Marois outlines plan to gain international support for Quebec independence

QUEBEC – Pauline Marois, who could be elected premier of Quebec next week, has shared some details about her plan to achieve international recognition of an independent Quebec.

The Parti Quebecois leader and current election front-runner suggests she’ll adopt a less aggressive approach than the one used before the 1995 referendum.

In an interview on her campaign bus, Marois told The Canadian Press that she will be pleased to talk about her independence plans with foreign governments.

But she said she will not work to line up promises from them to recognize an independent Quebec immediately after a sovereignty vote.

“My objective isn’t to go to London or Brussels to say: ‘I’m here to talk to you about sovereignty,'” Marois said in the recent interview.

“But every time I go there I will talk about it. That’s the difference.”

That makes her approach less forceful than the one used by Jacques Parizeau. He has revealed that before the last vote on independence, in 1995, he had worked to ensure that France would recognize Quebec as a country if his side won the referendum.

Such recognition was a centrepiece of his overarching strategy to quickly parlay his victory in a referendum – whose ballot question was actually about a partnership with Canada – into an independent Quebec. He came close to winning the vote.

Possible confusion over the implications of a sovereignty vote are what eventually prompted the Chretien government in Ottawa to table its Clarity Act, which sets basic ground rules for future plebiscites.

The federal law stipulates that the Parliament of Canada has a right to judge whether a referendum question has been clear, and whether the vote has produced a clear result, before a province can secede.

There are other major differences between the current political climate and 1995: support for sovereignty is well off its historic level of the early 1990s and Marois, unlike Parizeau, is not promising to hold a referendum in her first mandate.

Also, recent governments of France have been more supportive of Canadian unity than they once were.

In 2009, around the time of the release of his memoirs, Parizeau told The Canadian Press it was critical to line up foreign support so that Quebec could be recognized as a country following a Yes-side victory in a referendum.

He said he started working to secure that support the moment he won the leadership of the PQ in 1988. He said he was certain France would quickly recognize an independent Quebec, and was also confident that the United States would respect the result.

But Parizeau also said that such support could not be taken for granted in the future and would need to be cultivated, through diplomatic channels.

Marois said discussing independence would be one of her priorities when travelling abroad, even if it wasn’t the prime reason for her trip.

“So I won’t go for that – but each time I go (abroad) I will always speak about it,” Marois said in the interview last Friday.