RICKY BLUE

The Clarity Act: Last line of defense against Pols use old bait-and-switch technique

Bait-and-switch is a deceptive sales technique.

You advertise one product to attract customers. That's the bait. When they arrive they find out you are really selling something else entirely. That's the switch. It's considered a form of business fraud.

But unscrupulous retailers are not its only practitioners.

The recent election of the Bloc Québécois to fifty-four federal seats was a textbook case. They ran their campaign on being a clean party. They consistently hammered the Liberals on the sponsorship scandal because they knew it had deeply offended Quebecers.

That was the bait.

Then on election night a pumped-up Gilles Duceppe suddenly morphed into a tub-thumping separatist. He revealed that he was really selling Quebec independence.

That was the switch.

In the last provincial election, the Quebec Liberals promised to reverse the previous government's undemocratic forced municipal mergers.

That was the bait.

And that promise helped give them a majority win. But soon after the election it became crystal clear that they had no intention of giving us our little towns back as before. They even tried to force us to choose the mega-city with a rigged referendum.

That was the switch.

The Parti Québécois has been the master of this method. It has held two referendums with the purpose of separating Quebec from Canada. Each had two distinct levels of "bait-and-switch."

The first was to rename the goal "sovereignty," a fuzzy concept that could mean almost anything. How could any good Quebecer be against Quebec having some more sovereignty?

That was the bait.

What the PQ really wanted was full Quebec independence.

And that was the planned switch.

Then to further deceive us questions on "sovereignty-association" and "sovereignty-partnership" were used as bait on referendum day. But behind both was the ultimate switch to independence.

One can understand the politician's problem. How does he or she get the electorate to buy a product it doesn't want? If persuasion does not work and blatant coercion is politically hazardous, the only other way is to use a trick.

After the Bloc's overwhelming victory in the last federal election, some commentators are predicting that the Quebec Liberals will self-destruct at home and the PQ will be elected again. Then the stage will be set for a third Quebec referendum.

Impossible, you say? I recently bet a friend $100 that it will happen before 2010.

And because the political class in Quebec is so cavalier about using this fraudulent practice of "bait-and-switch," the only defence for Canadians living here is the Clarity Act.

The legislation that says the Canadian federal government will only negotiate a change of provincial jurisdiction after a referendum based upon the actual question asked. So if the question is not: "Do you want Quebec to become an independent nation: yes or no?" then Quebec independence is not an option.

Originally suggested years ago by the woefully underrated Equality Party, vilified as "extremist" by the Quebec government, but eventually championed by federal Liberal MP Stephane Dion, who has also braved much unfair abuse for it, this great Canadian law was passed to protect all Quebecers against the fraudulent practices of our overzealous, misguided and sometimes just plain dishonest politicians.

The Clarity Act is one of the most important laws in the history of Canada. It is a Canadian citizen's only protection against losing his or her country to the prevailing political deception of "bait-and-switch."