LaBelle Province could make great strides in recovery from it's darker days of the 70's.but if it wasn't for overactive real-estate markets,the long slow decline in the provinces fortunes would still be happenning. Let's hope it makes a complete recovery & goes on to treat all it's residents equally,as the article says,it's separatist thoughts are archaic & only serves to hurt ,rather than grow,with the rest of a great country.
heres' todays Gazette story
A new poll shows that 30 years after the first Quebec sovereignty referendum, and 15 years after the second, most Quebecers consider the debate over whether the province should separate from Canada no longer relevant.
The survey conducted last month found that 58 per cent of a representative sample of Quebecers think the issue is as good as settled with only 26 per cent saying it is now more relevant. Only 14 per cent said they believe that Quebec will become an independent country within 30 years.
However, that doesn’t mean that Quebecers have come to embrace Canadian federalism. A majority of 56 per cent believe that Quebec typically comes up short in federal-provincial disagreements, and while 47 per cent agreed there are fewer reasons for Quebec to separate than there were 30 years ago, 41 per cent said there are as many if not more.
As well, support for sovereignty among Quebecers continues to hover around 40 per cent, the same level of support registered in the referendum held on May 20, 1980. The second referendum, in October, 1995, was more of a squeaker with 49.4 per cent voting yet and 50.6 per cent no to the sovereignty proposal put by the Parti Québécois government of the day.
The survey was conducted by the Montreal-based CROP polling firm for The Federal Idea, a new Quebec think tank founded last year to advance the study of federalism in Canada and other parts of the world.
“It doesn’t translate into greater enthusiasm for federalism,” said the group’s spokesperson, André Pratte, chief editorialist for La Presse. “It shows that even if they might think that the debate is old hat, people are still critical of the federal system.”
He said that while most people have given up on sovereignty, most still hold to sovereignist attitudes. “They may not be ready to vote for independence, but their view of the country largely corresponds to the sovereignist view. If there was a new federal-provincial crisis the debate would come back very readily.”
A majority of respondents, 57 per cent, were also of the opinion that French in Quebec is less secure than it was 30 years ago with only 15 per cent saying it is more secure. Another 21 per cent who ventured an opinion said its status is much the same as it was.
Pollster Alain Giguère said the perceived threat to French today is not from English Canadians, but rather the growing predominance of English the world over. “It’s not the English of the Plains of Abraham any more. It’s the English that’s become the Esperanto of the 21st century.”
Giguère said the most telling finding as far as he is concerned is that Quebecers increasingly don’t identify with constitutional options as much as they did. Asked if they were federalist or sovereignist, 22 per cent said federalist and 24 per cent sovereignist. However, 22 per cent said they were partly both and 25 per cent declared themselves to be neither.
He said it indicates that Quebecers in general have become less interested in politics, a finding that jibes with other recent polls that suggest Quebecers have grown cynical towards politics and politicians.
“This is quite new from a socio-political point of view. The political scene doesn’t rouse the level of passion we’ve seen in the past. People are more focused on careers, families and their personal lives.
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