A Parti Québécois member of the provincial legislature who wants to create a distinct Quebec identity on the internet will first have to get approval from a United Nations agency.

Longtime sovereigntist Daniel Turp has started a petition to persuade the international authority responsible for internet domain names to create the .qc national extension, similar to Canada's .ca.

Turp says he just wants the internet to reflect the reality of Quebec.

But a spokesman for ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, says it's not as simple as just asking for the internet extension.

Jason Keenan said Turp would first have to go through procedures laid down by the International Standards Organization, a UN agency.

Canadian officials might have some say in the matter.

Turp points out that Catalonia, an autonomous region in Spain, has its own national extension — .cat — while the same goes for Greenland, a self-governing province of Denmark, which uses .gl.