"It's impossible to separate Quebec from Canada"

Another interesting read....

Young and new Quebecers seen as key to growth of sovereignty movement
QUEBEC (CP) - Pablo Santos is a committed Parti Quebecois activist but he still feels proud to be Canadian when he travels.

"It's impossible to separate Quebec from Canada," Santos said in a recent interview. "There is no way you can just pick up scissors and cut along the border."

Twenty-five years after Quebecers rejected sovereignty in the first referendum on May 20, 1980, nationalists like Santos remain very ambiguous about just how independent Quebec should become.

With practical trappings like a Canadian passport and an emotional connection to Canada, Santos sees no contradiction in the dual allegiance he shares with many Quebecers.

Many English-speaking Canadians are too quick to judge the sovereignty movement as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition, he said ahead of Friday's anniversary.

"One of the misconceptions of my Anglo friends is that sovereigntists hate Canada, that they are anti-Canadian," said Santos.

"It's much more nuanced than that. It's not a black-or-white thing."

Nearly 30 years after Pierre Elliott Trudeau famously declared "separatism is dead in Quebec," that is far from being the case.

Recent polls suggested support for sovereignty had cracked the 50 per cent mark for the first time since the 1990s. But at the same time, two-thirds of Quebecers indicated they were proud to be Canadian and a majority still wanted the province to remain part of Canada.

PQ Leader Bernard Landry says the children of Bill 101, the landmark language legislation from 1977 that put French at the forefront of education for most Quebecers, are the key to the future of sovereignty.

The law imposed French education on most new immigrants who settle in Quebec, making them far more likely to identify with the sovereignty movement, he said.

New arrivals and other Quebecers under 40 "incarnate those who will manage a sovereign Quebec because they were born Quebecers," Landry, 68, said in a recent interview.

"It was not my case. I was born Canadian, then French-Canadian. It was an incredible deeply rooted confusion. We finally had to decide we were all Quebecers. For my children and their generation, this is already done. The confusion is over."

Landry's dream would be to win the next election, likely in 2007 or 2008, hold and win a referendum within a few years and then hand off the reigns to the next generation.

"That's why I'm no danger to remain encrusted in that job," said Landry, who is likely to survive a leadership confidence vote next month.

"Time will take its effect."

Even with new generations, ambiguity remains a major hurdle for independence. Santos considers himself a Quebec sovereigntist but not a separatist, a key distinction when one considers the referendum question in 1980 proposed an economic association with Canada and the 1995 question suggested a "formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership."

If there is another referendum, the exact wording of the question will be crucial. One new wrinkle is the federal Clarity Act, which says any referendum question must be clear and free of ambiguity.

Canada could refuse to negotiate with Quebec separatists if Parliament concludes a referendum question is unclear.

Political scientist Jean Crete says support for sovereignty has grown on average by just under half a percentage point every year since 1980, when the No side won with about 60 per cent of the vote.

Traditional federalists born before the Second World War are dying off. The baby boom children of the Quiet Revolution tend to keep their sovereigntist convictions as they age while today's young adults are mostly in the independence camp, he said.

But independence is far from inevitable, according to Crete, a professor at Laval University in Quebec City.

The contradiction in Quebec society, where many people support sovereignty but still want to remain in Canada, will make outright independence difficult to achieve.

"It won't necessarily be sovereignty, but there will always be more and more pressure to accommodate this minority," Crete said.

"Canadians may long for the good old days before the Quiet Revolution when few francophones were educated and were easier to handle," he said with a chuckle.

The son of an Italian immigrant and a Latin American mother, Santos is a 39-year-old pioneer in the sovereignty movement. He learned to speak English before French and was one of a few sovereignty activists in the 1990s who was not a francophone and did not have roots in Quebec.

"There were people in the party who would say, 'What are you doing here?' I was a bit of a rare bird," Santos said.

Santos was convinced by the failure of constitutional talks through the early 1990s that Quebec "would be better off going alone."

An increasing numbers of allophones - people whose mother tongue is neither French nor English - appear to have quietly moved in small numbers to the sovereigntist camp.

A recent Leger Marketing poll suggested 31 per cent of allophones supported sovereignty, a big jump from the traditional level around 20 per cent.

While the polling firm mused that recent sponsorship scandal revelations from the Gomery inquiry may have caused a blip in the opinion surveys, Santos said he is seeing a change on the ground.

While many Italian-Quebecers still spit at sovereigntist advertising Santos hands out while helping candidates, Latin Americans and Africans are increasingly sympathetic, he said.

"It's almost impossible to break through with older immigrant groups like the Italians, the Greeks, the Portuguese," said Santos, who ran a PQ commission charged with increasing the presence of ethnic communities in the party.

"New groups are more open to it. Older Haitians would have fear in their eyes when you bring up the subject. Now, younger Haitians just roll their eyes at the thought of politics, like any young Quebecer," Santos said with a laugh.