Renvoi relatif à la secession du Québec

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Renvoi relatif à la sécession du Québec (French) or Reference re Secession of Quebec (English) is the name of a 1998 opinion of the Supreme Court of Canada on questions regarding a secession of Québec from Canada .

The full citation is Renvoi relatif à la secession du Québec, [1998] 2 RCS 217 and Reference re Secession of Quebec, [1998] 2 SCR 217 . The “Reference” in English indicates that this is a so-called reference question . These are legal questions that the Federal Government of Canada can raise to the Supreme Court. The court's opinions on such questions are not legally binding, but have never been disregarded. "Reference re" or "Renvoi relatif" denotes those legal issues that are related to the Constitution of Canada .

Background and questions

The background was the secessionist tendencies in Québec and two initiated by the Parti Québécois and a third planned referendum on the independence of Québec. The first referendum of 1980 failed with a minority of 40.44%, the second referendum of 1995 with only 49.42% of the votes. A third referendum announced by the Parti Québécois in 1996 and a law on the future of an independent Québec in the event of a success of the referendum by the National Assembly of Québec in the run-up to the second referendum prompted the Canadian government to act.

In order to clarify the legal situation, the Canadian federal government submitted the following three questions to the Supreme Court in 1996:

  1. Can the National Assembly, the legislature or the executive of Québec unilaterally effect the secession of Canada under Canadian constitutional law?
  2. Does the National Assembly, the Legislature or the Executive of Québec have the right under international law to unilaterally effect the secession of Canada? Does the National Assembly, the Legislature or the Executive of Québec have a right of self-determination under international law , which gives the National Assembly, the Legislative or the Executive of Québec the right to unilaterally effect the secession of Canada?
  3. In Canada, which law would prevail in the event of a conflict between national law and international law regarding the right of the National Assembly, the legislature or the executive of Québec to unilaterally effect secession from Canada?

Opinion of the court

The Supreme Court issued a position on the questions on August 20, 1998 after hearing the interested parties from February 16-19, 1998.

  1. In the opinion of the court, Québec's constitutional law has no right to unilaterally effect secession. However, the rest of Canada could not deny the Québec government the right to pursue the goal of secession in the event of a referendum. If this goal were to be adhered to, negotiations would have to clarify the conditions under which Québec could gain independence.
  2. With regard to the second question, the court came to the conclusion that an international law on secession was not applicable in the case of Québec, since international law did not give parts of the state the right to unilaterally effect secession. With regard to the territorial integrity guaranteed under international law, a people's right to self-determination under international law should in principle only be exercised within the framework of the existing political system, for example through negotiations. Even a clear democratic vote could not change that.
  3. Since the court saw no conflict between national Canadian law and international law, there was no need to answer the third question.

Response from the government of Quebec

The government of Québec welcomed the court's opinion, as it had shown that the referendum strategy could achieve its goal and that the Canadian federal government and the governments of the other Canadian provinces would have to negotiate a secession in the event of a referendum.

Federal Government Response

The Canadian federal government welcomed the court's opinion as it made it clear that Québec could not unilaterally cause secession.

In 2000, following the opinion of the Supreme Court, the federal parliament passed the Clarity Act , which sets out the conditions under which a province can enter into secession negotiations with the Canadian federal government.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Renvoi relatif à la sécession du Québec , [1998] 2 RCS 217, 1998 CanLII 793 (CSC), http://canlii.ca/t/1fqr2 , accessed on February 2, 2017.