January 5, 2006

Who is responsible for Canada’s slide towards national disintegration?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The election campaign has now passed the half-way mark. Following the Christmas-New Year’s time out, the politicians are again bombarding us with their messages in advance of the second round of leaders’ debates.

Along with child care, gun violence, insider trading on the stock market, and relations with the United States, the very future of the country has emerged as an election issue.

As we paused for the holidays, the Bloc Québécois had an astounding lead of 60% to 20% over the Liberals in Quebec, according to a poll conducted between Dec. 17 and 19 by the Strategic Counsel. The Conservatives and New Democrats were nowhere, at 8% each, in the province.

Even in Montreal, the poll found the Bloc was almost twice as popular as the Liberals. Such are the continuing fruits of the sponsorship scandal.

Yet Paul Martin has continued to attack the Conservatives as being less able, or even willing, than the Liberals to preserve Canada as a united country. Indeed, a few weeks ago the prime minister accused Stephen Harper and Gilles Duceppe, “if they get enough seats,” of “working together to dismantle this country that all of us are so proud of.”

This is all a bit odd, coming from a man who seemed unhappy with the Clarity Act and who appointed a founder of the Bloc, Jean Lapierre, who has called the act “useless,” as his Quebec lieutenant when Martin took over the party.

Steven MacKinnon, the national director of the Liberal Party, also spoke of a “Conservative-Bloc partnership,” while Liberal strategist John Duffy wrote about Harper’s “record of parliamentary co-operation with the Bloc.”

It goes without saying that Mr. Harper is no friend of Quebec’s sovereigntists. But there is no doubt that, should the Conservatives form a minority government (which I think they will), the Bloc Québécois will want to keep Stephen Harper in power for as long as possible. Why?

The House of Commons after Jan. 23 will likely have more than 60 “Quebec” MPs, as the Bloquistes like to think of themselves, while the remaining House members, be they Liberals, Tories or New Democrats, will all be from “Canada” (including the handful of Liberals elected in anglophone and allophone ridings of Quebec).

As the Conservatives will probably not win a single seat in Quebec, the Bloc will able to portray Mr. Harper as an “English Canadian” prime minister and the Conservatives as a party “foreign” to Quebecers. That will help the Bloc carry the message to people in that province that a Yes vote on separation in a future provincial referendum will be the only way to safeguard their interests as a people.

Indeed, the composition of the next parliament will make many Québécois feel as though the province has already, in all but name, split off from the rest of the country.

But don’t blame Stephen Harper or even Gilles Duceppe for this state of affairs. Just remember that those great defenders of Canada, Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, have been in power these past 12 years.