quebec calls it. He is credited this time with 15% of the voting intentions. This is a slight recovery from the start of the campaign when it stagnated below 10%. But it’s still pretty low. Three other parties, the Liberals, the Conservatives, and Québec solidaire, are also estimated at around 15%. But the favorite and probable winner of the poll on Monday, October 3, is the CAQ, Coalition Avenir Québec, announced around 35%. Its leader François Legault, in power for four years, has siphoned off part of the electorate of the Parti Québécois. Legault is himself a former member of the PQ, but he claims to be more nationalist than separatist. This former populist multimillionaire does not believe in independence. But he willingly makes anti-immigrant remarks. He wants to be a “Quebec nationalist” within Canada.
Independence is therefore no longer on the agenda, also because there are other subjects; among the youngest, the question of independence is a thing of the past. For them, the priority is the environment. It’s also the cost of living, inflation. And also the probity of the elected officials: for the record, one of the controversies of the campaign concerned the recourse, by the party in power, to the McKinsey cabinet, to help it manage the pandemic, a contract a little opaque of six million dollars. It reminds us of something in France. In any case, when Quebecers are now asked what their priority subject is, sovereignty or independence are no longer cited first by more than 2% of the inhabitants.