The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- A Night To Remember

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

There are going to be a lot of special programs done in the next few weeks, leading up to the 30th anniversary of the 1995 Quebec Referendum. A night that those of us who witnessed it will never forget. Tension and emotion ruled the evening. Chantal, Bruce and I were all in different roles watching the story unfold, and this week we talk about what was a historic moment. in the story of Canada, and what it still means in today's world. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Are you ready for a special edition of Good Talk? It's coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Chantelle-A-Bear and Bruce Anderson, special edition of Good Talk for this week. We're going to leave the sort of current offense behind, and we're going to go back a bit. I mean, some of us can't believe that it was.

was 30 years ago that we were all in some way involved in watching the referendum night in Quebec. October 30th, 1995 was that night. I was anchoring the CBC program, special coverage of the referendum. Chantal was writing her column, but also coordinating coverage for La Pras. And Bruce was, how do we describe what you were doing, Bruce? He were sort of analyzing advising, you were sort of more on the political side. Polling, thinking, talking to people, giving a little bit of advice. Yeah. Okay.

So the way I want to handle this is to try to go back, dial it back those 30 years. Because there are a lot of people out there, including our listeners, who are under 30, who didn't live through this experience. And kind of wonder what it was about and wonder for good reason because, you know, There's talk of referendums again in Quebec, possibly in Alberta. And so it's good to relive some of these kind of memories from that period 30 years ago. So why don't we start by kind of talking about where our heads were at going into that night because there have been a build-up and there have been lots of things happening towards October 30th, 95.

Chantelle, why don't you start us? Okay, so I'm going to rewind the bill. from that night. And for those, the minority of people who believe that campaigns don't matter, especially in Quebec, this one was the proof that campaigns do make a difference. It started off looking basically like a cakewalk for the federalist side. The numbers were fairly promising, and the first few weeks of the campaign didn't show much movement for the sovereignty option. On the contrary, the Jacques Paiso's campaign wasn't lifting

off. But this referendum was happening because there was a lot of pent-up frustration from a decade of constitutional failures. And that was also a back of the mind of many of the Quebec voters. At some point, Jacques Paiso did something that no one had seen coming. He gave up place as the lead person on the Sovereignty side, the yes side, to Lucien Bouchard. Lucien Bouchard was the federal leader of the Black Quebecoe. He was immensely more popular than Mr. Pagisot. It was also someone who could galvanize a crowd. And almost overnight, the numbers started to shift.

Now, I'm going to bring you to an anecdote that kind of explains why on that night, I was working at the Raju Canada news special on the radio side. And the people around me were from both sides, you know, those tables, those panels are assembled. And the person sitting right next to me was looking at the numbers coming in. And I thought he was going to have a heart attack from fear that the yes was going to prevail. And for some reason, I was convinced that, we were going to end the night on a no vote. But why did I think that? Because about a week

before the vote, and as opposed to you too, I spent most of the campaign not only on the ground, but also as a normal person that does normal things. And so I went with some friends to I drove right by today on Code de Nage.

We went to have a bit of a meal during the weekend before the start of the last week. And at some point, I looked around and I told my friends, if we were voting today, the yes would win. And what happened over that week, because on that weekend, the yes was ahead by a fair number of points, four or five points. What happened is once the story of those numbers started to come out, a lot of people decided to have second touch. And the wave that would have

carried the yes to a victory a week before the vote receded over the course of the last week of the campaign and ended where it ended in large part because many Quebecers wanted to send a message, but not necessarily. They didn't really believe they were giving a yes vote. A friend of mine was a politician who was a politician then drove back to Ottawa the morning after. And he stopped at a gas station on the Quebec side. And the guy who was handing out, you know, the gas said, great night last night. So my friend said, so you voted no. And the answer was, no, no, no, no, no. I voted yes. And I'm totally happy with the result, which is razor thin. We sent our message, but we don't have to pay the postage.

Okay, Bruce, you know, I want to get a sense of where your head was at. But, you know, it's challenging because basically Chantel just said neither you nor I are normal people. That's what I heard, too. Living normally in Quebec, I didn't see you hang out with a lot of francophone voters in the lead up to the referendum as you did. But nevertheless, give us your abnormal. sense of what was happening. You know, at that time, I was very involved in the in the Charlottetown Accord and the Meach Lake Accord before that.

And I was actually even working on Parliament Hill in what might have been considered to be the trigger event that led to all of this, which was Pierre Trudeau's Patriotian Initiative and the fight that ensued around an amending formula. But since we're at a complete license here today in the nature of this show that you've asked us to do, Peter, to go back in time and say, what do you remember about that night?

For me, a lot of what happened that night was a function of what happened in the years before. After the first Quebec referendum, Pierre Trudeau decided that he should launch a patriation initiative to bring, in quotes, the Constitution back home. There were, I think, something like six premiers who decided that they didn't like the initiative. It felt too unilateral.

They weren't sure what kind of amending formula there would be, and they decided to oppose it. It led to, you know, a famous night at a restaurant in Ottawa called Mama Teresa where Roy Romano and Jean-Cretchen and some other participants cobbled together an amending formula. And the nature of the amending formula was that I think it needed to be seven provinces representing 50% plus of the population. If they all agreed on an amendment to the Constitution in the future, that was going to be okay.

However, that made Quebec feel pretty isolated, pretty much convinced that there could be amendments to the Constitution that would happen without them. up not agreeing to the to the patriation formula or the or the act to bring the British North America Act to Canada. That then led to a whole series of events, including the Charlottetown Accord, the attempt to try to repair that damage and create a different way of thinking about the needs of Quebec, the distinct society clause being the most important one. And some of the frustrations in the West, around the Tripoli Senate. That was a big theme at the time. But the Charlottetown Accord failed. And then the Mulrooney government lost the election. Well, Kim Campbell was the leader

right after that. And when I think about that election and the fact that the BQ got 54 seats and became the official opposition and the reform got 52 seats and the conservative party was all but wiped out, taken down to two seats. There was not a lot of political musculature in Ottawa for the federalist cause then. It had really kind of squandered a lot of the energy around how do we solve this problem that started with the amending formula that wasn't widely agreed to. It wasn't concurred to by Quebec. So by the time we get to 1995, we've got a House of Commons that has a strong, regionalist, not very friendly to Quebec.

That's probably putting it mildly. I remember there was a campaign that Preston Manning ran, which included an ad that said, no more leaders from Quebec. It's been enough. We need leaders from somewhere other than Quebec. I don't think I've ever seen anything before of it that was that blunt or something. since. Maybe Andrew shared it something like that, but it's unusual. Anyway, it created even more tension. So what we had with this constant buildup of tension heading towards that particular referendum. And then we'll get into this maybe a little bit more. I had done some work with

Bill Fox, who both of you know really well, to study how referendums work in different parts of the world in Australia and Ireland and the petitions that happen all the time in the United States. And of course, we learned through that study that the no side is more likely to win than the yes side usually. The change is harder to persevere with through a referendum campaign than the argument for let's not change something. Chantelle made the point people have second thoughts. Another aspect of that is it's one thing to say, here's this beautiful. shiny change, and everybody who agrees with that change stays on one side. But then all of a sudden, people can say, well, I don't like this part of it. I don't like that part of it. They don't all have to agree on what the better alternative would be. They just have to be enough people who say there are parts of it that I don't particularly like. So that set up a dynamic where even though the start of that referendum campaign was 6040 for the for the change side. No, 6040 for the no change.

And then it flipped to the yes. That's right. And it flipped. And I think the biggest part of that for me was watching the, and I'll finish on this point, thankfully, I'm sure. Was watching the, with the realization that Quebecers were in a mood that wasn't about economics and it wasn't about legislative. authorities even and it wasn't about, it was a lot about emotion. It was a lot about how they felt about the way in which the rest of the country had related to them and the politics that had kind of surrounded those prior things. Meanwhile, the federal side was making an argument

that on too many days was economic. On too many days was about fear of what will happen if you make this horrible choice to separate. And so I wasn't surprised at how close it it was because I don't think that the federal argument was all that effectively put, at least not by all of the stakeholders. And there were a lot of stakeholders from all different sides. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, I said I stopped there. Okay.

Here's what I want to, and Chantal, you'll be best to answer this, I think. As you said, and as Bruce said, when the campaign started, it looked like it was going to be kind of a repeat of 1980, somewhere in the six. 40, maybe a little tighter than that. But it was going to be a win for the no side. Then everything changed when Lucien Bouchard entered the campaign. Even, you know, Jean Chetre said afterwards, that was a moment. Everything changed.

He had the passion. He knew what to say, how to stir the crowds, how to stir those emotions that Bruce was just talking about. But talk to me about Lucien Bichard, because he's a bit of a problem. puzzle. Some even argued in the days after that, that as close as it got to, the actual vote, the less he wanted the yes side to win. I don't know whether that's true. Maybe you do, but talk to me about Lucien Boucher. I don't know that Lusanne Boucher. I don't know that Lusanne Bouchard would be able to answer that your question as to how we felt in the dying days of the campaign, but I do believe from talking to him afterwards that he gave it.

everything to this campaign. Lucerne Bouchard's strength beyond its obvious political talents and its capacity to connect to Francophone Quebecers. Lucien Bouchard was the typical Quebec voter in the sense that this is someone who was a lifelong friend of Brian Mulroney. They were classmates in law school. He was appointed ambassador to France by Brian Mulroney.

once the conservatives were in power. In 1988, when things were going south for the conservatives and Maloney was facing a re-election campaign over the free trade agreement, he brought Lucien Bouchard back from Paris and appointed him to cabinet. He found a seat for him, got him elected, and the arrival of Lucien Bouchard in Brian Malarone's cabinet

made a significant difference to the outcome of the election in 1988. in Quebec. But while Lucille Mouchard agreed to do that, as was forgotten somewhere in history, Lucien Mouchard came back and became a cabinet minister because of the Meach Lake Accord and because of Brian Mulroney's efforts to patch the tear in the unity of the provinces that had happened at Patriotation. The Meach Lake Accord enjoyed tremendous support in Quebec. It wasn't very long. It was totally a Quebec round, as opposed to the Mishmash that was called the Charlottetown Accord that happened afterwards.

And so its rejection could only be a rejection of Quebec. If you didn't want the Meach like a court and you were in Manitoba or Newfoundland, the message to Quebecers is you were rejecting Quebec because it was a Quebec-based document. And you were rejecting what to most Quebecers is obvious, the fact that Quebec is different from the other provinces for reasons of language and culture. So Lucien Bouchard, having quit Brian Mulroney's cabinet shortly before the Meish Lake Accord was finally dead, was the typical Quebecer, the person who had believed in this reconciliation and who is now the jilted person.

And on that basis, when he was speaking to Quebec, about sovereignty, as opposed to Jacques Peggisot, who was a lifelong sovereignist who never went to bed at night without dreaming that one morning he would wake up, the sun would rise on a country called Quebec. Lucien Bouchard came to this round of referendum the same way that a lot of Quebecers who would vote to no or never believed that they would vote yes to sovereignty had come to it, as someone who had come to the conclusion that it was impossible. to every conciliation, and for Quebec to be itself within the Canadian Federation.

Now, whether he wanted this yes vote to happen is another question in this instance, yes, he wanted a victory, but what he wanted was something, a basis to negotiate a different relationship with the rest of Canada. That is not to say that at 50% plus one, he believed that it would lead to a separate country. But he believed that he would have a mandate to get a better deal for Quebec. I did a book about the referendum, what 15, 20 years on. But the book wasn't about what I think about Quebec politics. It was about what all those people had to say about that last week

and how they saw a possible yes. And I interviewed Lucien Bouchard's end, and yes, he wasn't sure that he would, with 51% that the result would be sovereign Quebec or even how it would work on the morning after. I also interviewed Jacques Paguzzo, and I can testify that only one of those two men had as heartbroken that night. And it was not Lucien Bouchard.

It was Jacques Pagetzer. Okay. Let me bring us to that night. You know, I covered the 1980 campaign. I wasn't anchoring then. Nolten Ash was. but I was part of the broadcast. But as we said, that was, you know, 60, 40 was not really close.

As we got to this night, we started to think, as everyone did in those final days, that it was getting closer and closer. We had started the campaign and designing our television broadcast with a bottom line, you know, figures. It was, you know, like 55, 45, and it would go back and. fourth. Then we thought Mark Bulgutcher was producing that night said, you know, it's going to be closer.

It could be really close. We better go to decimal points. So it became like 51.2 against whatever, 48.8 or whatever, however it adds up. But then on the day before, when we started seeing some of the polls,

we better thought, we better go to two decimal points. And that's what we ended up doing. We were so convinced it was going to be that close. But listen to this. This is how we started that night. From CBC News, Quebec Referendum Night. In Montreal,

here is Peter Mansbridge. And good evening. Welcome to our referendum headquarters in the Old Windsor Hotel in downtown Montreal. The country's future lies in the hands of one province tonight. Five million Quebecers are choosing. between yes and no, between Quebec and Canada. This is the scene at a polling station in Montreal. And then he droned on for another five hours

as we watched those numbers going back and forth. And the phrase that I use most often during that evening was kidded around about a lot after that was the way the votes were coming in, the sort of Anglo vote, the vote most likely to go no on the West Island of Montreal was coming in slow, really, slow. And as a result, the yes side was ahead for a good chunk of that evening.

What was the temperature in Ottawa like when those numbers were happening? Bruce, what were you hearing from some of those people you were dealing with both conservatives and liberals? Because you were dealing with both of them at that point. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there was a lot of, the structure of the question in the campaign had a lot to do with how the federalist forces, if you could call them that, we're feeling in the final days. And by that, I mean, the question that was put, I don't know if people remember it. Maybe we should just kind of remind people what it was, because it was arguably clever, arguably very manipulative. It was this. I'll read the English version of it. Do you agree that Quebec should become sovereign after having made a formal offer to

Canada for a new economic and political partnership within the scope of the bill respecting the future of Quebec and the agreement signed on June 12, 1995. That is asking people to know a lot about what those words mean, what the context implies, even what a yes vote really means to become sovereign after having made a formal offer. Did it imply that the offer would have been refused and then sovereign? he would have transpired. It was so vague that it was entirely legitimate for the federalist side eventually to come to the view that we need a clarity act where we can't have a referendum like this before.

But that and the way in which the provincial government in Quebec had set up the dynamics for the campaign, plus the political background meant that there were going to be unified federal forces on the surface of it. But below the surface of it, there were people who had different perspectives on a lot of this stuff, and they weren't all looking at it with the same eyes, and some of them had different political agendas. I think it's also fair to say that there was a lot of blame being placed on Jean-Cretchen during that period of time. He was not seen as a helpful advocate for federalism. He was seen as one of those classic Pierre Trudeau era, more muscular federalists,

of those who was kind of more annoyed with Quebec separatism or aggrieved by it, rather than trying to empathize with the understanding of what the term sovereignty meant to most people, which wasn't necessarily a legalistic or a constitutional term. It was more an emotional term. It was an aspirational term. And so I remember I was looking again today at the speech that Jean-Cretchen gave to the country in English and French, five days before the referendum. And this was, let's bear in mind, well after the polling had showed that things were getting

close, that the federalist argument was not working. And the research was pretty clear about why it wasn't working. It was a technocratic, economic, fear-oriented argument to people who were saying, I'm not interested in the technocratic, economic, and fear arguments. And the more I hear them, the more I'm like, you know what? I just don't feel like I want to vote for your argument. Jean Choray, I'll put it in parentheses here, was not alone in making a different kind of argument, but he was the champion of a different kind of argument.

And Kretcheno, in the speech that he gave to the nation, televised speech, and it would have reached a lot of people. And let's bear in mind there was like a 93% turnout in this referendum in Quebec. He, at near the end of this, first he's talked about making this irreversible, deep, devastating, breaking up of Canada. Is that what you want to do on Monday? Near the end, he said, ask these questions to the voters. Do you really think that you and your family would have a better quality of life in a brighter future in a separate Quebec? Do you really think it's worth abandoning the country we've built in which our ancestors said,

have left us? Have you found one reason, one good reason to destroy Canada? Well, this is not a charm offensive. This is a pounding of the same federalist fear-mongering drum. And it rallied some people, but I don't think it was what was needed at the moment. I think the opposite was what was more needed at the moment. And I think that I don't know if Mr. Critchin would ever agree with that. Of course. You know, do you really think it makes any sense any sense to break up Canada? Well, you know, that wasn't on the ballot.

I'll tell you. Just a second. I know Shantel is warming up. She wants to go on this very clearly. But I've got to take our first break. And we'll do that right now. We'll come back with Shantel right after this. And welcome back.

a special edition of Good Talk for this week as we are looking back on this 30th anniversary this month of the October referendum in Quebec on the future of not only Quebec but the future of the country. Chantelle Ibert, Bruce Anderson here where you're listening on Sirius XM

Channel 167 Canada Talks or you're on our podcast or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. All right, Chantel. Bruce had the floor there. And you were motioning that you wanted to jump in, so where you go? Yes, I'll

tell you with John Clitzin's speech actually accomplished. Yes, he scared a lot of people. Problem for Jean-Litzin is most of them were outside Quebec. And they saw his speech and he thought, oh my God, this might happen. This from the man who had spent his entire

leadership campaign leading up to June 1990 when he became liberal leader. And the time after that, telling Canadians, that there was nothing to fear. The Meijlake Accord didn't work. So what. Nobody was going to break up the country on his watch.

It was all okay. So watching that speech or even watching just the image of him speaking, no need for sound, he certainly put fear in the hearts of thousands of Canadians outside Quebec. In Quebec, he probably made a lot of people happy. If I had kept score of the number of people who came up to me after the referendum and said, we taught him a lesson, this was a very personal feeling that this person who is a Quebecer had spent a decade saying they're not serious, don't worry, they say that they're not happy about Meach, but they're going to move on, they're going to get over it, to see him scared because he looked scared that night. To see him scared made a lot of people feel good. For some people, it was enough. It wasn't necessary to go through with voting, yes.

They felt vindicated by having managed to take this guy who was always, you know, dismissing anything that might happen. And putting fear, real fear, in his face. one person in a restaurant said, I got what I wanted when I saw that speech. He looked scared. But Jean-Cletein, Bruce is right. Jean-Critzine made a career

out of demeaning the sovereignty movement. In Quebec, if you're a serious analyst in French, you talk about sovereign-ist. That's the polite thing to do. Jean-Critzain never stops talking about separatism. and never stopped talking about separatists. And the way he said it was always, you know, you could feel the contempt going into every syllable of that word.

It's like calling the NDP communist. It tells you where that person is going. So don't forget, at one point we never mentioned, 94% of Quebecers voted on referendum night. everyone who could vote voted so it was an extraordinary participation no one ever claimed not to have had their say or their vote suppressed

that's probably why in the months that followed the province did find its way to reconciliation did not remain cut in half as the results of the vote suggested but I think for Jean-Clese it was a wake-up call. He knew about sovereignty.

He had members of his family who were voting, yes. So it's not as if he was disconnected from the reality of sovereignty. But I think he thought he could have a replay of 1980 and then close the books once and for all. Obviously, that didn't happen. And the rest leads to the Clarity Act. and Jean-Cletein's ultimate victory. Because that night, no one knew if no meant no.

But over the decades that followed, it became pretty clear that no meant no. I'm glad you both actually pointed out the turnout that night, 93, 94%. I think it was the largest turnout ever in a vote in Canada. If not, second largest, but it's definitely a lot higher than normal elections.

And it was a 54,000 vote difference between the yes and the no. It was extremely close in terms of the sheer number of votes. And this is what it sounded like when we made the declaration of which side won. We are ready to make now that final projection on the evening.

CBC decision desk calling for a no victory numerically tonight. It's going to be a squeaker, maybe as much as one percentage point separating the two sides by the end of the evening. And that's Bernard Darum, making the same announcement on Roger Canada on their broadcast that night. What's interesting is, well, a lot of things about that night were interesting, but it didn't take long after the networks at all decided which side was going to win based on the formulas they used to calculate these situations.

It didn't take long before the story really changed. dramatically, when Jacques Parrizo spoke to the PQ membership in a rally. There was quite unlike the one Renni Lavec spoke to in 1980, which was dripping with emotion and was an incredible scene. But this one, Parizzo was mad. He was angry. And he basically, oh, not basically, he did. He blamed the result, en franca, but translated,

was he blamed it on big money and the ethnic vote. Now, what did that do to the impact of the vote that night on the people of Quebec and the people in the country, but mainly the people in Quebec? What impact would that have had? Bruce, you go first on this round. What impact would Parizzo's reaction? Yeah, the whole thing about, you know, the vote against the yes side was caused by big money and the ethnic vote.

Well, it led to his resignation, but I think it probably made a lot of people think having referendums is not always a good way to solve democratic problems. Hopefully everybody has sort of watched how these things go over time and come to the conclusion that even when you do have a high turnout rate, if at the end of the day, people voting on one side, think they know what they're voting for but aren't sure people voting on the other side think they want to vote on the other side but they're not 100% sure but in the end they have to cast a ballot and we're going to be guided by the results and so then what our politicians do with those results is important because the the average person did not want I don't think in Quebec I grew up in Quebec until I was 15 years old 16 years old and I I knew what the FLQ was and I knew what the hardcore separatist movement was and I also knew what the adjacent to

the separatist movement called the sovereignty idea really was and I think it was incumbent upon politicians after that outcome to not just calm the waters but to rethink the way in which they were talking about it and Paris O is obviously not up for that and you know with the benefit of hindsight, sovereignty association is what Rennie LeVec asked for. That's more or less what Parisot's question was looking for. And maybe this is going to be controversial, but it is more or less what our federalism is today. Every province has a measure of sovereignty and every province has an association with the rest of the country. And I sometimes feel that were it not for the muscularity of those federalists who said, I want to call out.

separatism as my political enemy, either because they hated the idea or because they saw making a political meal out of it. That created more tension in the run-up to 1995 than there needed to be. Let me put it that way. And Perez-O's comment probably served as a reminder that Commerheads needed to start to prevail a little bit. Chantelle, you wrote a very successful book called The Morning After, a number of years after, after the referendum. But you were able to get people talking, and you mentioned how you got Bouchard talking.

Talk to me about what Bruce was touching on. The impact of what that vote did in terms of Quebecers and their relationship within the country. Well, for one thing, I think many Quebecers, including those who were on the other side of this debate, would argue that the notion of a Quebec country in partnership with the Federation is more akin in their minds to the relationship between sovereign countries in the European Union than to the Canadian Federation. more the model of what Quebec sovereignists have sought. The question and the two-part question, if Chalk Pagosu had had this way and if he had a shot at winning,

that was his plan. He would have asked, do you want Quebec to become a sovereign country? End of question, question mark. The second part, the partnership was Lucien Bouchard's creation. And it was forced upon Jacques Pagosu with numbers to show that otherwise he was going to drive his sovereignty bus into a wall.

He needed the partnership issue. Lucien Bouchard would have liked to negotiate something and to bring it back to the people for approval. That would have been his plan. Obviously, that was not where Mr. Paiso would have wanted to go. But as far as election night comments, the fact that he quit basically the next day, kind of, you know, set them aside

in a way, because Lucien Bouchard was not of that persuasion, and as a premier, he didn't play in the movie of The Us versus them. There is a section of the Parts Quebecois that has been into that. It was there

before Jacques Pagosu made those comments, and it is still there today. But to win a referendum, you actually need to reach out beyond people who see Quebec society is the way it was maybe a hundred years ago, essentially Francophones.

But where, let's be serious here, whatever Jacques Pagiso said that night about money and the ethnic vote, over the 30 years that have elapsed since then, Quebecers have had plenty of opportunity if they so wished to revisit that referendum result and to turn it into a yes. I did the math this morning. there have been eight Quebec elections since the referendum and ten federal elections. In every single one of those elections, there was a sovereignty option on the ballot. And the sovereignty option, every time, hurt the Pats Quebecoire and those defending it.

Over those 30 years, the PQ has only been in government seven years. And it's not for lack of success, but in the case of Lucien Bouchard, he did win a majority mandate as Premier, but he lost a popular vote. If there had been a surge of we want to revisit this, we feel the result is stolen, there are more than enough francophone boaters in Quebec to overturn the 50-50 result of 1995. That is not what factually happened. And if you look at the other PQ government we've had over the years, that of Pauline Marwa, a minority government, when Madame Marwa tried to convert it into a majority, and the polls looked good for her.

She recruited the owner of Quebecor, Pierre Carl Pellado, who on the day he became a candidate, put the referendum back in the picture by raising his fist and saying we were going to have a country. What happened to Madame Marois? She became leader of the opposition. So when you look at, you know, all those votes over all those years, what you see is time and time again, Quebecers saying, one, a majority do not want to vote yes. But even among those who would like to vote yes, a significant section would rather not be asked because they fear a defeat.

So that is to the point where over those years, what finally happened? The Coalition Avenir Quebec is not the result of a popularity contest that makes Francois Lego or used to make Francois Legoe walk on water. It is the product of leading sovereignists and leading federalists getting together to offer a party that wasn't going to be consumed with referendum politics. and the CAQ is in huge trouble today, but it is one of the rare governments over the past decade and a half

that got a second term and end counting. So this, you know, to recreate the circumstances of 1995, even in 1997, now in 2025, is really easier said than done because me, I don't believe that we would have had this referendum in 1995 had it not been for the constitutional history that preceded it. The sovereignty movement got a second chance. It didn't expect to have that chance, but to recreate what gave that momentum is going to be very hard. I understand that the current PQ leader

is going to try very hard. I'm curious to see what happens to his lead in an election where he's promising a referendum in this first term. We'll know that this time next year. Okay. We're going to talk about that a little bit and also situation in Alberta. After our final break, we still have, we have about 10 minutes to do that. And we'll do it right after this. And welcome back to a special edition of Good Talk. We're dealing with the 30th anniversary, comes up at the end of this month of the Quebec referendum in 1995. Chantelle's here, Bruce is here, and I'm Peter, and we're all busy remembering what it was like 30 years ago.

For those of us who are old enough to remember, I wouldn't mind asking briefly before I get to this current thing, Chantel, because you said you were, you know, part of what your duties were that night were responsible for La Pras's coverage. And I just wonder how, you manage that because it's an extremely influential paper in Quebec on a night where it looked like for a while that yes was going to win so what were the kind of decisions that were being made

and you know internally about about that I know you were kind of preoccupied with the radio broadcast you were on but you must have had a sense of what was I was I wasn't the only person coordinating the coverage obviously it was a major operation and I I was on the ground a lot, as opposed to back in the office. So I think our plan was the same regardless. On a night like that, the only thing you can do is assign people to do whatever they will need to do. You can't prepackage it, as you know. Not that night.

How many times did you rewrite your column that night? I don't even remember if I had to write a column. That's how bad. I mean, it's totally faded from my memory. I remember that I was doing some political analysis. Do you know what you had for dinner that night or breakfast that night? I remember a couple of things about that night, but the first was the afternoon because I was doing political analysis for a major financial institution.

And as those types of organizations would, they really wanted a call. one way or another and I was really in high afterwards really proud of myself for having refused to give a call for having said you do not understand it's going to be too close

for me to give you a call you're not getting a call and then I remember walking back to where I was staying and thinking I'm walking through downtown Montreal on a night like this there are thousands of people on both sides all over the city

and it's very quiet. Exactly. I remember that too. I mean, some of us have been in countries where votes similar to that kind of thing would happen and it would end up, you know, extremely emotional, very close, but the side that lost, and then suddenly they're in the streets

and they're burning this, that, and the other thing. But I too walked around downtown Montreal that night when we finally got off the air and the quiet was quite something. Not like after a hockey game during the series. No, that's right. Okay, so what's the, I don't know whether lessons the right word, but what's the takeaway for, say, like, people in Alberta, who are some of whom who are considering strongly the idea of a referendum on their future.

What's the takeaway for them, Bruce? Well, the first thing for me is that referendums are dynamite. They're explosive. they can turn out really badly. They can create problems that are worse than the problems that you think you're trying to solve with them. Best example, I think for me, other people I have a different view about it,

is the Brexit one, which really divided young people versus old people and people in one part of the UK from people and others who saw their future being taken away because of this very narrow vote or the future that they imagined for themselves, very narrow vote. It was a terrible way to try to decide the relationship of the UK with the EU, I believe. And I think our experience in Canada with these referendums is they don't, they don't

advance the ball or the puck, I guess, is probably the better metaphor here in Canada. They can sometimes set us back years. They can create more division, more rancor. Second thing for me is the federalist response in 95, at least as voiced by, John Cretchen, I don't mean to be overly critical of him. He was a, he's a very proud nationalist, and I know that a lot of people have a lot of regard for a lot of things that he did. But in the context of how he articulated his argument, it was a little bit more like, have you lost your mind? And I don't think, have you lost your mind is the way to speak to Albertans, who feel a certain sense of frustration with the Federation, or British Columbians for that matter.

I think the, have you lost your mind argument for federalism is the worst possible argument for federalism. And federalists need to be either more inclined to just tamp the conversation down and replace it with a kind of a collective aspirational conversation or at least engage it in a way that acknowledges that there's some sort of root cause of an instinct for a greater sovereignty. if I can put it that way. And the third thing is, in 1995, I think the use rate of the Internet was around 7%. Somewhere between 5 and 10. Now, I don't know about you, but if I think about today, it's Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram. And the brief. That's how that campaign will go.

And good talk. And yesterday, I looked at Instagram a little bit. And I'm getting all of these reels. And the reels that I saw for some reason have Queen Elizabeth in a wrestling match and have all kinds of AI generated, completely fake but entirely plausible-looking pieces of video content. I'm terrified of what would happen in a world of AI and ubiquitous Internet access to an otherwise structured conversation that the country could have in 1995 because of the world. nature of our media environment. Chantelle.

Yeah, well, terrified is not really, you know, it's always interesting, terrified and scared when the referendum issue comes up. It's not really a word that translates in the other official language. But to people in Alberta are looking at this, the one thing about the Pasquois and the 1995 referendum is that it was built on a solid foundation of electoral success, both at the federal and the provincial level. It's really hard to translate a movement into votes in a referendum if you can't manage to get the dog catch or elected in the writing. That's rule number one. You do need, if you're serious about a country project, you do need people with some stature of gravitas and government experience to want to lead your party.

It's not kind of a one-night talent show and then you move on. It's a serious proposition to want to go down that road. And as for the risks, I guess Lucerne Bouchard put it best in a recent interview about the current plans for a referendum. What he said is losing two referendums, cost Quebec within the federation, gave it less leverage. So if you think of Alberta and a referendum and the results are not terribly positive for the secession option, that can only lead to Alberta's demands being taken less seriously than they would be otherwise. That is what happens. And that is also Mr. Bushaw

is not talking about Alberta. He was talking about the notion that a third referendum at a juncture where two-thirds of Quebecers say they don't want one, and 60% say, give or take a few points, say they would vote no, is not a good idea because it can only diminish Quebec's leverage. Well, that's also true of Alberta. Well, it was certainly a night like no other that we've seen, watching those numbers tip back and forth from one side to the other. and making everybody, no matter where they were in the country,

because there were huge numbers. I mean, the turnout was big in Quebec. There's no question about that. But across the country, there were huge numbers in terms of those who were watching. Because people were on the edge of their seats, wondering about what was going to happen in terms of the future of the country and trying to imagine it, you know, with a major chunk of it not being within the country. And so the same, you know, concerns.

And worries, fears, and excitement for some would be the result of other referendums if they're held, whether it's one in Alberta or if the PQ wins in the next provincial election in Quebec and he follows through on his promise to have another referendum. Well, the same one wonders how similar it would be not just on Quebecers or Abotan's part, but the rest of the country. itself. I mean, there are enough tensions around the country right now for a lot of reasons that would add to the mix. Okay, there was some fear when we thought of doing this. I'm glad we did it because it was a good experience. It was great to hear your recollections of a different

time in the country and we look forward to getting back to the regular routine next week right here on Good Talk. Thanks to Shantel, thanks to Bruce. Have a great weekend. We'll talk to you all again next week. Cheers, guys. Thanks, guys. Bye.