Lest anyone think, on the basis of a Supreme Court reference, that the government would defend Canada from dissolution, the Justice Minister was painfully blunt. Again and again Allan Rock emphasized to Parliament that although the government would not accept a unilateral secession, Canada would agree to a negotiated separation on demand. All that was necessary was a sufficient majority on a clear question. "The country," he said, "will not be held together against the will of Quebecers, clearly expressed." It is not secession that is out of bounds, in other words: only lawlessness.

The government of Canada would not try to prevent the separation of Quebec: only to ensure that the process was orderly. The minister was under no illusion as to what even a legal secession would mean for Canada.

"Quebec's inclusion is essential to preserving the country that we cherish," he said. "Without Quebec, the magnificent dream and the shining ideal that is Canada would simply not exist." Yet if the law should stand in the way of Canada's destruction, the Justice Minister vows meekly to change it.

Indeed, the Supreme Court reference is only the first of several steps the government has in mind to make secession as smooth and uneventful as possible. There will be talks on the question and the majority, perhaps the insertion of a secession clause in the Constitution. All of which raises an interesting question. If, as Rock insists, Canada will not deny Quebecers the right to secede; if Ottawa will take a Yes vote as the cue to begin negotiations; if the rule of law is not so much an obstacle to secession as an aid to it, why does the Government of Quebec not take him up on it? Why not renounce unilateralism, and put the issue to bed?

Answer: Because the separatists know that a negotiated secession is impossible. There is no chance of agreement among so many interested parties on such a complex matter. A Yes vote could only end in a unilateral declaration of independence.

They know that. But the Quebec public does not. Rock's attempt to split the difference on the secession question, invoking the rule of law while assuring Quebecers that it poses no real obstacle to anything, thus risks provoking a tragic miscalculation. A strong statement -- Canada is not divisible, period -- and Quebecers would know: a Yes vote would plunge Quebec into the terrifying legal void of a UDI. It is a vote for chaos and ruin. There is no safe exit from Confederation.

Instead, the federal stance almost asks them to vote Yes, secure in the belief that they would not thereby run the incalculable risks of a UDI, but would merely kick off another interminable round of constitutional negotiations.

Neither side could leave the bargaining table: Quebec, because the UDI option would have been foreclosed; Canada, because it has promised to honour a Yes vote. Safely nestled within the rule of law, Yes is thus the risk- free option. Or so it would seem. Only when the PQ, after a decent interval, pulled the UDI ripcord would Quebecers realize they had been duped.

Conditional federalism, then, is alive and well and living in Ottawa. Canada has no prior right to exist: It survives only by leave of Quebecers. The day they vote to end it, the rest of Canada has no choice but to sign its own death warrant. It is some progress that we will now actually insist on negotiations, but not much. This is the real point: the problem of separatism does not originate in Quebec. It is a problem of Canada. It begins and ends with a nation so enfeebled in its idea of itself as to be unable to object even to its own destruction.

What does it mean to say, with the Justice Minister, that Quebec has the right to secede, albeit by negotiation? It means that the territory of Canada does not belong to Canada, but to whichever group of enterprising citizens votes itself control over it. It means the laws of Canada do not apply to whichever group of citizens votes to renounce them.

It means that in the crunch, the government of Canada is prepared to sacrifice the "magnificent dream and the shining ideal" of Canada to the ethnocentric rage of the Parti Québécois: to destroy what twenty generations have built, to mock the dreams of our fathers, to impoverish the lives of our children, and all by the vote of perhaps 7 per cent of our population. And this is the hard line!