[R-G] The 2008 Canadian Federal Election: a Quebec Perspective

[Anthony Fenton]

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 147 ... October 14, 2008
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The 2008 Canadian Federal Election: a Quebec Perspective
Christian Rouillard

Traditionally, federal elections in Quebec have always been a  
privileged time to reflect and debate on Quebec’s constitutional  
status within Canada. Is Quebec getting more autonomous? Is Canadian  
federalism becoming more flexible? Are we heading towards  
decentralisation or centralisation? What about the sovereignty  
project? Are we getting closer or further away from the ‘winning  
conditions,’ to use Lucien Bouchard’s now dated expression? But this  
time, things are different. The Parti Québécois (PQ), under Pauline  
Marois’ leadership, has put the sovereignty question on hold for an  
indefinite period of time. Or, to put it in her own words, until  
‘Québécoises and Québécois are ready to talk about it’. Until then,  
the PQ is not interested in talking about the ‘how’ and ‘when’ of the  
sovereignty project. So, obviously, for once, the Bloc Québécois (BQ)  
has to find something else to justify its 18 year presence on the  
federal scene.  Predictably, the other parties, especially the  
Conservative Party, are repeatedly questioning the relevance of the  
Bloc Québécois in federal politics, arguing that the BQ’s members of  
Parliament (MP) have been a cost without any return for Quebecers.

Unsurprisingly, the BQ electoral slogan, ‘Présent! pour le Québec’,  
aims to emphasize that the BQ is here (in Ottawa) to defend Québec’s  
essential interests. But what do these interests amount to in 2008?  
According to the BQ’s electoral platform, they can be announced as  
follows:

	• the future of the Quebec nation;
	• Quebec’s culture;
	• Quebec’s economy;
	• the environment and the reduction of dependency to petroleum;
	• support for families, seniors, women, and youth;
	• justice.
The future of the Quebec nation, even though it is the first element  
of the platform, has been, to all intent and purpose, completely  
absent from the campaign. The second element, Quebec’s culture, has  
temporarily become a prominent issue, due to the Conservative  
government’s $45 million spending cut in the cultural sector. Since a  
$45 million cut can hardly be considered significant when total  
expenses exceed $220 billion, rigorous financial management has  
obviously nothing to do with this political decision. Quebec’s  
cultural sector has spontaneously mobilized itself to denounce this  
ideological stance of the Conservative government, putting to good use  
its artistic creativity, as illustrated in a much seen, and talked  
about, humorous video put on YouTube by its creators, on what might  
constitute a new Conservative program to support the arts. But, the  
American financial crisis having worldwide repercussion, economic  
issues have once again been put the forefront of the federal campaign  
in Quebec.

During the leaders’ debates (both French and in English), the  
Conservative government chose a laissez-faire attitude to deal with  
the financial crisis, and its expected consequences for the Canadian  
economy. If that may appear sufficient to some Quebecers, most of them  
considered that (lack of) strategy as unacceptable, especially in  
light of the Republican American federal government’s $700 billion  
tentative solution. How can there be such a discrepancy between the  
responses of an (American) republican federal government and a  
(Canadian) federal conservative government? Could Harper be even more  
conservative than Bush? Could the Canadian Conservative party be even  
more State averse than the American Republican party? Pressured by the  
last opinion polls suggesting a rise in the support towards the  
Liberal party in Ontario, and towards the BQ in Quebec, the  
Conservative government finally made public, through the Minister of  
Finance Jim Flaherty, its own plan to help Canadians cope with the  
financial crisis, which is for the most part based on a $25 billion  
government buy-out of mortgages from Canadian banks. But being  
announced just 5 days before the general election, and 2 days before a  
long weekend, the Conservative plan appears to be aimed more at  
stopping electoral losses, than helping Canadians and Quebecers to  
deal with significant loses in their savings, and in many cases, their  
retirement funds, as well as additional difficulties to access capital  
at a reasonable cost.

Unsurprisingly, the latest opinion polls in Quebec suggest a strong  
lead for the BQ, which should elect something in the range of 50 of  
its candidates out of the 75 federal ridings in Quebec. According to a  
Segma-La Presse opinion poll published on October 10, support for the  
BQ is at 42%, whereas it fell to 20% for the Conservatives, 18% for  
the Liberals, 13% for the New Democratic Party (NDP), and 6% for the  
Green Party. In other words, Stephen Harper and the conservatives  
appear to have lost their pari québécois (Québécois gamble). Near the  
end of the campaign, reasonable expectations for the Conservative  
would mean that they could barely keep the 10 seats they won the last  
time in Quebec, mostly in the Québec city and Beauce regions. As was  
the case during the last federal election, the Liberal Party of  
Canada, the NDP, and the Green Party are essentially non-players. Both  
the BQ and the Conservative campaigns, which for the most part totally  
ignore these three parties, are concerned primarily with attacking  
each other.

Paradoxically, the Conservatives’ strategy in Quebec to not only  
question the relevance of the BQ in Ottawa, but to straightforwardly  
suggest that a vote for the BQ is a wasted vote (a cost without any  
return), appears to have backfired. The BQ has risen to the challenge  
and explained, better than ever before, that in a democracy, a vote is  
never wasted. Gilles Duceppe, very effectively, has emphasized that in  
our system of government, the contribution of Parliamentarians can not  
be reduced to the executive branch, i.e. the members of government,  
but that it has to do first and foremost with their work in  
Parliamentary committees. Duceppe mentioned time and again the  
decisive influence of the BQ in the legislative process, most notably  
in the field of social policy. Interestingly, even though this line of  
argument is just as valid for the NDP and the Green Party, since  
neither of them can expect to form the next federal government,  
neither of them has succeeded in becoming a serious contender in  
Quebec politics, even on a regional basis. This shouldn’t come as a  
surprise in the case of the Green party, but it has come to be a  
disappointment for the NDP. To date, the NDP has but one Quebec MP who  
is in fact a former provincial Liberal cabinet minister.

For the time being, it appears that left-of-center Québécois remain  
critical of the NDP’s centralist vision of Canada and are consequently  
hesitant to support it in large numbers. As long as this remains the  
case, the BQ will have a significant advantage when it comes to  
leftist federal politics in Quebec. Even though it was far from their  
intentions, the group of former BQ members of Parliament and  
candidates that publicly accused the BQ of being a mere lobby group of  
Quebec unions , may very well have helped the BQ to secure the vote of  
left-of center Québécois, much to the chagrin of the NDP, whose leader  
Jack Layton, himself originally from Montréal, spent much campaign  
time and effort in Quebec. Even though constitutional politics has  
been put on the back burner this time around, it becomes evident that  
the nature of Canadian federalism will remain, for the time being, at  
least a ‘creeping’ issue in Quebec, and that this ‘creeping’ issue  
will impact the election results next Tuesday, October 14. For better  
of for worse, it seems that federal politics in Quebec will never rid  
themselves of constitutional issues, preferences, and indeed, paradoxes.

Christian Rouillard, University of Ottawa, Canada Research Chair in  
Governance and Public Management

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