Hundreds of Montrealers could be seen marching in the street Saturday, hopeful they’ll one day live to see Quebec become its own nation.
The march through the city’s downtown comes ahead of the 30th anniversary of the 1995 referendum on Oct. 30.
Camille Goyette-Gingras, president of OUI Québec, one of the groups behind the rally, said day by day she’s seeing more youth getting involved in the movement.
“Gen Z, they’re looking for systemic change, and for them, independence is exactly that,” she said.
Federalists won the 1995 referendum by a razor-thin margin, with 50.58 per cent of the vote. An earlier vote, also called by the Parti Québécois (PQ), happened in 1980, with 40.44 per cent voting in favour. The party, which is ahead in the polls with one year left before the next provincial election, remains hopeful about a third referendum it wants to see happen by 2030.
Goyette-Gingras said what she’s witnessing today is a citizen-led, non-partisan movement, one she’s confident could lead to another referendum within the next few years.
“You can feel that it’s the beginning of a vast movement,” she said.
Goyette-Gingras said many youth see independence as the solution to pressing issues like the climate crisis.
Young college and university students marched alongside those who participated in the 1995 or 1980 referendums. Opposition MNAs Manon Massé and Ruba Ghazal with Québec Solidaire, which supports independence, joined the crowd, eager to chant along to cries of “Le Québec un pays”, meaning that Quebec is a country.
Montreal sees emergence of youth referendum movement
Laure Fateux and Olivia Bégin, students at the francophone college Cégep du Vieux Montréal, both said a large portion of the student population there would call themselves sovereigntist.
“I think it’s important that Quebec becomes a country, so that it can preserve its culture, language, and its history,” said Fateux.
Begin said her parents and grandparents voted in favour of Quebec becoming a country, in both 1980 and 1995, adding it’s evident the movement is being revived under her generation.
Leonard Vidal also studies at the same college, and said he feels independence is the only thing that will allow Quebecers to escape the status quo of the Canadian government, one he described as a “colonial, petroleum state.”
Catherine Lamoureux-Schmidt, who studies at L’Université du Québec à Montréal, agreed, saying the “only way of doing that is by becoming a country.”
Both her and Vidal are behind a Quebec-wide coalition of student groups hoping to see Quebec as a free nation. They said that coalition has grown from five clubs to 22 within about a year. It’s a strictly non-partisan group, the two said.
Lamoureux-Schmidt said she supports the notion of a “nation-to-nation” relationship with First Nations in Quebec, saying “we don’t want to build another country without listening to them.”
Like many others in attendance, she also said she anticipates seeing another referendum vote within her lifetime.
“It’s more than half of the nation that hasn’t been able to say what they think about that, so I think it’s more than necessary to have that question brought back to the public,” she said. “We want to have our future in our hands.”
Quebec Liberal Party Leader Pablo Rodriguez, speaking from the party’s members’ assembly in Trois-Rivières, said an independent Quebec would be viable but impoverished, echoing warnings of his predecessors.
“We wouldn’t be at the same economic standing, we wouldn’t be part of the G7, and we would have to renegotiate our free trade agreements,” said Rodriguez, a former federal minister.
