Middle Ground: Service Ban and Sovereigntist Party

middle ground: The hope was to repeat that success and, in the process, bring the increasingly scattered sovereigntist forces back to the PQ. So convinced was Pauline Marois government that it had an electoral ace up its sleeve that it declined to reach out to the opposition parties for a consensus, according to The Chronicle Herald. When the other parties sought a middle ground with the government, the PQ doubled down on its civil service ban of religious garb instead. It was the sovereigntist party most ambitious identity-related project since the introduction in the late 1970s of the French-language charter, a legislative framework that to this day enjoys support right across the party lines in Quebec. The rest is history. Three years later, the PQ is still dealing with the fallout from the adventure. Marois made the charter and its coercive measures a centrepiece of her re-election platform and led the party back to opposition after only 18 months in power. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.