Voting to Break Confederation: Round Two, 1995
Throughout the evening of October 30, 1995, Canada’s prime minister watched Quebec referendum tallies ebb and flow toward a separatist victory. Ballot counts took time. Of 5,087,009 eligible voters, 4,757,509 had cast ballots — 93.52 percent — larger than any turnout for a Canadian or provincial election in history. Between No and Yes, the razor-thin difference was 50.58 percent to 49.42 percent. The federalists had eked out a win with 54,288 votes, barely the number of fans to fill Montreal’s Bell Centre for two Canadiens hockey games.
Jean Chrétien, a staunch federalist, had been in a bravura state of denial that separatists could succeed. Equally astonishing, the separatists themselves had done little concrete planning for what would happen if they won beyond dreamily thinking about France granting diplomatic recognition that would trigger a similar pattern throughout La Francophonie. Stunning revelations in The Morning After, Chantal Hébert and Jean Lapierre’s 2014 book of interviews with top sovereignist and federalist leaders about the events of October 1995, have since disclosed that separatist Premier Jacques Parizeau and Bloc Québécois leader Lucien Bouchard had no blueprint beyond voting day — typical Canadian “muddling through” of major events with no clear plan.
Over the decade and a half since the 1980 referendum on separation, political forces had built inexorably to this second referendum, seemingly in six bounding steps. First, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, honouring his 1980 pledge to overhaul Canada’s Constitution if Quebecers defeated the separatist option, initiated extensive constitutional negotiations that by November 1991 resulted in the PM and nine premiers — but not Quebec Premier René Lévesque — agreeing to patriate the Constitution and include in it a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The resulting Constitution Act 1992 was then enacted — but without ratification by Quebec’s National Assembly.
The second step, taken by Trudeau’s successor Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Lévesque’s successor Premier Robert Bourassa, was to complete the “unfinished” constitutional business. The two, with all other premiers, negotiated constitutional amendments to address Quebec’s concerns. The Meech Lake Accord, as already noted, clarified several of Ottawa’s powers in relation to the provinces and recognized Quebec as “a distinct society within Canada.” Ratification of the accord didn’t go to a national referendum but dragged out over three years of inept political handling by Ottawa amid fierce isolated opposition in New Brunswick, Newfoundland, and Manitoba. The drama of ratification’s failure during the summer of 1990 prompted justifiable outrage in Quebec. Support for sovereignty surged.
The third step was taken by Lucien Bouchard, a close personal friend of Prime Minister Mulroney, who’d appointed him to the cabinet. Bouchard betrayed his long-time friend and country by forming the Bloc Québécois, a breakaway separatist coalition of Progressive Conservative and Liberal MPs from Quebec as a new federal party in Parliament devoted to Quebec sovereignty.
The fourth was Premier Bourassa’s proclamation, in the wake of the Meech Lake Accord’s demise, that a referendum would be held in Quebec during 1992, with either sovereignty or a new constitutional agreement on the ballot. That sparked a major round of constitutional negotiations, resulting in the Charlottetown Accord’s extensive package of constitutional amendments, which failed to win ratification in 1992’s Canada-wide referendum.
Fifth came political realignment. A general election in 1993 brought a Liberal majority government to power in Ottawa under Prime Minister Chrétien, a veteran of these wars who’d been Canada’s minister of justice during the 1980–81 constitutional discussions. Facing him across the Commons aisle was the Bloc Québécois led by Lucien Bouchard, who in the 1993 federal election won fifty-four seats with 49.3 percent of Quebec’s vote, giving the separatists the ironic status of being “Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.”
Sixth, and finally, an election in Quebec the next year produced another change of the guard. The separatist Parti Québécois, led by Jacques Parizeau, returned to power by ousting the provincial Liberals, forming a majority government with 44.75 percent of the popular vote. The new government’s campaign platform, and hence its electoral mandate, despite not being approved by even half the electors, included holding a referendum on sovereignty.
It took a lot of manoeuvring to get the referendum aligned because the separatist movement embraced hardliners and moderates and most had different opinions about a winning path. The earlier étapiste approach was history. The government introduced its Act Respecting the Future of Quebec, or “Sovereignty Bill,” mailed a copy to every household in Quebec, and announced a National Commission on the Future of Quebec. Within the PQ, debate continued over what terms for sovereignty should be voted on in the referendum. Parizeau disdained the PQ’s earlier quest for a continuing economic relationship with Confederation that would somehow be ambiguously coupled with sovereignty — René Lévesque’s formulation. In 1980 he’d watched Ottawa successfully campaign to render the sovereignty-association concept a non-starter. Why repeat history?
Opposition in the sovereignty movement to the premier’s hard-line stance for outright independence coalesced around Bloc Québécois leader Lucien Bouchard. He believed a ballot option lacking partnership with Canada would doom the vote with moderate nationalists who were more realistic about separation’s economic impacts. Bouchard’s position was reinforced by Deputy Premier Bernard Landry, and by Mario Dumont, popular young leader of another party, Action démocratique du Québec. They all wanted an option “softer” than Parizeau’s. When the National Commission reported in April 1995 on its study about the future of Quebec, it confirmed that the public generally desired an economic partnership with Canada.
Given the circumstances, Parizeau agreed to a broader approach. He, Dumont, and Bouchard signed an agreement on June 12, 1995, outlining details of the Quebec-Canada partnership negotiation process, seeking “sovereignty” with an economic and social partnership to be negotiated and presented to the rest of Canada. The premier was content that their agreement allowed the Quebec government to declare immediate independence if negotiations weren’t successful, or following a successful referendum. Despite a brilliant legal challenge by lawyer and former separatist Guy Bertrand, who sought injunctions to stop the referendum and bring on a trial to establish that separating from Confederation wasn’t constitutional, the juggernaut advanced.
The referendum ballot asked, Do you agree that Quebec should become sovereign after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership within the scope of the bill respecting the future of Quebec and of the agreement signed on June 12, 1995?
Ballot-question wording inevitably attracts critiques. Daniel Johnson, Jr., leading Quebec’s Liberal Party, called it confusing and said it should have contained the word country, as in “a sovereign country.”1 Some argued it shouldn’t have mentioned “partnership” proposals because no Canadian political leaders outside Quebec would negotiate a partnership with an independent Quebec, while a more legalistic version of the same point was that no entity existed capable of undertaking Confederation’s divorce proceedings.2 Some saw the question as misleading because it implied that agreement had already been reached between Canada and Quebec on June 12, rather than just among the three leaders of sovereignist parties in the province.
Under Quebec’s referendum law, Jacques Parizeau chaired the Yes forces, Daniel Johnson the No campaign. As required by the Referendum Act, both committees contributed their messages for a brochure sent to every voter. Each side had a $5 million budget. Campaign spending by any person or entity outside the umbrella committee framework would be illegal.
The campaign began October 2 with a televised address by both leaders, Parizeau injecting urgency by stressing this vote might be the last opportunity for sovereignty in the foreseeable future, Johnson covering the referendum with the fog of fear by forecasting economic uncertainty that a Yes vote would provoke. The economic card, always played by the federalists, included Quebec’s unclear position in the North American Free Trade Agreement, Quebec’s inability to control the Canadian dollar, which it hoped to still use, and statements of pending doom from business leaders Paul Desmarais of Power Corporation and Laurent Beaudoin of Bombardier Inc., influential men with thousands of employees and contractors.
Parizeau criticized such interventions, accusing Quebec business leaders of betraying their customers and workers, a line that resonated well with separatist militants but seemed only to highlight economic uncertainties that worried undecided voters. The Yes campaign stressed that any prospects for revamping Confederation were slim to non-existent, based on convincing evidence to date, so the only course was to vote Yes and prepare to leave.
After one week, polls showed Yes trailing significantly. Needing to kick-start separatist momentum, Parizeau named Lucien Bouchard chief negotiator for the partnership talks between Quebec and Canada following a Yes majority vote.3 The move had a double impact, making popular Bouchard more prominent in the campaign while also emphasizing the Quebec-Canada “partnership” nature of the ballot question. The next rounds of polls showed gains, and before long a majority of Quebecers said they intended to vote Yes.4 Bouchard’s speeches, delivered everywhere and often, urged Quebecers to vote Yes and give a clear mandate for change. He said only a strong Yes would permit final solution of Confederation’s enduring constitutional issues, and that a new partnership with “English Canada” would benefit all.5
Aboriginal leaders in Quebec strongly opposed separation. They had grievances about their relationship with Ottawa, but experience dealing with provincial and municipal governments had convinced aboriginal peoples that they would face an even harsher future in a country called Quebec outside Confederation. Affirming their own right to self-determination, the aboriginal leaders said forcing their peoples to join an independent Quebec without their consent would violate international law. If forced to decide, the aboriginal peoples of the province would separate from a separate Quebec and remain within Confederation.
Advancing from press conferences and demonstrations, the politically potent Cree of Northern Quebec decided to fight fire with fire. Their respected grand chief, Matthew Coon Come, published Sovereign Injustice, a well-researched and persuasive legal analysis of the plan for a forcible inclusion of the James Bay Cree and Cree territory into a sovereign Quebec. He made the case for his people’s right to self-determination and maintaining their territories within Confederation. The Cree then held their own referendum.
With voting on October 24, the ballot question asked, Do you consent, as a people, that the Government of Quebec separate the James Bay Cree and Cree traditional territory from Canada in the event of a Yes vote in the Quebec referendum?
With more than three-quarters of eligible voters casting ballots, 96.3 percent voted to stay in Canada. The Cree uprising against separatists was soon reinforced by another referendum vote, this time by the Inuit of Nunavik, whose ballot asked plainly, Do you agree that Quebec should become sovereign?
With 96 percent answering No to that question, the prospective landscape of a partitioned Quebec began to resemble Swiss cheese with big holes in it. Nunavik land occupied the top third of the province. The Cree held extensive territory around James Bay and inland.
To increase pressure on the Yes side, aboriginal groups demanded “full-participant” status in any constitutional negotiations that might flow from the referendum.6 The province’s aboriginal communities, understanding fully the consequences of the choice being forced by Quebec’s government, increased tension in the campaign by making real to Quebecers the serious consequences of partition.
Jean Charest, the federal Progressive Conservative leader, sent a potent message to his fellow Quebecers when, at No rallies, he waved aloft his Canadian passport, one of the strongest in the world of international travel and an asset of citizenship foolish to abandon — a riveting image that reappeared on television newscasts and newspaper front pages.
From the start, the federalist No campaign had many disparate elements — provincial Liberals, federal Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, and others. There was touchiness about who should be prominent, and who had to be kept out of sight. Separatists cried foul each time someone beyond the province’s borders took a stance on the referendum, which is why non-Quebec Liberals in Ottawa maintained low visibility as cabinet ministers, though several countered the Yes campaign by directing their departments to mail social payment cheques to Quebec households with a pro-Canada message, and by ordering scores of citizenship judges from across Canada into the province to accelerate turning upward of twenty thousand immigrants into voting citizens in time to cast a No ballot by late October. Even the prime minister, a proud Quebecer, was kept at bay for most of the campaign, until polling numbers for the Yes side sobered everyone to fear that Quebec’s bolt from Confederation was only days away and it was time to muster “all hands on deck.”
Jean Chrétien’s addresses had been rare, but now near the end of the campaign, when the uncertain outcome finally sparked him to action, the PM spoke at an October 24 federalist rally in the largest arena of West Montreal, focusing some four thousand No supporters on Quebecers’ emotional attachment to Canada, promising reforms that would give Quebec more power, startling everybody by reversing his (and Pierre Trudeau’s) stance and declaring he would support recognition of Quebec as “a distinct society,” and that he’d lead reforms to the Canadian Constitution.7
After that speech in Verdun Auditorium, the prime minister delivered an October 25 televised address promoting the virtues of Canadian federalism for Quebec, mentioning the shared values of all within Confederation and warning how Jacques Parizeau would use a Yes majority to declare independence from Canada.
Lucien Bouchard got equal airtime following the PM’s segment, despite being a leader of the Yes campaign in Quebec striving to break Confederation, because as leader of the Official Opposition in Canada’s Parliament, he was entitled to rebuttal. Bouchard recapped the animosities of the constitutional debate. When addressing French-speaking viewers, he criticized Jean Chrétien’s behaviour, holding up for the TV camera a newspaper’s front-page report on the 1982 constitutional deal that excluded Quebec, showing Trudeau and Chrétien laughing.8 Knowing his margin of victory lay with swing voters who needed reassurance about a continuing relationship between a sovereign Quebec and Confederation, the separatist leader dwelt on the partnership element of the proposal. Addressing English-speaking Canadians, Bouchard said ending the interminable constitutional squabbling would be good for everyone, asked for understanding of the Yes side, and committed to “negotiate in good faith.”9
If the PM, in desperation, would reverse his stance on “distinct society” to save Confederation, others were no longer prepared to let the separatists have an open playing field. The silenced non-Quebec ministers holed up in Ottawa broke through many hurdles and stirred up Canadians outside Quebec to join an October 27 “Unity Rally” in Montreal at Place du Canada sponsored by the city’s business leaders. Fisheries Minister Brian Tobin of Newfoundland went on television, urging Canadians to get to Montreal and join the rally, which he dubbed “the crusade for Canada,” to show support for Quebec remaining in Confederation. The prospect of Quebec becoming an independent country, creating a vast gap in the centre, leaving Canada with east and west sections like Pakistan after India’s partition, caused thousands of emotional people to reach Montreal by chartered buses and flights with airline tickets 90 percent off in a “unity” sale. At times during the day, the throng at Place du Canada reached 125,000, with the people hearing speeches by Jean Chrétien, Jean Charest, and Daniel Johnson. Televised images panning the vast crowd with its oversized Canadian flag dramatized the showdown. It was impossible to say how the event influenced voting. Jean Charest believed the rally maintained No campaign momentum when it was most crucial. Daniel Johnson was anxious about the rally exacerbating tensions with English Canada. Lucien Bouchard rightly wondered why English Canada had failed to rally in the streets of Fredericton, Winnipeg, and St. John’s this way to prevent the collapse of the Meech Lake Accord.
When voting took place, Quebec society’s long-standing divisions in the perpetual quest for cultural survival were again revealed. Yes was the choice of some 60 percent of French-speaking Quebecers while about 95 percent of English-speaking voters and Allophones voted No.
The Yes side was strongest in heartland Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, across sprawling Gaspé, the oddly named “Centre-du-Québec” (which isn’t in the province’s centre but along the St. Lawrence River’s south shore encompassing such urban centres as Drummondville, Victoriaville, and Bécancour), and also in Montreal’s and Quebec City’s suburbs.
Northern Quebec’s mostly aboriginal voters, the Outaouais region of western Quebec where many thousands of federal government employees live, the Eastern Townships with its Anglo heritage and long partnership between the two linguistic communities, and the Beauce, at peace in its natural beauty and wanting peace in its public affairs, all generally voted No.
The largest turnout of electors in Canadian history showed just how delicately balanced the tipping point had become. The proposal of June 12, 1995, was rejected by 50.58 percent of Quebecers while 49.42 percent voted Yes — a tissue-thin margin, significantly narrower than in the 1980 referendum.
Jacques Parizeau resigned as premier. Lucien Bouchard, elected the new leader of the Parti Québécois, became premier. He announced that a third referendum would be held once “winning conditions” arose, but meanwhile, the government’s priority would be to overhaul Quebec’s economy. Daniel Johnson resigned as leader of the provincial Liberals. Jean Charest, a man seemingly destined to become prime minister of the country, succumbed to intense pressure from federalists across Canada and in Quebec. He resigned as national Progressive Conservative leader and then was acclaimed leader of the Quebec Liberals — on a mission to keep Confederation whole.