Nations and people, like all things in this world, are called to change. Let’s check out the long story. What will we see there? We will see Celts becoming French, Normans becoming English, Ottomans becoming Turks. We will see cultures rise and fall, appear then disappear, in gentleness and in destruction. Before being Quebecois, we ourselves were French Canadians after having simply been subjects of the Kingdom of France. Whether we see the tragedy or the comedy of the human condition, it does not know permanence.
Does this mean that any cultural transformation is desirable? Does this mean that, knowing the inevitability of change, people should slowly abandon themselves to the immensity of history? Of course not. These people, while they existed, wanted to live as they were. And they had the right to do so. But it is important to note that the Quebec people, like the Canadian, American or Chinese people, may one day disappear. Anyone who dares to state the possibility of this disappearance, as Paul St-Pierre Plamondon did recently, would not be talking nonsense. He would simply state a truth.
We can understand what is truly shocking in his speech: it is saying out loud the obvious that everyone knows quietly. This evidence is a taboo and, like all taboos, its function is to maintain the integrity of the whole, that of the fragile Canadian federation. What evidence? That the possible victory of the Yes camp in a referendum depends on a demographic configuration where Quebecers remain a large majority in the territory of Quebec. Which amounts to saying: that individuals identifying with the Quebec people remain the majority on Quebec territory.
Of course, it is possible to be English-speaking, to live on the west of the island of Montreal and to want the independence of Quebec. Whether we are white or black, Christian or Muslim, born here or born elsewhere, we can rationally reach the conclusion that the Quebec nation should be fully sovereign. We can choose to no longer want to belong to an oil country, judge that the overlaps in public functions and tax declarations are irrational, or even quite simply that the centralizing turn of the federal government since Trudeau senior no longer corresponds to the initial pact of a federation that it is high time to redefine.
But what is impossible is to desire the independence of Quebec if, living on its administrative territory, we do not identify with the Quebec people. If we are first and foremost Canadians, if we live in Quebec as we would live elsewhere in Canada, we have no kind of desire for the independence of the people we meet, certainly, but to whom we don’t feel like we belong. And that’s completely normal and understandable. We would then have no interest in this independence which would call into question the power of our own Canadian people. Why would the member of a given people want it to weaken?
The whole issue of Quebec’s independence lies there.
A possible victory in a referendum is a mathematical question. You must obtain 50% of the votes plus one. However, the different groups that make up the province do not all have the same chances of voting Yes. We can reasonably estimate that it is among French speakers that we find the largest pool of possible “Yes” voters. We know the Stalinist proportions in which Anglophones, in 1995, voted No. Therefore, victory in a referendum directly depends on the proportion of the population who primarily identify with the Quebec people. The greater this proportion, the greater the chances of winning, the lower it is, the less so.
This proportion has been decreasing for several years. More and more individuals living in the territory of Quebec have Canada, another people, as their primary identity affiliation. The majority will not vote for the independence of Quebec. When Paul St-Pierre Plamondon says that the window of opportunity for victory is closing, based on current forecasts, he is not wrong. It only describes the major trend in the demographic composition of Quebec.
Now, we must clarify an extremely important point. The independence of Quebec is at stake among those who identify with the Quebec people. It is only for them that independence is a real question. Federalists and separatists are just as Quebecois as each other, but they have a different reading of the viability of the Quebec people within the Canadian federation.
However, affiliation with the Quebec people is open and elective. We can choose to be Quebecois. We can seduce newcomers into becoming one, even if they initially thought they were arriving in Canada. So here is where we must moderate the speech of the leader of the Parti Québécois.
In the current context, if no further action is taken, the next referendum could be the last winnable referendum. But there is a glimmer of hope: if we put our minds to it collectively, we could reverse the decline of the Quebec people on their own territory. Identity is not written in the blood, it is in the will. Let us reach out, show the prodigious cultural wealth of our people and their tremendous power of attraction! What would be magnificent? May the winning referendum be thanks to the votes of all those who have chosen to integrate the Quebec people.
Paradox of this hope? We would need, right now, all the tools that we can only obtain once we are independent. But nothing, until the next referendum, stops us from trying.