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Elsewhere, nationalism has taken on a negative connotation, associated in the United States with the “America First” rhetoric of President Donald Trump and in Europe with a rise of far-right governments and political parties calling for limits on immigration.

But in Quebec, nationalism has a different meaning, and it isn’t a dirty word. Legault summed up his approach in a speech to delegates at a conference of the party’s youth wing in August. Now that the debate over Quebec independence has been put to the side, he said, the door is wide open for other big ideas.

“But when we talk about social projects — there is a society,” the premier said. “It assumes there is a nation. It assumes there is a family. We don’t have to be embarrassed to be what we call nationalists.”

Joseph Yvon Theriault, sociology professor at Universite du Quebec a Montreal, said Quebec nationalism has been around for 150 years and is far more moderate in its application here than in other countries.

From the 1800s to the 1960s, the Quebecois people fought to be recognized as a distinct political and cultural entity within Canada, Theriault said. That nationalism evolved in the 1960s into the Quebec separation movement, he said, popular support for which has been declining since the late 1990s.

Today, he said, “It’s about the idea that Quebec forms a nation. That it’s not just another ethnic group in North America but a society, with its own institutions, culture and know-how.”