The return of Bernard Drainville to politics has aroused many reactions. In the federalist camp, this announcement was portrayed as proof that the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) would be crypto-sovereigntist. The demagogy of a Dominique Anglade who no longer knows how to go about reviving her party has something to laugh about. If François Legault remains undeniably a sovereignist at heart, it is obvious that his party is still far from a separatist turn, its most influential heads being most often seasoned federalists.
The CAQ does not even show the shadow of a project for the constitutional reform of Canada or the defense of an “Equality or independence” doctrine. Let’s be serious: the party in government is not even “autonomist”, and its nationalism is downright palliative, giving the impression of supporting an apathetic people wishing at least to “die with dignity”.
But we must be attentive to political signs that do not deceive. By adopting Law 21 on secularism and Law 96 on French, the CAQ, unwittingly, confronted the Canadian regime in its constitutional foundations. More than ever, Canada embodies a country that has pushed multiculturalism to the extreme and that day by day normalizes the supremacy of English to the detriment of national bilingualism. Seeing the Quebec independence movement in disarray, English Canada lost all complex with regard to its atavistic contempt for Quebec. Thus we hear more and more often chroniclers of English-Canadian public life affirm that the government of Quebec is “supremacist”, “racist”, “xenophobic” – and more.
Under the leadership of François Legault, Quebec embodies a French nation in America, concerned with preserving its language and its values through changes specific to our time. The CAQ’s vision of the future cannot fit within the limits imposed by the Canadian regime. This is the great naivety of the caquists who put their sovereignty on hold, believing that it is possible to make “gains” within a federation that has gone mad. The plan to repatriate all powers over immigration is an eloquent example.
If Quebec were to have full sovereignty over immigration, this would seriously compromise the Canadian project of the Century Initiative, which consists of increasing the Canadian population to 100 million inhabitants by 2100, with the main method a dizzying increase in the immigration thresholds imposed on the provinces. How can we seriously think that Canada, which essentially defines its identity by its demographic diversity, will be open to a request for repatriation, which would inevitably restrict its pharaonic projects of demographic inflation?
The CAQ is a party made up of honest but very naive people. Without them realizing it yet, the caquistes will soon lead us to a major constitutional crisis which will follow undemocratic decisions of the Supreme Court on laws 21 and 96. Why can we foresee such a scenario? Because it has already taken place in the past, as long as we want to break with the historical amnesia specific to Quebecers. It is curious, moreover, that there are so few separatist intellectuals who see this tidal wave coming, the warning signs of which are multiplying from week to week.
Whatever the “civic” nationalists and other complexed separatists think of it, who feel the pressing need to call themselves “on the left”, independence will not come about through a beautiful citizens’ constituent assembly whose discussions would essentially revolve around social programs and the fight against climate change. The major political events that make history are very often the response to a political impasse, born of an exacerbated conflict.
In Quebec, the eternal battle with Ottawa has always experienced its most intense moments when the contentious issues revolve around identity. This is why we will not achieve independence on tuition fees or fisheries, despite the very real and deleterious presence of the Canadian regime in these areas of jurisdiction.
Let’s get to the point: the CAQ includes a significant number of members and deputies who are sovereignists or authentic nationalists. All have the virtue of sharing the most popular feeling of Quebecers of simple quiet pride. But this is not enough. Because a political leader must not be the simple reflection of the popular temperament: he must push his people further, show them a more ambitious way forward.
However, the CAQ nationalists are the representatives of Lucien Bouchard: they are strongly connected to the people, but plagued by ambivalence and the anguish of failure. And this is where the need for an assumed and voluntarist independence à la Jacques Parizeau appears. The great man, as we know, was not afraid to go for it and want to design a truly independent country, with or without association with Canada.
Born into a bourgeois family, Parizeau was devoid of the atavistic complexes rooted in many Quebecers and their leaders. For the next appointment with history, Quebec will need, once again, this type of man capable of assuming risk and a taste for freedom. The difficult position in which the Parti Québécois currently finds itself should make us seriously think about how such a figure can arise.
In this context, can the PQ still play a historic role? Will the CAQ experience a schism within its troops? Will a great man create his own political formation? These are questions for which it is still difficult to provide answers. Those who consider them vain and disconnected from reality will soon see that the great political events in history take on a very rapid sequence, the new context of which changes men, awakening in them unsuspected fibers.