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As the Parti Québécois tries to ramp up support for sovereignty, it’s becoming increasingly clear that party leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon has opted for fear and bitterness as motivational engines.

Last weekend, during the PQ’s national council, Plamondon delivered a speech that accused Canada of deliberately seeking “to weaken” and “even erase Quebec,” suggesting it “only knows how to crush those who refuse to assimilate.” He then reiterated his intent to hold a “last-chance referendum” if elected.

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Doubling down on his comments, PSPP later invoked francophones being deported, executed and denied the right to a French education in Canada — “a constant during all its history.”

“All its history?”

Yes, the British attempted to assimilate francophones, and Acadians were deported. Members of the Patriotes rebellion (which counted English speakers among them) were executed. Francophones were denied the right to French education. It’s undeniably thanks to the community’s resiliency and resistance that it persevered and survived.

But it’s also thanks to the legal protections granted after the Quebec Act of 1774, which recognized the French language, French civil law and the Christian religion in Quebec. Since 1867, and despite certain provinces trampling on French language minority rights, there has been no concerted or substantive effort by Canada to “erase” Quebec or French Canadians.

The Quebec Liberals have accused St-Pierre Plamondon of fearmongering, while Québec solidaire’s Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois referred to his discourse as marked by “resentment, fear and catastrophism.”

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With support for sovereignty barely budging at around 35 per cent, and survey numbers showing 69 per cent of Quebecers believe Canada is “a country I’m proud to live in,” it’s probably safe to say most Quebecers are less concerned about the possibility of a Yes win than about the detrimental effect this type of alarmist rhetoric can have, again, on Quebec’s social and political climate.

And while this rhetoric might appeal to PQ hardliners, I doubt it appeals to most Quebecers — certainly not the younger demographic.

Instead of standing on the supposed socioeconomic benefits of Quebec independence, PSPP is choosing the populist playbook of fear, nursing old grudges and amplifying the stale rhetoric of “melancholy nationalism” — a school of thought described in Jocelyn Maclure’s book, Quebec Identity, which perceives Quebecers as a fragile and fatigued colonized nation, condemned to economic and political subordination.

The problem with that sort of rhetoric is that, for far too many Quebecers today, that way of seeing Quebec and its relationship to Canada is outdated and no longer relevant.

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Yes, Quebec continues to duke it out with the federal government on various jurisdictional matters, but that’s also part of the constant confederal push-and-pull taking place across the country.

Several Canadian prime ministers have hailed from Quebec. In the Bloc Québécois, we have a political party in Ottawa that exists solely to defend the interests of Quebec federally. Quebec may continue to resist federal centralization (just like every other province), and the relationship between Canada and Quebec may remain contentious on some issues, but to claim with any seriousness that Canada in 2024 is actively trying to erase Quebec is simply dead wrong.

Quebec has more immigration powers than any other province because French is willingly prioritized. The Official Languages Act established institutional bilingualism across the country. The Canadian government is investing more than $4.1 billion over the next five years in its official-languages plan, primarily to reverse any decline of French and promote its vitality, recognizing that the “situation of French is unique.” The Trudeau administration recently announced measures to increase francophone immigration to help restore the demographic weight of the francophone community in Canada.

Does the federal government always get it right when it comes to dealing with Quebec? Of course not. But if Ottawa’s goal is to “weaken” or “erase” Quebec and the French language in Canada, it’s doing a spectacularly bad job of it.

Toula Drimonis is a Montreal journalist and the author of We, the Others: Allophones, Immigrants, and Belonging in Canada. She can be reached on X @toulastake

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