Footnote 63, Chapter 7, Page 201:

The following is a version of the paragraph on pages 200-201 that contains more poll data involving support for Quebec’s secession. Abundant survey data and political commentary can be evaluated to estimate the extent to which the secession of Quebec is desired and whether it is ever likely to occur. Young’s extensive analysis of the movement for, and potential ramifications, of Quebec’s secession illustrates the widely shared assumptions that the movement is substantial and highly significant but that secession is unlikely to ever occur. On the first page of his introduction to his 506 page treatment of this subject, Young explains that it “was written on the assumption that a majority of Quebecers might vote for sovereignty… despite the apparently low probability that this would occur.” Polling data indicates that Quebecers have become more likely to vote for sovereignty but those who oppose it throughout Canada are probably capable of preventing this region’s secession. Apparently, “the idea of [Quebec’s] independence came out of the fringes” in the 1960s and demand for secession escalated following the introduction of the 1982 Constitution Act and the failure to pass the Meech Lake Accord in 1990. A month after the Constitution Act was passed in 1982, a Sorecom poll found that, although 75 percent of Québécois thought it “was important for Quebec to remain in Canada,” 61 percent of them also “felt that the new Constitution had weakened Quebec’s position.” Within a decade later, following the failure to pass the Meech Lake Accord, “support levels in Quebec for ‘sovereignty’ and ‘independence’ rose to a range of 60-65 per cent.” A poll in Quebec conducted by the Globe and Mail- CBC in 1990 found that 62% favored sovereignty. Young explains that, by 1992 when the Charlottetown Accord also failed to pass, nationalist Quebecers concluded that it was “impossible to change the Canadian constitution so as to accommodate the distinct nature of Quebec,” their choice was thus “between the status quo and sovereignty,” so “sovereignty is the only solution,” and “only a vote for secession can produce change and security.” By 1992, an “extensive poll of Quebecers by CROP” found that 54% wanted Quebec to remain a province of Canada. Fournier estimates that controversy involving the Meech Lake Accord “moved about 20 percent of the citizens of Quebec… into the sovereigntist camp.” This controversy was the latest reminder for Quebec nationalists that Canadian public opinion no longer supported the cultural autonomy that their group had historically enjoyed. In 1990, a Globe and Mail-CBC poll found that 82 percent of the “Canadian population (excluding Quebec) was opposed to Quebec’s exercising the right to pass laws affecting French language and culture” and another poll of Québécois found that 65% of them “considered English Canadians to be somewhat hostile toward them.”