The Quebec sovereignty movement is a political movement aimed at attaining independent statehood (sovereignty) for the Canadian province of Quebec. The term separatist is used interchangeably with sovereigntist (alternate spelling sovereignist) outside of Quebec[citation needed].
In layman’s terms, separatism, independence and sovereignty all refer to the same goal of having the province of Quebec leaving Canada to become a country on its own, with future possibilities of various collaborations with Canada. However, sovereignty is the term most commonly employed.
With a sovereign state, Quebec separatists and sovereignists claim that the people of Quebec will be better equipped to foster their own economic, social, and cultural development. Sovereignists are generally not in opposition to federalism as a concept[citation needed], but are opposed to the present federal system in Canada and do not believe it can be reformed in a way that could satisfy what they see as the desire of Quebecers to govern themselves apart from the rest of Canada in all respects.
The idea of sovereignty for Quebec is based, according to its proponents, on historical and sociological evidence that Quebecers are a people and a political nation—see Identity Politics. However, when polled, only Francophone Quebecers believe they belong to a Quebec nation, and non-Francophone Quebecers reject this idea. Still, the Francophone Quebecer political class feel that they have democratic control over a state of their own, but that inside the Canadian federation as it currently stands, this state does not have the constitutional powers which the Quebec government needs to be the effective national government of Quebecers.
