In 1995, Quebec held a referendum on whether to secede from Canada. The vote was incredibly close, with 49.42% of Quebecers voting in favour of independence and 50.58% opposing it – a margin of just 1.16%. In the fallout from the referendum, Jacques Parizeau, the then premier of Quebec and a prominent leader of the pro-independence Parti Québécois, claimed that the referendum was lost due to “des votes ethniques” – “The Ethnic Vote.”
While Parizeau’s comments likely reflected a widespread frustration among the ethnic French population of Quebec, his remarks were widely condemned for drawing a distinction between the…