In March 2013, an aging Jacques Parizeau was given a standing ovation by the delegates to the convention of Option nationale (ON), in which he saw “leaven in the dough”. Thanks to their enthusiasm, “an agreement between all the sovereignists will become possible”, he told them.
At the end of the new biographical documentary titled Jacques Parizeau and his imagined countrydirected by Jean-Pierre Roy and André Néron, we can see the young activists, visibly moved, rushing towards the former Prime Minister to thank him and shake his hand.
The sequence of events would surely have sorry for him. Contrary to what he wished, the sacred union did not come true. Two years after his death, Québec solidaire (QS) rather disdainfully rejected the alliance proposed by the Parti Québécois (PQ) and ON helped to crystallize the division by merging with QS.
The objective of the authors of the documentary was to allow Mr. Parizeau to get out of the “prison” in which he was locked up by the unfortunate sentence about “money and ethnic votes” that he pronounced on the evening of referendum of October 30, 1995.
The numerous testimonies of Mr. Parizeau’s contemporaries will perhaps enable generations who did not know him, and who have remembered only what his detractors have said, to take the measure of his unique contribution to the building of the modern Quebec.
After more than a quarter of a century, the PQ and the sovereignist movement as a whole still bear the scars of the 1995 speech. In the eyes of many, especially those young people whom Mr. Parizeau loved so much, they remain suspect.
It is true that it was not just a single sentence. The split between “them” and “us” was apparent throughout the Yes leader’s speech, and the tone was not particularly friendly.
Mr. Parizeau exuded such an image of rationality and composure that it was difficult to imagine that bitterness could have taken over at this point. But he was a human being. His former chief of staff, Jean Royer, who knew his emotionality, still regrets not having held him by the hand that evening to ensure that he read the speech prepared by Jean-François Lisée.
The gaffe was undeniable and he paid the price. He was clumsy at times, but there was nothing racist about him and he saw immigrants as full-fledged Quebecers, perfectly free to make their political choices. The testimony of Vincenzo Guzzo, who offered to show the film in his cinemas, is eloquent. Even if he and his family voted No, he does not hide his admiration for the former Prime Minister.
We cannot assume what Mr. Parizeau would have said of Law 21, but he had strongly criticized the Charter of secularism presented by the Marois government. He saw very well that this would give bad press to the sovereignist project and would push immigrants to throw themselves into the arms of the federal government, in which they would see a defender of their rights.
In his mind, independence was nevertheless a project that would be carried out first by and for French speakers. At a meeting of the National Council of the PQ held in January 1993, he had the misfortune to declare that the sovereignist camp did not need immigrants to win. It certainly didn’t fall on deaf ears.
In an attempt to pick up the slate, the PQ had hastily organized a meeting of representatives of cultural communities, but the operation was so tightly knit that it only made matters worse. On referendum night, Mr. Parizeau could hardly be surprised.
In reality, he held himself responsible for the defeat, says Jean Royer. Despite thirty years of effort since the Quiet Revolution, he had not succeeded in transmitting his own audacity to a sufficient number of Quebecers.
No one has done as much as him to convince Quebeckers that economic and financial success was not forbidden to them and to create a class of entrepreneurs. It was not to see these millionaires from Quebec inc. “to spit in the soup”, as he reproached them during the referendum campaign.
The documentary opens with the speech he had recorded, in English, to inform the international community that on the edge of North America, a small people who had found the courage to face adversity for 400 years had just taken its place in the concert of nations.
Listening to it, it is difficult not to feel a certain embarrassment. Like the feeling of having missed the boat or having let the captain down at the critical moment.