Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, November 28, 1993                   TAG: 9311300354
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DONALD E. NUECHTERLEIN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SEPARATISM IN QUEBEC

Jean Chretien and his Liberal Party's electoral success had less to do with his personal popularity than with a nationwide contempt for the Progressive Conservative leadership in power since 1984.

Kim Campbell, who in May replaced the unpopular Brian Mulroney as the Conservatives' leader and prime minister, tried valiantly to restore the party's popularity going into the elections. She failed completely, and the Conservatives dropped from 157 seats in the House of Commons to only 2. In the debacle, Campbell lost her own district in Vancouver.

While Liberals achieved a substantial majority of seats in parliament, their strength is concentrated in Ontario, where the party captured 98 of the province's 99 seats, and in the four small Atlantic provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland.

Two new political parties, the Bloc Quebecois and the Reform Party, emerged as major regional contenders for power in Ottawa. Reform, led by Preston Manning from Alberta, captured most of the seats in British Columbia and Alberta, while Bloc Quebecois, headed by Quebec separatist Lucien Bouchard, won more than two-thirds of Quebec's 75 constituencies.

Canada is now divided politically into four distinct regions: Ontario, the West, Quebec and Atlantic Canada. Only Liberals won seats in all four regions. The arrival in Ottawa for the first time of an openly Quebec independence party raises the real possibility that Canada could split into three parts before the end of the l990s. Here is why:

Bouchard leaves no question about his objective: Quebec is finished with constitutional reform and wants independence, in economic association with English-speaking Canada. He told supporters after the Bloc's impressive victory that it was the start of a process of separation from Canada.

Manning adamantly opposes Bouchard's plan. Reform's appeal in western Canada results in part from Manning's rejection of political and economic concessions to Quebec. A year ago he denounced the so-called Charlottetown Accord that gave Quebec a special status in Canada. Voters across Canada, in a national referendum, rejected the plan.

Manning's view of the Bloc's plan for independence is: "If Quebec wants to leave Canada, let it go. But they should not get any economic concessions." If Quebec separates from Canada, the West may not be far behind.

Canadians and Americans must now contemplate the possibility that Bouchard and his provincial allies, the Parti Quebecois, will succeed in taking Quebec out of Canada by winning provincial elections in 1994. My conclusion is that English-speaking Canadians now accept the likelihood of divorce with Quebec in the next few years.

Meanwhile, Chretien as prime minister must lead a country that is deeply in debt, whose unemployment rate is over 11 percent, and whose voters blame the loss of jobs primarily on a 1988 free trade pact with the United States.

The North Amerlcan Free Trade Agreement was not an issue in the Oct. 25 elections, largely because Liberals did not actively oppose its ratification when the Mulroney government placed it before the House of Commons.

But Chretien said he wanted to reopen discussions with the United States and Mexico in order to ensure that Canada's interests are adequately protected in NAFTA. Chretien has not asked for renegotiation, but Ross Perot seized on Chretien's comments to claim that Canada opposed NAFTA.

Canadian-American relations will be good under Chretien's leadership, but his government will challenge U.S. trade policies more vigorously than did Mulroney. Part of the reason is the Liberal Party's nationalist wing, centered in Ontario. Another is Chretien's belief that Canada must strongly resist protectionist pressures in the U.S. Congress.

\ Donald E. Nuechterlein, a resldent of Charlottesville who's teaching this fall at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, is author of "America Recommitted: U.S. National Interests in a Restructured World."