The Separatist Curve Ball

Therein lies the rub for hardline federalists, who contend secession should be illegal in Canada, as it is in most other countries around the globe. Alas, it’s “definitely too late” for that, says Stéphane Dion, who, as Chrétien’s unity minister, spearheaded the federal response to the country’s near-death experience in the 1995 referendum. Indeed, when the Chrétien government sought advice from the Supreme Court of Canada in 1997 on the requisite legal process for secession, it didn’t bother asking if it would be constitutional to simply declare the country indivisible. Dion says it would be impossible for the federal government, having twice campaigned in sovereignty referendums, to try to turn back the clock. “Because so many politicians had agreed that Canada was divisible, to come by surprise and to say the contrary . . . it would have been too late.”

If anyone could have advanced that option, Dion says it was prime ministers such as Lester Pearson, during the separatist movement’s infancy in the 1960s, or Pierre Trudeau, during the first referendum in 1980. Marc Lalonde, one of Pierre Trudeau’s key Quebec ministers and now Martin’s campaign co-chair in the province, says Trudeau did consider declaring Canada indivisible but decided the option was moot if he wasn’t prepared to back it up with force. Mr. Trudeau, says Lalonde, “was not one to entertain the concept that, if people really wanted to separate and they had voted for it democratically, that we would send in the army and keep people against their will.” Trudeau believed “Canada was not the kind of country which would keep people by force” and that saying so up front would ultimately make “a stronger case” for staying together.

In any event, the Supreme Court that the federal government would be obliged to negotiate separation should a clear majority of Quebecers express their will to secede. That judgment became the foundation for Chrétien’s daring Clarity Act. Initially opposed by many Quebec federalists, including Martin, it has since become a source of solace as they ponder the spectre of a weak minority government facing a resurgent separatist movement in a third referendum. Aimed at exploding separatist dogma that independence can be achieved painlessly on Quebec’s terms with a simple majority Yes vote on an ambiguous question, the act specifies that the federal government would negotiate secession only if a clear majority of Quebecers votes Yes on a clear referendum question to separate. Moreover, it spells out that secession would require a constitutional amendment negotiated with the other provinces and that everything, including Quebec’s borders, would be on the table.

Still, those rules are only as good as the will of the prime minister of the day to enforce them, and for the embittered Chrétien faction of the Liberal party that’s cold comfort. Notwithstanding Martin’s late embrace of the Clarity Act, Eddie Goldenberg scoffs: “If Martin is around, he may decide a [referendum] question ‘Do you like hot dogs? ’ is good enough to break up the country.” Political sniping aside, no prime minister leading a minority government would be well positioned to hang tough in the face of Boisclair’s declaration that he’d simply ignore the Clarity Act.

It’s worth noting that it is possible to win majority governments even with Bloc dominance in Quebec. Chrétien, taking advantage of a divided conservative movement, managed it three times by sweeping Ontario. Should winning a landslide Ontario vote prove impossible for Martin or Harper, it’s premature to assume no one else could in the future. The sponsorship scandal will eventually fade, and the Bloc’s fortunes could sink again. Another referendum is not a certainty. And the notoriously thinskinned Boisclair could yet turn out to be federalism’s salvation.

Still, if another sclerotic minority emerges courtesy of the Bloc, Monahan predicts frustrated Canadians will lose patience and demand the country’s first-past-the-post electoral system be replaced by some form of proportional representation (PR). The current system, long maligned for distorting the level of support for parties, has seen the Liberals capture more than 50 percent of the seats in Parliament with as little as 37 percent of the popular vote. It also favours parties whose support is regionally concentrated. Hence, the Bloc can win fifty seats with only 13 percent of the nationwide vote, while the Green Party, with around 4-percent support sprinkled around the country, winds up with none.

Some provincial governments are flirting with PR but the option has never gained much momentum at the federal level, largely because the one saving grace of the first-past-the-post system was deemed to be its ability to produce stable majority governments. A second consecutive minority election could change all that, says Monahan. “I’ve heard the argument made recently that we’re no longer getting the benefits. In fact, the first-past-the-post system is benefiting the Bloc so why should we maintain that system when it’s not now delivering us what we had always thought to be its prime feature, namely, a majority national government? I think it’s certainly something worth thinking about.” Under PR, seat counts would more fairly reflect each party’s share of the national popular vote, enabling small parties such as the Greens to gain a foothold in Parliament and diluting the Bloc’s influence. But if stability is the objective, PR, with its propensity to produce minority governments in perpetuity, may well be a case of the cure turning out to be worse than the disease.