Politics of Quebec
Institutions
Many of Quebec's institutions are centuries old. This first parts of this article present the main political institutions of Quebec society. The last part will attempt to present an overview of Quebec's current politics and issues.
National Assembly of Quebec
The National Assembly of Quebec is part of a legislature based on the Westminster System. However, it has a few special characteristics; one of the most important ones being that it functions mostly in French, although English is allowed and the Assembly's records are bilingual. The representatives of the Quebec people are elected with a first-past-the-post method. Since at least the 1960s, various reforms of the electoral method have been proposed, but none have been enacted. The government is created by the majority party and it is responsible to National Assembly. Since abolition of the Legislative Council in 1968, the National Assembly has all the powers enact laws in the provincial jurisdictions.
History
Until 1968, the Quebec legislature was bicameral, consisting of the Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly. In that year, the Legislative Council was abolished, and the Legislative Assembly was renamed the National Assembly. Before 1968, there had been various unsuccessful attempts at abolishing the Legislative Council, which was analogous to the Senate of Canada.
The Legislative Assembly was created with the Constitutional Act of 1791. It was abolished from 1841 to 1867 under the Act of Union which merged Upper Canada and Lower Canada into a single colony named the Province of Canada. With the British North America Act 1867, which would later become the Constitution Act 1867, the Legislative Assembly was restored to former Lower Canada, today the province of Quebec.
Executive Council
The Executive Council is the body responsible for decision-making in the government. It is composed of the premier, the government ministers, the ministers of state and delegate ministers. The Executive Council directs the government and the civil service, and oversees the enforcement of laws, regulations and policies. Together with the lieutenant governor, it constitutes the government of Quebec.
Chief electoral officer of Quebec
Independent from the government, this institution is responsible for the administration of the Quebec electoral system.
Government of Quebec
The government of Quebec consists of all the ministries and governmental branches that do not have the status of independent institutions such as municipalities and regional county municipalities.
Human Rights and Youth Commission
Office québécois de la langue française
The Office québécois de la langue française is an organization created by the 1977 Charter of the French Language. It is responsible for applying and defining Quebec's language policy pertaining to linguistic officialization, terminology and francization of public administration and businesses;
See language policies for a comparison with other States in the world.
Quebec Ombudsman
Conseil du statut de la femme
Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec
Municipal institutions
School boards
Quebec anglophone school boards
Quebec francophone school boards
Political parties
The current major political parties in Quebec are:
- The Liberal Party of Quebec
- The Parti Quebecois
- The Action democratique
- The Union des forces progressistes
International organizations
Quebec is a participating government in the international organization the Francophonie, which can be seen as a sort of Commonwealth of Nations for French-speaking countries. Through its civil society, Quebec is present in many international organizations such as Oxfam.
Politics of Quebec today
Recent political history
When Quebec became one of the four founding provinces of the Confederation, guarantees for the maintenance of its language, culture, and religion were specifically written into the Constitution. English and French were made the official languages in Quebec and school systems which provided for public funding of religious schools were established. Unfortunately for French-speaking Canadians, the same was not true for the other provinces. Under the Constitution the provinces had control of education, and in Quebec the school system was entirely confessional. The Protestants and Roman Catholics ran separate school systems in Quebec until the 1990s when secularization of schools took place under the Parti Québécois government.
Under the Union Nationale government of Maurice Duplessis and all previous governments, the Roman Catholic Church was allowed to maintain religious control over social services such as schools and hospitals. In return, the clergy used its influence to exhort voters to stay with the conservative government, which also took firm stands against social reform and unionism.
In 1960, under a new Liberal Party government led by Premier Jean Lesage, the political power of the church was greatly reduced. Quebec entered an accelerated decade of changes known as the Quiet Revolution which saw near complete decolonization. The changes were so quick and so radical that the Liberal government was voted out in 1965 and the Union Nationale party was returned to power.
During the 1960s, a small terrorist group known as the Front de libération du Québec launched a decade of bombings, murders, robberies and attacks on Government offices. Their activities culminated in events referred to as the October Crisis when the British Trade commissioner to Canada was kidnapped along with Pierre Laporte, a provincial minister and Vice-Premier, who was murdered a few days later.
A non-violent Quebec independence movement slowly took form in the late 1960s. The Parti Québécois was created by the sovereignty-association movement of René Lévesque; it advocated a reconfederation recognizing Quebec as an equal and independent nation. The Parti Québécois was elected in 1976. The first PQ government was known as the "republic of teachers" for its high number of candidates teaching at the university level. The PQ passed laws to favor equal financing of political parties and the Charter of the French Language (the so-called Bill 101). The Charter is a fundamental law making French the sole official language of Quebec while guaranteeing the rights of the English-speaking community. The first enactment of Bill 101 became controversial for its regulations on commercial signs. It banned English-only and bilingual signs, as the government claimed that they violated the right of the French-speaking majority. This section of the law was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, see: Ford v. Quebec (A.G.). The law was amended to comply with the Supreme Court ruling. The current 1988 law specifies that signs can be multilingual so long as French is predominant. Most businesses now voluntarily choose to put up French signs following market forces.
In 1980, Premier Lévesque put sovereignty association before the Quebec voters in a referendum. Sixty percent of the Quebec electorate voted against it. The Canadian government repatriated the constitution in 1982 without the approval of the Quebec provincial government. From 1985 to 1994, the federalist Parti libéral du Québec governed under Robert Bourassa and Daniel Johnson, Jr. Progress on the constitutional issue resulted in the Meech Lake Accord in 1987, but it collapsed in 1990. Another constitutional deal, the Charlottetown Accord, which sought to resolve a long list of unrelated issues at the same time as it resolved the rest of the nation's relationship with Quebec, was rejected by country-wide referendum in 1992.
The Parti Québécois was re-elected to office in 1994, led by Jacques Parizeau, and held another referendum on sovereignty. On October 30, 1995, the measure was rejected by an extremely slim margin, less than one percent. The federal Liberal Party under Prime Minister Jean Chrétien came under sharp criticism for mishandling the "No" side of the referendum campaign.
Parizeau resigned and was replaced by the head of the federal Bloc Québécois, Lucien Bouchard. Under Bouchard, the sovereignist option was pushed aside, as it didn't seem possible to gather "winning conditions".
For some the fight for Quebec independence is still very important to this day. However, after ten years the separatist Parti Québécois government, Jean Charest, leader of the Parti libéral du Québec, was elected premier of the province in the election of April 14, 2003.
Quebec City hosted the Summit of the Americas in April 2001, attracting huge anti-globalization protests with activists from everywhere in the Americas.
The National Issue
A central question in Quebec since the 1960s is the political status of the province inside Canada. A majority of people seem to wish for a change in status, however no single political option currently gathers a majority of the vote. Therefore, the question remains unresolved even after almost 50 years of debates.
Federalist Nationalists
The federalist nationalists are nationalists who believe it best for the people of Quebec to reform the Canadian federation in order to accomodate the wish of Quebecers to exist as a society distinct by its culture, its history, its language etc. They recognize the existence of the Quebec political (or civic) nation, however they do think Quebecers truly wish to be independent from Canada. Before the arrival of the Parti Quebecois, all major Quebec parties were federalist and nationalist. Since then, the party most associated with this view is the Liberal Party of Quebec. On two occasions, federalists nationalists of Quebec attempted to reform the Canadian federation together with allies in other provinces. The 1990 Meech Lake Accord and the 1992 Charlottetown Accord were both unsucessful.
Sovereignists
Sovereignists are nationalists who do not believe Canada to be reformable in a way that could answer what they see as the legimitate wish of Quebecers to govern themselves freely. They opt for the independence of Quebec, however they often insist on affirming their desire to offer an economic and political partnership to the rest of Canada on the basis of the equality of both nations. The political party that the sovereignists created is the Parti Quebecois, which its members define as a party of social democrat tendency. The Parti Quebecois organised two referendums that would have led to negociations for independence: one in 1980 and one in 1995. They were both unsucessful.
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