Many of you write to me to ask me why I talk so much about the national question? Isn’t this an ideological monomania, an intellectualized identity neurosis? Those who believe it today will still believe it tomorrow: I give up trying to convince those for whom the national question has no legitimacy; we are speaking from too distant analytical frameworks. I am speaking to others here who are wondering if I am not insisting a little too much, but who know the important question.
Survival
I will answer them: we are going through the most important period in our history. Since 1759, since 1760, since 1763, and even since 1840, depending on the date you choose, our people have never been in so much danger. The migratory drowning caused by Ottawa’s crazy immigration policy, which is not new, by the way, brings together in the same enterprise the fight for independence and that for survival: the first is now the condition of the second.
Our political future as a people is no longer one question among others, but one that conditions all others.
If we do not decide quickly, we will become a minority in our country within a few decades. We will go from being masters at home to being too much at home. The development of anti-Quebec racism in our schools, documented by Jean-François Lisée (who calls it something else, I take the trouble to note), in a recent column, reminds us that this symbolic expulsion of French-speaking Quebecers from their own country is not coming, but already committed.
François Legault’s third autonomist way is a dead end. It neglects the fact that the Canadian demographic revolution renders all provincial nationalist posturing futile.
There is something strange in seeing some works appearing at the moment apparently consecrating the apparent triumph of the third way, and the return of the blues, while the first is decomposing, and the second is returning to the sovereignist house. Support for sovereignty is being repoliticized in the polls. The autonomists, moreover, do not say that independence is undesirable, but that it is not achievable in the present political context: it is a way of prolonging a strategic choice which dates from the early 2010s, but which no longer corresponds to the current situation.
Law 101 updated like Law 21, the famous gestures of affirmation of the CAQ government, are condemned to collapse if Canada completes the migratory submersion of Quebec, while imposing on us its multiculturalism and an Anglonormativity which make it practically impossible the integration of immigrants. A country cannot be indifferent to its population. If the historic French-speaking majority becomes a minority, or a slight majority, it will see all of its identity structures collapse before it.
Quebecers, deep down, are aware of this. This even goes beyond the framework of the coming constitutional shock to Quebec secularism, even if it will also accelerate the awakening of a large number of people.
The third referendum has been announced, it will take place – not holding it would mean losing it, moreover. The Quebec people have no right to miss it. If it fails, it will fall apart. I note, and repeat, that if it does not stand, it will also fall apart.
Courage
The Yes victory implies that 65 to 70% of French speakers vote Yes.
It’s doable. But that means putting an end to our fratricidal quarrels. Everyone will have to reach out to each other. Both the left and the right, since these currents must be properly named, will have to remember that the existence of a people is more important than a particular model of society, which by definition is always modifiable.
This will be the last chance for the Quebec people.