Quebec opts into Canada?

[frigidmagi]

Montreal Gazette

It's not often we see history being made - and even less often that we see so much of it being made as in Monday's federal election.

And much of it was made here in Quebec.

Nationally, the New Democratic Party will form the official opposition, thanks to its sweep of this province. And the Liberals, with their lowest seat total since Confederation, have been relegated to a third party. For both parties, these are historic firsts.

The Bloc Québécois failed to obtain a majority of this province's seats for the first time in the seven federal elections it now has contested, going back to 1993.

Only once before, in 1965, did a party led by an English-Canadian win more seats in Quebec than a major party led by a French-speaking native son.

On Monday, all three federalist parties did it. Even if Gilles Duceppe hadn't announced his resignation on Monday night, there was no party left for him to lead.

But we should not be too hasty in concluding from a single federal election that Quebec has ended its self-imposed political isolation from the rest of the country.

If it has opted back into Canada, it has done so only partly and grudgingly, and maybe only temporarily.

In switching from the Bloc to the New Democrats, it has exchanged representation in one opposition party for another, from one that demands everything to another that promises everything.

It remains suspicious of federal power, and has again refused to participate in the government of Canada.

Such participation would require accepting both responsibility for the government of the country and the need for compromise with its other regions.

For Quebec, it is preferable to have no power at all than to be held responsible for its exercise, and to have to share it.

And so, with the possibility of an NDP-Liberal governing alliance removed, this province will remain comfortably in the opposition, in a New Democratic caucus a majority of whose members will be from Quebec.

Many of them, however, with the notable exception of Thomas Mulcair, are cardboard-cut-out stand-ins, absentee campaigners, some unable to speak the language of their constituents, swept into office to their own astonishment and possibly terror in place of more experienced and qualified incumbents.

"The province of Quebec has no opinions, it has only sentiments," said Sir Wilfrid Laurier at the turn of the last century.

Now it has mood swings, like an adolescent with AD-HD. Only four years after impulsively swinging to the right with Action démocratique du Québec in the 2007 provincial election, it has swung just as hard to the left with the New Democrats.

(One difference is that while the ADQ caucus was often likened to daycare, the NDP's Quebec caucus will have to be called Mul-care.)

So before Liberals seek a unite-the-left merger with the NDP, they might want to until after another election to see whether this province's "orange crush" lasts longer than its infatuation with the ADQ.

It is the fear of commitment and responsibility expressed again in Monday's election results, even more than the obliteration of the Bloc, that should worry sovereignists.

And so should the constant yearning for a third option, something else, something different, something new, such as Jack Layton's NDP- or maybe François Legault's future provincial party.

Pauline Marois's position appeared secure after her 93-per-cent confidence vote at the Parti Québécois convention two weeks ago.

But until a few weeks ago, so did Duceppe's. So it is not beyond the realm of imagination that what happened to the Bloc leader in Monday's federal election could also happen to Marois in the next provincial one.

In the celebration over recent events, it was kinda easy to forget that Canada had an election (sorry guys). An interesting election it was to! We saw the fall of 2 parties and the rise (sorta) of one. In this case, the Bloc Quebec got a firm, hard kick in the teeth delivered by the voting public of Quebec. I gotta wonder if it's because the Quebecers are feeling neglected or something else?