Leadership Quote by Gilles Duceppe

The genius of Duceppe's question is that it pretends to be innocent while quietly detonating a major taboo. "Why would it be ridiculous" doesn’t argue for a Quebec army so much as it exposes the reflex that treats the idea as self-evidently absurd. He’s not selling militarization; he’s interrogating the hierarchy of legitimacy in Canada, where sovereignty is permitted as a cultural vibe (language laws, flags, festivals) but becomes "crazy" the moment it takes institutional form.

As a rhetorical move, the line forces listeners to declare their priors. If you laugh, you’ve admitted that Quebec is, at bottom, a province and should stay in its lane. If you don’t, you’ve conceded that Quebec can be imagined as a state - and states, inconveniently, have armies. The question format is strategic: it shifts the burden of proof to federalists, who must explain why one political community’s self-defense is normal (Canada’s) while another’s is inherently illegitimate (Quebec’s). That’s not a debate about tanks; it’s a debate about who gets to be considered "real."

The context is the post-referendum sovereignty movement, where separatist politicians had to normalize the idea of an independent Quebec without sounding reckless. Duceppe’s line works because it’s both modest and radical: modest in tone, radical in implication. It turns a punchline into a premise and asks the country to notice the joke it’s been telling itself.