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rfmcdonaldFrom The Globe and Mail, by Ingrid Peretz.
The 1995 Québec referendum was a decidedly stressful time for Canadians. I remember watching the news coverage and feeling a knot in my stomach as I saw ridings in northern Québec return results revealing that more than two-thirds of the population voted "Oui." Northern Québec didn't set a precedent thanks to the tendency of individual voters in Montréal and western Québec to vote "Non" in sufficient numbers to counteract separatist votes.
In the end, I really can't be bothered to care. There may well have been voter fraud on the part of individual separatists, although federalists can hardly claim the moral high ground. (Alliance Quebec doesn't deserve to be very credible either, thanks to its leadership's tendency to ally with marginal political parties and its exhibition of the classic tendency of fringe groups to suffer mass defections.) Let the past be past, and hope that the transformation of Canada into something not altogether unlike the German Confederation of the mid-19th century proceeds quickly enough to placate separatists everywhere in this country.
Nearly five million ballots that almost tore up a country are headed to the shredder, ending a 12-year legal saga born in the turbulent wake of the Quebec referendum.
A judge gave Quebec's elections chief the green light to destroy the warehoused ballots Wednesday, dashing the hopes of federalists who believed they could unlock the secrets of possible vote-rigging in the 1995 referendum.
To most of Quebec, the ballots are long-forgotten relics of a distant and painful political battle. But to others, they're historic pieces of evidence.
The focus is on 86,501 ballots that were marked improperly and never counted in the outcome, a No victory of 50.6 per cent.
The high rate of rejection in certain federalist ridings led the anglophone-rights group Alliance Quebec to seek the preservation of the ballots.
[. . .]
That plan was dashed in a ruling by Superior Court Justice Roger Baker. He granted a petition by Chief Electoral Officer Marcel Blanchet to dismiss Alliance Quebec's lawsuit, effectively sending 4.8 million ballots to the dustbin.
While the "overtones" of the suit were significant because they dealt with the possible breakup of the country, Judge Baker said he was ruling on a matter of procedure.
"Courts are not political forums. Courts are not here to make statements," he said from the bench.
"This is not 1995 … this is not to determine whether Quebec is staying or not in Canada," he said. The matter before him boiled down to "a procedural entanglement."
He said 13 years had elapsed since the referendum, a “potentially cataclysmic” event in Canada, and “13 years is too long” to deal with the legal request.
Lawyers for the Chief Electoral Officer said the Quebec elections law didn't permit them to make the ballots publicly accessible.
The ballots are preserved in a warehouse in Quebec City at a cost of $12,000 a year.
A spokeswoman said Mr. Blanchet would wait for the 30-day appeals process to elapse before destroying the ballots. Held in sealed boxes, they would eventually be shredded and the paper recycled.
The 1995 Québec referendum was a decidedly stressful time for Canadians. I remember watching the news coverage and feeling a knot in my stomach as I saw ridings in northern Québec return results revealing that more than two-thirds of the population voted "Oui." Northern Québec didn't set a precedent thanks to the tendency of individual voters in Montréal and western Québec to vote "Non" in sufficient numbers to counteract separatist votes.
In the end, I really can't be bothered to care. There may well have been voter fraud on the part of individual separatists, although federalists can hardly claim the moral high ground. (Alliance Quebec doesn't deserve to be very credible either, thanks to its leadership's tendency to ally with marginal political parties and its exhibition of the classic tendency of fringe groups to suffer mass defections.) Let the past be past, and hope that the transformation of Canada into something not altogether unlike the German Confederation of the mid-19th century proceeds quickly enough to placate separatists everywhere in this country.
