The campaign, as such, has been more a sounding of public opinion, a sorting out of the contenders for next time, than a serious contest for power.

But if the election is an opportunity to express a preference for one party platform or another, or to pass judgment on the incumbent's record, it is still ultimately about choosing a government. Seldom has the choice been more important, or the stakes so high.

There are plenty of reasons to vote against the Liberals. The party, not to say it lightly, lied its way to power in 1993, and it is galling indeed to see that go unpunished. With no real prospect of losing office, it has governed with the arrogance of the unaccountable, as displayed in matters large (the Somalia inquiry) and small (the Pearson airport shlemozzle). If it has earned high marks for its handling of the deficit, it rated a D- in its most important test: the 1995 referendum. And after all this, it now comes before the people, unable to explain why it has called the election or what it would do with the mandate it seeks.

Alas, none of this matters. Whatever complaints one may have about the Liberals' record, whatever misgivings about their agenda, one issue in this election overshadows all: Who is best able to manage the coming crisis over secession.

Put that way, there really is only one choice. It might be nice to find some inspirational leader who could unite us by sheer force of personality; it would be wonderful if there were some magic constitutional formula that could satisfy all the regions' complaints simultaneously. But if either of these things exist, they are not much use to us now. We need to put away such thoughts, and focus on the crisis at hand.

We are six months away, a year at most, from the most serious threat to our survival as a nation that we have ever faced -- one that threatens not only to disrupt the existing constitutional order, but to plunge large parts of the country into chaos. The likely sequence of events is as follows.

Some time this fall, the Supreme Court will bring down its ruling, finding, as it is expected, that the right of Quebec to secede unilaterally is recognized nowhere in domestic or international law. The government of Quebec will seize upon the usual surge in nationalist sentiment that greets any such incident to call a snap election, empowering it to hold another referendum on independence. If it wins the election, the referendum will follow just as soon as the polls are right. And if it wins that -- well, we know what is in store then. A pretence at negotiation, then a unilateral declaration of independence. Then God only knows.

No amount of last-minute constitutional bribery is going to prevent this, whatever its merits or demerits. What is in order now, if the federation is to be preserved, is crisis management. No one should be in any doubt that a UDI, if it comes, can be contained. The powers available to the government of Canada in such a crisis are formidable indeed, provided it has the wit and the nerve to use them. To take just one small example, as Patrick Monahan and Michael Bryant put it in their paper for the C. D. Howe Institute, "Canada controls the airports, seaports, key federal buildings and all the international entry points into Quebec; absent voluntary agreement from Canada to depart, it is not clear how the Quebec government could oust Canadian officials and Canadian control of these strategic locations." All the same, to face down the separatists will require no small amount of cunning, plus a taste for political thuggery: The separatists have never been constrained by Marquess of Queensbury rules, and neither should we. It will demand a leader with ice in his veins and fire in his belly. Indeed, given the defeatism that prevails among so much elite opinion in the country, it may well be said that the task of the prime minister is to hold the country together, in spite of itself.

I am willing to bet that the current leadership of the Liberal party has the requisite qualities of ruthlessness and duplicity. Jean Chretien, in particular, will never give the separatists the satisfaction: thirty years of personal enmity, if nothing else, should see to that. Granted, the government's performance in the last referendum is far from reassuring -- but then, they were hardly alone in believing beforehand that the No side would win handily. Unlike many of their critics, moreover, they appear to have learned some lessons from the debacle: witness Ottawa's new willingness to define the question, the majority, and the rules of engagement.

It's no sure thing, but given the alternatives -- or lack of them -- the Liberals are the federalist "beau risque."