By PHILIP AUTHIER - Premier Jean Charest has ripped into Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois's new piece-by-piece sovereignty plan, describing it as unworkable, a threat to the economy and a recipe for disaster.
Charest said any reasonable person sitting across the table from a Péquiste government asking Ottawa to divest itself of some of its powers voluntarily, which the PQ proposes in a document released Sunday, would see things for what they are - a ruse.
"What credibility will Mme. Marois have when she knocks on the door of the federal government and says, 'I want all these powers, I want all the money, and once you have handed this over I actually want to separate from the rest of Canada?' " he said. "(The plan) leads nowhere."
It will only create uncertainty and rapidly poison relations between Quebec and Ottawa, the premier said.
"It's a threat to the whole economy of Quebec," Charest said after a speech in Montreal. "What Mme. Marois is proposing is going to war with the federal government."
Charest was reacting to the latest installment in the PQ's 40-year-old quest to turn Quebec into a country. This one, hastily made public Sunday after a number of leaks, will not be official PQ policy until the party membership votes on it at a 2011 policy convention. The plan faces a first test on Saturday at a meeting of riding presidents in Rivière du Loup.
The PQ used to be of the opinion that victory in a referendum would be needed to create the kind of country it envisions. Now, instead of waiting for the "big referendum," the party would hack away at the federation piece by piece. The strategy, which some analysts say would wind up in the courts, is to show Quebecers the benefits of more powers now by flexing to the limit the muscles the province currently has.
PQ polls show that 72 per cent of Quebecers think Quebec should open talks designed to assume power over culture. A single tax form is popular , too. Conseil de la souverainté president Gérald Larose would like to set up a supreme court right now. The PQ wants to rewrite the Charter of the French Language to make it apply to small firms and federal institutions.
"We are convinced we must leave behind this all-or-nothing approach in favour of one that is always seeking more for Quebecers," Marois said Sunday.
The grab-back from Ottawa has sparked comparisons to a plan the Action démocratique du Québec - an autonomist party - cooked up years ago.
"We are not autonomists," Marois said yesterday on Radio-Canada. "We are sovereignists. It's not four years of quarrelling (with Ottawa). It's four years of progress."
The word "referendum" does not appear in the plan.
pauthier@thegazette.canwest.com