Seismic shift in Quebec politics

ik - wow! When I first read this article, I thought it was surprisingly accurate for something about Québec coming from the Toronto Star. But then I noticed that it was by Chantal Hébert. NO ONE knows Québec politics better than Chantal Hébert, and for her to talk about a seismic shift in Québec politics is quite astounding. Interesting times....

Jan. 19, 2006. 06:40 AM
CHANTAL HÉBERT

NATIONAL AFFAIRS COLUMNIST

Montreal—Whoever said election campaigns don't matter?

Regardless of its ultimate outcome, this one has profoundly altered the federal landscape. In fundamental ways, it will not be the same after Monday.

For the first time in over a decade, it is once again politically correct to support the Conservatives in Central Canada. After a 13-year absence, the party has returned to the mainstream and, from all indications, it is there to stay.

But it goes beyond that. Quebec has been the scene of a dramatic shift, a sea change whose implications are still difficult to measure except to know that they are significant.

Consider the following:

This was never going to be a good year to run as a federal Liberal in Quebec. But if Quebecers had only wanted to punish Paul Martin for the failings of his party and his government, they would have stuck with the Bloc Québécois.

Gilles Duceppe remains Quebec's most respected leader. He has run a campaign whose only fault to date has been its predictability. For his pains, he has recorded a double-digit loss in support since the election call. According to a CROP poll published this week, the Bloc could come out of the election with less than 40 per cent of the popular vote on Monday. In the Quebec City area, it has actually fallen behind the Conservatives.

Harper's surge in Quebec caught the Bloc completely off guard. It seems its counteroffensive was too late in coming to nip it in the bud.

That a leader from Alberta — whose policies remain controversial in Quebec — is the beneficiary of this turn-around makes it even more remarkable.

Earlier this week, Montreal's federalist daily La Presse, gave its unqualified editorial support to the Conservative party. La Presse has supported the Tories in the past, notably in the Mulroney era. But he was a Quebecer.

Since Pierre Trudeau, La Presse had always endorsed Quebec federalist leaders over non-Quebec ones.

Here is another measure of the magnitude of the Conservatives' psychological breakthrough in Quebec: At this point, Harper's Tories are more popular than Mario Dumont's Action démocratique party. In francophone Quebec, they outrank Jean Charest's provincial Liberals.

Suddenly, it pays for a Quebec leader to be associated with Harper.

Regardless of Monday's seat count in Quebec, this will have lasting consequences. For better or for worse, the Conservative party has for now become the federalist option of choice in Quebec.

For the foreseeable future, it — rather than the Liberals — stands to attract the better candidates.

If Harper becomes prime minister, one of his biggest challenges will be to live up to the expectations he has created in Quebec.

The good news is that, on the scale of the grand constitutional reconciliation promised by Brian Mulroney two decades ago, his promises are modest. Indeed, the evidence so far has been that it is the openness to dialogue rather than the non-existent fine print of the Conservative commitments that has enticed Quebecers to turn to the Tories in significant numbers.

That also means, by the way, that the premise that Harper would automatically have to step down if he lost this election is no longer valid.

In the unlikely scenario of a narrow Conservative defeat Monday, the party would still emerge from the vote with more of the attributes of a national party than the Liberals and a more popular leader in all regions of the country, including Quebec.

For now, though, the Quebec developments are primarily a lesson for two opposing forces that too often thrive on each other's tunnel visions.

The sovereignty movement is the biggest immediate loser of Quebec's flirt with Harper. In the short term at least, the momentum toward another referendum has been reversed. For those who harbour the dream of a winning referendum at the first opportunity, this is a wake-up call that will be difficult to ignore.

But the pundits of the Canadian chattering class who have been using their pulpits to preach the virtues of a general federal disengagement from the Quebec front should also take note.

Their mutual-indifference thesis was based on the glib theory that Quebecers had no interest in participating in Canadian affairs. That assertion was already grossly simplistic at the time the election was called. As the campaign comes to an end, it has also been proven to be dangerously ill informed.