According to a report in Monday's Journal de Quebec, Gilles Duceppe met this week with the U.S. Consul-General posted to Quebec and with the State Department's Director of Canadian Affairs, and requested their assistance in organizing a visit to several American cities in October. The purpose of the tour, according to the report, is to promote Quebec sovereignty internationally.
"I hope to explain Quebec's situation and how we see it. We already do this regularly each year with ambassadors posted to Canada. It's the Bloc's job to communicate a point of view that is different from what they get from Messrs. Harper, Ignatieff et Layton."
While the tour itinerary has not been finalized, Mr. Duceppe's trip to the U.S. is likely to include stops in New York, Boston and Washington. In November, he will take his message to Europe, with stops likely in Paris, Brussels and Strasbourg. The Bloc leader has also received an "official invitation" from the autonomy-minded government of Catalonia in Spain.
Mr. Duceppe is nothing if not strategic.
In recent years, the view has been spreading among some pundits that the Bloc provides a safety valve to Québécois that lessens the possibility of the province separating from Canada. However, the fact is that, if an election were held today in Quebec, the PQ would form a majority government.
No one should have any doubt about the agenda of a PQ government. And, notably, the recent decision of the International Court of Justice in the matter of Kosovo confirmed the view that there is nothing in international law that would make a unilateral declaration of independence illegal.
In referring the question of secession to the Supreme Court, the Chrétien government made precisely the opposite case - but it's view was rejected by the Court in it's 1998 decision. Tellingly, over the weekend, Bob Rae conceded the legal point in an interview with the Montreal Gazette, though the admission was buried in the overall message in which he quite rightly rejected the notion that Kosovo would serve as a precedent for international recognition. That said, those who've been comfortably assuming that the Clarity Act had resolved the issue of Quebec separation may want to re-think their assumptions before resuming their slumber on the unity issue.