with slow progress towards independence, and others hoping to put the sovereignty question on the backburner. Leadership by PQ leader Pauline Marois was divisive. In 2021, François Legault's Coalition Avenir Québec government in Quebec proposed to amend the Charter of the French Language and the provincial constitution to more strongly entrench French as the sole official language. In response to this, the Bloc Québécois initiated a motion in the House of Commons endorsing the constitutionality of Legault's initiatives. The Commons passed the motion 281–2. There were 36 abstentions. organizations Political parties and parliamentary groups Parti Québécois SPQ Libre Bloc Québécois Communist Party of Canada Québec solidaire Option nationale Parti indépendantiste Marxist–Leninist Party of Quebec Groupe parlementaire québécois Non-partisan organizations Mouvement pour une Élection sur la Souveraineté Mouvement de libération nationale du Québec Conseil de la Souveraineté du Québec Réseau de Résistance du Québécois Sympathetic organizations Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society Confédération des syndicats nationaux (Confederation of national labour unions) Centrale des syndicats du Québec (Quebec labour unions congress) Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec (Federation of Quebec workers) Union des artistes (Artists Labour Union) Mouvement national des Québécois et des Québécoises media Québecor Journal de Montréal Journal de Québec Groupe TVA (defunct) Québec-Radio Vigile Past organizations Rassemblement pour l'indépendance nationale (RIN) Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) Parti nationaliste chrétien (PNC) Parti nationaliste du Québec Parti indépendantiste (1985) Union Populaire Nouvelle Alliance Québec-Canada Action démocratique du Québec – was originally sovereigntist, but later abandoned in favour of considerable autonomy Arguments Reasons for sovereignty Justifications for Quebec's sovereignty are historically nationalistic in character, claiming the unique culture and French-speaking majority (78% of the provincial population) are threatened with assimilation by either the rest of Canada or, as in Metropolitan France, by Anglophone culture more generally, and that the best way to preserve language, identity and culture is via the creation of an independent political entity. Other distinguishing factors, such as religious differences (given the Catholic majority in Quebec), are also used to justify either separation or nationalist social policies advocated by the Parti Québécois. The historical argument for Quebec independence stems from the region's history, as it was conquered by the British in 1760 and ceded to Great Britain in the 1763 Treaty of Paris; French Canadians in Canada were subsumed by waves of British immigrants. This argument makes the claim that Quebecers have the right of self-determination. Eight of the other Canadian