The 1980 Quebec independence referendum was the first referendum in Quebec on the place of Quebec within Canada and whether Quebec should pursue a path toward sovereignty. The referendum was called by Quebec's Parti Québécois (PQ) government, which advocated secession from Canada.
The province-wide referendum took place on May 20, and the proposal to pursue secession was defeated by a 59.56 per cent to 40.44 per cent margin.
A second referendum on sovereignty, which was held in 1995, also rejected pursuing secession, albeit by a much smaller margin (50.58% to 49.42%).
Background
Quebec, a province since Canadian Confederation in 1867, has always been the sole majority French-speaking province. Since Canada's creation, tensions have existed between the French and English parts of the country. With English being the only national language until 1969, French Canadians in Quebec saw bilingualism as a “one-way road”, with French speakers expected to learn English to cater to Anglophones both in Quebec and the rest of the country. The Roman Catholic Church held power over everything from educational to welfare institutions in the province, with Quebec citizens having to pay tithe taxes to the Church.
As industrialization grew the size of the working middle class, power remained in the hands of English speakers. In Montreal, many mayors through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries did not speak French. This led to what The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science called "a Montreal elite largely imported, overall Anglo-Saxon, and dominated by business matters". Across Quebec, business was conducted in English, with French speakers never controlling more than 20% of businesses throughout the 1900s. This constant subordination of French Canadians in Quebec led to the Quiet Revolution, characterized by the effective secularization of society and the creation of a welfare state (état-providence). It also caused a realignment of provincial politics into federalist and sovereigntist factions, the latter calling for the separation of Quebec from Canada and its establishment as a sovereign nation state.
A prominent sovereigntist was René Lévesque, who helped found the Parti Québécois (PQ) with like-minded separatists. The PQ proposed "sovereignty-association", a proposal for Quebec to be a sovereign nation-state while requiring (hence the hyphen) an economic partnership with what remained of Canada. The PQ had intended to declare independence upon forming government, citing the principle of parliamentary supremacy. This was changed in the party platform after internal lobbying by Claude Morin to a referendum strategy to better allow such a declaration to be internationally recognized.
The PQ won the 1976 election in a surprise rout of the governing Quebec Liberals of Robert Bourassa on a general platform of good government and the promise of holding a referendum on sovereignty-association during their first term. In government, the PQ implemented a number of popular reforms to longstanding issues in the province, while emphasizing its nationalist credentials with laws such as Bill 101, which reinforced French as the province's official language. The bill controls everything from street signs to education to internal business communications, and essentially gives everyone the right to live in Quebec without knowing English. While the bill was popular in French circles as it finally affirmed their language rights, it added to the tension in English communities. With anything English-only, even product labels, effectively banned, Bill 101 may have contributed to growing Anglophone migration out of Quebec, and one Anglophone paper at the time said Bill 101 made Quebec a “police state”.
The PQ's efforts were in philosophical conflict with the federal Liberal government of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, an opponent of sovereignty who instead urged Quebecers to seek empowerment at the federal level through reforms that provided for bilingualism and protection for individual rights. Trudeau, an effective campaigner whose party had dominated federal politics in Quebec for over 80 years, was considered such a formidable opponent that Lévesque refused to implement a referendum while Trudeau remained in office.
In the 1979 federal election, the Liberals were narrowly defeated by the Progressive Conservatives led by Joe Clark, whose platform had included a more accommodating approach to constitutional negotiations with the provinces. Clark's minority government made a point to not have the federal government be involved in the referendum, leaving the task of representing federalist voices to Claude Ryan, the new leader of the Quebec Liberal Party.
On June 21, 1979, Lévesque announced the promised referendum would occur in the spring of 1980, and that the question would be announced before Christmas.
Leadup
On November 1, 1979, the Quebec government made public its constitutional proposal in a white paper entitled Québec-Canada: A New Deal. The Québec Government Proposal for a New Partnership Between Equals: Sovereignty-Association.
A dramatic change occurred in Ottawa on December 11, 1979, when a series of confused phone calls led the nationalist Social Credit Members of Parliament (MPs) to abstain from a budget vote, which, along with a concerted Liberal and New Democratic Party (NDP) push, led the Clark government to unexpectedly lose a vote of confidence on a budget bill, precipitating a federal election. Three days afterward, Trudeau announced his return as leader of the Liberals. Polls showed Clark losing handily.
Question
The referendum question was a subject of much internal debate amongst the Parti Québécois caucus. Pur et durs such as Finance Minister Jacques Parizeau preferred a simple question on the entirety of the proposal. Lévesque came to the view that, as sovereignty-association would by necessity require negotiations with the Government of Canada, the government of Quebec should be treated as a legal agent and require ratification of its final decision. He also felt the safety of a second referendum would convince swing voters to back the "Yes."
A significant debate arose as to whether a "question" under the Referendum Act could have more than one sentence: the final compromise was to use semicolons.
The question announced on December 20, 1979, was:
"The Government of Quebec has made public its proposal to negotiate a new agreement with the rest of Canada, based on the equality of nations; this agreement would enable Quebec to acquire the exclusive power to make its laws, levy its taxes and establish relations abroad — in other words, sovereignty — and at the same time to maintain with Canada an economic association including a common currency; any change in political status resulting from these negotiations will only be implemented with popular approval through another referendum; on these terms, do you give the Government of Quebec the mandate to negotiate the proposed agreement between Quebec and Canada?"
Lévesque, while noting its cumbersome nature, stated that it was transparent and could be easily understood.
Legislative debate
The Liberals presented their constitutional proposal, known as the "Beige Paper" on January 10, 1980, which advocated a decentralized Canadian federation. While generally viewed as detailed and competent, the report did not make much impact on the federal election, and was attacked by the PQ as vague and insubstantial. Ryan, who disliked the federal Liberals, refused to endorse either Trudeau or Clark.
On February 18, 1980, the federal Liberals won a majority in the House of Commons, and Trudeau returned as Prime Minister. Trudeau announced Jean Chrétien, his most trusted lieutenant, as having responsibilities for the federal response to the referendum. Ryan was furious.
Television had recently been introduced to the Quebec National Assembly, and the legislative debate on the referendum question was scheduled for prime time live viewing on March 4, 1980. The debate lasted two weeks, and the result was a smashing PQ success and a disaster for the provincial Liberals. The PQ Cabinet, coordinated by House Leader Claude Charron, provided detailed outlines of their files and the benefits they said sovereignty would provide them. The Liberals provided quick and taunting retorts regarding the referendum question that would normally be heard on the legislative floor, but which appeared to be flippant and insubstantial compared to the lengthy and detailed speeches of PQ members to television viewers. The Liberals seemed to lack preparation and Ryan, unaware of the television cameras, was caught yawning on a few occasions during Liberal interventions.
Polls released after the debates showed the Yes and No side roughly even, with a majority amongst Francophone voters for the "Yes."
Brunch des Yvettes
Less helpful to the "Yes" campaign was a speech by the Minister of Consumer Affairs, Cooperatives and Financial Institutions Lise Payette to a committee in Montreal, which mocked what she viewed as the "No" side's complacency by using the conception of Yvette, a docile schoolgirl from pre-Quiet Revolution schoolbooks, a general theme she had also used in the legislature. Payette then stated that Ryan wanted a Quebec full of "Yvettes" and that his wife, Madeline Ryan, was an Yvette. The personal attack prompted a furious editorial by prominent journalist Lise Bissonnette, who sarcastically contrasted Payette's televised exploits with Mme Ryan's accomplishments in the private and public sector.
Payette apologized during the legislative debate, but the remark and editorial sparked a movement. On March 30, a group of 1,700 women, including Madeline Ryan, held the brunch des Yvettes at the Château Frontenac in Quebec City. The movement grew until a rally at the Montreal Forum on April 7 when close to 15,000 women, among them the federal Health Minister, a legislator in the National Assembly of Quebec, and incoming Speaker of the House of Commons, denounced the minister's declarations about women and manifested their support for the "No" side.
Campaign
On April 15, Lévesque announced before the National Assembly the referendum would occur on May 20, 1980. The same day, on the opening of the House of Commons, Trudeau announced that the Government of Canada would not negotiate sovereignty-association under any circumstances, as he considered the question too vague and the Canadian government's authority too uncertain to do so. He also stated that the question was too vague to give Lévesque and the PQ any mandate to declare independence, making any result from a "Yes" vote impossible; in contrast, he offered that a "No" vote would lead to constitutional change. His position was supported by Clark and national NDP leader Ed Broadbent.
The "Yes" campaign was, in the initial stages, low key. It focused on gaining broad acceptance of sovereignty-association through specialized "regroupments" that would be presented with special certificates at ceremonies led by Lévesque and other cabinet ministers. The regroupments were seen as an attempt to show broad support for the movement and create conversations at the ground level, however, the attempt to create them in some heavily Federalist professions, such as lawyers, prompted a severe backlash.
The "No" campaign, led by Ryan, was run as a traditional election campaign, with Ryan campaigning during the day and making speeches in local hockey arenas across rural Quebec.
Controversially, the Canadian government became involved on its own accord in the referendum despite the provisions of the provincial Referendum Act, which tightly restricted all campaigning to the designated "Yes" and "No" committees with set budgets. Canadian government politicians made appearances coordinated by Minister of Justice Jean Chrétien and Marc Lalonde, mainly speculating on the economic uncertainty a "Yes" vote could bring. Chrétien argued that prominent PQ member Claude Morin would sacrifice Canada's oil and national gas price to drive in an ambassadors' Cadillac. Lalonde argued that old age pensions were directly threatened by a "Yes" vote. Though initially reluctant, Ryan started to accept and welcome the Canadian government's help, and continued to speak across Quebec.
The referendum prompted an unheard-of political mobilization, and the campaign was seen as a traumatic event in Quebec, as the hard choice between "Yes" and "No" shattered the nationalist consensus that had existed since the Quiet Revolution.