Court battles loom as Quebec passes 'seditious' secession law Ottawa asked to intervene--Paul Wells --National Post Jacques Boissinot, The Canadian Press   Bruised by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's strong showing in Quebec in the federal election, the provincial government yesterday set the stage for a new court battle over the rules of secession by passing Bill 99, a law declaring the province can separate in defiance of Canadian law and Canada's parliament. Quebec's tiny Equality Party immediately announced it will challenge the law in Quebec court as "false, unconstitutional, anti-Canadian, and seditious." The party's leader, Keith Henderson, called on the federal government either to strike the Quebec bill down or to join his court challenge. The National Assembly voted along straight party lines yesterday in adopting the bill, subtitled "An Act Affirming the Fundamental Rights and Prerogatives of the Quebec People and the Quebec State." Parti Québécois members and Mario Dumont, the only sitting member of the Action Démocratique party, voted in favour. The Liberal opposition voted against the bill. The bill states that "the Quebec people has the inalienable right to freely decide the political regime and legal status of Quebec." It adds that "the Quebec people, acting through its own political institutions, shall determine alone the mode of exercise of its right to choose the political regime and legal status of Quebec." Other sections assert that any referendum on Quebec's future would carry with a 50%-plus-one majority of votes cast and that in any secession, Quebec's territory would be indivisible. During final debate on the bill, Lucien Bouchard, Quebec's Premier, called it "more than simple law; it is more like a charter of political rights for the people of Quebec." But Jean Charest, the Opposition Liberal leader, pleaded with the government to abandon its proposed law. It will certainly be struck down in courts, Mr. Charest said, thus weakening the province's political hand rather than strengthening it. "We will not subscribe, Mr. Speaker, to any act that risks weakening Quebec," he said. The court challenge Mr. Charest warned about is ready to be filed by the Equality Party, which fields candidates in every provincial election but has not succeeded in getting any elected since 1989. The new bill comes just as separatist sentiment seems to be waning. The federal Liberals captured 44% of Quebec's popular vote in the recent election. The bill now goes to Lise Thibault, the province's Lieutenant-Governor, for the royal assent that would make it law. However, the Equality Party has asked Ms. Thibault to refuse to sign the bill, a manoeuvre known as "reserve," which has not been used for nearly a century. If Ms. Thibault doesn't reserve her assent, Equality wants the federal government to disallow the bill, another rarely used method for keeping provincial bills from becoming law. A federal source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said yesterday the chances of immediate federal intervention are close to zero. As with earlier court challenges to the separatists launched by private citizens, such as that of lawyer Guy Bertrand in 1995, Ottawa is "watching closely," but will not immediately get involved, the source said. If the federal government refuses to intervene, Mr. Henderson will send his lawyers to court to have the law declared unconstitutional. "Unless the federal government grows a spine, it's going to be up to citizens to litigate," Brent Tyler, a lawyer for Equality, said in a telephone interview. He said his case will be filed within days. But because private citizens can only launch cases in lower courts, it could take years to work its way up the ladder of appeals unless Ottawa steps in to take the question directly to the Supreme Court, Mr. Tyler said. "We're saying, 'Look, why not short-circuit this process?' We're more than happy to do it if the feds are going to be derelict in their duty, but somebody has to do it." Bill 99 was introduced by Mr. Bouchard's Parti Québécois government nearly a year ago as a rebuttal to federal Bill C-20, the so-called "Clarity Law." Mr. Bouchard introduced his bill in a crisis atmosphere, ordering air time on the province's television networks to explain why he thought Quebec's rights were under federal assault and needed defending. The Clarity Law, a cornerstone of Mr. Chrétien's unity strategy, asserted that Parliament would be required to judge the clarity of any future referendum question on secession, and then to vote again on whether the results of a referendum vote were clear enough to allow secession negotiations to begin. The law was written to conform closely with the language of the Supreme Court's historic 1998 opinion on secession. The court ruled secession negotiations must follow a vote by a "clear majority" on a "clear question," while leaving it up to undefined "political actors" to decide what is clear in each case. Bill 99 set out to deny any federal role in a decision by Quebecers about their future. Mr. Bouchard wanted every party in the National Assembly to endorse it, but the Charest Liberals have refused to endorse either Bill C-20 or Bill 99.