FOR Scots, they are the deja-vu elections.

Next week the people of Quebec look set to elect a new nationalist government.

But not, political commentators stress, because they want to reopen the bitter debate about the Canadian province's independence.

No, the Québécois, or Quebecers, experts say, are looking for somebody competent to take over from floundering incumbents. Sound familiar?

Polls put the Parti Québécois or PQ – the province's main "sovereigntist" or nationalist party – in a clear lead, although short of an absolute majority

PQ leader Pauline Marois, buoyed by opinion polls, last week talked of forming a "sovereigntist government" after Tuesday's provincial vote. If victorious, she would, she said, open talks to force the Canadian federal government to live up to Quebec's current official status as "a nation within a united Canada".

Quebec has already gone through two referenda on sovereignty, the last, in 1995, as bitterly fought as it was close, and the PQ would officially like another.

But Marois' main opponent, the Francophone and constitutionally neutral Coalition Avenir Québec, supports a moratorium on more referenda in the immediate future.

The incumbent liberals, trailing in the polls, are staunch "federalists", Canada's answer to Unionists, as are the left-wing New Democrat Party, which won the province at last year's federal elections.

"The PQ is rising from the dead," one Scottish-based sympathiser told the Sunday Herald, suggesting they had stolen a trick from Alex Salmond and the SNP. "But younger Quebecers are more comfortable with their identities as French-speaking Canadians than their parents."

Cue something else in Quebec that would give Scots a sense of deja-vu: "The big support in Quebec would be for something close to the Scottish proposal of devo max," explained Michael Keating, a professor at Aberdeen University who knows the province well. "The political parties have been scrambling to occupy that space.

"What they are talking about now is really renegotiating federalism rather than outright independence.

"There are issues, such as keeping [the Canadian] currency that would sound very familiar in Scotland."

Another Scottish-based Quebec watcher, Ailsa Henderson of Edinburgh University, reckons Quebecers would quickly grasp Scotland's obscure formulas for greater devolution, such as devo max.

She said: "There is a notion in Quebec of a spectrum of powers, where there would be something shy of independence."

It is no coincidence that Quebecers and Scots are stumbling in to similar constitutional ground. They talk a lot– at least the nationalists do.

"The politicians in Quebec are very aware of the similarities with the UK and Scotland," said Henderson. "The links between the parties are strong. We often, for example, see SNP politicians meet with those from the PQ."

Are there Nationalists helping the PQ in this summer's elections? "Not that we know of," comes the line from SNP HQ.

Francophone sovereigntist newspapers have heaping praise on a future independent Scotland. Le Devoir of Montreal, for example, said Scotland was on its way to become a "Scandinavian social-democracy with Queen Elizabeth as a bonus".

But if Scottish nationalists have their friends in Quebec, they also have their enemies.

Federalist-sympathising papers take a different view, not least in Anglophone Canada.

Toronto's Mail and Globe earlier this year said it believed Scotland would "become one of the European leaders in homicides, hard-drug abuse, obesity, cancer deaths and alcoholism".

Think Scotland's independence debate is rough? Quebec's has been rougher.

"The language used on both sides can be more nationalistic than in Scotland," Henderson said, "perhaps because language – whether French or English – has historically been so important part of politics."

Why so nasty? Because, unlike in Scotland, there is no overriding recognition that Quebec is a country.

Quebec nationalists have, historically, had to assert the very premise of nationalism: that their province is a nation.

Keating explained: "Here you can have Scotland as your country and you can have Britain as your country.

"That is one of the secrets of unionist success in Britain, that they have been prepared to accept the trappings of nationhood for the constituent nations of the United Kingdom.

"But the rest of Canada has huge difficulty in looking at Quebec as anything other than another province."

The Quebec nationalists lost their referenda – probably the only Yes camp to lose such a plebiscite, according to the province's own academics.

But that didn't kill the PQ, even if it did put the party on its electoral knees for a while.

Keating summed up: "Like in Quebec, [in Scotland] the independence issue is not going to go away whatever the outcome of the referendum.

"It is perfectly plausible, for example, that the SNP could lose a referendum and win the subsequent Holyrood elections."

David Leask monitors how the world's media report on Scotland's independence referendum for the Herald and Sunday Herald.

His latest blog, on Quebec's ferociously partisan media's coverage of Scottish politics, can be found at www.heraldscotland.com