Canada: Politics:UPDATE: What happened to Bloc Quebecois in Election 2006?
Guest analyst Laurent Moss, a Canadian and Quebecois cultural gem, is the editor and writer of a superb instance of bilingualism, Le blog de Polyscopique. In this blog-entry, Mr Moss gives us the most thoro account of what happened in Quebec - in our most recent Federal Canadian Election on January 23, 2006 - as we voted for the membership of a new House of Commons and the establishment of a new government for our continent-wide country. refWrite considers it a duty and a privilege to try to bring a better understanding of francophone political developments in la belle province to our English-language readership, not least of all its Christian and reformational segments of that wider readership. In his blog-entry, Mr. Moss provided some 30 live links in order to document his study; I hope to update this entry by adding some further asterisks (*) to indicate to readers which are in English, as many are. - Politcarp
It is sometimes hard to remember how dark clouds were gathering over the sovereignist movement in the years following the 1995 referendum on sovereignty won by the NO side. Polls were showing a steady decline in support for the sovereignist option. Though the Parti Québécois was re-elected in the 1998 provincial elections, it actually received less votes than the Liberal Party. Then the PQ was defeated in the 2003 elections, when it received 33 percent of the popular vote and lost almost 500,000 votes compared with 1998. Both in terms of the share of the vote and of the number of votes, the PQ suffered its worst defeat since 1973. Meanwhile, the Bloc, which had won 54 seats and 49 percent of the vote in 1993, only won about 40 seats and 40 percent of the Québec vote in the 1997 and 2000 federal elections and lost about 450,000 votes compared with 1993.
This contributed to the perception that sovereignists were not on history's side. In 2001, a CRIC poll found that 54 percent* of Quebecers considered sovereignty an idea whose time had passed. Sovereignist intellectuals were beginning to explore alternative solutions to a referendum on sovereignty they could not win: see for example Jean-François Lisée's Sortie de secours and Claude Morin's Les prophètes désarmés, respectively published in 2000 and 2001. Political scientist Jean-Herman Guay pointed out that in the summer of 2003 polls were so bad for the Bloc Québécois that some sovereignists suggested that it would be better for the Bloc to disband itself than to get crushed in the next federal elections.
Of course, this all changed very quickly in the wake of the Auditor General's report on the sponsorship scandal and of the Gomery Commission. Suddenly, sovereignists were showing strong momentum and their project, instead of being headed for the dustbin of history, seemed to be nearly impossible to stop. In the 2004 elections, the Bloc repeated its 1993 performance by winning 54 seats* and 49 percent of Québec votes. Helped by the unpopularity of the Charest government, the Parti Québécois reached new heights in polls in 2004 and 2005. Support for the sovereignist option was also rising, with some polls showing that the YES side could have won by 54 percent had a referendum been held in 2005 with the same question than in 1995. In the 2004 elections, a Bloc MP talked about a return of Jacques Parizeau's three periods: a Bloc Québécois triumph, followed by a Parti Québécois victory and finally a referendum on sovereignty. The Parti Québécois adopted in June 2005 a program that focuses on an early referendum and on governing a new country of Québec. The PQ was so sure that it would have to lead a country and not a province that its new program is "in particular mute on the governance of the province of Québec", as was pointed out by journalist Michel Vastel.
The strong showing of the Bloc in the 2004 elections would have been good enough to be Parizeau's first period. However, the dissolution of Parliament in November 2005 meant that this first period would have to be fought once again. And, let us remember, the Bloc was eager to do so since the Liberal government would not have fallen if the Bloc had not voted to overthrow it. With a Liberal Party tainted by the sponsorship scandal and the Gomery Commission, most people expected the Bloc to do even better than in the 2004 elections. During the Bloc's electoral convention, Duceppe spoke of making the Liberals disappear in Québec and of winning more than 50 percent of the votes in Quebec. In 9 provincial elections, 4 federal elections and 2 referendums on sovereignty, never had the sovereignist PQ-Bloc-YES option won an absolute majority of the popular vote. If the Bloc had won a mythic 50 percent + 1 votes, its performance would have been hailed as a triumph and as a dress rehearsal for a sovereignist victory on the glory night of the referendum.
Instead, the Bloc won 42 percent of the Québec vote and won 51 seats, a net loss of 7 percent of the popular vote and of 3 seats. Indeed, its 42 percent score is closer to the disappointing performances of 1997 and 2000 than to 1993 or 2004. The only reason why the Bloc has 51 and not 40 or less seats is because of the division of the federalist vote. In keeping with the metaphor of the three periods, a Le Soleil editorial by Jean-Marc Salvet claims that sovereignists have lost the first period Monday whereas Le Devoir editorialist Bernard Descôteaux writes that "[t]he second period will be longer and more difficult" for sovereignists than expected. Four days before the vote, when polls had already shown a decrease in Bloc support, ADQ leader Mario Dumont asked "how could [sovereignists] pretend they will then be able to have 50 percent of the vote in a referendum if they cannot even rally half of Quebecers in a less compromising federal election?"
Of course, what deprived the Bloc from winning an absolute majority of votes is the rise of the Conservative Party in Québec. As Le Devoir and Maclean's reported, Conservative leader Stephen Harper refused to believe in the inevitability of a Parti Québécois victory in the next provincial elections followed by a referendum of sovereignty. Instead, he believed that this eventuality could be avoided if federalism were made attractive to Quebecers and he showed the leadership to do so in his Québec City speech on federalism and Québec. Josée Legault, a former political advisor to Péquiste Premier Bernard Landry and a fervent sovereignist, wrote that PQ leader André Boisclair was right to warn that Harper is dangerous, but "that 'danger' wouldn't be 'to Quebec' as much as it would shake the near certainty that many Péquistes have of winning the next election and ensuing referendum".
The 2006 elections mark the end of what columnist Alain Dubuc called "the sovereignist bubble" of the two last years, a bubble that had been fueled by the sponsorship scandal, the arrogance of the federal Liberals and the lack of federalist alternatives. Even in the wake of Jean Brault's testimony to the Gomery Commission when a Léger Marketing poll PDF download showed that 54 percent of Quebecers would vote YES on a referendum on sovereignty, the same poll showed that 56 percent of these YES voters wanted Québec to remain a part of Canada. This fact should have made clear that Quebecers have not yet given up on Canada. Now there is no hurry to hold a referendum on sovereignty and Quebecers will at least wait to see how Harper's approach to federalism turns out.
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