NEW YORK — Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard resigned Thursday, saying that he has failed to lead his French-speaking province to independence from Canada and that it is time for someone else to lead the separatist cause.
"I regret one thing--not having done better and more," he said in an emotional speech in the province's legislature in Quebec City. "I recognize that my efforts to revive the debate were in vain."
The charismatic Bouchard led Quebec's movement to split from Canada in a 1995 referendum that the separatists lost by just 1 percentage point. He became premier of the province in 1996, but despite his popularity, support for sovereignty has steadily waned. His resignation--a surprise to many--dealt a staggering blow to Quebec's 40-year-long quest for independence.
"It's the end of a generation's dream," said pollster and political analyst Jean-Marc Leger. "The only advantage they had was Lucien Bouchard. Without him, it will be very tough."
Bouchard, 62, said he will stay on as premier until he can be replaced. But he is leaving his party, the provincial Parti Quebecois, immediately and leaving politics permanently.
In his fifth year as premier, Bouchard seemed increasingly frustrated by growing pressure from party hard-liners to push for another referendum, and by the public's waning interest in his party's raison d'etre--separating from Canada.
Polls by Leger and others show a steady decline in support for independence since the failed referendum, from nearly 50% in 1995 to about 40% now. The top priorities for Quebecers, Bouchard said, have become more personal than nationalistic: health care, education and family. Only 1% listed sovereignty as their first priority in the most recent poll in October.
Bouchard, too, showed that he had other priorities as a leader. He worked obsessively to eliminate the province's multimillion-dollar deficit, if only, he said, to prove that Quebec could handle itself as an independent country.
But leaders of the Parti Quebecois wanted him to focus on establishing Quebec as a sovereign French-speaking state and openly questioned his commitment to the separatist cause, rooted in efforts to preserve the language and culture of the French-speaking province amid its English-language surroundings. He nearly stepped down as party chief at a party convention in 1995 after battling such criticism.
