Word: referendum
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...interesting that throughout the torturous months that gripped Canada in the run-up to the Quebec referendum, no serious challenge to the simplistic and unjustifiable definition of a separatist "victory"--a mere 50 percent of the vote--was posed...
Breaking up a peaceful and well-respected country certainly qualifies in my book for the supermajority condition, but this was never an issue in the Quebec referendum. It is hard to see how serious debate took place without questioning this central assumption, that it is somehow justified to remove a province from a federation on the decision of a mere half of its eligible voters. What of the other half? This case is interesting because it is not merely an academic argument: the uncanny behavior of Canadian voters produced a near 50-50 split, the vote being decided 50.6 percent...
When the legality of a simple majority referendum was questioned, politicians from both sides called it, dismissively, a "legal" issue as opposed to a "political" one. The niceties of the law were now seen as trivial, in a country obsessed with questions of federal-provincial jurisdiction and constitutional wrangling...
...after Quebec Premier Jacques Parizeau announced his resignation over barely losing the secession referendum, it looks as though Canada may soon be dealing with an even more formidable separatist. Leaders of the Parti Quebecois are already trying to revive their push for secession under the banner of Lucien Bouchard, the movement's charismatic co-leader. Since Parizeau's decision to leave Tuesday, at least two potential replacements have said they would defer to a Bouchard candidacy. The Parti Quebecois, which took power in Quebec last year, chooses its leader through a vote of all 150,000 members. TIME's William...
...rather lose by discord than win by this narrow victory. In the next few weeks, the federal government will cut Quebec social payments, welfare and health coverage.... The next referendum in six to seven years will be a victory," he said...