NICOLET, Que. – He leads a new party dedicated to Quebec independence, has a clear game plan for making it happen within its first mandate, and touts plenty of economic arguments for why his province shouldn’t be one.
Meet Jean-Martin Aussant: the man who doesn’t think the Parti Quebecois is sovereigntist enough.
Aussant, once a rising star for the PQ, abruptly quit the party in June 2011 over differences with leader Pauline Marois. He sat in Quebec’s legislature as an Independent until he founded the upstart Option nationale a few months later.
With only one seat in the national assembly, Aussant fought unsuccessfully for his right to appear in the TV leadership debates – the first of four goes Sunday.
So what does this economist, a former vice-president of Morgan Stanley Capital International, actually stand for and wish he could tell debate viewers?
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He says the PQ, a party created in 1968 for the specific purpose of achieving independence, has become a “so-called sovereigntist party.”
Aussant is frustrated with its wishy-washiness and refusal to set referendum timetables in its perennial effort to win over that crucial soft-natio
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As Jacques Parizeau laid to rest, a sense that something more than one man was lost
The focus Tuesday was on Parizeau’s accomplishments, but that could not disguise the sense that the window was closing fast on the dream of a generation
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MONTREAL — The hymns were sung and the eulogies read in memory of Jacques Parizeau Tuesday, but underlying the state funeral was a sentiment that something more than a single man was being laid to rest.
Since his death at the age of 84 on June 1, the former premier has been hailed as an architect of the Quiet Revolution, a builder who helped create such pivotal institutions as Hydro-Québec and the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec.
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