The Liberal Party ran a minority government in Ottawa until November 28 when it was defeated in a no-confidence vote. Martin is trying to shore up slipping Liberal Party support in Quebec by painting the vote as a choice between Canadian federalism and Quebec sovereignty. “It is clear that separatists are there to elect members to achieve sovereignty,” he warned. “Quebeckers have a choice between a party devoted to destroying Canada and us.” “Quebeckers,” instead of “Quebecois,” is the word used by the Canadian rulers to deny the existence of a Quebecois nation.

The Bloc Quebecois is currently holding 54 of Quebec’s 75 seats in federal parliament. In the election campaign, it is backed by the Parti Quebecois, a pro-sovereignty party that has good prospects of defeating Quebec’s Liberal government in the next provincial election. If that happens, PQ leader André Boisclair has said he will call another referendum on Quebec sovereignty.

The most recent opinion polls give the Bloc Quebecois 54 percent of the decided voters in Quebec compared to 27 percent for the Liberals. Neither the Conservative Party nor the New Democratic Party (NDP), a labor party based on the unions outside Quebec, has significant support within Quebec.

An editorial in the December 10 Globe and Mail, Canada’s main national English-language daily, slammed Martin’s stance as “short-sighted, foolhardy and even dangerous.” The Liberals “have set a rhetorical fire,” said the Globe, “that may, after the election, be hard to contain. Inviting Mr. Duceppe to claim he has won a ‘referendum’ is worse than stupid.” Gilles Duceppe is the leader of the Bloc Quebecois.

In the meantime, NDP leader Jack Layton announced his support for the 2000 Clarity Act, a reversal from the party’s stance last year. The act gives Ottawa the authority to decide on whether the ballot question in any future referendum on independence for Quebec meets Ottawa’s specifications and on the percentage required for sovereignty to pass. The act was adopted after the 1995 referendum, which the pro-sovereignty side lost by only a few percentage points.

At the start of the election campaign Duceppe and Boisclair said they opposed the Clarity Act and called for Quebec to ignore it. The act is widely seen by Quebecois as a denial of their right to self-rule.

During the nationally televised leaders’ debate on December 16, Prime Minister Martin, looking directly at the Bloc Quebecois leader, stated, “You are not going to take my country away from me with some trick, with some ambiguous question [in a future Quebec sovereignty referendum]. You’re not going to win Mr. Duceppe, let me tell you that.”

“The Communist League campaign calls for repeal of the Clarity Act,” Michel Prairie told a meeting to launch the League’s campaign December 4. Prairie is the CL candidate in the Toronto-Centre riding (electoral district) for the House of Commons, Canada’s parliament. The CL is also running Beverly Bernardo in Parkdale-High Park and John Steele in Eglinton-Lawrence, both ridings in Toronto.

“The Quebecois nation was forged during 150 years of struggle against national oppression,” Prairie said. “The Clarity Act violates Quebec’s right to national self-determination.” He pointed out that the CL campaign platform says: “Working people across Canada should support Quebec independence as part of forging unity in the fight for a workers and farmers government in Ottawa.”  
 
 
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