The Elections of 2000: Politics, Culture, and Economics in North America

CHAPTER 5: Quebec and the Canadian Federal Election of 2000: Putting the Sovereignty Movement on the Ropes?

CHAPTER 5 Quebec and the Canadian Federal Election of 2000: Putting the Sovereignty Movement on the Ropes? A. Brian Tanguay FOR THE INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT IN QUEBEC, the outcome of the November 2000 Canadian federal election marked another bitterly disappointing setback on the road to sovereignty. Not only did Jean Chrétien—an object of intense loathing among the Quebec nationalist intelligentsia—succeed in winning his third consecutive majority, he did so while increasing the Liberal Party’s share of both votes and seats in the province of Quebec.1 For the second consecutive election, the Bloc Québécois (BQ) and its sovereignty option failed to generate much enthusiasm among Quebec ’s voters. Worse still, less than two months after the federal election, Premier Lucien Bouchard resigned as leader of the provincial Parti Québécois (PQ) and premier of Quebec, citing his inability to reinvigorate the independence movement as the principal reason for his departure from political life. Bouchard’s successor , Bernard Landry, while more popular among the militant faction of the Parti Québécois (les purs et durs) than the erstwhile 96 comrade-in-arms Brian Mulroney had ever been, has failed to breathe new life into the sovereignty project. He now finds himself at the helm of an increasingly unpopular governing party which risks being annihilated at the polls in the next provincial election. What was the impact of the 2000 federal election on the Quebec “problem?” The central question posed in the analysis is whether the Liberals’ 2000 “three-peat” foreshadows the inevitable collapse of the sovereignty project. Predictions about the future of Québécois nationalism are notoriously risky. Only fifteen years ago, in the mid-1980s, it appeared to many observers that Quebec’s nationalist movement was on the ropes when a renascent Robert Bourassa and his Quebec Liberal Party defeated the Parti Québécois in the 1985 provincial election. In the span of five years, however, the independence movement in the province re-emerged stronger than ever, revitalized by the death of René Lévesque in 1987, the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision on the language of commercial signs in Quebec in 1988, and the collapse of the Meech Lake Accord in 1990. It may well turn out that the PQ’s current travails are merely temporary, and that the party and the movement need only find a dynamic new leader in order to recapture their former dynamism. As I argue here, however, a more plausible view is that the Quebec independence movement now faces a number of significant, and perhaps insuperable, social and political hurdles. My analysis proceeds in three stages. In the next section, the backdrop to the 2000 federal election campaign is sketched, focusing in particular on the Chrétien government’s two-pronged strategy for meeting the challenge of Québécois nationalism in the wake of the 1995 referendum on sovereignty. Plan A consisted of measures “to accommodate Quebec in the constitution and to meet some of the province’s traditional demands,” while Plan B involved an attempt to clarify “the process and the implications of Quebec and the Canadian Federal Election of 2000 97 Quebec secession, and [to challenge] the sovereigntists’ assumptions about these matters.”2 Simplifying somewhat, Plan A is the carrot and Plan B the stick in the federal government’s strategic repertoire for responding to the challenge of the Quebec independence movement. The sovereigntists’ inability to mobilize voters against Plan B, which they denounced as an anti-democratic assault on the right of the Québécois to self-determination, provided Jean Chrétien and the Liberals with a considerable strategic advantage during the election campaign. In the second section of the chapter, I examine the actual election results in 2000 to assess differing explanations of the outcome. Finally, I explore the obstacles now confronting the sovereignty movement in Quebec and the likelihood that they will be overcome. In conclusion, the current situation may be optimal for the Liberal Party of Canada, the “natural governing party” of the country, but it does not necessarily represent the ideal solution to the Quebec problem.3 BACKDROP TO THE 2000 FEDERAL ELECTION: THE SOVEREIGNTY MOVEMENT STALLS Throughout its second mandate (1997–2000), the Chrétien government’s political agenda was dominated by the need to formulate a response to the threat of Quebec secession. In the historic referendum on sovereignty-partnership held...