Quebec Steps Up to Ponder a Great Divide : Canada: Debate is heated before province’s Monday vote on secession.

CAP-A-L'AIGLE, Canada —  Ask Valerie Andree Authier why she plans to vote Monday to break up Canada and she replies that Quebec, not Canada, is her homeland and that she will vote not to dismantle one country but to found another.

“It’s about identity,” she says with a level gaze in the dining room of the upscale inn she manages for her family here in rural Quebec. “I’m young--I’m not yet 30--and I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and work for my country and make that happen.”

Less than 12 hours later, on a rainy night in Montreal, Constant Jeanty and his wife, Jacqueline, offer an equally heartfelt testament to a united Canada as they stand jammed into a sweltering hockey arena for a national unity rally. They speak of the prosperity, tranquillity and personal freedom they have found since emigrating from Haiti 26 years ago.

“We’ve seen other countries and we’ve seen other people’s lives, including the dictatorship that was in Haiti when we moved,” Constant Jeanty says. “This is a place for people to live together . . . . The idea is to keep something that is working well.”

Two national visions will collide at the ballot box when Quebec’s government asks the province’s 5 million voters for permission to secede from Canada. Quebec’s separatists dream of an independent nation of 7.3 million, a nationalist bastion of the French language in North America. Canada’s federalists champion a diverse, multicultural country, officially bilingual in English and French, that reaches across the continent from the cliffs of Newfoundland to the forested coast of British Columbia.

The clash of what novelist Hugh MacLennan called Canada’s “two solitudes” extends back generations. The Quebec separatist movement emerged in the late 1960s, but never before have the separatists seemed so close to their goal.

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A poll published Saturday in Le Journal de Montreal and the Toronto Globe and Mail newspapers showed 46.8% of decided voters in favor of separation and 41.4% against, and the rest undecided or refusing to respond. Other polls last week showed a three- to six-point edge for secession among committed voters, with the undecided vote remaining large enough to turn the referendum either way.

Prime Minister Jean Chretien, a Quebecker but a lifelong defender of Canadian federalism, warned in a televised address to the nation last week that Canada is facing a crisis, and he solemnly beseeched Quebec voters not to “turn your back on Canada.”

“What is at stake is our country,” he said. “What is at stake is our heritage. To break up Canada or build Canada. To remain Canadian or no longer be Canadian. To stay or to leave.”

In a meeting with members of his Liberal Party on Wednesday, Chretien was twice moved to tears as he discussed the referendum campaign, according to news reports out of Ottawa.

The separatists, meanwhile, are riding an emotional wave of nationalist pride and promised change stirred by their campaign leader, Lucien Bouchard, who heads the opposition Bloc Quebecois in Canada’s Parliament.

“Let us welcome ourselves for what we are: a people, a vibrant country, proud, welcoming and confident,” Bouchard said in his television reply to the prime minister.

Although polls in Quebec traditionally overestimate separatist sentiment, the possibility of a separatist victory has gripped the province and startled the rest of the country.

Banks in Quebec say movement of accounts to other provinces or into U.S. currency has increased. Passport offices report triple the usual number of applications in Quebec as residents seek to protect their mobility. Investors fled the Canadian dollar all last week, driving down its value against the U.S. currency; by Friday, there was so little interest in buying it that major banks stopped trading at noon.

In the United States, the prospect of political and economic upheaval in its northern neighbor and largest trading partner prompted President Clinton to make a subtle pitch for defeat of the referendum.

While acknowledging that “the people of Quebec will have to cast their votes as their lights guide them,” Clinton praised Canada as a country that “has the kind of values that we’d all be proud of. And they’ve been a strong and powerful ally of us--of ours. And I have to tell you that I hope we’ll be able to continue that. I have to say that I hope that that will continue. That’s been good for the United States.”

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A separatist victory Monday would not bring an instant break. The measure empowers Quebec’s separatist ruling party to declare independence at an unspecified date. But it also calls on the government to try to negotiate an economic and political partnership with what would be left of Canada. Secession would come after such an agreement was signed or negotiations reached an impasse.

The partnership offer is intended to woo Quebec voters who are wary of outright independence but dissatisfied with the status quo. Bouchard and Quebec Premier Jacques Parizeau have even suggested that Quebec citizens could keep their Canadian citizenship as well.

The tactic has worked. As many as 30% of those planning to vote for the referendum tell pollsters that they don’t really want independence at all. They’re looking to scare Canada into constitutional concessions to Quebec.

Canada’s leaders and the public outside Quebec equate the partnership offer with a request for a divorce with bedroom privileges, and have said “No thanks.”

Bouchard and Parizeau counter that Canada’s own economic interests, world financial markets and longstanding ties of family and friendship would compel both sides toward partnership. In any case, they say, a majority vote Monday means no turning back.

Quebec’s departure would deprive Canada of one-fourth of its population and 22% of the domestic economy. The Atlantic provinces of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island would be cut off from the rest of Canada. The short-term economic outlook would include a dramatic drop in the value of the Canadian dollar, a sharp rise in interest rates and a possible recession to follow.

The long-term prognosis is harder to formulate.

The optimistic scenario is that Canada and Quebec, driven by a desire for economic and political stability, would exercise their well-practiced talent for compromise and agree on a union of equals in which Quebec would gain political autonomy but the countries would maintain common institutions for trade, defense, border control and perhaps other government functions.

In the worst case, Quebec’s secession could lead to a complete splintering of the country’s 128-year-old confederation. For example, a dormant separatist movement in British Columbia could reawaken.

No one predicts serious violence. Although one court already has ruled that the referendum is a violation of the Canadian constitution, there is no sentiment for enforcing that ruling at the point of a bayonet.

How did Canada, a country that for two years in a row has topped the United Nations’ list of countries with the best living conditions, come to this?

That’s a question being asked all over the nation these days.

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In mid-October, one would have been hard pressed to find a single objective political analyst or pollster who would have predicted the race would be this close at this date. Chretien was touring western Canada two weeks ago assuring people that he had the situation under control. And few doubted him.

After all, Canada had been down this road before, and Chretien had been there. In 1980, Quebec defeated a similar referendum by a margin of 60% to 40%, and Chretien was a key player on then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s winning team.

In this campaign, the unity forces have emphasized the economic risks of separation, citing studies showing that independence could cost 92,000 Quebeckers their jobs. At first it worked. But then the charismatic Bouchard replaced Parizeau as the separatists’ lead campaigner. His galvanizing presence and a series of gaffes by the unity forces transformed the race.

Suddenly, polls showed that issues of national identity and pride had replaced jobs as top concerns of voters.

“I think we sort of forgot about the dynamics of nationalism and pride and emotion, because our politics here for so long have been concerned mainly with pocketbook issues,” said Roger Gibbins, who chairs the political science department at the University of Calgary.

For the most part, the campaign has avoided the excesses of French Canadian nationalism that sometimes relegate English-speaking Quebeckers and immigrants to second-class status. In its final week, however, the separatists’ campaign has assumed a tone of personal attack on Chretien that might surprise Americans used to Canadian civility.

When Chretien’s nationally televised address appeared on a giant screen before separatists rallying in suburban Montreal, the crowd shouted “Traitor!”

Chretien has not indicated exactly what he will do if the separatists win. He has suggested he would refuse to recognize a close victory as grounds for separation.

But that would be a devastating political blow from which he might not recover.

And something else to consider if the separatists suffer a narrow defeat: Parizeau’s government does not need to stand for reelection until 1999. He could try for independence once more before then.