premise: If, in 1995, during the referendum debate in Quebec, the National Assembly had passed such a bill against the federalist vote, limiting it so that it would have less weight than the sovereignist vote, what would people have thought of the National Assembly and of its Parti Quebecois members?
hypothesis: The bill against the vote wasn't passed.
reason: The passage discusses what would have happened if the bill had passed. One would deduce that it didn't pass.