No Democracy, Now!

Right-wing Canadian journalist Andrew Coyne expresses a view in the National Post on Québec independence that I suspect many Canadians will agree with. For readers aware of Ireland’s historic relations with the so-called United Kingdom, not to mention any contemporary Scots striving to sever their relationship with the UK , the contempt for democracy and the rights of peoples will ring all too familiar:

“The country is “sleepwalking into a perfect storm,” the political scientist Donald Savoie writes, hetero-metaphorically. Others are more laconic. “A turning point may have been reached that makes the uncoupling inevitable,” writes the National Post’s John Ivison…

Fortunately, such a scenario is impossible. Not unlikely: impossible.

Even if the PQ [Parti Québécois] were to win the election, and even if it could persuade Quebecers to overcome their visceral aversion to another referendum, and even if it were to ask a clear question and to win a clear majority, the next stop would be nowhere. Whatever conditions the Clarity Act may impose on the federal government’s participation in negotiations on secession, the real obstacle is more profound. The federal government has no legal authority to negotiate any such thing. Nor does anyone: there is no duly constituted representative of “the rest of Canada,” nor any means of duly constituting one.

Suppose there were. Even to enter into negotiations on such an extraordinary matter as the dissolution of the federation would require — legally, arguably; politically, certainly — a referendum of the rest of Canada, to mirror the one in Quebec.

The negotiations, if begun, would have to reach agreement on a truly dizzying number of issues, all of them zero-sum, with demands for input at every stage from multiple parties. Even if these could be sorted out, the result would require ratification in every province, very likely by referendum. All this, remember, while a simultaneous set of negotiations was under way on the shape of what remained.

The next referendum, if it comes, will be unlike any previous. As the feds are legally barred from accepting the result of any but a clear question, they can scarcely participate in a referendum that did not ask one. But the PQ will never ask such a question, if no other reason than because Ottawa insists it must. We are far more likely, then, to see some sort of preposterous charade along the lines of “do you agree that Quebec should assume such and such powers” — no more illegitimate than previous questions, but without the sanction of precedent. In which event the proper response of federal leaders is to ignore it. It always was.”