When separatists lost the 1995 referendum, then-premier Jacques Parizeau notoriously blamed "money and the ethnic vote" and finance minister (and future premier) Bernard Landry yelled at a Hispanic hotel worker. Later, Mr. Landry complained that setting a higher standard than 50-per-cent support for unilateral separation would be like giving a veto to Quebec's "cultural communities."
Today, the Parti Québécois has lost thousands upon thousands of soft-nationalist voters to the Action démocratique du Québec, and the old party's new leader, Pauline Marois, wants them back. Her tactic is to propose a form of official provincial citizenship, which would be restricted to people who speak French; non-francophones would be forbidden to stand for public office or even to petition the provincial legislature. A worrisome step. And then up pops Pierre Curzi, the PQ's culture critic, making the outrageous suggestion that unilingual Anglos in Montreal could lose the right to vote in a sovereign Quebec.
Quebec anglophones have an unlikely defender: Graham Fraser, the federal commissioner of official languages. Previous occupants of the office have done little but upbraid the federal government for not being adequately francophone-friendly, but Mr. Fraser has marched into the Quebec fray to say that young Quebec anglophones are just about the most bilingual people in the country, are profoundly sympathetic to francophone Quebec and don't deserve to be Mr. Curzi's punching bags. He's right.
Pierre Curzi (top right), the Parti Qubcois's culture critic, happily watched then-prime minister Paul Martin sign a UN convention on diversity and cultural expression in 2005; now that the PQ is on the outs, he's beating up on Montreal anglophones.


The PQ is wrong to try to refight the Quiet Revolution. It's over. And the party's unwillingness to recognize that is exactly why it's in the wilderness.
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