I would respectfully suggest that Premier Charest is either playing to the pipe-dreams of his constituents or he is ignorant of the fact that the French have been a non-issue in North American politics for over 200 years.
The French lost their entire claim to Canada when Montcalm was defeated at Quebec City on September 13, 1759. They later lost their entire claim to any of the rest of continental North America when they signed the Louisiana Purchase on May 2, 1803.
I don't know if Quebec could legally secede from Canada, but I doubt that they would succeed if they tried and I would hope that the residents of Quebec would remember that they are Canadians who are free to immigrate to France if their French heritage is critical to their very being.
The political lines drawn between the Anglophone and Francophone in Quebec is a sad situation for all Canadians, but it should be a pointed lesson to those in the U.S. who think that making Spanish a 2nd legal language is a good idea. I would be distressed to think that someday Mexico would lay claim to much of the western U.S. because some subset of the Spanish-speaking American population felt a closer kinship with Mexico than with the U.S. The prelude to a 2nd U.S. Civil War?
Jeff
