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Trudeau has suffered the lumps any politician who has held office for ten years can expect to accumulate. The country's original infatuation with its leader waned, rekindled briefly at his last election in 1974, then waned again. His government has shown many signs of tired blood. These include scandals involving Cabinet ministers and other Liberal Party officials, and admissions that the legendary Royal Canadian Mounted Police have taken part in illegal entries and the unauthorized opening of mail. (The latter scandal was compounded last week when Trudeau's Solicitor-General, Francis Fox, 38, who was responsible for the Mounties, announced that he was resigning because he had forged a husband's signature in order to get an abortion for a married paramour.) Before the Péquiste victory, Trudeau's government had the approval of only 29% of Canadians.
While the Prime Minister's star was tumbling, that of the premier-to-be was beginning a new rise. After failing to convince Quebec's reformist Liberals that they should adopt a separatist policy, Lévesque quit the party in 1967 to found the Mouvement Souveraineté Association, the forerunner of his Parti Québécois. He squeezed out radical elements, earning a reputation as a democratic moderate, and thus the organization survived the antiseparatist backlash that followed the F.L.Q. kidnapings. In 1968, Lévesque predicted that his party would pick up 20% of the vote in its first provincial election and become Quebec's official opposition in the second. "From there, it is only necessary to wait one's turn to be the government." His turn came the third time around. In 1976, the P.Q. toppled the Liberal government of Lévesque's onetime friend Robert Bourassa, winning 69 of 110 seats in the provincial assembly. In a calculated ploy, Lévesque downplayed the separatism issue and instead ran hard on a platform of good government.
Nonetheless, Lévesque made clear that sooner or later Quebec would face a referendum on separatism.
If the voters were asked directly to choose independence from a range of options, polls show, the Péquistes would lose. Only 19% of the population favor that stark choice. However, 40% approve "sovereignty-association," which is the way that Lévesque refers to independence plus a hoped-for economic union with the rest of Canada. But fully 67% of the same sample favor "revised federalism," meaning constitutional changes that would give Quebec greater autonomy within the Canadian confederation. Faced with that evidence of fluid opinion, P.Q. experts are now debating how to word the referendum question to give Lévesque the best chance of winning a favorable vote. Their probable strategy will be to woo more people into the camp of