MONTREAL—Maria Mourani, the Ahuntsic MP who this week publicly renounced sovereignty after being ousted from the Bloc Québécois earlier this fall, is no Lucien Bouchard.

Her decision to embrace federalism the better to turn her back on the Parti Québécois’ secularism charter will not unleash a flood of pro-Canada conversions in Quebec. Nor is it exclusively altruistic.

Mourani’s diverse Montreal riding is fundamentally federalist and only a division in the non-sovereigntist vote between a high-profile Liberal candidate and the surging NDP allowed her to keep it in the Bloc fold in 2011.

That her change of heart will enhance her prospects for re-election should she run again in 2015 is not in doubt. The ex-Bloc MP, who continues to sit as an independent in the Commons, has a variety of federalist political vehicles to choose from between now and then.

Be that as it may, Mourani’s defection was a clear shot across the sovereigntist bow.

Mourani is not the first sovereigntist to cross over to the other side but the traffic on this particular Quebec road has traditionally been heavier in the other direction.

Moreover, past lapsed sovereigntists had usually tended to be discreet about their change in allegiance.

But there was little that was furtive about this week’s developments.

On Wednesday Mourani proclaimed that Canada — because fundamental rights are enshrined in its Constitution — is best placed to protect minorities.

A simple majority in the national assembly is enough to water down the rights guaranteed in the Quebec charter and the PQ is proposing to use that route to pave the way for the restrictions on religious rights that it seeks to impose throughout the province’s public service.

Mourani added that with its secularism charter the PQ had veered from its long-held tenet of inclusiveness to embrace a more ethnic-based form of nationalism. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau could have been speaking through her mouth.

The reaction from sovereigntist quarters was virulent. But that virulence in itself is representative of an ongoing shift in the Quebec sovereigntist-federalist paradigm.

For a long time the onus has been on francophone federalists to explain how they can find fault with the 1982 patriation of the Constitution without Quebec’s assent and/or support the PQ’s language laws and still oppose sovereignty.

The inference has been that their loyalty to Canada is somewhat unprincipled; that it goes against the grain of the larger collective Quebec interest.

Both the language and the constitutional issues also exposed divisions in the federalist facade that the PQ was only too happy to exploit.

But with her secularism charter Marois might as well have taken a hammer to her own foundations.

Over the past fall, Quebecers have been treated to the sight of public sovereigntist divisions — including between the premier and her predecessors — over the charter. Such divisions over the identity-related initiative of a PQ government are unprecedented.

With federalists mostly on the sidelines, sovereigntists have been debating other sovereigntists over the perils of the charter for the fabric of Quebec society and for the greater cause of the province’s independence.

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This week, Mourani’s defection found other sovereigntist critics of the charter on the defensive, scrambling to explain how one could be staunchly against the Marois’ initiative and still support the PQ.

By all indications they are failing to convince some of their own.

On Friday, former Bloc MP Raymond Gravel penned a devastating open letter in which he wrote that Marois’ professed admiration for France’s secular model made him “want to vomit.”

He described France as a country where discrimination and racism are rampant. Unless the charter is rewritten along more inclusive lines, Gravel concluded, he will terminate his 30-year association with the PQ.

For decades the PQ had succeeded in commanding what most francophone Quebecers construed as the political high ground in the province’s identity debate. But its secularism charter has opened a breach in its walls of moral superiority and so far it is not federalists who are rushing in but sovereigntists who are running out. And they are not all leaving in the dead of the night.

Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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