Who needs Quebec sovereignty? The Quebec Liberal Party does, for some of the same reasons as the Parti Québécois.
Opposition to sovereignty might be the last remaining principle that distinguishes the Liberals from the PQ, just as advocacy of sovereignty defines the latter. Can the average Quebec voter say what else the QLP still stands for?
And as long as Quebec politics remains polarized by the sovereignty question, the Liberals benefit as well as the PQ.
Opposition to sovereignty slows the erosion of the QLP's electoral base, just as support for it does for the PQ, and keeps the financial contributions flowing into the party's coffers.
And a return to constitutional polarization might help the Liberals more than the PQ to win back support lost to Action démocratique du Québec in the 2007 general election but failed to regain last year.
An analysis of the 2007 general election by political scientists Éric Bélanger of McGill University and Richard Nadeau of the Université de Montréal showed that for every vote the ADQ took from the PQ, it took two from the Liberals.
Also, ADQ voters in 2007 were closer in their characteristics and attitudes to Liberals than Péquistes.
Maybe that's why Premier Jean Charest has seemed even more eager to talk up the PQ's latest scheme for achieving sovereignty than is PQ leader Pauline Marois.
By the time Marois released her "plan for a sovereign Quebec" on Sunday, Charest had already attacked it at least twice without having seen any more of it than what had been reported in a newspaper last week.
The day that La Presse reported that a PQ government would hold "sectoral referendums" on individual constitutional jurisdictions such as language, Charest gave the newspaper an interview saying the plan would "divide Quebecers."
He said the plan "will create economic instability, political instability, especially with the threat of sectoral referendums in repetition. I found that quite alarming."
Charest said the real purpose of the plan was to build up support for sovereignty. "They'll look for issues that divide Quebecers, that divide Canadians," he said. "They won't be looking to reach agreements with the federal government. They'll be looking for sovereignty."
He honed his attack lines on Saturday in the predominantly non-francophone riding of Marguerite-Bourgeoys in southwest Montreal, where a by-election is to be held June 22. Charest spoke in French of a "menace Marois sur l'économie"- a Marois threat to the economy - because her sectoral referendums would cause "several years of disturbances."
The plan wasn't supposed to be made public until next Saturday, at a meeting of PQ association presidents. But, apparently alarmed that Charest was defining the plan for public opinion before it could, the PQ scrambled to call an unusual Sunday-morning news conference to release it with an explanation by Marois.
The plan calls for a gradual transfer of power from Ottawa to Quebec, until the province eventually becomes sovereign. And while it does not mention the sectoral referendums, Marois wouldn't rule them out.
But the plan does not commit the PQ to a deadline for holding a final referendum on sovereignty. Marois said one would be held only when the PQ government was convinced it had the support of a majority of Quebecers.
And in interviews, Marois sounded more federalist than sovereignist, emphasizing that the plan calls for the transfer of power within the federal system and barely mentioning her ultimate objective of sovereignty.
It might be the closest the PQ has come to becoming federalist since René Lévesque accepted the "worthwhile risk" of negotiating within the Canadian constitution after losing the 1980 referendum.
dmacpher@thegazette.canwest.com