Politics: Québec: New pressure on Québec separatists to honour internat standard on referenda need for 55% majority
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Much attention has been paid in Québec to the fact that the Parliament of Montenegro recently voted in favour of holding a referendum on Montenegro's secession from Serbia in which the secessionnists will need 55 percent, and not 50 percent + 1, of the vote in order to win the referendum. This requirement for a clear majority flows from the demands of the unionist opposition in Montenegro and from the recommendations made by the European Union and by an opinion of the European Commission for Democracy through Law, better known under the name of the Venice Commission.
The importance of this turn of events cannot be minimized and it holds many important lessons. In its new program, the Parti Québécois says that it will hold another referendum on Québec sovereignty which will be decided by "the internationally recognized benchmark of 50 percent plus one of the votes [expressed]". But now two international organizations, with respectively 25 and 48 European member countries, have explicity recognized 55 percent as a valid threshold in such referendums. According to the ,Venice Commission, not only is such a requirement for a qualified majority consistent with international standards, but it also "help[s] to ensure greater legitimacy for the outcome." According to a May 2005 Léger Marketing poll, a majority of Quebecers agree: 52 percent believe that 50 percent + 1 is not enough support to proclaim the independence of Québec whereas 46 percent believe it is.
The Venice Commission cites various examples of requirements for qualified majorities in European referendums. But there are also Canadian precedents. In 1898, Wilfrid Laurier's Liberal government refused to introduce alcohol prohibition despite the fact that the prohibitionists had won 51.3 percent of the votes expressed in a referendum. British Columbia's 2005 referendum on electoral reform required a qualified majority of 60 percent of the votes expressed, including simple majorities in 60 percent of electoral districts, in order to change British Columbia's electoral system. The YES side won 57 percent and Gordon Campbell's Liberal government refused to implement electoral reform. The British Columbian government required a qualified majority in this referendum, as opposed to simple majorities in previous referendums, because it thought that a change in the electoral system was too important a change to be approved by a simple majority. The Venice Commission agrees with the principle that more important changes need more important majorities, and points out that the fact that "the proposed [Montenegrin] referendum is one dealing with the crucial issue of the independence of the country" argues in favour of a qualified majority.
The Venice Commission also said that "any question submitted to the electorate must be clear (not obscure or ambiguous) [and] it must not be misleading". It deemed that the question of the Montenegrin referendum met these standards of clarity: "Do you want the Republic of Montenegro to be an independent state with full international and legal personality?" On the other hand, the question of the 1995 Québec referendum would probably not have met these standards of clarity and Le Devoir columnist Michel David points out that "with a question as clear as that asked in Montenegro, the probability of a YES victory [in Québec] would be quite small, no matter the required majority".
These two issues of the required majority and of the clarity of the question are the same ones that are tackled in the Clarity Act, and have thus been the subject of most attention in Québec. Nevertheless, there are other relevant elements in the Montenegrin referendum. The first one is that the Montenegrin Parliament has unanimously agreed to the referendum process. In contrast, the Québec 1980 and 1995 referendums were called by the Government through executive decrees without any agreement with the Opposition. In both cases, Québec's National Assembly voted only on the wording of the question and it was adopted by the Parti Québécois majority in the Assembly over the opposition of the Liberal minority. On September 20th 1995, the Parizeau government rejected a Liberal amendment that would have clarified the 1995 referendum question by adding the word "country" after the word "sovereign". The Venice Commission held that such a cavalier treatment of the concerns of the Opposition is not acceptable. It strongly recommends that "serious negotiations should take place between the majority and opposition within Montenegro in order to achieve a consensus on matters of principle concerning the conduct and implementation of the proposed referendum" and that such matters include both the required majority and the wording of the referendum question. Indeed, the 55 percent threshold is the main thing that came out of the negotiations between the government and opposition in Montenegro.
Thus, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said the "sine qua non condition" for France's and the European Union's acceptance of the Montenegrin referendum was that it be accepted by the Montenegrin opposition, which then asked for a 55 percent threshold. This is why Douste-Blazy says that this threshold has not been introduced by the European Union, but has rather come out from an internal political process in Montenegro. This is also why Douste-Blazy could not say which threshold should be used in any future Québec referendum, because this threshold will come out from an agreement among all parties to the referendum in Canada. But what is striking is that the French Foreign Minister declined to endorse the 50 percent + 1 threshold for a Québec referendum despite the fact that all three Québec political parties agree with such a threshold. The reason is that at least another party must agree to the referendum process: the federal government. In the Montenegrin case, the agreement of the Serb government is automatic, because the right to secession was expressly enshrined in the Serbia-Montenegro agreement. In contrast, the Canadian constitution is silent on secession and the Supreme Court of Canada, in its Secession Reference, held that a Canadian province had no right to secession under Canadian law and that any secession would have to be effected through amendments to the Canadian constitution with the agreement of the federal government and of the other provinces. The Supreme Court also said that the federal government and the other provinces would have to negotiate in the event of "a clear majority vote in Quebec on a clear question in favour of secession", but it left to political actors the task of determining what constitutes "a clear majority on a clear question", which led to the Clarity Act. Douste-Blazy, by declaring that "this is a question internal to Canada and its provinces", thus validated the Supreme Court's approach.
Québec sovereignists have often been quite naive in thinking that the international community would necessarily side with them. They forgot that the international community is made up of already sovereign countries, not of separatist movements. These sovereign countries, even though they may have been created in the past through secession, now have no particular interest in supporting separatist movements elsewhere and may instead be themselves facing separatist movements at home. It is thus not surprising that, as Michel Vastel revealed in his book on Jean Chrétien, about 30 world leaders told Prime Minister Jean Chrétien at the end of 1995 they were shocked that he could have let Canada come so close to dismantlement. These conversations motivated Jean Chrétien to take a harder line on separatism. United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali told Chrétien: "How could you have let that happen? If you accept secessions as easily as that, we will have 500 new states and the world will be impossible to govern." Indeed, world leaders realize that if a country like Canada, with a long continuous experience as a stable liberal democracy, can be dismantled, then no country is safe from such a fate.
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