"[4]The debate about Québécois nationhood centres on the question of the status of the province of Quebec and its primarily French-speaking population.
In response, the Liberal Party of Canada under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau advocated an increased role for French-speaking Canadians in the federal government through a policy of Official Bilingualism, a federal presence in social programs that sought to create a unified Canadian identity that resisted demands for more provincial autonomy, and a new constitution based on individual rights that would sever the remaining colonial ties to Britain.
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau subsequently pushed through the amendment of the constitution with the Canada Act 1982.
First Nation groups and the populist Reform Party in Western Canada also opposed the accord, arguing that their cultural and regional grievances were being ignored.
Support for sovereignty soared to above 60%, and the sovereigntist Bloc Québécois formed under disaffected Progressive Conservative Cabinet Minister Lucien Bouchard.
However, the federal Liberal Party of Jean Chrétien won power in 1993 by sweeping Ontario and picking up votes in all provinces.
A Parti Québécois government held another referendum on sovereignty and a "partnership" with Canada in 1995 and lost by only a few thousand votes.
Leading candidate and political scientist Michael Ignatieff mused that Quebec should be recognized as a nation in the Canadian constitution.
In his 1992 book Blood and Belonging, Ignatieff had championed the cause of civic nationalism based on "a community of equal, rights-bearing citizens, united in patriotic attachment to a shared set of political practices and values."
[8] Sensing political division in his political opposition, Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe scheduled a motion in the House of Commons for November 23, 2006—similar to the 2003 Parti Québécois resolution passed unanimously by the National Assembly in Quebec—that it also recognize "Quebeckers as a nation".
The English version changed the word Quebecer to Québécois and added "within a united Canada" at the end of the Bloc motion.
Harper's Intergovernmental Affairs minister Michael Chong resigned from his position and abstained from voting, arguing that this motion was too ambiguous and had the potential of recognizing ethnic nationalism in Canada.
Liberal MP Ken Dryden summarized the view of many of these dissenters, maintaining that it was a game of semantics that cheapened issues of national identity.