Canada's Parizeau obsessed with Quebec independent

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): Jacques Parizeau's great ambition in life was to be the first president of the independent Republic of Quebec, so it's not surprising that he told lies. Statesmen do. It's more surprising that he should admit the lies so soon after the fact -- but when statesmen tell the truth, it is also done with malice aforethought.

Parizeau's new book Pour un Quebec souverain (For a Sovereign Quebec) has caused a furor in Canada, because he makes it clear that he planned to declare Quebec independent unilaterally within ten days if the 'Yes' side had won the October, 1995 referendum. Yet his revelation actually makes it less likely that the seven million Quebecers will choose independence any time soon.

Canada's only province with a French-speaking majority came within a hair's breadth of voting yes to independence in 1995: the final tally was 49.4 percent 'yes' to 50.6 percent 'no'. Just another 27,000 'yes' votes, and Parizeau would have had a kind of mandate for independence. But not for the immediate, unilateral declaration of independence that he is now talking about.

Quebecers are notoriously risk-averse, and the separatists only lured so many of them into voting yes by promising that the process of independence would be slow, legal, and totally cost- free. They promised to offer the rest of Canada an economic union, and negotiate for a year before taking any unilateral steps towards independence. They even promised that Quebecers could go on using Canadian money and Canadian passports after independence.

They said just about anything that would reassure 'soft' nationalist voters that separation would be a gradual, painless transition. They had to, to have any hope of winning. They would have to tell the same reassuring lies in any future referendum.

But now along comes Jacques Parizeau, former leader of the separatist Parti Quebecois (PQ) and premier of Quebec during the referendum, to reveal that if he had won, he would have immediately and unilaterally declared Quebec's total independence.

This revelation does huge damage to the separatist cause and to Lucien Bouchard, the PQ leader who took over from Parizeau as premier of Quebec immediately after the referendum. Bouchard has promised yet another referendum on independence within the next few years, but how is he to win it now that the cat is out of the bag?

Parizeau is well versed in the political art of 'deniability', so his revelations are cunningly structured in a way that requires the conclusion that he was going to declare independence within ten days of a 'yes' victory. Yet when you read the text carefully, he never actually says that in quite so many words.

The key passages were leaked to the Quebec City newspaper Le Soleil recently, five days before the official book launch. The obvious conclusion was drawn at the paper, the story ran at the top of the news right across Canada for two days (in the midst of the federal election campaign) -- and only then did Parizeau, who had never been more than five minutes from a phone, officially deny it. Parizeau clearly wants Canadians, and especially Quebecers, to believe that he was going to move instantly to independence.

In retrospect, there is much evidence from the immediate pre- referendum period to show that Parizeau intended to move fast. In July 1995, for example, Parizeau boasted privately to European Union ambassadors in Ottawa that Quebec voters were like lobsters entering a trap. Once they voted 'yes' there would be no escape.

On Oct. 26 Jean-Marc Jacob, defense critic of the federal branch of the separatist party, circulated a message to French- speaking Canadians in the armed forces asking them to transfer their loyalty to Quebec after a 'Yes' victory. On the day of the referendum, Quebec's Deputy Premier Bernard Landry wrote to foreign ambassadors asking them to recognize Quebec's independence the moment the National Assembly proclaimed sovereignty.

So what would have happened if Parizeau had got the chance to put his plan into action? And why is he making it public now? What would have happened is chaos. The Inuit and Cree native peoples who claim the northern two-thirds of Quebec, and are a majority of the population there, would have acted on well-laid plans to remove the territory from Quebec's control. It's a simple job: just dig trenches across the half-dozen roads leading into northern Quebec, park trucks across the airstrips, and it's done.

If Quebec makes any menacing moves, you threaten to cut the hydro-power lines from northern dams and cut off much of its income.

Meanwhile, down south, the separatists would have faced financial disaster as ordinary depositors panicked and a flood of money fled Quebec, seeking places where there was no risk of it turning into new Quebec pesos. Almost everybody in the Quebec financial sector believes that the separatists planned to deal with this threat by decreeing an emergency tax of up to 30 percent on capital transfers outside Quebec. Even though such a tax would instantly divide the Canadian economy in two.

Faced with these developments, serious rioting in big-city Montreal -- by nationalists furious about losing northern Quebec, and by non-francophones in a panic about their money and their future -- would have been inevitable. The riots would probably have triggered federal intervention -- and Canada today would be a country with no-go zones, refugees, terrorism, and a 60-cent dollar. Parizeau would be under arrest, or perhaps glorying in the role of leader of the 'government-in-exile' of the Quebec republic.

Parizeau is a fanatic who would regard all this as a modest price to pay for the ultimate goal of an independent Quebec. Moreover, he despises those former colleagues who have no stomach for such sacrifices. People like Lucien Bouchard, for example.

Which is probably why Parizeau is bringing all this up now. He sees Bouchard as a deal-maker who would settle for less than complete independence for Quebec, so he is deliberately sabotaging Bouchard's chances of winning a referendum on a softer question.

After these revelations, who would trust even the softest question?

The Globe and Mail, Canada's only newspaper with a national circulation, recently suggested that Parizeau should be awarded the Order of Canada (upside down, of course) for services to federalism. It seems a fair comment.