BY JOHN STEELE AND MICHEL DUMAS
MONTREAL - Daniel Johnson, the leader of the Quebec Liberal Party (QLP), had not even finished explaining his resignation on March 2 before capitalist politicians and the media from one end of the country to the other were campaigning to draft the federal Conservative Party leader, Jean Charest, as his replacement. Charest is currently the only politician considered for the job. No leader of the QLP is running.

The purpose of this "Draft Charest" effort is to rebuild the QLP into a credible alternative to defeat the bourgeois nationalist Parti Quebecois in the coming Quebec elections. The PQ, if reelected, is committed to calling the third Quebec sovereignty referendum since 1980.

In a March 10 editorial underlining that with a Liberal Party victory in the next Quebec election "there will be no referendum on separation," the nationally-circulated English- language Globe and Mail speculated that with a few concessions to Quebec from the rest of the country, "the independence movement would be dealt a crushing blow."

Charest "is a man who galvanized the federal camp in the 1995 Quebec referendum by holding up his Canadian passport and asking people to reflect on its value," declared the Toronto Star editors on March 3. "It will take that kind of energy and style to defeat [Quebec PQ premier Lucien] Bouchard....Johnson's exit gives his successor a better shot at winning the premiership - and avoiding another referendum."

The ruling class campaign behind Charest, holding him up as the only politician that can save Canada from the "separatists," reflects the inability of the dominant sector of the Canadian ruling class and their representatives in Ottawa to push back the Quebecois struggle for their national rights.

Quebecois struggle for national rights
In 1995, the "Yes" to Quebec sovereignty side lost by only 1.2 percentage points and for the first time in history a clear majority of the oppressed Quebecois nation voted for a sovereign country. During the referendum campaign thousands of Quebecois youth took to the streets throughout Quebec chanting "we want a country."

The resistance of the 6 million Quebecois to their national oppression - based on their language, French - has been a fault line of instability in the Canadian federal state since its formation in 1867. Today, this resistance is one of the main obstacles facing Canada's capitalist rulers, in their austerity drive against working people across the country. The Quebecois struggle for justice and equality also hampers their efforts to draw in working people behind the Canadian flag to advance Ottawa's imperialist interests against its competitors on the world market, including the use of its troops under United Nations or NATO cover in the Middle East, Bosnia, and Kosovo.

This resistance is also the source of divisions among capitalist rulers.

In the weeks before his resignation, the tactical divisions among federalist politicians over how hard to drive against Quebec were reflected in the opposition by both Charest and Johnson to the initiative by the federal government, led by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, to ask the Supreme Court of Canada to declare illegal any "unilateral" action on Quebec sovereignty by the Parti Quebecois government.

Ottawa suffered a setback when it met outrage and condemnation throughout Quebec in opposition to its Supreme Court maneuver. One thousand Quebecois and their supporters demonstrated in Ottawa in front of the Supreme Court, and 4,000 turned out to a PQ rally in Montreal to defend Quebec's right to decide its future without Ottawa's interference.

Johnson resigned a few days after the federal Liberal Party announced its intention to participate directly in the next Quebec provincial election over his head. On March 11, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien threw his endorsement behind the "draft Charest" campaign. "I welcome the best candidate, yes. If he wanted to run, I think it would be a good thing. Besides, everybody says so," said Chrétien.

Anti-Quebecois flag waving
In recent weeks Ottawa has taken further steps against Quebec. A centerpiece of the federal budget placed before parliament at the end of February was a direct attack on Quebec's historical right to control its education system. The government presented a Millennium Scholarship Fund in February that overrides Quebec's student scholarship and loan system. The fund "is being set up, not so much to help students but to satisfy the federal government's need for `visibility' - which is Ottawa-talk for sending a cheque with a big red maple leaf on it," wrote Globe and Mail Quebec columnist Michel Auger.

Ottawa's sharpening attacks against Quebec reflect the general shift of capitalist politics to the right as Canada's ruling capitalist families attempt to raise their profits rates on the backs of workers and farmers, and strengthen their competitiveness against their rivals in the United States and other imperialist countries. This has opened space for the right-wing Reform Party, led by Preston Manning, who expresses the coarsening of bourgeois politics with his openly chauvinist attacks against the Quebecois.

On February 26, in an unprecedented display of anti- Quebecois chauvinism in the federal parliament, Bloc Quebecois Member of Parliament Suzanne Tremblay was prevented from speaking by an organized demonstration of Liberal and Reform Party MPs waving Canadian flags and singing the national anthem "O Canada" in English. Earlier, while attending the winter Olympics in Japan, Tremblay had criticized the massive display of Canadian flags and the sparse use of French in the official ceremonies of the Canadian delegation.

"It is unimaginable that the Canadian flag in whatever form, should be banned from the Commons, or that `O Canada' should be stifled," screamed a Toronto Star editorial March 12. "If that offends separatist MPs, too bad...We'd rue the day when patriotic MPs were barred from showing their disdain for those who would wreck this country."

The Canadian flag was finally barred, supposedly over consideration of protocol but above all to prevent the waving of the Quebec flag in the House of Commons.

In her visit to Ottawa on March 10 to firm up the Canadian government's support for Washington's war preparations in the Middle East and military intervention against the oppressed Albanians in Kosovo, U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright, while stating that Washington does not intend to "interfere" in Canada's internal affairs, said that Washington cherishes relations with a "strong and united Canada." Albright praised Canada as a bilingual parliamentary democracy dedicated to "solidarity and the rule of law," an implied reference to Ottawa's position that Quebec cannot legally declare its own independence.

The turmoil around Johnson's resignation and the likelihood that Charest will leave the federal Conservatives to lead the Quebec Liberals continues the trend towards the fragmentation of capitalist politics registered in the 1993 federal elections.

At that time, the governing Conservative Party was defeated by the Liberals and reduced to two seats, while the Bloc Quebecois, based only in Quebec, became the Official Opposition, with the western-based Reform Party only a few seats behind. The Social Democratic union-based New Democratic Party was also reduced to a handful of MPs. In the 1996 federal election following the last Quebec sovereignty referendum, Canada's capitalist rulers were left without one genuinely national party with a base both inside and outside of Quebec.

Counting on Charest to make the decision to quit as federal Conservative Party leader to lead the Quebec Liberals, the Reform Party has intensified its campaign for a merger between Reform and the Conservatives. Alberta Premier Ralph Klein is being posed as a possible leader of a new right-wing party.

John Steele is a member of the International Association of Machinists in Toronto.  
 
 
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