Commentary from Quebec, but mostly in English, and in federalish.
Thirty years later they are still at it: the grievance nursers, the unity warners, the federalism renewers and the statesman solvers and the whole shambling constitutional industry, still rolling, still meeting, still funded. Still.
There are people approaching their fifties who were not old enough to vote when the Queen signed the Constitution Act 1982 into law, snipping the last legislative strings tying the Constitution of Canada to the Parliament of Britain, entrenching a homegrown process of amendment within it, adding a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and much else.
After several decades of failed attempts, this ought to have been a moment for great national celebration - as it should be now, on its 30th anniversary. But that is to reckon without this country's capacity for pointless politicization, sterile debates and perpetual indignation. And so the only people who will be marking the occasion, aside from a little gathering of Liberals in Toronto, will be the ones most convinced the country suffered some terrible calamity with patriation that they alone can put right: the constitutional industry, again.
So PKP totally avoids the central issue raised by the Supreme Court of Canada in its 1998 response to the reference on Quebec’s secession. The court ruled that there were two ways to attain independence: either by a successful revolution, or a negotiated amendment to the Constitution of Canada. A negotiated secession would require meeting four conditions: the test of democratic legitimacy (a clear answer to a clear question); the rule of law (abiding by the requirements of the Canadian constitution for its amendment); the principle of federalism (obtaining the consent of the other provinces); and recognizing the rights of minorities (in particular of the aboriginals).
The Québécois, practical people, would never knowingly engage in a revolution. So the only realistic means of secession is a negotiated amendment. But PKP, like the Parti Québécois, ignores the central issue in the real world: at what price can the PQ obtain the consent of the rest of Canada for Quebec’s secession? For example, would the PQ agree to exempt from secession the lands of the Inuit, the Cree and the Montagnais, who all voted in 1995 by 95 per cent or more against being part of Quebec’s secession? If so, Quebec would lose half its present territory. If not, the rest of Canada will consider secession illegitimate.
The problem is not how “Québec” could thrive after independence. The crucial problem is how to get there. What territory would remain under the jurisdiction of the new sovereign Quebec? The Supreme Court made clear that a seceding Quebec is as divisible as Canada is now — and in accordance with the very same principles. But PKP offers only silence on the issue.