Lucien Bouchard

No problems.

And then you got Lucienne Bouchard involved.

You got the right people on the, the very influential people on the yes side involved.

And all of a sudden they nearly won.

I spoke with Preston Manning and I spoke with Jean Chrétien.

I spoke to Lucien Bouchard and I spoke to Daniel Johnson, who led the Yes side in Quebec.

I spoke to Jacques Péguiseau, obviously.

Mario Dumont was part of the three leaders leading the Yes side.

He also mentioned Jacques Parizeau.

I found it interesting when he refused to mention Lucien Bouchard.

Jacques Parizeau was only premier for a year, and he referred to the Jacques Parizeau government as having been able to govern despite seeking a referendum.

He also did mention Pauli Merwin.

Yeah, right.

And I wonder, in the case of Bouchard, do you think that might have anything to do, Robert, with the fact that Bouchard had advised him, don't go ahead and do this?

Yes, I think there's some tension between PSBP and Lucien Bouchard.

Maybe that's why he didn't evoke Bouchard's name.

So that's, that's what Marion Dumont did with Action Démocratique that morphed into the CAQ.

He was on, you know, he was on the bus with Parizeau a- and, and with Lucien Bouchard in the '95 referendum.

But, you know, he's always soft-pedaled it.

But then when they asked him, like there was thought of getting him to be the leader of the Quebec Liberals, and he chuckled.

For a while now, there's been this pressure to cut and to change things.

Over 20 years ago, you had Lucien Bouchard, the most right-wing PQ Premier, who took things further to the right.

In 1996, he put in this Balanced Budget Act.

that said you have to balance the budget, which you can talk about in a minute.

I think that there has been a crisis of productivity.

I mean, I think you've discussed this on the other episode of the podcast in Canada, in Quebec in particular.

And you mentioned Lucien Bouchard and the Lucid Manifesto.

That's what they were saying.

And some pretty interesting revelations came out of that.

What hit me hardest was the revelation that apparently Lucien Bouchard, the star, of the separatist cause in the Yes campaign in the 1995 referendum, apparently he wasn't really sincerely pushing for full-blown Quebec independence and really just wanted to strengthen Quebec's negotiating position vis-à-vis the rest of Canada.

In other words, a typical...

Quebec soft nationalist, as they were called.

His record is as a political thinker, which is just all over the place.

One thing I would also add really quickly is a lot of sovereignists historically, leaders and grassroots, have gone through different shifts in their views over time, over the decades.

Lucien Bouchard is actually a great example of that.

Former Governor General Adrian Clarkson once called him a man of successive sincerity.