but it is not prepared to accept sovereignty 

In light of recent developments in the Canadian and Quebec political landscapes, in particular the outcome of the November 30, 1998, election, the Bloc Québécois has to update its blueprint for sovereignty and contribute in a useful way to the process of determining Quebec’s political future and efforts to defend Quebec’s economic, social and cultural interests. Rodrigue Biron and Gérard Latulippe have called on the BQ to take part in the creation of a United Alternative, but we feel it is inappropriate for the Bloc to take what would amount to a giant step backward in terms of opportunities for sovereigntists to promote their political agenda on the federal stage.

The people of Quebec will be that much more open to the sovereigntist option if the Bloc Québécois focuses its attention first and foremost on modernizing its blueprint for a new country. In this context, the Bloc Québécois has to devote its energy to linking sovereignty with the phenomenon of globalization and explaining the factors that still make statehood a powerful advantage within the international community. The Bloc Québécois also has to update its proposal for partnership and come up alternatives to the economic and political partnership that was offered in 1995. It can lay before its more militant members the prospect of a closer union or a less integrated association with Canada or even other states or communities of states. The Bloc Québécois has to consider not only the sovereignty of Quebec, but also the sovereignty of its people within the state of Quebec, and then foster a real debate over democracy and the different ways democracy can be expressed in a sovereign Quebec.

The Bloc Québécois, like its other partners in the sovereignty movement, is not committed, unlike the Reform Party and proponents of the United Alternative, to ousting the Liberal Party of Canada from power in Ottawa. Nor is it up to the Bloc Québécois to help other existing federal parties come to power, the parties that in March 1998 unanimously supported Jean Chrétien’s Liberal Party in backing Jean Charest as the Quebec Liberal leader. The Bloc Québécois has twice proven that it can defeat all the federalist parties in Quebec, the Liberal Party foremost among them, and that Quebeckers prefer to have the BQ defend its interests in Ottawa. The Bloc will continue to defend Quebec’s interests and demand that the powers assigned to Quebec by the Constitution of Canada are respected. It will also work, as it did on the issues of manpower and labour training and language-based school boards, to consolidate those powers, something only a sovereigntist government in Quebec City has managed to do in the past decade.

But the primary objective of the Bloc Québécois must continue to be to promote Quebec sovereignty. That objective is not incompatible with the need to carry on a constructive dialogue with Canadians of all political stripes and offer them a mutually beneficial partnership. This is one of the components of the plan for the future of Quebec to which the Bloc Québécois has made a significant contribution and on which the Bloc can continue to work in a decisive manner because of its place on the political stage. But certainly not at the expense of the promotion of sovereignty, an idea that the Reform Party and proponents of the United Alternative have never wanted to include in their discussions, apart from the fact that they refuse to recognize the very existence of a Quebec people.

The United Alternative may be prepared to welcome sovereigntists into the fold, but it is not prepared to accept sovereignty. It would be surprising if they did. The thought of Preston Manning promoting sovereignty in western Canada during a future election campaign under the banner of the United Alternative is matched only by the thought of the outcome. The results would be worse than the last "beau risque". The sovereigntists have already taken the chance of working with other federalist parties in the hope of seeing Quebec take its rightful place within the Canadian federation. The lessons learned from the "beau risque" seem to be completely lost on those who advocate sovereigntist participation in the United Alternative. One of those lessons, not the least among them, gave rise to the Bloc Québécois, a party which added a new weapon to the strategic and political arsenal of Quebec sovereigntists and which, despite what its detractors might say, has not lost any of its relevance or legitimacy.

Taking the federalist gamble again with the Reform Party or the United Alternative would be turning a blind eye to the experience the BQ has gained on the federal scene over the past eight years, which tends to indicate a real will to centralize the federal government’s powers. In that sense, careful reading of the Reform Party’s plan for a New Canada, which is the main inspiration for proponents of the United Alternative, shows that the Reform Party’s proposals would do nothing to stop the centralization process. The Reform Party’s position on issues like the social union is not entirely without ambiguity, like its position on sectoral constitutional issues over which the Bloc Québécois has closed ranks with the Quebec government to get what no federalist Quebec government managed to get before.

With the human and materiel resources available to it, and with the strong support it continues to get from the public, as witnessed by the outcome of the by-election in Sherbrooke and the latest opinion polls, the Bloc Québécois can develop proposals to modernize the blueprint for sovereignty. It can thus contribute to the debate the entire sovereigntist movement must undertake in 1999. The best alliance for the Bloc Québécois is still the alliance which it has always had with the Parti Québécois and in which the Partenaires pour la souveraineté, and through them civil society as a whole, must be involved in a lasting way. The United Alternative will never accept sovereignty. This means that an alliance with the proponents of the United Alternative will not give the sovereigntists new tools that will help them attain their legitimate main goal, which is political sovereignty for Quebec.