Will Quebec sovereignty rise again?

In today’s The Big Story podcast, it’s been almost 30 years since a narrow vote in the 1995 referendum ended the last threat to Canadian unity. And while it’s not as though there hasn’t been idle talk since then from angry provinces and their citizens, there’s never again been a serious question of a province seceding from Canada.

But history repeats, and as the 30th anniversary of the 1995 vote looms, a look at the underlying political conditions reveals some striking similarities — particularly if as expected the Conservatives decimate the Liberals in the next federal election. 

Gerald Butts is the vice chair of the Eurasia group, director of the World Wildlife Fund, as well as the former principal secretary to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty. He wrote about Quebec secession for The Walrus.

“There are a lot of very aggressive actors out there that mean this country harm, and we should be very careful within our internal domestic politics about making claims that the country itself is broken rather than the government or the policies it’s promoting,” said Butts. 

So, is this idle speculation? Or is this a likely scenario that, amid all the political turmoil in Ottawa and around the world, nobody is paying enough attention to?