MONTRÉAL—Almost six months into her minority mandate, Quebec premier Pauline Marois is still looking for an edge in her dealings with Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

This weekend, the first gathering of the Parti Québécois in 2013 was expected to feature the presentation of a full-fledged Quebec-Ottawa strategy. The item was pulled off the agenda at the last minute.

Officially it has yet to be fully vetted by the cabinet. But by all indications PQ strategists also need more time to come up with a plan that will have legs in Quebec public opinion.

That is turning out to be harder than they expected.

On paper, the PQ had reason to believe that it would have a de facto advantage in its dealings with the federal Conservatives — at least in the eyes of the Quebec voters who matter to its electoral fortunes.

Harper is the first non-Quebec prime minister to have a sovereigntist government elected on his watch. His government’s policies are unpopular. His party routinely runs next to last (ahead of the Green party) in Quebec voting intentions.

The political dance between a Quebec sovereigntist government and the prime minister of the day is a familiar one and Marois spent most of her political life in that particular ballroom.

But Harper has brought a different choreography to the exercise and it seems to have left the premier scrambling to find her footing.

In the recent past, it used to be federal policy when the PQ was in office to not let its theses go unchallenged.

For long periods over the Trudeau and Chrétien eras, federal-provincial relations were punctuated by almost daily spats between the national assembly and Parliament Hill. The Quebec-Ottawa feud dominated the national conversation.

But these days, the PQ is more likely to hear the echo of its own voice than the angry noise of a federal put-down.

On the weekend, PQ minister Bernard Drainville delivered a fiery critique of the federal EI reform. He described it as a deliberate federal ploy to force Quebec workers to leave the province for Western Canada.

And last week his colleague Jean-François Lisée argued that the current directions of CIDA were so at odds with Quebec values that it was time for the province to set up its own international aid agency.

In the not-so-old days, a string of federal ministers would have rushed to the microphones to rebut the PQ’s assertions.

On the weekend, the volleys from the péquistes trenches hit a mass of federal dead air.

There are those who would suggest that a federal government disinclined to be in the face of its sovereigntist counterpart is one that is missing in action on the unity front. But the evidence so far suggests otherwise.

As opposed to her predecessors, Marois leads a minority government — at the mercy of a non-sovereigntist opposition majority.

On matters related to sovereignty, the opposition parties are backed by a solid majority of voters.

On Saturday, PQ members woke up to the sobering news that support for sovereignty sits at 37 per cent — six points down from a year ago.

According to a Léger Marketing poll commissioned by Le Devoir and The Gazette, only 30 per cent want a referendum.

It is hard to overstate how central a vocal, angry, unpopular federal government is to the PQ’s latest game plan.

In one of her first moves as PQ leader three years ago, Marois sought to recast the party’s approach to Quebec-Ottawa relations.

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At the time she described the so-called sovereigntist governance as an endless stream of demands designed to drive up fatigue with Quebec in the rest of Canada and pave the way for the province’s exit from the federation.

It is a scenario built on provocation, confrontation and ultimately reciprocal rejection.

But it takes two to tango and so far Marois is dancing solo while Harper is content to pull federal-provincial strings out of the public eye.

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