WI Quebec separatists win 1995 referendum?

^ Well, it would have been a victory in the referendum, but a VERY long ways from a done deal.

What happens? Negotiations over succession start between Ottawa and Quebec City. Native Canadians immediately demand that their portion of the province stay in Canada - which would NOT go down well in Quebec City. Their demands, such as using Canadian money and not taking a large chunk of the Canadian debt, have to be taken off the table or else the politicians responsible find themselves chucked from office in short order. The negotiations would get bitter very fast.
 
There is also the fact that it wasn't officially sanctioned by the Federal government. At the time there weren't any laws that said it was legal to separate. So Quebec could vote all it wanted, but the feds could technically ignore it. The Fed's didn't stop it, or try to stop it, but they had said that the only thing it might do is cause the start of negotiations that may or may not lead to separation in the future.
With a mere one percent support for separation, the government could easily say that while it was regrettable, there was no legal way for Quebec to separate. If Quebec tried to go to the courts, a 1% majority would likely lead to a Federal win in the supreme court. The court would say that it needed a higher majority to separate, a clearer question, or that it was strictly illegal. So Quebec would at best have to do a revote.
If it was in the high 50's or 60's, there would be negotiations, probably with a focus on special distinction, a few more rights and things like that, but not actual separation.
In the 70's or higher the carving knives come out, and Quebec gets dismembered, leaving only a core region to separate. At that level people would realize that a friendly separation was probably best. But the government would have to negotiate hard to keep free passage on the St. Lawrence and other things, probably trading land for access.
 
Could there have been a civil war? I think the USA would have objected to that
Not a chance. At best there would be some riots, graffiti, some fist fights, and lots of semi-peaceful demonstrations.
The Quebec people aren't very violent and even the most die-hard separatist was opposed to armed struggle by that point. Only a very small fringe that was full of other ideas as well as separation ever supported violence.
It was one reason they gained so little support from others, if they weren't willing to fight for their beliefs why would anyone want to support them.
 
^ Well, it would have been a victory in the referendum, but a VERY long ways from a done deal.

What happens? Negotiations over succession start between Ottawa and Quebec City. Native Canadians immediately demand that their portion of the province stay in Canada - which would NOT go down well in Quebec City. Their demands, such as using Canadian money and not taking a large chunk of the Canadian debt, have to be taken off the table or else the politicians responsible find themselves chucked from office in short order. The negotiations would get bitter very fast.

Completely agreed. Talks are likely to progress nowhere fast and bog down causing Quebec to become even more of a festering boil in Canadian political life. The real question is how Ottawa reacts to the failure of the secession negotiations, do they play hardball in an attempt to bring Quebec back into Confederation? Or do they try to wait it out?
 
Completely agreed. Talks are likely to progress nowhere fast and bog down causing Quebec to become even more of a festering boil in Canadian political life. The real question is how Ottawa reacts to the failure of the secession negotiations, do they play hardball in an attempt to bring Quebec back into Confederation? Or do they try to wait it out?

Depends on who is in charge. The Liberal Party would probably try to work the situation though in good faith, but the Reform Party (which with the Bloc Quebecois gone would be the official opposition in 1995) would play serious hardball, and so likely would the Progressive Conservatives, who were dead on the federal level in 1995 but still very much alive in many of the provinces. The Quebec separatists had a number of demands which had no chance in hell of acceptance (saying that they were gonna take over Canada's CF-18s based at Bagotville was pretty stupid, for one), but the plan was to negotiate out the differences.

The problem is that the politics of the time would have been quite against Quebec. The whole country loathed the separatist ideas, and were quite happy to say so, and not a premier in the nation other than Jacques Parizeau thought this was anything less than awful. Chretien would surely lead those negotiations himself, but he'd be trying to balance concerns of Quebec against a country that would surely be quite willing to let them rot and would probably be willing to say so publicly. If Canada's conservative media elements didn't say so (they would), then Preston Manning and Stephen Harper, who was then the Reform Party's Intergovernmental Affairs critic, surely would.
 
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