While the national question is very much on the agenda in Scotland ever since the election of a first SNP government at Holyrood in 2007, in Quebec the issue has experienced two decades of slowly declining salience following the 1995 referendum defeat. Yet, political parties in Quebec still compete on the issue. Seeking or preserving Quebec’s autonomy within the Canadian union remains a fundamental aspect of the parties’ discourse in the province. The purpose of this paper is to understand the reasons why the national question still dominates party behaviour in Quebec, and to analyse the ways in which substate and statewide parties articulate their views on the national question and on its various dimensions.
