Are Quebeckers Being Brainwashed?- Part Two

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please. - Mark Twain.

I was going to publish this post a bit later in the week, but in respect to a request from JASON, a valued and prolific commentor, I decided to move it up to today....so here goes..

One of the saddest aspects of the sovereignty debate is that professional advocates for an independent Quebec have resorted to the most egregious massaging and distortion of facts, in an effort designed to change the perception that Quebec has a pretty good deal in Canada.

These militants have been fighting an uphill battle ever since the implementation of Bill 101. Cry as they will, the language law has been instrumental in removing most of the irritants and complaints francophone Quebeckers had about maintaining a French society in Quebec. Ironically, it is this success that in large part has made redundant the need for independence.
Secondly, the billions and billions of dollars in transfer payments from the rest of Canada to Quebec has put paid to the sovereignist assertion that Quebec gets a raw economic deal from Canada.

So selling sovereignty is a lot harder than it was in the past and thus separatists have had to reach deep into their bag of arguments to pull out a variety of cockamamie ideas that really don't hold much water upon close dissection.
But because these arguments are repeated and repeated ad nauseum, with nary a dissenting voice in the media, they do tend to take root to a certain extent.

And so, everyday Quebeckers are fed the same hackneyed diet of complaints and grievances that really aren't true at all.
Wash, rinse, repeat, is the battle plan of the modern independence movement.
In other words- Lie, distort, repeat......Lie, distort, repeat.....
Here are some of the main talking points offered by sovereignists.

• The 1995 referendum was stolen
• Montreal is being anglicized
• French is in danger of disappearing
• Anglophone institutions are over-funded
• Cegep attendance by francophone and allophone students is dangerous
• There's a plot to eliminate French in the rest of Canada
• 50% of the budget for Super hospitals is being spent on 8% of the Anglophone population.
• Learning English will turn everyone into Anglophones
• The strong Canadian dollar caused by Alberta's oil destroyed Quebec's manufacturing base.
• Ottawa owes Quebec billions...... blah.....blah... blah

Let's start by debunking the notion that the 1995 referendum was stolen.
This myth is so popularly ingrained that it is taken as a historical fact in Quebec.
But looking at the question dispassionately tells a different story.

Proponents of the myth contend that the federal government interfered on the NO side by pumping money surreptitiously to murky unofficial organizations that supported the NO side in contravention of the referendum law, which set a strict spending limit on both the YES and NO camps. They also contend that Ottawa fast tracked the processing of immigrant applications for citizenship so that these newly-minted Canadians could vote massively NO in the referendum. Contentions were also made that the immigration level was greatly increased in the two year run up to the referendum.

On the other side of the coin, there is evidence that the PQ government also spent money promoting sovereignty covertly, through the various ministries. Another serious allegation exists that says that efforts were made in English districts to intimidate voters and reject NO ballots during the voting process of the referendum.

Each side has put a lot of weight on these arguments, so let's examine all aspects equally.

The allegation that general immigration levels were increased in the years before the referendum, specifically to affect the referendum outcome is really too far-fetched to consider. Could federal officials really believe that in two years hence the addition of a couple of thousand immigrants would be the turning point in a referendum that as of yet hadn't been called?  I'm afraid that those in the immigration department, like all federal employees, are not that creative and foresighted.

Now, the question of the immigrants being fast tracked.

Evidence is irrefutable that many immigrants were fast-tracked by immigration Canada, but in its defence, the department says that this is always the case before a major election.  Maybe, maybe not, but the highest estimate of these 'fast-tracked immigrants offered by the sovereignist side is 14,000.
Some of these fast-tracked citizens were minor family members, not of a voting age and so even the darkest sovereignist estimate would lead to no more than 10,000 extra votes for the NO side.

Since the NO side won by over 52,000 votes, this alleged  'cheating' wasn't as crucial as is made out by sovereignist forces, even if we accept it as true.

On the countervailing side, it's also clear that there was a concerted effort, backed by the PQ cabinet (according to Richard Le Hir) to send shock troops to certain English polling stations to intimidate anglo voters and also to reject NO ballots on flimsy technical excuses.
A review of the voting data shows that across Quebec, each riding had somewhere between 400 and a 1,000 rejected ballots per riding. These ballots were rejected because they were spoiled or didn't follow the basic rules.
But three ridings stuck out like a sore thumb with the Chomedy riding having an astonishing 5,500 ballots rejected with an average of 1 out of every 9 ballots tossed out. Two other 'English' ridings showing a smaller, yet still abnormally high rejection rate.  Citation

All told, it's fair to say that about 10,000 NO votes were reject fraudulently, again not as big a deal as the NO side would have us believe, but enough to counteract the YES votes of the fast tracked immigrants.

Both these issues cancel each other out rather neatly and so the remaining issue of the federal government 'interference' remains the only legitimate bone of contention. 

There isn't any doubt that the federal government interfered on behalf of the NO side by means of secret funding of OPTION CANADA and other organizations fighting on the NO side.
Sovereignists claim that this interference made the difference between winning and losing.

I agree.

The referendum law conceived by the PQ government banned spending by third parties, anybody outside the official YES and NO camps. Both sides were given an equal spending limit and nobody outside Quebec could participate.

This seemed eminently fair if you're a sovereignist, but not if you are the federal government which  also has a stake in the outcome.

In fact no provincial law can restrict the federal government from making their views known to the people.
Every constitutional lawyer knew from the outset that the referendum law was flawed, but the PQ banked on the fact that Ottawa wouldn't interfere officially and they were right.

Looking at the polling data at the beginning of the referendum it seemed to Ottawa that the NO side was on track for another easy win. A tragically flawed decision was made not to contest the referendum law based on the notion of leaving well enough alone.

We all know how that turned out.

When Lucien Bouchard took over a faltering campaign and re-ignited the YES side, Ottawa panicked and resorted to a secret campaign of under the table financing of NO side forces, including organizing the massive Unity Rally in Montreal, where many Ontarians were bussed in to bolster the numbers. 

I've no doubt that this final spending push made enough of a difference to tip the NO side over the top.

I can sympathize with sovereignists who look on the exercise as a deceitful betrayal, but alas, it wasn't illegal.

In the aftermath of the referendum, when this hidden campaign become public knowledge, the chief electoral officer laid charges against several people for violating the referendum law.

Alas those charges were stayed when a court challenge of the referendum law, led by my good friend Robert Libman, was successful. Much to the chagrin of separatists, all charges had to be dropped.

"In 1997 Libman won a unanimous Supreme Court Judgement in "Libman v. Quebec (Attorney General)" in which certain sections of the Quebec Referendum Law concerning restrictions on third party spending were struck down. The charges against federalist groups who participated in the large Pro-Canada Rally during the 1995 referendum campaign were cancelled as a result of this decision." Wikipedia

Like Bill 101, it was clear that the referendum law could never withstand a court challenge.
That hasn't stopped sovereignists from calling the court reversal another Anglo betrayal. But as long as Quebec remains part of Canada, it is forced to follow Canadian law, a fact that continues to rub sovereignists the wrong way.

That being said,  there's little doubt that the federal government acted dishonourably by doing something secretly that they could have done out in the open.

On the other hand, the PQ government wrote a referendum law it knew to be indefensible in the hope that a YES vote victory would make any court challenge redundant.
In addition, the convoluted 40 plus word referendum question was clearly meant to obscure the true implications of a YES vote.

"Do you agree that Québec should become sovereign after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership within the scope of the bill respecting the future of Québec and of the agreement signed on June 12, 1995?"

 In a meeting with Ottawa-based foreign ambassadors, Jacques Parizeau told them that Quebecers, in the event of a Yes vote in a sovereignty referendum, would be trapped like "lobsters thrown into boiling water!"  Link{FR}

Did the Quebec government do anything illegal? No, but certainly nothing to be proud of.

And so in conclusion, both sides acted dishonestly, but not illegally.

The real dishonesty is not that separatists overestimate the number of fast-tracked NO voters or underestimate the amount of NO spoiled ballots, it is that they continue to perpetrate the myth that Ottawa illegally interfered in the referendum and somehow 'stole' the result.

And so the myth lives on.