Mulcair firms up NDP policy on Quebec sovereignty

Fifty per cent plus one–plus. That sums up the more demanding new position on a Quebec sovereignty referendum that Thomas Mulcair has taken, now that the election of a Parti Québécois government has made the question less hypothetical.
The official policy of Mulcair’s federal New Democratic Party, contained in the so-called Sherbrooke Declaration of 2005, is that Quebec has the right to “achieve sovereignty” on a referendum vote of 50 per cent plus one.
But in an interview broadcast on the Radio-Canada television program Les Coulisses du pouvoir on Sunday, Mulcair implied that the federal government would not necessarily have to agree to sovereignty after a simple-majority vote.
Asked about the Sherbrooke Declaration, the leader of the NDP official opposition in the House of Commons referred instead to the 1998 opinion of the Supreme Court of Canada on Quebec secession.