'The PQ is a party of ideas'

Like Lévesque, who went to the polls not long after losing the 1980 referendum, Marois aligned her party behind her by promising a return to power and responsible governance. It worked for Lévesque; he handily won the subsequent election in 1981. But sovereignty is a stubborn dream and a PQ victory in the coming election would serve only to reawaken it. Without the ability to foist a referendum onto the voting public, however, the party hoi polloi would find itself dependent on the whims of its leader to further the cause. Marois had made it clear that this is unlikely in her first or even second term as premier, setting the stage for yet another “debate over ideas.” Marois has even come up with a slogan. Rather than a referendum, a PQ government, she said earlier this year, would bring about a “national conversation” on sovereignty, by dispatching PQ MNAs and sovereignist luminaries around the province to extoll the wonders of a sovereign Quebec. She would also institute 11 “gestures of national governance,” including the adoption of a Quebec constitution and citizenship. The goal is to whip Quebecers into a such a nationalist froth that they cannot help but want to separate from Canada.

Sound familiar? That’s because it is. Lucien Bouchard touted a similar idea in 1995, when he said Quebecers’ collective distaste for the Canadian status quo would eventually create “winning conditions” for a sovereign Quebec. Only then, he said, would he call a referendum. He didn’t get the chance. Six years later, Mr. Bouchard left the party, cast out by the very hardliners he sought to mollify. In 1995, he was deemed the saviour of the sovereignist movement; today, Bouchard is regularly booed at the PQ conventions.

Already, Marois’ grand unification of the PQ is showing cracks. The FTQ, the province’s largest union confederation, didn’t endorse the party in the upcoming election. SPQ Libre, the PQ’s only designated ‘political club’ and respite for party hardliners, recently published a blistering attack on Marois’ decision to shelve the referendum option. “A referendum is to sovereignty what a deadline is to journalism,” wrote SPQ Libre’s Marc Laviolette and Pierre Dubuc. “Without the due date of a referendum, the sovereignty movement will likely scatter, fracture and whither.”

Not coincidentally, six sovereignist parties have formed in the last three years, the largest of which, Québec solidaire, received roughly four percent of the popular vote in 2007. The more nationalist of these new parties decry the PQ’s lack of sang froid on the issue of sovereignty. Québec solidaire et al. won’t likely steal a significant number of votes, much less a seat, from the péquistes. However, they have already robbed the party of young volunteers, delegates, diehards and other assorted true believers that have long constituted the lifeblood of the party. “There is a civil war within the separatist movement, and it’s becoming more and more explosive,” Patrick Bourgeois, editor and publisher of nationalist newspaper Le Québécois, told a Montreal newspaper recently.

Still, in the short term, things look good for Marois. She performed extremely well during last week’s televised debate. At the very least, she is poised to return her party to Official Opposition on Dec. 8. Should she stifle Charest’s pursuit of a majority government, she could rightfully question the wisdom and expense of his election call during a time of widespread economic turmoil. Should she win, she would be the first elected female premier. Inevitably, though, she will have to face head on what has burdened nearly every other péquiste leader before her: the Parti Québécois itself. Parizeau was right. The PQ is a party of ideas; as such is too unruly a beast for anyone to control it for very long. Her political foes, plentiful as they may be, won’t likely spell the end of Pauline Marois. Her own party is all too adept at doing that on its own.