Quebec went to the polls Monday and elected a government whose founding purpose is to leave Canada. Paul St-Pierre Plamondon's Parti Québécois took 59 of the 127 seats, five short of a majority, and it'll govern as a minority. CBC and CTV both projected the result, and Plamondon intends to govern on exactly that basis. Ottawa will now negotiate with that government, fund it through equalization, and treat it as a partner in Confederation. No one will call Quebec ungovernable. No one will invoke the Clarity Act before the ballots are counted. No one will write editorials about the province's hostility to Canadian values.
For thirty years, Ottawa has told any province that doesn't go along with it what it's allowed to want. The National Energy Program. The cancellation of Northern Gateway. The killing of Energy East. Bill C-69. Every time Alberta pushed back — through referendums, through Sovereignty Acts, through elected Senators no one in Ottawa recognized — the response from the press gallery and the federal cabinet was the same: dangerous, divisive, extreme. The Parti Québécois has separation written into its constitution and has now been handed a minority government with 59 seats. The response from the same quarters will be: democratic, legitimate, a voice that must be heard.
Plamondon ran on a clear sovereignty timeline and won. That's his right. Quebec's voters made a choice and that choice deserves respect. Now Ottawa decides what to do with it — and we already know how it plays. Ottawa doesn't apply the rules the same way to every province. Equalization flows from Alberta to Quebec at roughly $14 billion annually when you count the whole thing. That money will keep flowing to a government whose stated goal is to dissolve the country writing the cheques. No federal minister will hold a press conference about it. No columnist at the Globe will ask whether it can keep going. Nothing happens. Everyone moves on. Quebec's political identity is a cultural fact; Alberta's is a problem to be managed.
Ottawa didn't build Confederation around national unity. It built Confederation around which province gets to set its own terms. Quebec worked out a long time ago that the threat of leaving is worth more than actually leaving. Alberta now has something it didn't have before. Visiting Calgary last year, Plamondon said he would recognize an independent Alberta if the province voted to separate. CBC and Global News both reported it. Alberta separatist Jeff Rath told The Canadian Press on Tuesday: "For the first time in Canadian history, we have a government in Quebec that supports Alberta independence." Albertans vote on 19 October on whether to begin the legal process toward a referendum on separation. It isn't a binding vote to leave. Alberta's Sovereignty Act was met with alarm in Ottawa. A PQ minority government will still be met with a phone call from the Prime Minister's office offering to talk. One province passes a law and it's a national crisis; the other elects a separatist government and it's a conversation. Those who refuse are respected. Those who comply are exploited. If the threat of leaving is the only language Ottawa hears clearly, Alberta should consider speaking it plainly — not as theater, and not as a bluff.
Plamondon's win is not Alberta's problem. It is Alberta's instruction manual.
