[R-G] Quebec Elections: Liberals win bare majority in record-low turnout

[Anthony Fenton]

Quebec Elections: Liberals win bare majority in record-low turnout

December 14, 2008 By Guy Charron

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/19949

11 December 2008 -- Held under conditions of the biggest global  
economic crisis since the Great Depression, Monday's Quebec election  
was marked by the lowest voter turnout in at least 80 years (57  
percent) and the near annihilation of the right-wing populist Action- 
démocratique du Québec (ADQ).

The Liberals—who have held power since 2003, but were reduced to a  
minority government in an election 20 months ago—secured a  
parliamentary majority, but only barely. With a 42 percent share of  
the popular vote, the Liberals won 66 of the 125 seats in the National  
Assembly, while the Parti Québécois (PQ), with 35 percent of the  
popular vote, reclaimed official opposition status.

Liberal Premier Jean Charest called the elections in early November  
claiming that Quebec needed a majority government to confront the  
financial crisis and looming recession. His real motivation was fear— 
fear that the economic crisis would rapidly undermine popular support  
for his government.

Even as the election campaign unfolded, reports emerged that the  
Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec [the Quebec pension plan] had  
suffered massive losses due to the financial crisis. Charest, with the  
support of former PQ Premier Bernard Landry, denounced opposition  
calls for the government to reveal the extent of the Caisse's losses,  
because he well knew the hemorrhaging of the Caisse's balance sheet  
would give credence to opposition claims that the government might  
soon have to increase taxes, or even slash pension benefits to  
compensate for the Caisse's losses.

In their campaign for a parliamentary majority, the Liberals received  
strong backing from the Quebec elite. It calculates that a government  
assured of holding office till 2013 will be better able to implement  
public spending cuts, health care privatization, and other socially  
regressive measures in the face of popular opposition.

The size and scope of the collapse of the ADQ, which, as a result of  
the March 2007 election, had become the official opposition and  
narrowly missed forming a minority government, shocked, even  
stupefied, the professional political analysts. Twenty months ago  
these pundits had claimed that the surge in support for the ADQ was a  
"revolt" of the "real, true blue," i.e. traditionally conservative,  
Quebec.

In reality, the ADQ's strong showing in the 2007 elections was the  
result of a protest vote, born of the frustration and anger of working  
people, particularly in rural Quebec and the outer suburbs of  
Montreal, over stagnating living standards and deteriorating public  
services.

To be sure, the ADQ's founder-leader Mario Dumont waged in 2007, as in  
2008, a right-wing populist campaign—a campaign that in the 2007  
election was largely directed against immigrants and religious  
minorities. Dumont's success in the 2007 election was largely due to  
the support he received from sections of the establishment, especially  
the tabloid press. Big business has long used the ADQ, which was born  
of a nationalist split-off from the Liberals, as a means of pushing  
the Liberals and PQ further right.

In the current campaign Dumont tried to revive his chauvinist campaign  
over the so-called "reasonable accommodation" issue, but found no  
support from the populace or press.

On Monday, the ADQ polled 16.35 percent of the vote and won just 7  
seats, as compared with almost 31 percent of the vote and 41 seats in  
the 2007 election. Even more revealing is the freefall in the number  
of votes won by the ADQ. Whereas in 2007 the ADQ won 1,224,000 votes,  
on Monday it won substantially less than half that number, about  
530,000.

So devastating was the ADQ's showing that Dumont announced his  
resignation as party leader in his election night speech. Given the  
role Dumont has played in the ADQ since its founding in 1994 (his name  
is even part of the party's official name, Action démocratique du  
Québec/Équipe Mario Dumont), his resignation places a question mark  
over the party's continued existence, at least as a significant player  
in Quebec politics.

The unprecedented low voter turnout suggests that many who voted for  
the ADQ in 2007 chose simply not to vote in this year's election. The  
October 14 federal election, it should be noted, also saw the lowest  
voter turnout in a century. The lack of interest in official politics  
is a distorted and confused expression of growing popular disaffection  
with a political set up in which the parties, whatever their election  
rhetoric, end up implementing the same right-wing policies on behalf  
of big business—the dismantling of public and social services, further  
limits on workers and democratic rights, and tax cuts skewed to  
benefit the most privileged layers of society.

A further factor in the ADQ's collapse bears mention. The corporate  
elite turned against it, having concluded after witnessing the ADQ as  
official opposition, that it was too untested and volatile to be  
trusted with a share of power. Newspaper editorialists lamented that  
the ADQ's social conservatism and immigrant-baiting cut across its  
promotion of a right-wing "free-market" agenda that directly  
articulates the needs of big business.

The press' coverage of the ADQ made clear that the Quebec elite wanted  
to see it returned to the status of a third-party—although not  
necessarily, as now is the case, one bereft of official status in the  
National Assembly—and the PQ restored as Quebec's official opposition.  
While the most powerful sections of Quebec and Canadian capital are  
opposed to the PQ's call for an independent Quebec, they recognize  
that the PQ has "proven itself" during its four governmental terms as  
a party ready to impose the demands of big business in the face of  
popular opposition and, indeed, is particularly adept at doing so,  
precisely because of its close and longstanding ties to the trade  
union bureaucracy.

The seats the ADQ lost Monday were divided almost equally between the  
Liberals and the PQ. The PQ won most of the ADQ seats in the outer  
suburbs of Montreal and the Laurentian region north of Montreal. The  
Liberals captured ADQ seats in the Quebec City region and Eastern  
Townships.

The PQ, which since the 1970s has alternated with the Liberals as  
Quebec's governing party, was clearly ecstatic at regaining official  
opposition status and especially at the unexpectedly large number of  
seats it captured Monday, 51.

Opinion polls published in the weeks and days immediately prior to the  
election had indicated that the PQ would take a share of the popular  
vote on the order of 30 percent, not the 35 percent share it captured  
Monday. Unquestionably, the key factor in the unanticipated strong PQ  
showing was a popular reaction against the campaign that Canadian  
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his minority Conservative government  
had mounted in the preceding week to stigmatize an attempt by the  
federal opposition parties to form an alternate government as  
illegitimate and a "separatist coalition." This campaign openly  
appealed to and fanned anti-Quebec prejudice. It culminated in a  
"constitutional coup," in which the un-elected and unaccountable  
Governor-General shut down parliament for seven weeks so as to prevent  
the opposition from defeating the Conservative government on a non- 
confidence vote.

Monday's election results were also a blow to Harper and his  
Conservatives in another sense. The Conservatives have developed close  
ties to the ADQ and during the course of the campaign Dumont came to  
the defence of the Harper government, denouncing the proposal for a  
Liberal-NDP coalition supported by the PQ's sister party at the  
federal level, the Bloc Québécois, as bad for Quebec. The rout of the  
ADQ leaves the Conservatives further isolated in Canada's second most  
populous and only majority French-speaking province.

That said, the PQ's "resurgence" is far less impressive when one  
scrutinizes the vote totals. The PQ polled just 14,000 votes more than  
in the last election, when it had its worst showing since its first- 
ever election in 1970.

The same, mind you, could be said of the Liberals. While they won 66  
seats Monday, they did so with essentially the same number of votes  
(1.3 million) as in 2007, when they received their lowest-ever share  
of the popular vote.

There was one other significant development in Monday's election.  
Québec solidaire (QS), which describes itself as Quebec's left  
sovereignist or pro-Quebec independence party, won its first-ever  
seat, although its share of the province-wide popular vote remained  
less than 4 percent. Amir Khadir, an Iranian-born doctor and one of  
QS's two co-leaders, was elected in the Montreal riding of Mercier,  
defeating a prominent péquiste (PQer) in what had long been considered  
a PQ bastion. Press reaction to Khadir's election was highly  
favourable, with such right-wing mouthpieces as the Montreal Gazette  
declaring that QS represents a legitimate current of opinion in Quebec  
that merits representation in the National Assembly.

This reaction reveals that the establishment has already taken the  
measure of Québec solidaire. The axis of QS's politics is to pressure  
the PQ to prevent it from moving too far right and to advocate limited  
social reforms within a "fiscally responsible" framework. (See:  
"Québec solidaire: Quebec's "left" party in the orbit of the big  
business PQ")

The lack of popular enthusiasm for the Quebec election campaign is  
largely bound up with the fact that apart from the PQ's advocacy of  
independence there is virtually nothing that distinguishes the  
policies of the two traditional parties of government. Both have  
presided over a massive erosion of the quality of public services.

The lamentable state of Quebec's public health care system did emerge  
as a campaign issue, leading the Liberals and péquistes to trade  
accusations as to who is responsible for hospital emergency-room  
overcrowding and months-long waiting lists for urgently needed medical  
operations and procedures. The PQ closed hospitals and imposed massive  
budget and job-cuts during its last two terms in office (1994-2003);  
the Liberals, for their part, have promoted health care privatization.

PQ leader Pauline Marois defended the PQ government's elimination of  
thousands of health care jobs as part of its socially regressive "zero- 
deficit" campaign, insisting that she would do the same if similar  
conditions arose. Marois also declared that in a period of crisis it  
would be irresponsible to rule out public spending cuts. Another  
measure of the right-wing tenor of the PQ campaign was Marois'  
suggestion that the PQ might form a coalition with the ADQ, which  
advocates wholesale health care privatization and other neo-liberal  
measures, in a minority parliament.

As the campaign progressed, the corporate media became increasingly  
critical of the politicians for trying to generate popular enthusiasm  
for their flagging campaigns with promises of limited social spending  
increases, rather than "preparing" the population for the "sacrifices"  
that the economic crisis will require. Typical was an editorial signed  
by André Pratte, La presse's chief editorial writer. "The party  
leaders speak of increasing public spending so as to make our social  
programs more generous," protested Pratte. "Are they unconscious of  
the gravity of the crisis? Or do they act this way because that's what  
voters want?"

The media is also troubled by the results of the election. The  
Liberals have only a tiny parliamentary majority and actually won the  
vote of less than one in four Quebecers. The elections, moreover,  
clearly demonstrated popular opposition to privatization and fiscal  
conservatism as represented by the ADQ and mass alienation from the  
parties of the elite and the official political process. Alain Dubuc,  
one of Quebec's most influential commentators, summed up some of the  
establishment's fears in a column published in La presse, Quebec's  
most important daily, Tuesday. A government, wrote Dubuc, "that wants  
to build for the future, must be able to launch reforms, to shake  
things up, to demonstrate audacity, to be an agent of change. And  
therefore to sometimes be unpopular. It is there that the Liberals'  
weak majority could become an obstacle."

However, the Liberals will be able to count on the support of the  
trade union-supported PQ and the ADQ rump in imposing the burden of  
the economic crisis on working people. Both Marois and Dumont have  
pledged to cooperate with the Charest Liberal government in responding  
to the crisis.