Sadly, a tiny minority of the people of Quebec just can't get over the fact that France lost the wars on the North American Continent. They want to go back to the womb, the mother tongue, and the mother culture. What they do not realize is that Quebec has not had a French culture for well over 100 years. it has an Anglo-French culture, one that is very, very different from the culture in France.
Oh boy! What a lesson in the socio-cultural reality of Quebec! I'm guessing that by the ''tiny minority'', you mean the approximately 40% of Quebecers that want Quebec to be a country. And if so, you are totally wrong about them wanting to go back to the womb. Quebecers are very much aware of the differences between their culture and French culture. And their is no desire to go back to French culture. We have Quebec culture and that's good enough. Of course, there are cultural crossovers between Quebec and France because of language in the same way that there are crossovers between British and English Canadian culture.
Quebec has had a strong English speaking population for well over 200 years now. The Francophones do their best to beat down the English language, and to attempt to erase any aspect of English cultural influence, but it is a losing battle.
In the long run everything ends up dying. Latin disappeared despite the fact that no Roman would have believed you would you manage to go back in time to tell them. So with this in mind, even English is bound to disappear eventually or mutate into something else.
But for the time being, there is no reason for Quebecers to simply abandon their language.
The French speaking people of Quebec are simply not replacing themselves. Their birthrate is so low, that in another 100 years, they will be a tiny minority in their own province. By then, the language will have been changed to English, and those that speak French will be considered somewhat backward and quaint.
That remains to be seen. As long as we keep a good grip on language laws, children of immigrants are required to learn French and this makes a huge difference. And there's been a mini-boom in the last decade. No doubt we would need to have more babies, but things have improved and there seems to be a slow but steady curve towards heightened fertility because of pro-family measures that have been taken by the government in the last decade.
There is no doubt that English is becoming more and more a huge influence. But to say that French speakers will be considered backward and quaint just demonstrates your inability to understand the value of a different language.
There is not support even among the French speaking population of today to make Quebec an independent country. As time goes by, that support will be less and less and less. It is a self-solving problem, nothing that anyone actually needs to worry about.
In the years following the first referendum (1980), support for separation went down and many said the issue was over. But then came the Meech Lake crisis and the whole constitutional debate. We then got the 1995 referendum where virtually half of Quebec voted for separation.
The constitutional issue isn't settled and while support for separation isn't overwhelming, neither is support for federalism, which enjoys the easy and safe road of the status quo. Why do you think the Bloc is still going strong? Something is still wrong and given the right conditions, only a few sparks would be needed for the separation movement to flare up dangerously. This cannot be repeated enough.
