A Separatist Split-Up

Sovereignty for Quebec was the rallying cry that helped carry Premier Rene Levesque and his Parti Quebecois to power eight years ago. When Levesque declared last week that the goal of independence had to give way to bread-and-butter issues, he split his party and possibly jeopardized his eight-seat majority in Quebec's provincial parliament. Five cabinet ministers resigned, two legislators bolted, and half a dozen others threatened to quit the party. The defectors included Finance Minister Jacques Parizeau and Social Affairs Minister Camille Laurin, an author of the law that imposed French as Quebec's only official language.

Levesque felt he was adapting to reality: voters rejected separatism in a 1980 referendum, and polls show that only a small minority favor it now. Faced with sagging popularity, 12.9% unemployment and one of the highest tax rates in Canada, he wanted to prepare for the provincial elections that must be held by spring 1986 by focusing on economics and getting along with the popular new federal government of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. But at a convention in June, the Parti Quebecois had voted to make independence its main campaign issue. Abandoning that cherished goal, Parizeau said last week, would be "sterile and humiliating."