Tasha Kheiriddin - Is the Bloc Quebecois dead? Commentators in Quebec are divided: La Presse columnist Vincent Marissal wrote the party a three-line obituary today, while editor Alain Dubuc believes that the rejection of the Bloc is a “catastrophe” for the sovereignist movement. But others disagree: Jean Francois Lisee, ever optimistic, asserts on his l’Actualite blog that the party shouldn’t be written off just because Quebecers have been swept up in an orange tsunami.
Logic would seem to dictate that a party with only four MPs, no party status, no Parliamentary budget, and facing the cut-off of its public funding, would disappear into the ether. Federal parties have come and gone through the province before: Social Credit elected 26 MPs in Quebec in 1962; by 1980, it was a footnote in history. In the Bloc’s case, voters seem to have imposed their own version of a sunset clause: when a party putatively dedicated to Quebec separation celebrates its twentieth anniversary in a still-united Canada, it’s time to pull the plug on a failed experiment.
So what happens to the remnants of the Bloc? Now-unemployed political staff and former MPs will likely migrate to two camps: the Hill offices of new NDP MPs, and the ranks of the Parti Quebecois, in the run-up to the 2013 provincial election. As if Jean Charest didn’t have enough problems, he now faces the equivalent of hive of angry bees, with Queen Bee Pauline Marois promising to pick up where Gilles Duceppe left off, and defend the interests of Quebec against its oppressors in Ottawa.
The second question on Quebecers’ minds is how the NDP will represent the interests of Quebec. Over half its caucus hails from la belle province, but not all are francopohones – indeed some, like the now-infamous Ms. Vegas (new MP Ruth Ellen Brosseau, who is still MIA after her mid-campaign vacation ), don’t even speak French, a point of consternation for Quebec’s chattering classes and voters alike. Josee Boileau, editor of Le Devoir, laments that Quebec will have less influence in the new Parliament than in the old: in a minority Parliament, the Bloc had more sway (aka blackmail ability), since it could force the government to compromise to retain power.
It’s true that the traditional configuration of a majority House relegates the Opposition to opposing, rather than proposing. But it also makes the NDP a potential government in waiting (insert shiver here). Jack Layton’s great challenge will be representing the interests of his Quebec caucus without being consumed by them; if the NDP morphs into merely a new mouthpiece for Quebec grievances, it risks losing support in the rest of the country and dividing its caucus. Layton would be well advised to pick off remnants of Quebec’s shell-shocked federal Liberal party, to temper the nationalist strain than now imbues the NDP. Both staffers and ground troops are mulling their futures – and knowing how much Liberals like power, it might not be a stretch to offer them olive branches and tempt them into the socialist fold.