Andrew Coyne: Marois outdoes her predecessors with the most discriminatory platform Canada’s seen in years | Full Comment | National Post

Andrew Coyne: Marois outdoes her predecessors with the most discriminatory platform Canada’s seen in years | Full Comment | National Post

At the height of her now famous confrontation with François Legault near the end of Wednesday’s televised tête-à-tête, Pauline Marois attempted to play down the fears he was doing his best to raise over her party’s proposed référendums d’initiative populaire. As adopted at the Parti Québécois’s last convention, the appealingly named RIPs would allow a petition of 15% of Quebec’s voters to trigger a referendum on separation — well, a referendum on anything, but separation was the issue that most exercised Legault.
The measure, he said, would “send us into the ravine with the caribou” — a tangy reference to PQ hardliners, of which Legault was once one of the most ardent — allowing the militants to pitch the province into a referendum: a referendum, he added, the PQ would surely lose. Pish-posh, Marois retorted (I’m paraphrasing). “I’m not afraid of the people. I won’t stop them from initiating a call for a referendum.”