François Legault and Paul St-Pierre Plamondon met yesterday.

The prime minister now wants to know what the opposition leaders’ priorities are. And the head of the PQ took the opportunity to appeal to the head of the CAQ: Ask no less for Quebec than for Robert Bourassa.

Bourassa, as we know, was not a sovereign. But he never closed the door to independence once and for all. He always kept independence in his game as a last resort when historical circumstances called for it – it’s understood those circumstances never arose for him. We will remember that after Meech’s failure in the face of history, he recalled that Quebec was free and in control of its own destiny, that it had a full right to self-determination.

Independence

One can believe, and this is my case, that Robert Bourassa betrayed Quebec in the early 1990s that it was then dominated by its colonized psychology, refusing to choose independence when it was possible to have it to make an amicable decision in Quebec. But again, he’s always been careful to keep that card in the Quebecers’ game.

But what about François Legault?

He was already a Separatist, and passionately so. Many of them believe that behind his change of facade to the Canadian framework, which is more one of resignation than conviction, he hides Separatist sentiments.

The fact remains that today, because he believes a third referendum would be a loser and because his coalition relies on censorship of the constitutional question, he is tempted to double-lock the possibility of independence.

All he has to say on the matter is that Quebecers do not want a third referendum. Definitely. Strictly speaking, that’s not wrong in the short term.

But he, if historical circumstances raised the question again, what would he answer?

He refuses to answer because, as I said, he refuses to ask the question. It mentally locks us in Canada through referendum defeatism.

In concrete terms, this means that he does not go as far politically as Robert Bourassa, who was nevertheless a self-confessed federalist.

The PSPP recalled this by asking François Legault to move away from this absolute refusal to raise the national question and at least to recognize that independence is a legitimate option for Quebec. The PSPP therefore calls on François Legault to recognize “Quebec’s options”.

PSPP

From this point of view, PSPP works as a teacher and does politically useful work.

Because if François Legault, who too often believes that nationalist politics consists in angering Ottawa in a press release, is unable even to consider the possibility of independence, as a Liberal Prime Minister once did, who looks a bit like him, he will have confirmed in everyone’s eyes that his nationalism is a facade nationalism that plays identity quacks to excite francophones in elections, but is unable to seriously raise the question of the political future to ask of Quebec.