The sputtering indignation of Quebec's separatist leaders underlined the feebleness of their response to the forthright, forward-looking comments of French President Nicolas Sarkozy this week.
Mr. Sarkozy spoke some basic truths about the world. "Do you believe the world as it faces an unprecedented crisis needs division? Needs hatred?" he said, as he awarded Premier Jean Charest the Legion of Honour in Paris. He cited "the universal values that we share in Quebec as in France: the rejection of sectarianism, the rejection of division, the refusal to retreat into oneself."
This was, in a sense, a bookend to president Charles de Gaulle's "Vive le Québec libre" spoken from the balcony of Montreal City Hall in 1967, that obnoxious call to destroy the country that had done so much, a little more than 20 years earlier, to save his own. Your project makes no sense, Mr. Sarkozy was saying. Give it up. Move on. "No head of state has ever used such contemptuous epithets as yours to describe Quebec's independence movement," said the letter of complaint from Gilles Duceppe, leader of the Bloc Québécois, and Pauline Marois, leader of the Parti Québécois. True, but not much of a defence of their outdated project.
Such a blast of fresh air has not come this way from France for a long time. An exception was the last time Mr. Sarkozy addressed this subject, at the Canadian cemetery in Normandy last May: "We love Quebec but we love Canada. And of those who died here, we didn't ask what region they came from. We knew what country they came from. We didn't even ask what language they spoke. Those who are buried here, even if they didn't speak our language, saved us."


Quebec separatists have long looked to Mother France for succour, and to some extent received it. For decades, France's policy was "neither interference nor indifference," which was verbal sleight-of-hand, sometimes accompanied by nudges and winks, as happened last July at Quebec's 400th-anniversary celebrations, when Prime Minister François Fillon lovingly evoked "a great historic voice" (de Gaulle's) that had "pulled Quebec out of its hibernation." Mr. Sarkozy put an end to all that nonsense. "The non-interference, non-indifference, honestly, it is not really my thing." To be equally frank, it wasn't really Canadians' thing, either. Mr. Sarkozy, on behalf of Mother France, has cut the cord, and the separatists are, more than ever, adrift.
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Sarkozy: une «bouffée d'air frais» au Canada anglais

Agence France-Presse - Les propos du président français Nicolas Sarkozy qui ont provoqué une protestation des chefs indépendantistes québécois sont une «bouffée d'air frais», estime samedi le quotidien anglophone The Globe and Mail.
«Cela fait longtemps qu'une telle bouffée d'air frais n'était pas venue de France», écrit le quotidien dans un éditorial, estimant que les déclarations de M. Sarkozy mettent un point final à l'épisode ouvert par le célèbre «Vive le Québec libre» lancé en 1967 par le général de Gaulle à Montréal.Le président français a provoqué une vive réaction des indépendantistes en les accusant indirectement de sectarisme.
En remettant une décoration au premier ministre québécois Jean Charest, M. Sarkozy avait plaidé pour l'unité du Canada et «le refus du sectarisme, le refus de la division, le refus de l'enfermement sur soi-même, le refus de définir son identité par opposition féroce à l'autre».
Dans une lettre adressée au président français, la chef du Parti québécois Pauline Marois et le chef du Bloc québécois Gilles Duceppe ont jugé «méprisants» ses propos sur leur mouvement et estimé qu'aucun chef d'Etat «n'a autant manqué de respect aux plus de deux millions de Québécois qui se sont prononcés pour la souveraineté (indépendance)».
«M. Sarkozy au nom de la France-mère a coupé le cordon et les séparatistes sont, plus que jamais, à la dérive», conclut le journal en exprimant la satisfaction d'une bonne partie du Canada anglophone face aux propos présidentiels français.