Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard waves to supporters after leading the separatist Parti Quebecois to victory in Quebec's general election Nov. 30. (REUTERS)

By Steven Pearlstein
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 1, 1998; Page A1

QUEBEC CITY, Nov. 30 – The separatist Parti Quebecois won a narrower-than-expected victory tonight in Quebec's provincial elections, as the French-speaking province continued to drift toward a final confrontation with the rest of English-speaking Canada.

With more than three-quarters of the vote counted, returns showed that incumbent Premier Lucien Bouchard's party will control 76 of the 125 seats in the provincial legislature, the federalist Liberal Party 48 seats and the Democratic Action party one seat .

If those results hold up through the final tallies, they would represent a loss of one seat for the Parti Quebecois from the majority it won in Quebec's last election, in 1994, and a gain of one seat for the Liberals.

The popular vote count, however, showed a virtual tie, with the Liberals taking 44 percent of the overall vote and the Parti Quebecois 43 percent.

The disparity between the overall vote and the number of seats allocated reflected the Liberals' concentrated support in districts on the island of Montreal, in the so-called Eastern Townships and in western Quebec near Ottawa.

Although the Parti Quebecois's margin of victory was hardly the landslide that polls had predicted, it was a setback for Canada's top business and political leaders who recruited Charest in an effort to unseat the separatist government and remove the political threat of Quebec's secession.

The vote capped a 32-day campaign that pitted two of the country's most charismatic politicians: Bouchard, 59, the intense incumbent who honed his separatism in the poor and remote Saguenay region of the province, and Charest, 40, whose perfect bilingualism was a reflection of his strong dual loyalties to both Canada and Quebec. But what was originally billed as a clash of titans quickly turned into a slow denouement as Bouchard shrewdly outmaneuvered Charest on such issues as health care and tax cuts while tapping into widespread voter satisfaction with his government's performance.

Throughout the campaign, Charest sought to define the debate with his increasingly strident warnings that reelecting Bouchard would put the province on an "irreversible course" toward the breakup of the Canadian federation. But Quebecers appeared unfazed by the prospect and warmed to Bouchard's calculated ambiguity on the independence question.

In the last referendum on the issue, in October 1995, Quebecers split just about evenly on the question of separation. And while there were no indications from today's vote that the pro-separatist vote has increased, there was also no indication that it had fallen much, either.

As the Parti Quebecois faithful waved the blue and white fleur-de-lis flags symbolic of Quebec sovereignty, Bouchard tonight reaffirmed his determination to assemble what he has called the "winning conditions" for a referendum to take Quebec out of Canada. But as he had during the campaign, he extended an olive branch toward Quebec's sizable number of federalists, promising to protect the rights of the province's English-speaking minority.

Bouchard's win will put increased pressure on Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who throughout his career has taken a hard line against the separatist instincts of his fellow Quebecers. A spokesman said Chretien's cabinet is likely to take up the Quebec question at its regular meeting in Ottawa on Tuesday.

Tonight Chretien warned Bouchard that his federal government would meet any attempt to push separation with "all the energy we have. When the time comes to defend Canada – our country and our home and our family – we will be there every step of the way."

The continued support for the separatist Parti Quebecois comes after decades of genuine progress for French-speaking Quebecers. The provincial government has won nearly complete power over education, the health system and even foreign immigration. Strong language laws ensure the primacy of the French language in schools, the daily conduct of business and even in the selection of songs on the radio. And thanks to the active intervention of the provincial government, the economy is dominated by home-grown businesses of all sizes, headed by Francophone executives.

At the same time, the federal government in Ottawa has lavished Quebec with $6 billion to $8 billion a year in benefits above what the province contributes in taxes. And Quebec politicians have been given pride of place in Canadian cabinets for as long as anyone can remember.

Yet despite all these gains and accommodations, Desmond Morton, director of the Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University, said Quebec still has not won from English Canada the thing it has really wanted all along: respect. Despite several failed attempts at constitutional reform in the last 20 years, the French-speaking province has never won the recognition for its distinctive place in the Canadian federation.

For its part, English Canada is also tiring of the seemingly endless dance with Quebec.

"There is a sense in the rest of Canada of being pretty fed up with Quebec, and after this election it will be worse," said Pierre-Marc Johnson, a former premier of Quebec and Parti Quebecois leader who is now a lawyer in Montreal.

As the campaign was winding down, in fact, one of the country's two English-language national newspapers, the Globe & Mail, weighed in with an uncharacteristically blunt editorial declaring that Quebec could no longer continue to hold the country hostage with its threats of secession. "The hostages don't want to play that game any more," it said. "The game is over."

Two days later, the other national paper, the National Post, in a front-page column, conceded that the people of French and English Canada had, psychologically, long since given up on each other and that it was now only for the politicians to confirm it. "Jean Charest is right when he talks about an irreversible process," Mark Styn wrote. "Unfortunately for him, the question was settled a long time ago."

That is also the way Bouchard's top political strategist sees it. "This is like a bad marriage where one spouse wants to leave," Jean-Francois Lisee explained today as he savored his impending victory. "Obviously we need to arrange joint custody of the kids – which in this case is the dollar, the national debt, certain assets. But it's over. The truth is that we will be better as courteous neighbors than quarreling spouses."

Whatever doubt today's vote cast on the imminence of a referendum on sovereignty, the instinct toward separation appears strong among the young people of Quebec, who polls show strongly backed the Parti Quebecois and Democratic Action, a small party led by Mario Dumond, 29, who combined a sovereigntist instinct with a conservative economic platform.

Unlike many of previous generations of separatists, these young voters are not parochial French-speakers intent on getting even for a host of indignities they have suffered at the hands of English-speaking Canada. For the most part, they are bilingual, multicultural in their friendships and confident in their ability to make their way in a global economy.

But in interviews last week, they also made it plain to a visiting American that they thought of themselves as Quebecers, not Canadians, with little interest in continuing the debate over constitutional arrangements.

"Canada is a federation for me, not a nation," explained Edric Caldwell, 24, who is studying screen writing at the University of Quebec at Montreal. "I am Canadian only in the sense that a Frenchman would say he was a European. Leaving Canada just wouldn't be a very big deal for me."

Alain Gagnon, director of the Quebec Studies Program at McGill, said he saw a marked change in his Francophone students beginning in the early 1990s. "It's as if something snapped," he said. "They just aren't part of Canada any more. The older people still have some hope that something can be stitched back together or that some better deal can be struck with Ottawa. But the youth don't identify with Canada any longer."