Carman Neustaedter

June 2000

"Vive le Québec…libre!" roared French President Charles de Gaulle in 1967. The words echoed throughout Montreal and began echoing throughout the rest of Canada. Separatists roared inside along with de Gaulle. It was the period of the Quiet Revolution in Québec and a new outlook was growing amongst Québecers, an outlook of independence. Québec has always seen themselves as a distinct society: a separate nation from the rest of Canada. For this reason, Québec has consistently pursued objectives to keep its language and culture intact and increase its foreign policy role. Two significant periods in Canadian history have risen from the words shouted by de Gaulle at Expo ’67 in Montreal. In 1980 and once again in 1995, Québec citizens took to the polls in referendums to decide their fate in Canada. Separatists gleamed in admiration that their dream was becoming a reality, but many people in Québec and the rest of Canada looked on in doubt and fear. Québec’s role in a post-secession era was uncertain and future relations with Canada were even more questionable. The United States looked on during both periods, mostly silently hoping for Canada to remain strong and united. Just what type of North America is Québec looking for? What types of partnerships would they attempt to gain with Canada and the United States if they did secede? Was the federal government prepared to defend national unity?

The story began to unfold in 1968 when a charismatic ex-journalist named René Lévesque founded the first separatist political party in Canada, the Parti Québécois. Lévesque received his greatest chance to become premier of Québec in the 1976 Québec election. He campaigned against Premier Robert Bourassa of the Québec Liberal Party on good government and in November of 1976 his party was elected with a majority government. Once Premier of Québec, Lévesque began taking steps to prove that attention had to be paid to the status of Québec and a move towards independence. Lévesque wanted to address the fact that Québec society was distinct and had both a differing view of domestic and foreign policies than the rest of Canada. The first step for Québec sovereignty would therefore be a move to develop its own foreign policy. During the Quiet Revolution in Québec in the 1960’s, the role of French Canadians first began to change. Québecers began to receive a broader-view of the world and there was a growing interest in international relations. If Québec could pursue a role more internationally oriented within Canada, then other countries may begin to identify with them and develop support for Québec’s independence.

L’Opération-Amérique was set up by Lévesque to help seek support from other countries on Québec’s independence. Lévesque’s hopes were that the United States would see Québec’s position and remain neutral on the issue of Québec sovereignty. It was important for Québec to have the United States remain neutral in order to maintain close business relations with them. Québec also hoped to push the notion that they would be a good trading partner and a good place to invest. To achieve these ends, Lévesque and other Québec leaders wanted direct talks with the United States’ political executive and the ability to initiate ministerial visits and information exchanges. There was an underlying hope that precedence could be established for Québec’s constitutional jurisdictional status within Canada. Washington refused to set up any such exchanges and Québec soon found out that any attempt to persuade the United States to develop support for Québec sovereignty was falling on deaf ears. Washington felt that Québec was not trying to set up a political framework for discussion between the United States and Québec; Québec was only attempting to demonstrate their intentions for a new international position to Ottawa and in the end upset the federal government. Moreover, it was apparent that the United States feared a parallel to the U.S. Civil War. L’Opération-Amérique ended in failure and became simply an information discussion on Québec sovereignty. L’Opération-Amérique’s main problems stemmed from the fact that it had no specific political target or issue for Québec to discuss with the United States.

Lévesque’s next tactic and most important motion was to hold a referendum in Québec which would ask the people for a mandate to pursue "sovereignty-association". Because he had not campaigned on a sovereignty mandate, Lévesque felt that Québecers should have the chance to first decide whether they wanted the Québec government to pursue sovereignty on their behalf. In what appeared to be a complex and puzzling question, the referendum question was presented prior to the scheduled referendum date of May 20, 1980. It asked Québecers to allow the Québec government to pursue a mandate on Québec sovereignty along with an economic association with Canada:

With a majority oui vote by Québecers, Lévesque felt that both Québec sovereignty and an economic association with Canada could be achieved at the same time. "Sovereignty cannot go without association: they are inseparable," stated the Lévesque government in its secessionist proposal. Furthermore, they asserted that negotiations would be absolutely necessary for secession to occur and no unilateral declarations would be made. Negotiations would involve talks over "territory, the protection of minorities, citizenship, the transfer of federal civil servants, and the armed forces." Any negotiations would then be brought before the National Assembly of Québec for a vote.

In reaction to the proposed referendum and Québec sovereignty, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau outlined two possible courses of action: constitutional reform to renew federalism and promote unity, and a national referendum on separatism to stop Lévesque’s sovereignty-association referendum. Trudeau sided with the former first, hoping that it would be enough to alleviate the tensions between Québec and the rest of Canada. A task force was then sent out across Canada to gain the views of the provinces on constitutional reform. Returned by the task force was a call for regionalism and decentralization of the Canadian federal system. At the present time though, the provinces seemed only to be concerned with tax revenues, resources, and offshore jurisdiction. Meanwhile, a proposed national referendum bill died while only on the order table, eliminating Trudeau’s second plausible course of action.

To further attack Québec’s sovereignty position, Trudeau criticized the referendum question for asking of the impossible. Trudeau stated that if Québec asked to discuss sovereignty-association he would reply, "Québec is not a sovereign and independent country, there is no way of discussing association with Québec." Furthermore, he stated that if Québec were to ask to discuss sovereignty alone he would reply, "You do not have a mandate to discuss purely and simply sovereignty because you did not ask this question purely and simply in your referendum." This view showed that Ottawa felt both sovereignty and a Canadian economical association could not be achieved by one means. They were viewed as separate issues that needed to be placed on separate agendas.

With consistent close relations between Canada and the United States since confederation, the influence of the United States accordingly became important during the Québec movement for sovereignty. Ottawa hoped that the U.S. would remain neutral on the issue of sovereignty in order to stabilize close economic and trade relations with the superpower. Canada was the U.S.’s leading trade partner and was seen as containing a vast amount of energy resources. The U.S. thus pushed for three details in its position on Québec sovereignty: a preference for maintaining a united Canada, affirmation of Canada’s autonomy in the decision of sovereignty, and non-interference. To assert their position, the U.S. consistently kept the Canadian embassy in Washington abreast on visits by Québec representatives.

During the time of the Québec election of Lévesque, President Jimmy Carter came to office in the United States. Carter and Trudeau met on several occasions to discuss the problems and tensions within Canada. Occasionally the two met privately and when asked about the issue of sovereignty, Trudeau explained to Carter that sovereignty would be an issue on Canada’s agenda for a long time to come, but contrary to Québec’s views, Canada would remain unified. Carter asserted that the matter was not to be decided by the U.S.; the problem was for Canada and Québec to work out, "My own personal preference would be that the Commonwealth stay as it is and that there not be a separate Québec province. But that’s a decision for Canadians to make." With promising reassurances from Trudeau on a united neighbour, Carter began to turn his attentions elsewhere. Québec separation at the time, was seen as only a minor issue in the international sphere of politics. The U.S. had continued concerns abroad with the Soviet Union and its nuclear arsenal.

Still attempting to thwart Québec secession at home, Trudeau’s constitutional reform was put on hold when he lost the 1979 national election to the Conservative Party headed by Joe Clark. Clark gained a minority of the seats in the House of Commons and only managed to stay in power until February 1980. With only three months remaining before the Québec referendum, Trudeau, regained a majority government, but could do little more to affect its outcome. On May 18^th, to the delight of Ottawa, Trudeau, and the rest of Canada, the Québec referendum on sovereignty-association was defeated with a 59.56% Non vote. The Parti Québécois now had no mandate to pursue the issue of sovereignty-association. Initiative for change lay completely in the hands of the federal government. Prompted with renewed hope, Trudeau began resurgence for his new constitution, fostering the ideas of patriation, a charter of rights, and a unified country. Trudeau eventually patriated the constitution in 1982 and included an entrenched Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Negotiations for the new constitution took place amongst the provinces, but in the end, Lévesque refused to sign the package. A new constitution without the approval of Québec would later be found to be disastrous to the heated debate on Québec separation. Trudeau had succeeded with two of his constitutional goals, but failed at the most important: a unified country.

Québec sovereignty was put on hold with the defeat of the Parti Québecois government in the 1985 Québec election. Following a failed constitutional reform package by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1987, the Meech Lake Accord, Lucien Bouchard, a federal minister at the time, broke away from the federal Conservative Party. Bouchard formed the Bloc Québecois as a federal party along with other Tory parliament members from Québec. A second constitutional package from Mulroney’s government, the Charlottetown Accord, was introduced and it gained support from the provinces, but failed in a national referendum in 1982. In the 1993 federal election, Canadians saw the annihilation of the federal conservatives and the Bloc Québecois gaining a majority of seats in Québec, enough to form the Official Opposition in the House of Commons. For the first time in Canadian history, a party wishing to break-up Canada sat in the federal legislature. Following shortly after this transformation, the Parti Québecois, this time under the leadership of a former civil servant of Québec, Jacques Parizeau, once again came to power in Québec in 1994. Parizeau was committed to Québec secession and once again brought sovereignty into the spotlight.

Parizeau wasted little time in re-establishing Québec’s position for sovereignty by introducing a draft bill in December of 1994 which outlined Parizeau’s rules of the game. The act stated that after a successful Québec referendum, an agreement would be pursued with Ottawa whereby Québec would receive power to "make its own laws, raise its own taxes, and conclude its own treaties." In comments made to the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, James J. Blanchard, Parizeau expressed his views of Québec’s promising international future,

Debate leading up to the referendum began encompassing the critical issues of separation. It was uncertain how Québec’s borders would be drawn and what the rights of English-speaking Canadians and aboriginal nations would be if Québec did separate. These issues were complex and would be the centre of any negotiations between Québec and Ottawa following a oui vote.

Controversy also began to arise over the referendum question proposed by Parizeau. The question referred to the bill from December 1994, An Act Respecting the Sovereignty of Québec, and an agreement signed on June 12, 1995 between the Bloc Québecois and the Parti Québecois. The latter established the joint project of the two parties to push for Québec secession. The agreement was merely a political act to show Québec that there was a united front and to help sway undecided voters. The question set to be asked was,

Criticism was drawn from the fact that the question was deemed "hard" as opposed to the "soft" 1980 referendum question. The question more narrowly posed the position of sovereignty than in the previous referendum and a continued association with the rest of Canada was murky. Fears lurked in Québec that voters would be dissuaded away from sovereignty with such a hard position. As a countermeasure, Parizeau, with only three weeks left before the scheduled October 30^th referendum, named Bouchard as "chief negotiator" with Ottawa for the proposed negotiations following a successful referendum for Québec. David T. Jones, a senior foreign service officer for the U.S. Embassy at the time, points out that Bouchard was arguably "the most popular politician in Québec following the 1993 federal elections, his touched-by-death experience transmuted him into another political dimension." Blanchard, U.S. Ambassador to Canada, stated that Québec voters may now think they are voting for whether or not they feel Bouchard should lead sovereignty negotiations and not for sovereignty itself. Nevertheless, separatists had gained an edge.

In retaliation to the rising momentum of the separatists, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien began his own campaign of promises for a united Canada. He first criticized what he felt was the Parti Québecois intent to confuse the voters by stating, "It's a mirage. It is still a proposition for separation, but they don't have the guts to say they are separatists." In a notable address to the nation, Chrétien pleaded that he would keep "open all the other paths for change including the administrative and constitutional path." Federalists also fought back with a massive rally in Montreal on October 27^th, just three days before "judgement day". Ottawa played on the fact that despite Québec’s wishes, international negotiations regarding NAFTA and NATO would not be automatic. Although NATO had been looking at expanding its membership, Québec would need the approval of all NATO members. Moreover, NAFTA was an agreement reached by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, not Québec. Chrétien commented "They say, ‘we will be part of NAFTA,’ but I know very well that to be part of NAFTA they will need the consent of Canada, the United States, Mexico…So when they say ‘everything will go smoothly…it is my duty to say ‘hold on a minute.’" Chrétien’s hopes were that his economic threats and constitutional foreplay would be enough to discourage Québec voters from voting yes. Chrétien could do little more than threaten separatists and propose constitutional reforms however. The vote was essentially for Québec with no stronghold for Ottawa to grasp. Constitutional reforms had been plagued in the past with the failures of both Meech Lake and the Charlottetown Accord. There was no reason for Québec to feel any more optimistic for change than they had in the past.

Another major problem arose for Canada with a possible oui vote in the referendum looming. Canada would be left with the difficulty of renegotiating the constitution with a remaining fragmented Canada, as well as keeping the rest of the provinces from following Québec’s course of action. Canada suffers from other regional disparities aside from Québec’s and quite plausible is the fact that these regions would wish to secede as well. Charles Doran, an International Relations professor at The John Hopkins University wrote that three major problems would face Ottawa after Québec secession. First, the rich provinces, namely British Columbia, Ontario, and Alberta, may no longer favour subsidizing the poorer provinces of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Manitoba. Secondly if Québec separated four provinces would be isolated geographically from the rest of Canada, specifically Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. A favoured view is that Québec would allow transportation and communications means through its territory, but in international politics nothing is guaranteed. Finally, western Canada would feel severed from the rest of Canada without Québec’s counterbalance for Ontario. The west would be predominately overpowered in the House of Commons by Ontario, given its current structure. It may even be the case that regional disparities and a powerful Ontario would push the west to also secede. Should Québec secede, Ottawa would have to work harder than it did with Québec to hold the fragmented leftovers of Canada together.

With the possibility of a oui vote, many conclusions were drawn up for conceivable relations between Québec and the rest of Canada. All scenarios stemmed from the facts that any separation from Canada would likely take effect peacefully. Québec was intent on forming international agreements leaving a close-partnership a possibility. It had already outlined its intent to be a part of NATO and NORAD, and was outspoken on desires for free trade as outlined in NAFTA. Québec also had a solid economy, which would help to maintain the social aspects of Québec such as employment opportunities. Richard Simeon of the CD Howe Institute discusses four reasonable forms that a partnership between Canada and Québec may take on, should Québec secede. The first possible scenario would be complete isolation. Québec and Canada would still be governed by international rules of trade setup by the GATT and the WTO, but there would be very few other international agreements among the two parties. This position is for the most part, disfavoured by the Parti Québecois and Québec voters. The second scenario would reflect the NAFTA model with treaties based primarily on economic matters. Québec had always been in favour of NAFTA and Bouchard himself in many public addresses adopted this position. A "multiple-linkages" model was the third possible scenario, whereby many multi-lateral agreements would be made setting up all areas of relations. These agreements would be subject to change quite frequently. Although it has potential, it is unlikely that both parties would prefer continuous renewals and negotiations of treaties. The fourth and final scenario favoured a confederal relationship where a set of institutions would be placed to govern over the sovereign states in areas of economics. This model reflects the organizations setup under the European Union. Québec would, more likely than not, have difficulty in giving up any sovereignty they had achieved from secession to an overarching institution however.

Throughout Québec’s sovereignty campaign, the United States too kept a watchful eye on the happenings to the North. When asked of their position, the U.S. would routinely say they preferred a united Canada, but little more would be conferred. Bouchard met with President Clinton on one occasion prior to the referendum. Bouchard proposed,

In response, Clinton did not comment on sovereignty, but merely asked how Bouchard’s illness was and when the referendum was to be held. Clinton had managed to steer the U.S.’s position to political neutrality for the meantime. The United States did point out that an independent Québec would not automatically inherit the treaties of NORAD or NATO and would not automatically get entered into NAFTA. The U.S. remained silent on other referendum issues, leaving the referendum decision internal to Canada.

With the referendum date lurking ever-closely and polls showing support for separation rising, Blanchard reports that the U.S. became ever-increasingly interested in a possible yes vote. The United States’ position of a unified Canada needed to be strengthened to maintain current American interests. The prowling threat of a separate Québec and dissuaded Canada-U.S. relations was enough for the U.S. to approach a more active role. Québecers generally looked to the United States with admiration and had praised its neutral position in the past. Any movements by the U.S., especially by a president as popular as Clinton was in Québec, would have the potential to alter the voting pattern in Québec. In an attempt by the U.S. to sway any uncertain voters, a question was planted for a news conference featuring President Clinton. A Canadian reporter asked Clinton if he was concerned about a possible break-up of Canada. Clinton responded,

The U.S. marveled in their chief executive’s flamboyant address, feeling this was a pivotal point in the Québec referendum campaign. The U.S.’s final stance of favouring Canada over Québec had been portrayed. The rest was now up to Québec.

On October 30, 1995, after much anticipation from Québec, the rest of Canada, and the United States, the numbers were in. Québec narrowly voted non for sovereignty with only a 50.58% majority. A dissatisfied and disgusted Parizeau blaimed the loss on "money and the ethnic vote." The victory for the federalists only brought new issues to light however. It would now be Ottawa’s role to pursue constitutional reform intended to bring Québec back into negotiations. Bouchard managed to shrug off the referendum defeat and in response to possible constitutional discussions asked, "Why would English-speaking Canada be willing to help us achieve our goals when they weren’t before?" As a result, federalists felt that any possible negotiations would simply fall on deaf ears. Chrétien responded to Bouchard’s comments by stating, "The problem is anything we offer him is never enough. He doesn’t know what he wants…the separatists are afraid to sign a deal with us…they don’t want to look foolish to later generations of separatists." The war of words continues today as Québec outlines the same continual threat of separation and Ottawa creates promises on promises.

The triangle that developed during both referendum periods between Québec, Canada, and the United States displays the integral role that each plays in the others’ economies and domestic affairs. All are influenced concurrently by the others and repercussions are inevitable. During both referendums, Québec had strong intentions for partnerships with Canada and the United States following separation. A difficulty arose though because Canada and the United States were not as enthusiastic as Québec. The United States played a more vocal role in the second referendum by strongly voicing this contention. Pierre Trudeau articulated Canada’s position in the first referendum with a unifying and strengthening voice, but Jean Chrétien failed to do so the second time around. The vote became very close for Chrétien as a result. Although both referendums failed in producing negotiations between Québec and Canada on separation, they left staggering marks in Canadian history. Never before has such an effort been made to break apart Canada. Separatism is still alive and strong in Québec and another referendum on sovereignty may be in the near future. Both Canada and the United States are aware of this. Québec is a distinct nation and unless Canada can accommodate their distinctness, the future will only hold quarrels between the federalists and the separatists. The United States can do little but look on and allow Canada to resolve the conflict for itself. The future of Canada ultimately lies in the hands of Québec.