President Macron lacked sympathy towards Quebec, believes Bloc leader

Photo: Le président français Emmanuel Macron et le premier ministre canadien Justin Trudeau s’éloignent après une conférence de presse à Montréal, au Canada, le 26 septembre 2024.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s refusal to subscribe to the formula of “non-interference, non-indifference” during his whirlwind trip to the country has disappointed Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet, who believes that a large part of the French political class is more attached to the privileged relationship that France has with Quebec.

“Mr. Macron does not express the sympathy for Quebec that many of his predecessors have had,” the sovereignist leader said in Ottawa, bitter at having been excluded from the French president’s official visit, which ended Thursday.

He finds that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was “mean” not to invite him for the protocol visit. This “worst ambassador one could imagine to share the reality of Quebec” would have, he claims, suggested to the French delegation a position on the national question of Quebec that deviates from the traditional formula of neutrality used by most French heads of state before him.

“I have nothing against Mr. Macron, and I don’t get involved in French politics, obviously, but if I were given the opportunity, I would give him a different presentation of what Quebec is,” adds Yves-François Blanchet, during a call with Le Devoir.

200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000

On Thursday, Emmanuel Macron categorically refused “out of respect” to say whether he still held to the diplomatic position of “non-interference, non-indifference” regarding Quebec’s place in the Canadian federation. “I am not here to lecture Canadians. […] I am here as a respectful friend who loves each of its components,” he said in an interview with Radio-Canada.

Breaking with tradition

Pressed by journalist Louis Blouin, the president insisted that his role was not to “add complexity or emotion” to political debates on this side of the Atlantic. “In a political context that will not have escaped anyone, I do not want to interfere in your national political context.”

This evasive response leads Yves-François Blanchet to say that Mr. Macron is indeed moving away from France’s traditional position, which he says consists of “sparing his two friendships.” He points out that President Macron had already missed the opportunity to make a speech to the National Assembly during a previous trip, in 2018. This week, Mr. Macron passed through Ottawa and Montreal, but did not go to the Old Capital.

“I don’t know who the next president of the Republic will be. But I know that, generally speaking, support not for independence, but for Quebec’s right to self-determination, is fairly consensual in French politics,” Mr. Blanchet says.

As recently as last April, Emmanuel Macron’s former prime minister Gabriel Attal assured that France still adhered to the principle nicknamed “neither-nor,” invented by former prime minister Alain Peyrefitte in 1977 to express a bias in favor of Quebec while maintaining its relationship with the federal government. “I find myself quite comfortable with it, of course,” declared the head of the French government in the presence of Justin Trudeau. Since then, elections have been held in France, and Gabriel Attal has been replaced by Michel Barnier as Prime Minister.

Nicolas Sarkozy is the only French president in the last fifty years to have categorically distanced himself from the “neither-nor” formula, justifying himself by saying that it was “not really [his] thing.”

“Neither-nor,” still relevant ?

France’s principle of “non-interference, non-indifference” was a key part of the Yes camp’s strategy during the 1995 referendum, which was counting on the influential country to recognize a sovereign Quebec in the event of victory, explains constitutionalist Patrick Taillon.

“If France were to say, on the eve of the next referendum [on Quebec sovereignty] that there is no longer a ‘neither-nor’, that Quebec cannot count on its support, it would certainly remove a card from the independence movement’s hand,” analyzes the professor at the Faculty of Law at Université Laval. In the absence of international recognition, Catalonia, for example, never became an independent country from Spain following its 2017 referendum.

However, 21st-century Quebec sovereignists have had other cards up their sleeve since the Supreme Court’s 1998 reference on Quebec’s secession, adds Patrick Taillon. Canada’s highest court then gave Quebec the right to leave the federation under certain conditions, regardless of its support abroad.

Justin Trudeau will have another opportunity to shake the French president’s hand next weekend, at the Francophonie Summit in Paris. The Bloc Québécois leader will not be attending, having had to change his plans given the instability of the minority government in Ottawa and the risk of new federal elections as early as October.