If Quebecers are turning away from politics in disgust at the ethical lapses of their politicians, blame Canada.
At least that's what Bernard Landry seems to do.
The former Parti Québécois premier implied on the weekend that Quebec doesn't feel responsible for cleaning up its politics because it is part of Canada.
While Quebec sovereignty wouldn't solve all problems by itself, he said at a conference organized jointly by the federal Bloc Québécois and the sovereignist intellectual group IPSO, it would at least "make (Quebecers) responsible for (their) destiny."
Landry was commenting on disclosures that contributors to the governing Liberal Party have been favoured in the awarding of lucrative permits to operate private daycare centres.
"Independence is a new day rising," he said. "We clean up what needs to be cleaned up, and we manage our affairs responsibly."
"Blame Canada" is also the message of sovereignists and some Quebec commentators at the approach of the 20th anniversary in June of the failure of the Meech Lake constitutional accord. The accord would have given this province a form of special status as a "distinct society" within Canada.
The message that Canada is to be blamed for refusing to entertain new constitutional proposals from this province was supported by results of a new poll conducted for the sovereignist conference at which Landry spoke.
The poll results (snipurl.com/w4l1w) suggest that a new round of constitutional negotiations would be an exercise in futility.
They show that public opinion in the rest of the country rejects - and in almost all cases, overwhelmingly so - every proposal Quebec might make.
These even include the five proposals that formed the basis of the Meech Lake accord reached in 1987, to which the 11 federal and provincial heads of government then in office agreed.
But neither Quebecers nor other Canadians appeared to realize how far apart the two sides are.
One of the few points on which strong majorities among both agreed is that it will be possible to reform Canadian federalism to satisfy both Quebec and the rest of Canada - some day.
It's just that for most people in the rest of the country, that day hasn't arrived. While 82 per cent of Quebecers agreed that Canada should begin a new round of negotiations to reach a constitutional agreement satisfactory to Quebec, 61 per cent of other Canadians disagreed.
And for that, Quebec politicians, past and present, and federalist as well as sovereignist, are partly to blame.
In deploring the absence of a new constitutional offer from the rest of Canada, sovereignists and some Quebec commentators neglect to mention the role played by the 1995 referendum on Quebec secession.
For many English-speaking Canadians, the near loss of their country in that referendum was a traumatic event that only 15 years later remains fresh in their memory, and which they associate with the failure of constitutional negotiations.
It was a sovereignist government that held that referendum. But federalist politicians had helped make it possible by threatening the rest of the country during the Meech Lake negotiations with the breakup of Canada if the accord failed. Thus federalists justified secession as an appropriate response to the accord's failure.
Twenty years later, the presence of a PQ official opposition in Quebec City and a Bloc Québécois that holds a majority of Quebec's seats in the House of Commons are reminders that national unity remains fragile.
But English-speaking Canadians are also aware that, since the 1995 referendum, support for sovereignty itself in Quebec has waned.
Can Canada really be blamed, then, for not risking its survival in another round of constitutional reform?