Lorne Gunter - Here are three facts from Monday’s federal election that, taken together, have the potential to transform our national politics: Stephen Harper is the first non-Quebecer to be elected to lead a majority government in over half a century. Outside of Quebec, his party won 48% of the popular vote — nearly an outright majority. Finally, Mr. Harper heads up a majority with the fewest seats from Quebec in nearly a century.
The era in which Quebec ideas, Quebec politicians and Quebec’s demands dominate our national dialogue can end, if the new Tory majority wants it to.
Not since John Diefenbaker in 1958 — 53 years ago! — has any party with a leader from outside Quebec won a Parliamentary majority. Only about 27% of our current population was even alive when it happened last; probably under 15% have a conscious memory of it.
In 1958, the world was still three years from the first manned space flight. Only 40% or fewer of Canadian homes had televisions, and most of those were concentrated in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, which had CBC stations, and along the U.S. border where signals from American stations could be received — if one’s antenna was tall enough and the weather conditions were just so. Most Canadians still received the bulk of their news from newspapers and from radios the size of breadboxes.
“The net” was something your cousin Hamish used to catch fish in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. My God, Cadillacs still had fins and weighed two tons!
The last five leaders of majority governments were, in order, Pierre Trudeau, John Turner, Brian Mulroney, Kim Campbell and Jean Chrétien. Mr. Turner and Ms. Campbell don’t count because while they were from outside Quebec and led majorities, they did so only briefly and were never elected to head up a government.
It is also worth noting that Diefenbaker’s majority included a sizeable Quebec caucus. With the help of Maurice Duplessis and the Union Nationale party apparatus, the Chief’s Tories captured 50 of Quebec’s 75 seats in ’58.
Mr. Harper and his party have just seven seats from Quebec. Not since 1917, when Robert Borden won with just three Quebec MPs, has a national majority been formed with so little representation from that province.
Stephen Harper, then, is something most Canadians have never seen: a prime minister born and raised in English Canada who does not hold power at the pleasure of the smug, self-centered, expensive demands of Quebec.
This could (should) mark the end of Quebec’s hegemony over Canadian politics, but it need not mark the end of Canada.
Quebec is more isolated within our national debate than at any time within most Canadians’ living memory. Almost no one under 50 will be able to recall a time when our national government’s first reflex wasn’t to ask, “What will Quebec want on this issue?” Now, what Quebec desires doesn’t have to matter nearly as much.
For instance, Quebecers aren’t as likely as other Canadians to approve of the Tories’ tough-on-crime initiatives or their toughening of immigration requirements or their less-hysterical approach to the environment. But the Tories aren’t beholden to Quebec for their majority, so they don’t have to defer to that province’s desires on policy.
End of the gun registry not that popular in Quebec? Experiments with private delivery of health care a vote-loser there? Ditto deep cuts in the civil service? So?
And when a separatist Parti Quebecois government comes pounding on Ottawa’s door after the next provincial election, the Tories have the luxury, for once, of being able to try a little tough love rather than appeasement.
And Quebec can matter even less if the Tories revive Bill C-12 from the last Parliament. That was legislation that would have added 18 House of Commons seats in Ontario, seven in British Columbia and five in Alberta, to end the gross under-representation those provinces suffer in Parliament. Those 30 extra seats would shrink still further the influence of Quebec and its stagnant population.
Quebec need not be ignored or made irrelevant. Rather the Tories have the first chance in two generations to keep Quebec’s influence over federal politics at realistic levels, proportionate with that province’s share of the population. Let’s hope they take advantage of that opportunity.
National Post
_ lgunter@shaw.ca