MONTREAL—One thing on which sovereigntists and federalists can agree some 20 years after the 1995 referendum is that the Quebec independence movement—in one form or another—will likely never go away.
Prominent sovereigntists say their side—the Yes side—would have won if the federal government had stayed away and not tried to help the No campaign, particularly regarding the controversial Unity Rally in Montreal three days before the vote on Oct. 30, 1995.
Federalists, meanwhile, argue the defeat of the Yes side in 1995—and in the preceding referendum of 1980—is due to a stubborn-yet-obvious reality: Canada’s flexible, federal system works.
“There will continue to be a group of people in Quebec who want to separate and we need to respect that and understand that,” said former Quebec premier Jean Charest, who was the leader of the federal Progressive Conservative Party of Canada in 1995.
