Eye witness

Quebec, the Canadian province that has already held unsuccessful referendums on secession in 1980 and 1995, recently announced it would hold a third vote but only under "winning conditions".

While Lucien Bouchard, province premier and leader of the secessionist Parti Quebecois, may be sensitive to referendum burn-out, he knows that a certain ambiguity helps when it comes to counting French separatists.

Quebec voted the PQ into power in a 1976 election and saw the establishment of stringent language laws. Since then the PQ has helped change the public lexicon. At first they were pushing separation, then independence. For the past few years, though, they have called their proposal to leave Canada a "sovereignty" movement.

Why the word change? Maurice Pinard, a McGill University sociologist, says that the concept of sovereignty is easiest to swallow for a people who have remained fearful of the economic consequences of separating from Canada.

Quebec's separatist movement was born in the "quiet revolution" of the 1960s, emerging from a frustrated French-speaking majority, who recognised economic and social inequities. The English minority, about one sixth of the province at the time, held many positions of power over the Catholic people.

While the quiet revolution became violent in 1970, with the murder of a Quebec cabinet minister and a temporary police state in Quebec, the separatist movement found legitimacy through the Parti Quebecois.

Pinard interprets the opinion polls published over the years. The polls, to most, just reflect what seems to be a fluctuating public mood on separation.

But the researcher says that while there have been waves of majority support for secession, the mood is very often a reflection of the conditions with which the PQ frames its project.

Pinard cites one poll that showed almost a quarter of those voting for secession in the 1995 referendum believed that Quebec would still remain a province in Canada. "The confusion in the public is beyond belief," he said.