It's all in the demographics of Quebec, Western Canada and Hispanic Americans.

Angus Reid
Vancouver Sun

Quebec politics remind me of one of those horror movies where, at the end of the flick, just when everyone's breathing a sigh of relief that the monster is dead, there's a little movement in a pile of ashes to prepare the viewer for yet another sequel.

The monster in Quebec is separation and it appears to have an inexhaustible capacity to regenerate. At least that's the sense one gets from listening to the Francophone intelligentsia following the impressive victory of Jean Charest's Liberals in the Apr. 14 Quebec election.

Shortly after the polls closed, political scientist François-Pierre Gingras was warning of trouble for Charest if he doesn't show results in dealing with Ottawa.

"He has limited time to bring home results because history has shown support for sovereignty increases when the Parti Québécois (PQ) is in opposition."

And two days after the election, Andre Pratte, chief editorialist at La Presse, reflected that "after two lost referendums, and even though the Québécois are incredibly tired of debating this issue, 40 per cent still say they would vote Yes if asked again on sovereignty."

There's an entire industry that depends on continued instability between Quebec and Canada. Its pundits and prophets are predicting big trouble ahead—even after an election in which over two-thirds of Quebec voters repudiated the PQ and its separatist agenda.

Are these people to be believed? I don't think so.

That's because of three demographic trends—one in Quebec, one in Canada and one in the United States—each of which can seriously undermine the separatist cause. Taken together, they may put a stake in the heart of separatism once and for all.

The first of these is a substantial depletion of the number of potential separatist voters. According to Statistics Canada, the population of Quebec will experience little growth through the remainder of this decade (the result of the lowest fertility rate in the developed world.) But the number of Quebecers over 60 will mushroom to about 1.7 million—almost 30 per cent of Quebec's adult population. Older voters tend to be risk averse, bad news for the separatists.

There's another million or so non-Francophones who are also decidedly federalist in their orientation. The number of these voters will probably grow during the Charest years, bringing the combination of "Old, English and Ethnic" voters close to 50 per cent of the adult population by the end of the decade.

By then the separatists will need the support of more than 80 per cent of Francophones under 60 to have any chance of winning a referendum.

The second trend is that, unlike Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia will continue to boom, creating a situation by the end of the decade in which Quebec is moved into third place in the Canadian regional rankings. This is good news for Charest's declared interest in devolving more power from the federal government but bad news for separatist ideologues interested in special treatment for Quebec.

The "West" has had a considerably larger population than Quebec for almost a decade. But the four provinces west of the Ontario border don't really share a common identity.

Indeed, the designation "Western Canada" was invented by CBC commentators and federal officials in places like Toronto and Ottawa to describe "you people out there"—it is not generally used by the people living "out here" to describe themselves. Manitoba has as much in common with B.C. as Nebraska has with California.

But Alberta and B.C. are another matter. We share a common mountain range and a similar annoyance with a federal system stacked against us and an economic system that favours Ontario and Quebec. Together, we represent the "Deep West"—a real region with a growth rate that will produce a population of about eight million by 2011; about half a million more than Quebec.

The rise of the Deep West is bad news for the sovereigntists in Quebec because it will work towards redefining federalism and thereby support the Charest agenda. To understand the mood in the Deep West, take whatever measure of antipathy to Ottawa you find in Quebec and multiply it by two.

But the Deep West would rather use its muscle to bring about change than to separate. And the brinkmanship politics that Quebec sovereigntists have practiced for so long with Ontario and the Atlantic provinces have no traction out here.

The level of economic interdependence between the Deep West and Quebec is so minimal that our leaders can call the Quebec separatists' bluff without the same risk facing other provinces to the east.

Finally, the distinctiveness of the Deep West serves to silence those sovereigntists who would have their neighbours believe that there are two parts to this nation—Quebec and the "Rest of Canada." Quebec is about to shift into third place and the RoC concept into the dustbin of history.

The third demographic trend working against the Quebec separatist movement is happening south of the border—the explosion of America's Hispanic population. Already larger than America's black population, the U.S. Hispanic population will be 45 million by 2010—larger than that of Argentina and almost 15 per cent of the total U.S. population.

This trend, though clearly a positive development in the cause of linguistic diversity, spells bad news to Quebec separatists who have traditionally looked to the U.S. as a place that will welcome them with open arms in the post-Canada era.

Looking to the future, I suspect there'll be considerably more open hostility from the U.S. towards the prospect of a separate Quebec. With states like California, Texas and Florida increasingly dominated by Hispanic voters, the last thing the American establishment wants is the precedent of a linguistically-based separatist movement in North America.

But the greater impact of the Hispanic ascendancy in America will be that it demonstrates that cultures and languages survive and thrive, not through state control and legislation, but through high birth rates, an exuberant popular culture and a huge pool of ready immigrants who speak the language. The failure of the French language on all three fronts will inevitably doom the separatist movement in Quebec, which will look doubly impoverished when compared to the Spanish success in the U.S. and across the Americas.

So is the separatist movement in Quebec dead? Not yet—but stay tuned as a changing demography in Quebec, Canada and the U.S. shrinks its support base, national power and continental legitimacy.

There may be no more sequels.

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