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Stephen Harper’s Quebec lieutenant went public with his personal belief Monday that a 50% plus one referendum majority should be all the province needs to legally separate, even as his government heads to court to stop that very thing from happening.

“I am a proud Quebecer. I’ve already said that I am at ease with [50% plus one],” Denis Lebel, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, told an interviewer for TVA Nouvelles in an interview broadcast Monday.

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Mr. Lebel, who is the representative for the staunchly French-speaking riding of Roberval-Lac-Saint-Jean, repeated the sentiment in another Monday interview with Montreal radio station 98.5 FM.

“So 50% plus one, that’s a clear result for you?” asked a host, to which the minister replied, “we always said we would leave it to Quebecers to decide, but yes, that’s it for me.”

The comments were made as Mr. Lebel was stumping to defend federal efforts to oppose Law 99, a 2000 Quebec law asserting the right to separate on a 50% plus one vote, and that no “other parliament or government” could obstruct the “democratic will of the Québec people to determine its own future.”