But the Prime Minister did not say that. He said that his government would not accept a unilateral declaration of independence - that is, an attempt to secede without the constitutional amendments that would make it legal, and without the consent of Parliament and the other provincial legislatures that would make such amendments possible. He said, further, that he would not accept a referendum majority of 50 per cent plus one as sufficient to begin negotiations on secession; nor would he accept the verdict of any secession referendum unless the question to be voted upon was acceptable to both sides in advance.

But on the question of secession itself, the Prime Minister took a decidedly soft line, declaring that it was both possible in practice and legitimate in principle. "If there is a very clear desire to go," he told Good Morning America - has any other country decided solemn questions of nationhood over another country's breakfast? - "it could be done. But it has to be done with a clear mandate."

The divisibility of Canada is not at issue, in other words. It's just a question of conditions. Those being met, the requisite consent would be a formality. "I don't know what the rest of the country will do, but it is my reading that the people will not keep people by force in Canada."

Here at last is the long-awaited Chretien Doctrine. The people of any one province, or Quebec at any rate, may decide by themselves to destroy the country. They just have to ask us nicely. The other 23 million Canadians whose lives and legacy would hinge as much as those of Quebeckers on the result of any secession referendum would have the sacred right to rubber-stamp this decision. Provided the vote in Quebec produced "a clear mandate," it is the opinion of the Prime Minister that the rest of Canada would then have no choice but to accept the result.

It is probably progress that the Government of Canada no longer tacitly accepts that the life or death of a great and democratic nation should be decided on the basis of revolutionary edicts in provincial capitals, buttressed by the vote of perhaps 7 per cent of the population. But it hardly counts as a "hard line." Faced with an illegal bid to seize one-sixth of the land mass of Canada, the Prime Minister merely says: Wait a minute, we've got to do this by the book. In the process, he may well have weakened the federalist hand rather than strengthened it.

The legal chaos that would follow a unilateral bid is one of the chief barriers to secession. The Prime Minister, to the applause of commentators less disposed even than himself to prevent secession, has simply suggested how it could be done more smoothly - the chance for a quiet death being the dearest wish of most of the country's political class. Knowing that a vote to secede would plunge Quebec not into anarchy but into another interminable first ministers conference, this time on secession, might be enough to tip many strategic voters into the sovereigntist camp.

Worse, even the conditions are not credible. The Prime Minister may fancy that he has set the bar so impossibly high as effectively to forbid secession, without having to go so far as to say so explicitly. Indeed, even if we wanted to negotiate a secession, we would find it impossible: There are too many hurdles, too many unresolved questions, too many conflicting interests, too many points of law, too many places where the whole process could break down. Which is why the sovereigntists are wise to insist on the right to unilaterally secede. It's the only way it could possibly happen.

But suppose we did get into setting terms. The basic game-theory problems with the federal position remain. What does it mean to say that a unilateral secession will be repelled, but you are willing to negotiate one on demand? If you are prepared to block an illegal secession bid, why would you agree to a legal one? And if you're willing to allow a negotiated secession, because "the people will not keep people by force in Canada," then how is it proposed that you would block a unilateral attempt?