The most interesting thing about the year 1 budget of a sovereign Quebec is not the financial assumptions on which it is based, nor its incompleteness regarding the economic uncertainty that secession and the adoption of a Quebec currency will inevitably result. It is rather the angry reaction provoked by the strategic exercise of the Parti Québécois (PQ).
The PQ has four deputies in the National Assembly and it receives a little more than 20% of support in the polls, an increasing performance since the election of Paul St-Pierre Plamondon as leader. Despite its successes during the by-election in Jean-Talon, the party still has work to do in its reconstruction project. Since 2020, support for sovereignty has fluctuated between 27 and 38% in the polls, a threshold well below the hopes of the big evening.
And yet, the year 1 budget caused federalists to react beyond reason. In Ottawa and Quebec, he was received with disdain bordering on the comical. The federal Minister of Transport and political lieutenant of the Liberals in Quebec, Pablo Rodriguez, even evoked the memory of the divisions and friends lost since the 1995 referendum. The scarecrow par excellence of chicanery and division, the 1995 referendum will soon have 30 years. We should come back to these old refrains.
During the launch of his first novel (Fall 1995), inspired by the referendum, the former PQ strategist Dominique Lebel recalled with wisdom and respect that the two camps had both lost a little and gained a little on the evening of October 30, 1995. The new PQ MP for Jean-Talon, Pascal Paradis, for his part, rightly recalled that the independence project did not rhyme with chicanery. This is a “promoting project” imagined for Quebecers and not against them.
This is quite a contrast to liberal political thinking. Quebec will always be brazen and guilty when it asks for more than the status quo to ensure the survival of the French fact in America. Its aspirations for respect for its autonomy and its fields of competence, as well as its desire to protect the distinct character of its language and its institutions, come up against indifference at best, and intransigence at worst. Depending on the times and circumstances.
Federalism (non-renewable) is transactional. He promises programs, jobs, stability, a little less inflation, tax relief for the middle class and so on. This federalism cannot be reformed. He has no other proposal than to turn Quebec’s desire for independence into ridicule or a national tragedy.
If only for this reason, the option must remain alive and the debate on the independence of Quebec must have a real voice in the political agora. The Trudeau government will not convince that federalism is the preferred path for our collective future if it only pushes the option and the aspirations it underpins to the periphery of relevance.
The independence flame has lost its luster over the last 30 years. The discourse on the country to be born does not inspire as much the younger generations and Quebecers from diverse backgrounds. The PQ and solidarity activists are failing miserably in the necessary gathering of their forces. The same cause separates them, and it is pathetic.
Since his election, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon has done his best to revive the project by focusing on transparency and honesty. Its year 1 budget for a sovereign Quebec demonstrated that the federalist camp had nothing to offer other than a closed hand. In the early stages of rebuilding the PQ, he achieved his goal.