Should Quebec Have its Freedom?

Essay by Anonymous UserCollege, UndergraduateC-, November 1996

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persuasion paper on why Quebec should be free -

At the end of October in 1995 Canada came close to finally breaking

up. Quebecker's took a vote on the 30th on whether or not their province

should declare itself an independent nation. Most people and the media

believe that the separatists would loose. The people drew these beliefs from a

similar election help in 1980. Although in this recent poll, these scores were

too close to call. The separatists were defeated by a one percent loss.

The reason this past election was so close is due mainly to the change

of leadership on the separatist side. During the previous year before the

election , the YES campaign had been led by Quebec's premier Jacques

Parizeau. Parizeau is an economics professor, and had led a ponderous

campaign, since his Parti Quebecois (PQ) won provincial power 13 months

earlier. The No side, led by provincial Liberal's leader, Daniel Johnson, was

winning , with warnings of a slump and heavy job losses if Quebec broke

away.

On October 9th, Mr. Parizeau, realizing that his campaign was failing,

handed over leadership of the separatists cause to Lucian Bouchard.

Bouchard was head of the Bloc Quebecois (BQ), a distinct, federal level

party which swept[t the polls in Quebec in the 1993 federal elections, and

whose 53 members in the Ottawa parliament are second in number only to the

ruling liberals of Jean Chretien.

Already in June, Parizeau had retreated from his outright separatist

stance by agreeing with Bouchard, and with Mario Dumont, leader of a small

nationalist party, to couple a declaration of sovereignty with an offer to

negotiate with residual Canada a form of political and economic partnership,

similarly modeled on the European Union. By naming Bouchard the chief

negotiator of such a partnership...