The problem Pauline Marois faces is plain: The product she is supposed to be selling, independence for Quebec, is not popular.
With the global economy in crisis and the planetary climate changing, few Quebecers have much interest, right now, in sovereignty.
Under Marois the Parti Québécois has very little to offer except the magic wand of independence - few or no fresh policy ideas, projects, or economic approaches. (The current Liberal government, it should be said, isn't doing much better on innovation. But Premier Jean Charest doesn't have a problem: He's in office. Marois is the one with the problem.)
Her solution, not formally adopted by the PQ but now laid out clearly by the leader to be rubber-stamped in due course, is a return to the sham panacea of sovereignty, but this time in bits and pieces: A Quebec government under Pauline Marois would systematically pick fights with Ottawa in a series of domains where there's some hope of inflaming public opinion against the federal government.
Her set of highly-contentious demands seems to have been designed to stir up the embers of discontent and nationalistic longing. Dignifying her list of non-problems by calling it étapisme, the tried-but-not-proven slow road to sovereignty, Marois and those round her have selected a smorgasbord of what they evidently think are hot-button issues.
Some are symbolic: Quebec should demand ownership of the Plains of Abraham, now a federal park, Marois says. But for what?
Some are worrisome: Quebec having set up its own income-tax collection system, she would now demand that Ottawa back out of this field and let Quebec collect for the federal level. What could possibly go wrong there?
Some are ideological: Demanding sole control over cultural policy - and the money that goes with it - is just a way of saying that Quebec and the rest of Canada have nothing in common culturally - a classic example of the big lie.
Some are redundant: Does protecting the primacy of French really need constitutional change?
Some are downright ominous: Getting sole control over broadcasting would open the way to the strangulation of English radio and TV; maybe even the Internet.
We trust that Quebecers will see through this quarrelsome "bad-neighbour" policy. Marois says her strategy would be "one that is always seeking more for Quebecers," a posture rooted in another big lie: that Canada is a zero-sum game, in which what rest-of-Canada wins, Quebec loses, and vice-versa. This has never been true and is less true than ever in today's world. While Canada is negotiating a freer-trade deal with the European Union, what sense does it make for Quebec to be pulling up its own drawbridge, culturally or economically or any other way?
Jean Charest, never happier than when the PQ talks about sovereignty, pounced on Marois's plan and called it by its name: "What Mme. Marois is proposing is going to war with the federal government," Charest said. "It's a threat to the whole economy of Quebec."
Sadly, that doesn't seem to bother Marois and the true believers around her. The point is to invent a list of non-negotiable demands, good for years of acrimony. This might help the PQ, but it surely wouldn't help Quebec.