Quebec Independence Is Unlikely, but Some Will Still DreamThe idea of independence remains deeply unpopular in Quebec, yet the separatist Parti Québécois was re-elected to a minority government this week. Lambert Léveillé taught high school math forever in Beloeil, Quebec. So it wasn’t surprising that middle-aged men came up to greet him as I interviewed him in the parking lot of the elementary school where he had just voted last Monday. Léveillé, 80, may golf a lot these days, but he still turns to math to understand the world, including the provincial election in Quebec.
“The latest poll gave the Parti Québécois 29 percent,” he told me. “They’ll win. But with five parties in the mix, the vote will be split, and so it’ll be a minority government.” The retired math teacher’s analysis proved correct when the ballots were counted later that day. The separatist Parti Québécois beat the other parties by winning 59 seats, short of the 64 seats needed for a majority in the 127-seat provincial legislature. Its leader, premier-elect Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, 49, was the first leader of the separatist party in a generation to promise a referendum on independence if his party won. His promise roused the party’s base. But since independence remains deeply unpopular in Quebec — 70 percent are against it — he tried to ease concerns among other voters by pledging to hold a referendum only after Donald Trump leaves office in 2029 and the economy stabilizes. [Read: Parti Québécois Returns to Power, Reviving Quebec Sovereignty Push] The numbers point to the obstacles he faces. In Quebec, minority governments have lasted less than two years on average, so St-Pierre Plamondon could be out office before Trump. He lacks a popular mandate, as his party won only 28 percent of the popular vote, the lowest on record. With only a minority, he would need to persuade at least five lawmakers from opposition parties to join his call for a referendum. But the second and third biggest parties, the Quebec Liberal Party and the Conservative Party of Quebec, are staunchly against independence. The fourth party, Québec Solidaire, is separatist, with a vision of an independent Quebec as a collection of Québécois, immigrants and 11 Indigenous groups who prioritize climate change. This view might resonate in the nine left-leaning, diverse districts it won, all but one in Quebec’s two biggest cities, Montreal and Quebec City, but perhaps not in the Parti Québécois heartland.
The Parti Québécois was shut out of Quebec City and won only two seats out of 27 on the island of Montreal. But it swept the French-speaking suburban and rural areas populated mostly by the French Québécois, or French Canadians, who, historically, have been the main supporters of the party’s fight for an independent Quebec built on the French Québécois identity and culture. Last Monday, I drove out to two suburban districts east of Montreal where two high-profile incumbents — sitting ministers of the Coalition Avenir Quebec — were at risk of losing. A small city with detached homes on tree-lined streets, Beloeil is in a predominantly francophone district, Borduas, traditionally a Parti Québécois stronghold but held for the past eight years by the Coalition Avenir Quebec. On Monday, the district overwhelmingly swung back to the Parti Québécois. Still, few voters I met in Beloeil expressed interest in a referendum. No one was strongly against independence, but what I heard over and over again was that the math wasn’t there anymore. Quebec had changed so much since the unsuccessful referendums of 1980 and 1995. Back then, an independent Quebec was perhaps the final outcome of the self-determination of the French Québécois, a people who had liberated themselves from the grips of the Roman Catholic Church and the province’s English-speaking minority. [Read: Separatists Are Set to Win Quebec’s Election. What Will It Mean for Independence?] Today, they are better educated, richer and, polls show, have little interest in independence. Equally important, the province’s other communities, especially the growing immigrant population, are decidedly against independence. “We know that there’s only 30 percent of the population that’s interested in a referendum,” Léveillé, the retired math teacher, said, referring to polls. “At some point, you have to be able to see things clearly. There’s not a heck of a lot of anglophones who are going to vote for independence, and immigrants feel more Canadian.” “So independence is very unlikely, mathematically speaking,’’ he said, “even though it’s nice to dream.’’ To Patrice Desjardins, 47, the numbers didn’t add up either. A small construction business owner, Desjardins said he might have voted for independence if he had been old enough in 1995. Today, he felt that the cost of holding a referendum — cited at 130 million Canadian dollars by St-Pierre Plamondon during the campaign — would be better spent on other things like health care.
“It’s pointless to hold a referendum,” Desjardins said. “Maybe there was a chance years ago to become independent, but today the chances are becoming increasingly slim. So it’s not because I’m against it, but because it’s not possible.” “It’s already too late,” he added And then there was Dominique Tessier, 68, a lifelong die-hard separatist whose support for independence grew out of his family history. “I’m Québécois, francophone, my mother and father went to church,” he said. “I know our history.” When he played hockey as a boy, elbows flew against the “anglophones” of Otterburn Park, a city across the river from Beloeil that used to be home to English speakers. He came of age, politically, in the 1970s, when Quebec francophones led the construction of the province’s giant hydroelectric dams and when the Parti Québécois first took power under its charismatic leader, René Lévesque. He sent his three children to university. If there is a third time, Tessier said he would vote “yes” again for independence — even though he, too, felt that perhaps the time had passed Tessier never taught math, but he knew his numbers. He worked in commercial real estate for years. Now, he drove a school bus for 20 hours a week in Brossard, a diverse suburb just south of Montreal. “There aren’t any Québécois there anymore, just immigrants,” he said, adding that immigrants would not share the history that had led to his commitment to independence. “Will Quebec separate one day?” he said “Probably not.” Probably not, mathematically speaking. Dreaming, though, was something else. Norimitsu Onishi is a Montreal-based correspondent for The New York Times covering Canada. Artificial intelligence and the art of surgery
Vjsoa Isai, a Toronto-based reporter for The Times, and the photographer Cole Burston, went into the operating room at Toronto General Hospital earlier this year to see how doctors there have been using artificial intelligence in their surgical practices. Dr. Amin Madani, an endocrine and acute care surgeon, is training an A.I. model to think like the best surgeons, and testing the bounds of what A.I. can do in the operating room. Read the full article. Trans Canada
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