[A-List] Best chance for sovereignty was lost

["Jim Yarker" <sjy_estrien@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Best chance for sovereignty was lost
A quick election and referendum in 1996 would have meant a Yes victory
Josée Legault
The Gazette (Montreal )
vendredi 18 mai 2007



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Hindsight is always 20/20. But as Parti Quebecois members, even with a new 
leader, are faced with an uncertain future, looking back at Lucien 
Bouchard?s tenure might carry some important lessons.

A good start would be to read Linda Diebel?s book - Stephane Dion : Against 
the Current, published by Penguin (also available in French at Les Editions 
de l?Homme).

She lists a number of fatal strategic choices that Bouchard made after he 
became premier and which ended up weakening the PQ and the possibility of 
sovereignty in the foreseeable future.

In that book lies the story of Bouchard?s pivotal decision that sealed the 
fate of the sovereignty option : His refusal, in the spring of 1996, to call 
an election asking for a mandate to hold a third, decisive referendum.

At the time, except for a natural disaster that would destroy Canada 
physically, Bouchard calling a spring election was the one single thing that 
Prime Minister Jean Chretien most feared.

The book confirms Chretien thought, with reason, that given the close 
results of the October 1995 referendum, Bouchard?s saint-like popularity, 
Liberal leader?s Daniel Johnson?s ineffectiveness and Ottawa?s utter 
unpreparedness, if Bouchard had called an election, he would have swept 
Quebec and probably won another referendum.

Fearing Bouchard would do just that, Chretien gave a specific mission to 
Dion, his newly recruited minister of intergovernmental affairs : Make 
sovereignty almost impossible to attain by setting out new, strict "rules" 
for secession in case the Yes side won - almost a certainty at the time.

But what Ottawa hadn?t yet picked up on, and which Diebel missed as well, 
was that by the spring 1996, Bouchard had already moved on, choosing 
governance and his battle against the deficit rather than the final settling 
of the sovereignty issue.

Diebel recalls the time Chretien became the most frightened that Bouchard 
would go for an election. In May 1996, Bouchard threatened publicly to do so 
when Ottawa decided to intervene before the Superior Court in a case related 
to Quebec secession.

But Bouchard backed down. He didn?t call an election. He ended up only 
cancelling a meeting with Chretien. Not believing their luck, Chretien, Dion 
and their advisers heaved a sigh of relief.

When Bouchard chickened out, Chretien saw what Pequistes would take years to 
see : After he became premier, Bouchard was a paper tiger on sovereignty.

The rest is history. Bouchard?s retreat in 1996 gave Chretien and Dion ample 
time to refine their Plan-B strategy, go to the Supreme Court and get a 
ruling on secession saying that after a Yes vote Quebec?s borders would be 
part of the negotiations, and adopt the Clarity Act.

Bouchard?s refusal to call an early election, followed by his 
winning-conditions rhetoric, resulted in the demobilization of Pequistes and 
sovereignists at large, with some angry social democrats leaving the PQ. It 
was capped with an election victory in 1998 in which the PQ got fewer votes 
than the Liberals.

In 1996, Bouchard didn?t go for sovereignty even though the planets were 
perfectly aligned, as Chretien knew. Instead, over the years, Bouchard?s 
inaction squandered the Yes side?s political momentum after the referendum 
near-victory.

Someone wrote a book that called Robert Bourassa a "trickster," saying he 
had wasted a historical chance amid the post-Meech fury, to hold a winning 
referendum. But it was no state secret that Bourassa was a federalist. In 
his case, not going for sovereignty wasn?t cheating. It was buying time for 
his own option.

Bouchard is a different story. He was leading a sovereignist party and this 
is what he said he believed in, at the time. His wasting of the one chance 
he had of possibly taking sovereignty to a final victory in 1996, 
acknowledged at the time by a very frightened Chretien, is what will make 
historians render a much harsher judgment on Bouchard than they will on 
Bourassa.