With a federal election in the offing, there's been an outbreak of late here in Quebec of griping by political personalities and commentators that the province's interests and preoccupations are getting precious little attention from the national political parties and the rest-of-Canada population as a whole. But if Quebecers in general feel that way they have only themselves to blame.
There was the prominent complaint of Senator Jean-Claude Rivest, a senior adviser to former premier Robert Bourassa, in a recent speech that got front-page treatment in Le Devoir. He bemoaned the "thoughtlessness" of the major federal parties, which to his mind are showing a total lack of interest in Quebec's realities and deplored that Quebec's concerns have been nearly erased from the national agenda.
He was joined by former Parti Québécois minister François Legault, who polls suggest could be elected premier if he could get a functional party together, and assorted columnists of nationalist inclination whose main complaint is that none of the national parties shows any interest in reviving the constitutional debate that got talked to death two decades ago.
To begin with, Quebec does have problems, but none of them cry out for a constitutional fix. Putting it into the constitution that Quebec is a nation within Canada would do nothing to rectify its real problems. These include a range of dysfunctional provincial institutions, a staggering debt due to reckless spending, a decrepit health-care system, an underperforming school system, a bloated bureaucracy and rampant corruption. All of these should and can be dealt with by the provincial government under its present jurisdictions.
Nor should Quebecers be surprised that federal parties aren't straining themselves to dangle fat carrots before them this election campaign. For nearly two decades now and despite the best efforts of the national parties to connect with them, Quebecers, election in and election out, have delivered most of their federal seats to the Bloc Québécois, whose abiding interest is to advance the disintegration of Canada.
The Conservatives tried mightily in their first term to win over the Quebec vote. They got parliamentary recognition of Québécois nationhood, they put paid to the alleged fiscal imbalance, they gave Quebec a seat on the Canadian UNESCO delegation and Stephen Harper pointedly spoke French first at every formal public appearance, even abroad. And yet, when the Tories made a relatively piddling cut to arts funding before the last election, Quebec threw a collective hissy fit and gave the Bloc even more seats than before.
The lesson for Quebecers here is that if they don't participate in national affairs through the national parties, their concerns will predictably get short shrift. Bite the hand that reaches out to you too often and the hand will inevitably be withdrawn.