L'anniversaire

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose...
It's been ten years since the referendum. I predict the next one is fewer than ten years away. The last one was one by the forces of federalism by the comfortable margin of 50.6% to 49.4%. (In Florida they call that a landslide.) The next one...
I very much wanted to go to the big keep-Quebec-in-Canada bash held in Montreal. I had to work that day (it happened on a weekend...in five years, I got three weekends off.) Hindsight being perfect (depending on whose hind you've sighted), I really should have just buggered off and joined in the fray.
The sovereignty issue kind of fell off the radar in the aftermath of that oh-so-close defeat...everywhere but in Ottawa. On Parliament Hill, it was as if Jean Chretien, the engineer on the national train, had slept through a near-derailment only to jerk himself awake and initiate every countermeasure in the book once the moment of truth had passed. Chretien decided to plaster la belle province in Maple Leaves...and we all know what happened next.
The crushing irony is that Chretien's anti-separatist brainchild has directly led to a resurgence of Quebec nationalism. It's at least as strong as it was in '95...if another vote were held today, there's no guarantee the No side would prevail again.
I recall thinking in 1995 that Parizeau and his minions reminded me of nothing so much as an old boys' club, trying mightily to bar Quebec's doors to everyone who didn't fit their woolly definition of pur laine quebecois. When la roi Jacques famously intoned that "money and the ethnic vote" had lost Quebec its rightful place at the table of nations, he confirmed the essentially racist and snobbish character of the separatist movement.
A lot has changed in ten years, even though the threat of separatism remains. There still exist those who wish for nothing more than the total reversal of their ancestors' defeat on the Plains of Abraham, but they are, I think, a minority amongst separatists now. Many, if not most, separatists don't hate or resent Canada: they simply think Quebec would be better off on its own. The quality of governance seeping out of Ottawa over the last ten years suggests they may have a point.
Quebec has always seen itself as under siege. Over time, this mindset leads to a lot of us/them thinking, which is why the referendum came to be seen (in Quebec) as a battle between Quebec and what was labelled in English TROC...The Rest Of Canada. I found it interesting that les separatistes could so easily group the Acadian fisherman, the Torontonian financier, the farmer from Red Deer, and the Abbotsford store clerk together. Of course, this too points at the inherent racism corrupting the sovereigntist school of thought: it's a common assertion among whites, for example, that all Chinese people look the same.
The racism has largely leached out of the movement today. It may still lurk in PQ backrooms, but it no longer drives the bus. Instead, the driving force behind the push for Quebec separation is a rejection of Ottawa and its policies.
The nascent Western separatist movement has a lot in common with its Quebec counterpart, though it takes someone from elsewhere in Canada to see this. In the west, of course, the loathing of the federal government runs deep, and the consensus is that Ottawa exists solely for the benefit of Ontario...and Quebec. In Chicoutimi they may disagree with that last--the argument would be that Quebeckers might as well keep their money in Quebec and cut out the federalist middleman--but they certainly would agree with Alberta that Ottawa ought to mind its own business...
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I see a rough, uncertain future for Confederation as it presently exists. The federal government is like an overprotective and domineering parent shackling its pre-teen children, the provinces and territories, at every opportunity. The provinces whine for more money and more freedom, and even when Ottawa says yes, it makes sure its left hand is poised to take back what its right gives. Father Paul is that sort of man to whom everything, and therefore nothing, is of supreme importance...and he really doesn't seem to have any idea how to run the country. Lacking any visionary alternative, is it any wonder many in Quebec would like to get off?
I suspect that within two or three electoral terms, if not sooner, Canada will begin the process of splitting up. I believe what you'll see should you come to Canada in the year 2050 will more closely resemble the European Union than the Canada of today: a common currency, shared government on matters of "national"concern, but territories largely free to set their own agendas as regards such things as health care and taxation. This sort of system, if adopted sensibly, would satisfy Quebec's wanderlust with minimal risk, free "the rest of Canada" from the colossal waste of bilingualism (which was adopted to please and sate Quebec, and has done neither), and also be a boon to the West, removing the handcuffs Ottawa has placed on it. I see no other course of action that has as much upside.
Should Quebec opt to secede without Ottawa's help, it ought to know up front that it won't be easy. Much of Canada's military is based on what would be Quebec territory, and if Quebec thinks it can simply take over the base in Bagotville without a fight, it has another thought coming. Prominent PQ spokespeople have mused about recruiting amongst the Canadian military for a new Quebec military--something that qualifies as treason. Then there's the nontrivial matter of Quebec's share, by population, of the national debt, not to mention an awul lot of federal programs whose proceeds would stop flowing into Quebec the moment Quebec separates. You can't have your country, and repudiate it, too. And we haven't even considered what Quebec's native population would have to say. Remember Oka? The band that held Canada hostage in 1990? Think they don't have it in them to do it again?

No--I like my way better.