Tag: Québec

Quebec separatists stand to gain

quebecCanada is bracing for another fight with Quebec separatists.

Premier Pauline Marois today called an election for April 7 as she met Lieutenant-Governor Pierre Duchesne to ask him to dissolve the provincial legislature. Polls show Marois’ separatist Parti Quebecois may have enough support to form its first majority government in more than a decade.

“Today, I have summoned my ministers and we have taken the necessary steps to dissolve the National Assembly and call an election,” Marois said in televised remarks in Quebec City. “It’s now up to you, Quebeckers, to decide.”

A majority would set the stage in the French-speaking province for a possible referendum on secession from the rest of Canada, roiling credit markets and threatening to push the Canadian dollar lower.

“If they get a majority, I fully expect they will hold a referendum during their next mandate,” said Harold Chorney, a political science professor at Concordia University in Montreal. “Marois isn’t going to give up sovereignty.”

A majority victory for the Parti Quebecois would mark the third time since the mid-1970s the party has taken sole control of the province’s legislature, propelling Quebec into another confrontation with the rest of Canada that a former premier once likened to a never-ending visit to the dentist.

Quebec has held two plebiscites on splitting from Canada — in 1980 and 1995 — under previous Parti Quebecois majority governments. The party will hold a third vote if a victory is in sight, Jean-François Lisée, Quebec’s international relations minister, told ICI Radio-Canada television March 1. The separatists came within 0.6 of a percentage point of gaining majority support in the 1995 referendum, but support for the cause has been stalled in the 30 percent range in recent years.

One advantage the separatists may seek to exploit is the federal Conservatives’ lack of representation and low support in the province, where the party holds five of 75 districts. The Conservatives are in fourth place in support in Quebec, polling about 9.4 percent support in the province, according to a four- week rolling survey by Nanos Research of 208 Quebeckers that ended Feb. 15.

It’s a vulnerability for Harper that the opposition Liberal and New Democratic Party, both led by Quebeckers, will try to exploit ahead of federal elections in 2015.

Source: BNN

PRAAG congratulates Parti Québecois

PRAAG has congratulated the Parti Québecois on its excellent electoral score during provincial elections in Canada. Reacting on Twitter, the leader of PRAAG, Dr. Dan Roodt, said: “I support Québecois separatism, could bolster case for an Afrikaner volkstaat. Félicitations au Parti Québecois!”

The Afrikaner action group has often emphasised the similarities between national minorities surrounded by larger nations or groups such as the Québecois, the Flemish, the Catalans and the Afrikaners.

Roodt said: “We look upon the victory of Madame Pauline Marois as not only good for Québecois but for the cause of self-determination world-wide. Afrikaners, like Québecois, live surrounded by hundreds of millions of British Commonwealth subjects who impose English upon us and limit our economic and cultural freedom through racist and chauvinist legislation. That is not to say that we wish to compare South Africa’s totalitarian stance on multilingualism with the more enlightened Canadian version, but a small nation and a small culture can only be free in an own state.”

Dr. Roodt also called upon the Afrikaner separatist party, the Freedom Front Plus, “to learn from the successes of the Parti Québecois and its decisive defeat of liberalism, so as to hasten the Afrikaner’s liberation from the chains of the English Commonwealth state of 1910. We can also defeat liberalism and Anglicism like the Parti Québecois has done.”

Both Québecois and Afrikaners have a long history of language struggle and of being the objects of Anglo-Saxon scorn. Roodt also called for “greater cooperation between Québecois, Afrikaners, Flemish and Catalans who share similar experiences with majoritarian cultural oppression”. He was particularly touched by one Twitter message from Québec, stating in capital letters, “ON VEUT UN PAYS!”, we want a country!

“Good heavens, we want a country too! On veut un pays,” he concluded.

The Pro-Afrikaans Action Group (PRAAG) is an NGO in South Africa. Founded in February 2000, PRAAG is a movement of Afrikaner intellectuals, professionals, farmers, students and others campaigning for the rights of Afrikaners and white Africans generally and for equality with blacks as regards property ownership, language, access to education, the right to trade, and so on.