Quebec Election

Almost unnoticed in this week's news was a provincial election in Quebec. Politico had a somewhat obtuse take:

As much of Canada unites against U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war, Quebecers have elected a Parti Québécois government promising a referendum on independence that most of the province doesn’t want.

Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon won a five-party race on Monday night, earning a minority government with just 28% of the vote. The governing Coalition Avenir Québec, which won back-to-back majorities after taking power in 2018, was wiped off the electoral map, a rarity in Canadian history.

. . . Voters in the province wanted change, though they did not give St-Pierre Plamondon the 64 seats needed to secure a majority government, awarding him instead a minority mandate — the fourth in the province’s history.

Carney is Quebec’s most popular politician, with the Angus Reid Institute measuring his personal appeal at 61%. The province’s industries are among the most exposed to Trump’s tariffs. The combination may give the new separatist premier a reason to play nice with the federal Liberals — at least for the short term.

But St-Pierre Plamondon’s arrival could also complicate Carney’s attempts to keep Canada’s premiers united against Trump’s tariff agenda.

I've pointed out here that referenda on secession in Canada are actually a non-issue, because the Clarity Act lets Ottawa set the rules for any proposed secession:

Although the law applies to all provinces, the [1999] Clarity Act was created in response to the 1995 Quebec referendum and ongoing independence movement in that province. The content of the act was based on the 1998 secession reference to the Supreme Court of Canada made by the federal government of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.

It gives the House of Commons in Ottawa the authority to determine whether the questions on any referendum are sufficiently clear, as well as whether any majority vote to secede is sufficiently large. It also requires an amendment to the Canadian constitution for a secession to take place. So far, polling in both Alberta and Quebec suggets that neither province would have a majority of any size in favor of secession, but Parliament would be able to override any such vote in any case.

Such coverage as legacy media has given misses the main point, which the Quebec commentator in the YouTube video embedded above outlines clearly:

People in Quebec. . . understand that they are already a linguistic minority within Canada, and they have been subnjected to mass immigration that is fundamentally changing the makeup of the province. The argument for Quebec independence today, and the argument that will likely be made in the referendum, will be one of nationalism, aka, do we want to continue importing people from the third world who do not share our values and who continue to cause havoc that continues to threaten the French language in Canada?

Quebec is becoming less and less French every day. You go to Montreal now, most people speak to you in English instead of French. Or do we want to preserve the Quebec nation? This is something that concerns people of all poltical stripes in Quebec. The example I often give is I have people in my extended family. . . that are very, very leftwing Quebecers, but that also believe that we need to ban the burka, that teachers should not be wearing hijabs in schools, that police officers should not be wearing turbans. . .

I noted this a month ago:

This parallels another question that's come up in the Canadian trade dispute: Prime Minister Carney insists he was protecting Francophone Canada by rejecting the recent trade agreement -- but observers have made the point that Canadian immigration policy, which involves widespread immigration from India, threatens to flood out Francophone Canada. The Century Initiative, a project with widespread support from the Laurentian Elite, aims to increase the population of Canada, currently 41 million, to, 100 million by 2100. While it has not been passed by the Canadian parliament, current immigration policy there seems generally consistent with it.

In effect, with the native birth rate stable but current residents leaving, this would add 60 millon migrants from India to the current population of 41 million, with roughly 9 million whose first language is French. This would create a far larger language group whose primary language is Hindi or Punjabi, although Canadian Charter Rights (a weaker version of the US Bill of Rights) currently recognize only English and French as official languages.

So current unspoken policy in Ottawa is to dilute the French population anywhere in Canada beyond recognition by importing migrants who speak neither English nor French. It appears that French Canadians have few options to protest this policy -- which seems to be pushing the limits of implied French rights under their "constitution" -- beyond proposing secession referenda, which are feckless enterprises. This is the same non-option that Albertans have. Meanwhile, Like it or not, Canada isn't going to be able to continue on its current path.